10-21-2018, 11:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-21-2018, 01:58 PM by WinterStorm.)
I am a software engineer by profession, and the digital revolution currently dominates my Crisis ideas. In fact, I believe that the digital revolution is shaping this Crisis in the same way that prior waves of industrialization shaped the prior 3 ones.
1. We are moving into the post-paper age. Like many new trends, this is one in which "the future is already here, just not yet evenly distributed" since there is currently no consensus that we are already there. Since paper and coin money makes up less than 15% of financial transactions (with most people using debit/credit and getting paid using direct deposit), we have crossed the line into the cashless society. At last, we can say we are there. That doesn't mean that there isn't paper money, of course, but it is a minor and declining method of payment. Job applications and housing applications have moved online. Motor vehicle registration has moved online. Books are increasingly read on a computer in the same way we use MP3s.
In the 1990s (as a kid), I remember office desks containing stacks of paper. Today, the usage of paper is decreasing to the point that the office printer gets unused in many cases. Electronic communications has largely replaced the usage of paper, except for cases in which paper is still required by law or industry convention. Documents get emailed or stored on some cloud. People use Skype and Slack for office communications. The same thing is increasingly true for schooling. Heavy textbooks are being replaced by laptops and tablets which offer a lot of advantages, such as interactive and remote education. The classroom is becoming an institution dominated by computers rather than paper. Kids do their lessons on their computers and often turn their work online. It is my prediction that the upcoming Idealist generation will see paper in the same way Boomers viewed the icebox as a technology.
2. Fossil fuels will continue to slowly decline, while new ones such as solar and nuclear will continue to rise. This will involve a fundamental shift that will veer more towards how things are organized in the digital world. The rise of electric vehicles is a result of the Recovery Act of 2009. Not only will this solve the environmental problem caused by fossil fuel cars, the rise of EVs will usher in a more tightly integrated infrastructure. And here is why. An EV is powered by a battery. However you charge the battery is largely up to you, as long as you provide the correct input to the correct interface. So if you have a generator running petroleum, then you can use that. You can also use solar, wind, geothermal. You can charge at a charge station like a gas station, but also at the parking lot of many places, and even your own house. Batteries will become more energy dense and EVs more efficient. Also, Peak Oil now seems like a thing of the past. Elon Musk saved the say.
3. Autonomous cars will be the wave of the future. Cars today already have a significant amount of automation, with Tesla and Cadillac currently leading the pack. By the next High, we will have achieved Level 5 automation. What that means for the future of driving, I cannot say. This will make radical changes in society. A 10 year old might in the future be able to own a car, for instance. This technology, combined with drone technology, will finally give us flying cars. Automation will make flying cars into a rather safe technology.
4. The digital revolution itself provides the setting with which the Crisis is taking place. This is causing a revolution in the workplace and in the entire industrial sector. I never got to experience the Taylorist regime, but that idea that has been the basis of organization for about a century seems to be coming to an end. Whether you were capitalist, fascist, communist, anarchist, technocrat, or any other government or movement at the time, it was taken for granted for most of the 20th century that you adhered to the organizing principles of Taylorism and Fordism. Now, all of that is changing. Agile, which was created as a way to organize software development work, has taken over most organizations. Even if you are only using a part of Agile, it has changed the organization. The modern organization looks like a software development shop. In today's office, you are stationed at a computer and are using some custom internally developed application to do your work. The organization is pretty much built around the computer network to such an extent that the organization of the IT sector and infrastructure becomes indistinguishable from the form of the organization itself. The fact that workers are using software developed internally greatly contributes to the reduction of paper usage in the office, replacing them with electronic forms, databases, and automation. New technologies such as blockchain, AR, and Internet of Things are accelerating this digital trend. The same technologies and concepts that make the smart home will make the smart office.
