Megachange: The World in 2050 (The Economist)
edited by D. Franklin, John Andrews
The Economist
This book looks at our world 38 years from now. That's 38 orbits of the sun. The age at which a person is entering the suburbs of middle age. Half a lifetime.
It's helpful therefore to start by looking at our world that many years ago: 1974. There were two Vietnams, and, thanks to Watergate, two US presidents that year. The British Overseas Airways Corporation merged with another carrier to become British Airways. And mobile-phone technology was some futuristic fantasy that cropped up from time to time in a rerun of the original 1960s Star Trek. Yet we thought back then that space travel would be the long-haul travel of the 21st century.
Jardine House was the tallest building in Hong Kong, a city with - back then - many more shanty towns than shopping malls.
Colour TV had just started replacing black and white, but only in the wealthiest of homes. And magazine ads featured doctors and airline pilots with pearly white Hollywood smiles, extolling the health benefits of cigarette smoking.
Beam us back to that book, Scotty! Now those brainy people at the London- based The Economist - the news magazine that weirdly eschews bylines - have undertaken a collective crystal ball-gazing exercise, albeit based robustly on current and keenly projected trends.
This ambitious work, penned by the cream of the magazine's editorial team, looks at sweeping and epoch-defining 'mega-trends' that are changing the world faster than at any time in human history.
