Predictions for 2020: CONNECT and prepare for IMPACT

With just a few short days remaining until the one of the most awaited years in human history, I find myself somewhat curious as to what people predicted was going to happen in 2020 from a technology and innovation perspective. What technological marvels did our ancestors believe would have the most impact on people’s lives in the future?

One hundred years ago, the world had just emerged from the greatest war the planet had ever seen – World War I – and understandably, the society of the day looked to the future with a great deal of optimism and a large dose of aspiration.

Here are just a few of the predictions for the year 2020 from the Roaring Twenties:

• Flying taxis
• Flying emergency services (police, fire, ambulance)
• Routine trips to the Moon
• Kids learning through wires attached to their heads
• Video phones for international calls
• Automated farms
• Protective domes over our cities

Not bad for an era when the car, the radio and the telephone were only just becoming mainstream. But what’s more interesting is the thread of CONNECTEDNESS that runs through many of these predictions, be it in travel, education, communication or work.

Fast forward 50 years to the age of Disco and burgeoning social ‘wokeness’ – the 1970s – and some predictions for 2020 take a decidedly dystopian turn:

• MIT supercomputer, World One, calculates that the quality of human life will decline rapidly from 2020
• Robotic servants in every home (in fact, the robots would control everything)
• Insufficient jobs due to automation
• Nuclear war
• Giant bubbles over cities to protect them from a polluted environment
• Personal computers for every child at school (ok, this one is actually quite cool)
• Genetic medications to cure the common cold and cancer, and reduce aging (so is this one, cool I mean)

While the 21st Century is not all “10-4, good buddy” for the golden age of vinyl, there was still a desire to consider how humans were likely to interact with and through technology in the future. CONNECTEDNESS.

Having survived Y2K, the beginning of the third millennium ushered in some now familiar predictions of life in twenty years’ time:

• Books and paper documents no longer exist (paperless office, anyone?)
• 3D/holographic communications
• Talking to your house and appliances (and they answer back!)
• Automated cars (humans are now banned from driving)
• Biometric security used in everyday living (entering your home, place of work, or boarding a plane)
• AI medical assistants for diagnosis; nanobots for body maintenance and limb regeneration
• Lifelong learning and acquisition of skills now common for most people
• The United Kingdom would leave the European Union (Boris Johnson, yes that Boris Johnson, predicted this back in 1997 as a 30-something newspaper columnist!)

Ok, the last prediction on the list above is not strictly technology-based, but I couldn’t resist – it adds an eerie quality to my ramblings.

So where am I going with my ruminations as we round out 2019?

In recent years I’ve come to realise that despite our great technological advances, what makes humanity so powerful and enduring is the constant desire to CONNECT with one another to make a better life for all of us. Technology for ever changes and predictions about new technology come and go, but we should never forget that the real technological success throughout history is US.

My challenge to all WA members for 2020 is to “question everything, learn something” (Euripides, 431 – 406BC). Above all, CONNECT.

Happy New Year for 2020 and prepare for impact!

P.S. Please share your predictions for 2020.