The digital revolution also means that you will need entirely different skills in the 21st century. Tech careers are now a critical sector of the economy. There is a new concept called "New Collar" work, meant to replace and consolidate blue and white collar work. These are skills which don't require a college education and can be learned right out of high school. These type of jobs will similar to jobs like carpentry and plumbing in that they will allow most people to live a comfortable lifestyle while not investing a lot of time and money into college. I expect that this concept will be key to the widespread prosperity expected of a High.
The 20th century was dominated by companies like GM and Ford. Today, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and other technologies have totally replaced the old industrial era giants. Nearly every aspect of life is dominated by technology companies. Your work life is likely thoroughly dominated by Microsoft products like Outlook, Word, and Excel. Your home life and communications are now thoroughly dominated by technology. People increasingly do all of their shopping online with companies like Amazon. Google dominated search and email. There is virtually no activity left that doesn't heavily involve technology giants. This trend will only increase. It's kinda like churning butter and horseback riding. Once cars came out, the skill of horseback riding quickly disappeared because the world that it existed in no longer exists. We are already at the point at which the industrial, 20th century way of doing things is already becoming forgotten. The Homelanders will be the last generation to have any experience of a pre-digital era. They will only see its destruction and replacement, whereas the Millennials will have experienced the pre-digital existence as kids and Xers coming fully of age before the shift. The neo-Boomers, OTOH, will have no experience of a pre-digital existence.
5. In the book Generations, it is noted how household life gets easier, more predictable, and more stable during Highs. The prior Crisis finished the industrial modernization of the home by implementing plumbing and electricity on a mass societal scale. That period introduced several new home technologies including refridgerators. This time around, we have Smart Home technologies. The smart home is essentially a digital home, and is an IoT sector. Just imagine that your entire house is run like a computer program. Instead of just having printers and scanners as peripherals (such as during the 1990s), now you have things such as your washer/dryer, light sockets, window blinds, and water faucet now become computer peripherals too. This will give people unprecedented convience and control over their environment. Cheap microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, and ubiquitous computers and networks will allow people in the 2030s to live a Jetsons-like existence. People will clean their houses using robots (such a Roomba). People will keep up to date using smart mirrors. Voice user interface (i.e. Alexa or Cortana) will also dominate the home at the time. Each home will produce significant amounts of data. Every change of temperature, for instance, will be logged and stored in some database to be used be some other application (such as an automatic lawn sprinkler that doesn't run in sub-freezing temperatures). This means that your house is increasingly hackable both by yourself and by belligerents. The same concepts and technologies added to the workplace creates the smart office. In your multiscreen enterprise application, imagine someone adding a screen that gave you (or more realistically someone with credentials) the ability to control all of the lights in the office. This will be the future.
6. The smart home concept applied on a municipal level scale creates the smart city, which is just one of the changes that bring to mind the New Deal. Basically, use sensors and networks to capture data (weather data, pollution data, noise pollution data, traffic, etc.) for use by the city (and anyone with access to the API). For instance, Shotspotter is a network of sensors that listen for gunshots (location, time, maybe even type). Once the sensors have picked that up, a message is instantly dispatched to law enforcement and any CCTV cameras around the area turn on and watch the location. The scooter craze is another example of the smart city revolution. Things like this will increasingly dominate city life.
7. Related to smart cities is the concept of egovernment. Estonia, of course, is the poster child for digital government, but the US has made strides on its own. Most city and state governments, as well as the national government now allow you to find information and use services online. One instance is ticket payment for a moving or parking violation. And then there are tools for civic engagement, which have been extensively used during the Obama and Trump presidencies and presidential campaigns. With blockchain voting is likely to move online, and civic software will make society much more governable by giving the citizens a greater voice and more power. Obamacare is a prime example of digital government and digital transformation that will become ordinary the rest of this century.
8. We finally have a national health care system, and there is no turning back. Even if Obamacare is abandoned, there is no way Americans will tolerate not having a national health care system. All attempts to repeal have failed, meaning that the only argument is whether we keep Obamacare (with some possible changes) or we give everyone Medicare.
