Future forecasts future information society

Future forecasts future information society global warming futurology predictions

Updated Thursday, 19 August 2004

SW2000 TELEWORK STUDIES – Director Noel Hodson, got four main forecasts right.

First the growth of telework - When we started to promote teleworking and the Information Society in 1988 there were just a handful of “mobile” workers and the commute to work was at its height. Peak-hours travel threatened gridlock in most major cities. Now there are more than 20 million US and 10 million EU teleworkers, and teleworkers in all OECD countries, who no longer commute at peak-hours. Following the first true prophets of the electronic revolution we joined the train and forecast the changes that were coming – about 10 years ahead of time. Today our Telework Statistics are the most reliable and most visited on the planet.

Second – they laughed when in 1985 we advised property developers and friends to “move to higher ground and buy land in Antarctica.” Global Warming has arrived about 200 years earlier than most 1985 predictions. Land in Antarctica might be a long term investment – and by the time it is ice-free we forecast that capital ownership will have vanished from society (see the book The Future 2516 AD). But in the medium term, you can profit from the advice to move to higher ground; at least more than 100 feet (30 metres) above sea level.

Third – though it doesn’t appear on this site, in 1980 we advised several wealthy speculators to propose The Space Hotel to NASA – the first orbiting vacation weekend-breaks for all of us who would like to sample being astronauts. When should you make your move? It’s happening now.

Fourth – We predicted the PENSIONS CRISIS thirty years ago and made it part of our standard advice to business clients to forecast that most pension funds, endowment linked mortgages and equally long term bonds etc would lose value and not provide the level of income then being predicted (1968-1998) by the financial services industry. Against the massive marketing and sales budgets of the industry, this forecast was probably even more ignored than the others. About 5% of the client’s we advised actually took the advice. The pointers were in the demographics, the War Bulge, Baby Boomers, all competing for unearned retirement income at the same time – and in the regulations and criteria being applied by the FSA. This worldwide crisis will continue and unearned income will be harder to find. See link item 7 below.

If you want to learn which way the socio-economic system, or specific parts of it, will jump in the near and medium or long term – contact us to discuss the brief and our fees and costs for a confidential study.

This site has a number of papers and pictures about the Future. Here are links to some of them.

1. Politics and Money – A 1.5MB slide show of The Brave New World of the Information Society

2. Future Living Locations, styles, management, Off Planet Companies – a paper of short serious forecasts.

3. Future Living - a humorous view for Bank Dresdner – Russia’s dominant economy – The Lost City of Chartered Accountants

4. Future Traffic – paper for the RAC. Charts of forecasts for computers and vehicles – Gridlock.

5. Future 2516 AD – a new novel set 500 years ahead. About to be published and made into a film.

6. London’s Future due to Global Warming

7. ENRON & the Future of Auditors after the ENRON & other financial scams