In January, we collectively generated a set of forecasts (full list at the bottom of the page), which were then pared down to the most popular 15. Here we have pared that group down to 8. We encourage you to contribute to these in the categories overview, leaders, data, examples, and scenarios.


The Major Forecasts (shared by four or more)

  • Prosumers - As the distinction between consumer and producer blurs, open source models will expand to embrace a wide range of products and services.
  • Boundaries blur between work, social life, and personal growth
  • Group conversations and group memory - Group conversations will become much richer as group memory is more available, accessible, and richly linked.
  • Public education as control or path to civic participation - There will be increasing tension in public education between its use as a means for social control or as a path to civic participation.
  • Context aware tools and fragmented realities - Real-time, reflective context aware tools shape our behaviors and create fragmented realities (deeply personalized).
  • "Life dashboard" to deal with organizations - As digital identity tools evolve, you will have a repository and "life dashboard" of all activities with organizations and companies to manage your relationships with them.
  • Ease of use drives consumer electronics
  • Tensions from free telecom
  • The end of retirement
  • DIY healthcare
  • Taste maps - Next generation taste maps created from computer-based life recorderings will drive how we obtain recommendations of what to watch, listen, and attend, and to whom we connect.
  • Increased connectedness drives filtering
  • Long-term relationships improve from digital connectivity
  • The anti-tech movement - 'Gratuitous computing': The negative impact of pervasive technologies fuels a grassroots anti-technology movement.
  • The spread and differentiation of dominant languages - As select languages dominate and many die out, subsets/dialects of the dominant languages will spread and differentiate more quickly.

less than four contributors:

  • Energry prices explode, rebirth of suburbs
  • Nations of choice secede from nation states
  • More innovation in public places (virtual and physical)
  • Health and sustainability merge from individualistic to collective
  • Social networks harness power as they become empowered
  • New collective identities drive declining significance of race, ethnicity
  • 50% of females born in the US in the next century will live to age 100
  • Global conflicts and terrorist attacks strain the fabric of trust
  • Overcome shyness
  • New media technologies emerge to serve the elderly as well as the young.


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