9. One of the most interesting things to watch has been the blossoming of information age warfare. War is looking more and more like a cyberpunk video game. In fact, I am amazed at how accurately the Call of Duty series captures both the current and future reality of war. Since 9/11, drones have menaced the battlefield. It is gotten to the point at which you can build your own mini-reaper drone in your garage and wage terror or war. Robots have also revolutionized the battlefield. The IoT, and AR are of course entering the battle space, giving soldiers and enhanced view and more information about the battle field. Imagine having a HUD display for your helmet that provides perks that gamers are accustomed to (such as a map with (known) enemy positions and known friendly positions), and sensors that give detailed information about the battle field. Add in AI analysis and add in robots and this is the cutting edge of war today. People with gaming skills now can become drone warriors.
At the same time that we have robots and drones, we also have cyber networks that can be hacked. In the 1990s, cyberwar was still almost entirely science fiction, and the dominant view was that of a (Millennial) teenager using digital technologies to smash the oppressing corporation (which was modeled off of Microsoft) or some militaristic entity. 20 years later, cyberwar is a reality, but instead of anarchist teenagers fighting against Microsoft, now it is the national governments hacking and attacking each other. Cyberwar has been compared to nukes because the potential destruction can be very vast. We had a close call with the Wannacry event which shut down the British hospital system a couple of years back. Russian malware has been found on the computers of critical national infrastructure such as power plants. This has caused kind of an emergency drive to build critical cybersecurity, and has forced the nation to learn the basics of cybersecurity. I suspect that by the end of this Crisis, we will have robust cybersecurity protection. All products will likely have to follow basic security standards for it to be usable in many contexts, likely bordering on unreasonable paranoia early into the High.
With that said, national governments and blocs will have differences in digital policy, just like they had major differences in industrial policy in the previous Crisis in which nations tried out many ideas to build and fix a maturing industrial age society. Of course, many believed that fascism or communism would be the best way to organize an industrial power. In the 21st century, differences in digital policy have the potential to break apart the global internet. The Chinese internet is already on its way to becoming a separate internet. The EU has just recently implemented GDPR, which is a far reaching digital privacy law. The fact that the US doesn't have a law like this (yet) could also make large parts of the internet inaccessible to large groups. Just like the bipolar world of the 20th century caused technology and infrastructure to develop along separate and parallel lines, this separation will likely cause lasting cultural, social, economic, and political differences for the rest of the 21st century. China might have the totalitarian internet, while America has the free internet, for instance.
Since the 1970s, it has been widely remarked that the information age is giving to small groups and even individuals the same power traditionally reserved for large corporations and governments. This even becoming true for the military. Digital tools have given ISIS the ability to wage a serious and frightening insurgency. These same tools are also helping Ukraine resist Russian invasion and occupation. These tools include the ability to build war robots and drones in order to fight the enemy.
At this moment, it really feels that we are no longer living the post-WWII era, but now the post 9/11 era. 9/11 defines geopolitics now, not WWII (although it still has a heavy influence). The rest of the 21st century will largely be defined by the 9/11 wars (which include the Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi, ISIS, Yemem, and Ukraine wars, and likely the Second Cold War as well as digital warfare).
10. In the 1990s and 2000s decades, there was much talk of old versus new media. By the 2010s, everyone forgot about this argument because old media no longer really exists. Old media is now indistinguishable from new media. What we call "traditional television" can now be watched on Youtube. Books are increasingly downloaded, and the music industry today would be fully unrecognizable if not for familiar names like The Beatles. We live in an age in which internet trolls hold considerable power in politics, and are the driving force behind today's campaigns. Not only that, but propaganda has moved fully online. We live in an age of Twitter bots designed to spread propaganda. Even the arch-conservatives (Al Queda, ISIS, etc.) are fully online, having built their terror and war machine around the internet, using it for recruitment, propaganda, and surveillance purposes. This is an age of crazy Twitter demagoguery. Instead of the 1990s period of celebrities saying crazy shit in magazines and on television, now we live in a period of politicians saying crazy shit on the internet. Of course, as the Crisis passes, the demagoguery will come to a close, but the infrastructure that supported it will remain.
