The increasing connectedness of the world's people and
political economies is grounds for optimism for the future, despite
the growing risks associated with climate change, organised crime
and terrorism, say UN agencies.
The State of the Future report published this month by the
Millennium Project
of the
World
Federation of UN Associations (WFUNA), showed that more than a
billion people (16% of the world poulation) are now connected to
the internet. It showed the digital gap between developed and
developing economies continues to close.
"Most people in the world may be connected to the internet
within 15 years, making
cyberspace an unprecedented medium for civilisation," the
authors said. "This new distribution of the means of production in
the knowledge economy is cutting through old hierarchical controls
in politics, economics and finance. It is becoming a
self-organising mechanism that could lead to dramatic increases in
humanity's ability to invent its future.
"As the integration of cellphones, video, and the internet
grows, prices will fall, accelerating
globalisation and allowing swarms of people to quickly form and
disband, co-ordinate actions, and share information ranging from
stock market tips to bold new contagious ideas (meme
epidemics)."
The report's authors noted that developing countries generate
more than half of the world's £31-trillion economy. "This is
helping to democratise the coming knowledge economy with
tele-nearly-everything and providing self-organising mechanisms for
emerging collective computer-human intelligence and management
systems.
"A worldwide race to connect everything not yet connected is
just beginning, and great wealth will be generated by completing
the links among systems by which civilisations function and
flourish."
The authors were upbeat about the application of the artefacts
of digital technology to biology. "Just as lines of code were
written to create software to do amazing things, genetic code may
be written to create life to do even more amazing things, such as
producing hydrogen fuel instead of oxygen from photosynthesis.
Artificial organs may be constructed by depositing living cells,
layer by layer, using dot-matrix printers in a manner similar to
3-D prototyping.
"Future synergies among
nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and
cognitive science can dramatically improve the human condition by
increasing the availability of food, energy and water, and by
connecting people and information everywhere. The effect will be to
increase collective intelligence and to create value and efficiency
while lowering costs. The factors accelerating all these changes
are themselves accelerating, which will make the past 25 years seem
slow compared with the next 25," they said.
Not everything is rosy, however. The authors said that although
the number of electoral democracies is increasing, press freedoms
are decreasing. "According to Freedom House, only 17% of the
world's population has access to free media," they said. In
addition, "trivial entertainment flooding our minds with unethical
behaviour and the increasing proliferation of media and information
makes it difficult to separate the noise from the signal of what is
important to know about our global situation in order to make good
decisions."
Against this, "E-government is taking hold around the world and
it will become more effective as increasing numbers of citizens
have access to the needed technologies," they said.
The World Federation of UN Associations is an independent,
non-governmental organisation with Category One Consultative Status
at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and consultative or
liaison links with many other UN organisations and agencies. The
Millennium Project of WFUNA is a global participatory futures
research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners and
policy makers who work for international organisations,
governments, corporations, NGOs and universities. The Millennium
Project manages a coherent and cumulative process that collects and
assesses judgements from its several hundred participants to
produce the annual "State of the Future", "Futures Research
Methodology" series, and special studies such as the State of the
Future Index, Future Scenarios for Africa, Lessons of History,
Environmental Security, Applications of Futures Research to Policy,
and an annotated scenarios bibliography.