Future Trends

The next 20 years will bring more change than the previous 300. If this statement sounds somewhat preposterous, please keep in mind that we are now crossing a crucial threshold that was previously unthinkable. Technology is no longer simply changing our environment, i.e., what is around or outside us, or what hardware we use.

No more is it just a tool. Technology is well on its way to becoming a creative force — and a thinking machine, as well. Technology is now gearing up to go inside us, thereby changing who we are and rapidly redefining what it means to be human. All this, as some of my fellow futurists are fond of saying, to allow us to ‘transcend the limitations of humanity’. If intelligent machines are to perform our routine work for us, we will have to train them, teach them, connect them to us — in effect, making digital copies of ourselves, cloning our knowledge in the cloud.

This will alter us; and it will alter our view of what we are and what we could be, as well as what the machines are. And this is only the first step.… The world is becoming hyperconnected, automated and uber-smart — and everyone benefits. Six billion people are ‘always on’, around the planet, each of us seeing different information and content all the time.


We interact with platforms via augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), holographic screens, or via intelligent digital assistants.… By 2022, our digital egos have moved to the cloud and are developing a life of their own.

(From “Navigating the Digital Age”)