11. So the period from 1991 to 2013 (or 2001) was the modern day interregnum. The Cold War is back with us, and many of the things that defined that age have returned. The way things are moving now, we might be right back in the same place with them that we were in the year 1950. Everything geopolitics today reflects this reality, from the trade wars, to the Syrian War, to the ISIS war, to the new digital reality. So I'm guessing that we have another "century" of Cold War.
12. Elon Musk is revolutionizing space. I believe that people like Musk and Bezos will finally bring in the space faring future by the end of this Crisis. The next High will likely see a massive expansion into space. I'm betting that by the next Awakening, humans will have built bases on the moon and Mars, will have space based manufacturing, and will likely see the first true attempts at permanent space settlement (driven by expansion-minded Millenniials and culturally driven neo-Boomers). If history is a guide, this will match the previous ages of exploration during their Highs, as well as the westward expansion of the US after the nation's founding and the Civil War.
13. Playing video games is no longer a waste of time since it can lead to a lucrative career. Video games are now a full blown member of the cultural landscape, and we live in an age in which a majority of people from all demographics play video games. Video games are now a primary medium to transmit cultural information. There is also esports which is exploding in popularity. Video games are now a professional sport. Now, people who are the best at games can make money off of it. Popular musicians now write songs and music videos for video games today.
14. Racial integration is finally increasing again. The Crisis is foring us to confront issues raised during the Civil Rights Era. The whole migration crisis is emblematic of this. Most nations will have to grapple with whether integration or segregation is ideal, and to what degree. It is my prediction that the integrationists will ultimately win. We are also forced to confront gender issues. It is my prediction that most ideals of gender equality will be celebrated.
15. Laissez-Faire is now long dead (for now, at least). Compared to the 1990s, it looks substantially more like a centrally planned and controlled economy, especially since the crash of 2008.
1. We are moving into the post-paper age. Like many new trends, this is one in which "the future is already here, just not yet evenly distributed" since there is currently no consensus that we are already there. Since paper and coin money makes up less than 15% of financial transactions (with most people using debit/credit and getting paid using direct deposit), we have crossed the line into the cashless society. At last, we can say we are there. That doesn't mean that there isn't paper money, of course, but it is a minor and declining method of payment. Job applications and housing applications have moved online. Motor vehicle registration has moved online. Books are increasingly read on a computer in the same way we use MP3s.
In the 1990s (as a kid), I remember office desks containing stacks of paper. Today, the usage of paper is decreasing to the point that the office printer gets unused in many cases. Electronic communications has largely replaced the usage of paper, except for cases in which paper is still required by law or industry convention. Documents get emailed or stored on some cloud. People use Skype and Slack for office communications. The same thing is increasingly true for schooling. Heavy textbooks are being replaced by laptops and tablets which offer a lot of advantages, such as interactive and remote education. The classroom is becoming an institution dominated by computers rather than paper. Kids do their lessons on their computers and often turn their work online. It is my prediction that the upcoming Idealist generation will see paper in the same way Boomers viewed the icebox as a technology.
2. Fossil fuels will continue to slowly decline, while new ones such as solar and nuclear will continue to rise. This will involve a fundamental shift that will veer more towards how things are organized in the digital world. The rise of electric vehicles is a result of the Recovery Act of 2009. Not only will this solve the environmental problem caused by fossil fuel cars, the rise of EVs will usher in a more tightly integrated infrastructure. And here is why. An EV is powered by a battery. However you charge the battery is largely up to you, as long as you provide the correct input to the correct interface. So if you have a generator running petroleum, then you can use that. You can also use solar, wind, geothermal. You can charge at a charge station like a gas station, but also at the parking lot of many places, and even your own house. Batteries will become more energy dense and EVs more efficient. Also, Peak Oil now seems like a thing of the past. Elon Musk saved the say.
3. Autonomous cars will be the wave of the future. Cars today already have a significant amount of automation, with Tesla and Cadillac currently leading the pack. By the next High, we will have achieved Level 5 automation. What that means for the future of driving, I cannot say. This will make radical changes in society. A 10 year old might in the future be able to own a car, for instance. This technology, combined with drone technology, will finally give us flying cars. Automation will make flying cars into a rather safe technology.
4. The digital revolution itself provides the setting with which the Crisis is taking place. This is causing a revolution in the workplace and in the entire industrial sector. I never got to experience the Taylorist regime, but that idea that has been the basis of organization for about a century seems to be coming to an end. Whether you were capitalist, fascist, communist, anarchist, technocrat, or any other government or movement at the time, it was taken for granted for most of the 20th century that you adhered to the organizing principles of Taylorism and Fordism. Now, all of that is changing. Agile, which was created as a way to organize software development work, has taken over most organizations. Even if you are only using a part of Agile, it has changed the organization. The modern organization looks like a software development shop. In today's office, you are stationed at a computer and are using some custom internally developed application to do your work. The organization is pretty much built around the computer network to such an extent that the organization of the IT sector and infrastructure becomes indistinguishable from the form of the organization itself. The fact that workers are using software developed internally greatly contributes to the reduction of paper usage in the office, replacing them with electronic forms, databases, and automation. New technologies such as blockchain, AR, and Internet of Things are accelerating this digital trend. The same technologies and concepts that make the smart home will make the smart office.
The digital revolution also means that you will need entirely different skills in the 21st century. Tech careers are now a critical sector of the economy. There is a new concept called "New Collar" work, meant to replace and consolidate blue and white collar work. These are skills which don't require a college education and can be learned right out of high school. These type of jobs will similar to jobs like carpentry and plumbing in that they will allow most people to live a comfortable lifestyle while not investing a lot of time and money into college. I expect that this concept will be key to the widespread prosperity expected of a High.
The 20th century was dominated by companies like GM and Ford. Today, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and other technologies have totally replaced the old industrial era giants. Nearly every aspect of life is dominated by technology companies. Your work life is likely thoroughly dominated by Microsoft products like Outlook, Word, and Excel. Your home life and communications are now thoroughly dominated by technology. People increasingly do all of their shopping online with companies like Amazon. Google dominated search and email. There is virtually no activity left that doesn't heavily involve technology giants. This trend will only increase. It's kinda like churning butter and horseback riding. Once cars came out, the skill of horseback riding quickly disappeared because the world that it existed in no longer exists. We are already at the point at which the industrial, 20th century way of doing things is already becoming forgotten. The Homelanders will be the last generation to have any experience of a pre-digital era. They will only see its destruction and replacement, whereas the Millennials will have experienced the pre-digital existence as kids and Xers coming fully of age before the shift. The neo-Boomers, OTOH, will have no experience of a pre-digital existence.
5. In the book Generations, it is noted how household life gets easier, more predictable, and more stable during Highs. The prior Crisis finished the industrial modernization of the home by implementing plumbing and electricity on a mass societal scale. That period introduced several new home technologies including refridgerators. This time around, we have Smart Home technologies. The smart home is essentially a digital home, and is an IoT sector. Just imagine that your entire house is run like a computer program. Instead of just having printers and scanners as peripherals (such as during the 1990s), now you have things such as your washer/dryer, light sockets, window blinds, and water faucet now become computer peripherals too. This will give people unprecedented convience and control over their environment. Cheap microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, and ubiquitous computers and networks will allow people in the 2030s to live a Jetsons-like existence. People will clean their houses using robots (such a Roomba). People will keep up to date using smart mirrors. Voice user interface (i.e. Alexa or Cortana) will also dominate the home at the time. Each home will produce significant amounts of data. Every change of temperature, for instance, will be logged and stored in some database to be used be some other application (such as an automatic lawn sprinkler that doesn't run in sub-freezing temperatures). This means that your house is increasingly hackable both by yourself and by belligerents. The same concepts and technologies added to the workplace creates the smart office. In your multiscreen enterprise application, imagine someone adding a screen that gave you (or more realistically someone with credentials) the ability to control all of the lights in the office. This will be the future.
6. The smart home concept applied on a municipal level scale creates the smart city, which is just one of the changes that bring to mind the New Deal. Basically, use sensors and networks to capture data (weather data, pollution data, noise pollution data, traffic, etc.) for use by the city (and anyone with access to the API). For instance, Shotspotter is a network of sensors that listen for gunshots (location, time, maybe even type). Once the sensors have picked that up, a message is instantly dispatched to law enforcement and any CCTV cameras around the area turn on and watch the location. The scooter craze is another example of the smart city revolution. Things like this will increasingly dominate city life.
7. Related to smart cities is the concept of egovernment. Estonia, of course, is the poster child for digital government, but the US has made strides on its own. Most city and state governments, as well as the national government now allow you to find information and use services online. One instance is ticket payment for a moving or parking violation. And then there are tools for civic engagement, which have been extensively used during the Obama and Trump presidencies and presidential campaigns. With blockchain voting is likely to move online, and civic software will make society much more governable by giving the citizens a greater voice and more power. Obamacare is a prime example of digital government and digital transformation that will become ordinary the rest of this century.
8. We finally have a national health care system, and there is no turning back. Even if Obamacare is abandoned, there is no way Americans will tolerate not having a national health care system. All attempts to repeal have failed, meaning that the only argument is whether we keep Obamacare (with some possible changes) or we give everyone Medicare.
9. One of the most interesting things to watch has been the blossoming of information age warfare. War is looking more and more like a cyberpunk video game. In fact, I am amazed at how accurately the Call of Duty series captures both the current and future reality of war. Since 9/11, drones have menaced the battlefield. It is gotten to the point at which you can build your own mini-reaper drone in your garage and wage terror or war. Robots have also revolutionized the battlefield. The IoT, and AR are of course entering the battle space, giving soldiers and enhanced view and more information about the battle field. Imagine having a HUD display for your helmet that provides perks that gamers are accustomed to (such as a map with (known) enemy positions and known friendly positions), and sensors that give detailed information about the battle field. Add in AI analysis and add in robots and this is the cutting edge of war today. People with gaming skills now can become drone warriors.
At the same time that we have robots and drones, we also have cyber networks that can be hacked. In the 1990s, cyberwar was still almost entirely science fiction, and the dominant view was that of a (Millennial) teenager using digital technologies to smash the oppressing corporation (which was modeled off of Microsoft) or some militaristic entity. 20 years later, cyberwar is a reality, but instead of anarchist teenagers fighting against Microsoft, now it is the national governments hacking and attacking each other. Cyberwar has been compared to nukes because the potential destruction can be very vast. We had a close call with the Wannacry event which shut down the British hospital system a couple of years back. Russian malware has been found on the computers of critical national infrastructure such as power plants. This has caused kind of an emergency drive to build critical cybersecurity, and has forced the nation to learn the basics of cybersecurity. I suspect that by the end of this Crisis, we will have robust cybersecurity protection. All products will likely have to follow basic security standards for it to be usable in many contexts, likely bordering on unreasonable paranoia early into the High.
With that said, national governments and blocs will have differences in digital policy, just like they had major differences in industrial policy in the previous Crisis in which nations tried out many ideas to build and fix a maturing industrial age society. Of course, many believed that fascism or communism would be the best way to organize an industrial power. In the 21st century, differences in digital policy have the potential to break apart the global internet. The Chinese internet is already on its way to becoming a separate internet. The EU has just recently implemented GDPR, which is a far reaching digital privacy law. The fact that the US doesn't have a law like this (yet) could also make large parts of the internet inaccessible to large groups. Just like the bipolar world of the 20th century caused technology and infrastructure to develop along separate and parallel lines, this separation will likely cause lasting cultural, social, economic, and political differences for the rest of the 21st century. China might have the totalitarian internet, while America has the free internet, for instance.
Since the 1970s, it has been widely remarked that the information age is giving to small groups and even individuals the same power traditionally reserved for large corporations and governments. This even becoming true for the military. Digital tools have given ISIS the ability to wage a serious and frightening insurgency. These same tools are also helping Ukraine resist Russian invasion and occupation. These tools include the ability to build war robots and drones in order to fight the enemy.
At this moment, it really feels that we are no longer living the post-WWII era, but now the post 9/11 era. 9/11 defines geopolitics now, not WWII (although it still has a heavy influence). The rest of the 21st century will largely be defined by the 9/11 wars (which include the Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi, ISIS, Yemem, and Ukraine wars, and likely the Second Cold War as well as digital warfare).
10. In the 1990s and 2000s decades, there was much talk of old versus new media. By the 2010s, everyone forgot about this argument because old media no longer really exists. Old media is now indistinguishable from new media. What we call "traditional television" can now be watched on Youtube. Books are increasingly downloaded, and the music industry today would be fully unrecognizable if not for familiar names like The Beatles. We live in an age in which internet trolls hold considerable power in politics, and are the driving force behind today's campaigns. Not only that, but propaganda has moved fully online. We live in an age of Twitter bots designed to spread propaganda. Even the arch-conservatives (Al Queda, ISIS, etc.) are fully online, having built their terror and war machine around the internet, using it for recruitment, propaganda, and surveillance purposes. This is an age of crazy Twitter demagoguery. Instead of the 1990s period of celebrities saying crazy shit in magazines and on television, now we live in a period of politicians saying crazy shit on the internet. Of course, as the Crisis passes, the demagoguery will come to a close, but the infrastructure that supported it will remain.
11. So the period from 1991 to 2013 (or 2001) was the modern day interregnum. The Cold War is back with us, and many of the things that defined that age have returned. The way things are moving now, we might be right back in the same place with them that we were in the year 1950. Everything geopolitics today reflects this reality, from the trade wars, to the Syrian War, to the ISIS war, to the new digital reality. So I'm guessing that we have another "century" of Cold War.
12. Elon Musk is revolutionizing space. I believe that people like Musk and Bezos will finally bring in the space faring future by the end of this Crisis. The next High will likely see a massive expansion into space. I'm betting that by the next Awakening, humans will have built bases on the moon and Mars, will have space based manufacturing, and will likely see the first true attempts at permanent space settlement (driven by expansion-minded Millenniials and culturally driven neo-Boomers). If history is a guide, this will match the previous ages of exploration during their Highs, as well as the westward expansion of the US after the nation's founding and the Civil War.
13. Playing video games is no longer a waste of time since it can lead to a lucrative career. Video games are now a full blown member of the cultural landscape, and we live in an age in which a majority of people from all demographics play video games. Video games are now a primary medium to transmit cultural information. There is also esports which is exploding in popularity. Video games are now a professional sport. Now, people who are the best at games can make money off of it. Popular musicians now write songs and music videos for video games today.
14. Racial integration is finally increasing again. The Crisis is foring us to confront issues raised during the Civil Rights Era. The whole migration crisis is emblematic of this. Most nations will have to grapple with whether integration or segregation is ideal, and to what degree. It is my prediction that the integrationists will ultimately win. We are also forced to confront gender issues. It is my prediction that most ideals of gender equality will be celebrated.
15. Laissez-Faire is now long dead (for now, at least). Compared to the 1990s, it looks substantially more like a centrally planned and controlled economy, especially since the crash of 2008.