The Shape Of Things To Come

The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme, 2007-2036 has dozens of rather disturbing moments. I strongly urge everyone to read it in full. Its view of what awaits us in the near future is truly dystopian.

We have brain-chip mind control:

By 2035, an implantable information chip could be developed and wired directly to the user’s brain. Information and entertainment choices would be accessible through cognition and might include synthetic sensory perception beamed direct to the user’s senses. Wider related ICT developments might include the invention of synthetic telepathy, including mind-to mind or telepathic dialogue. This type of development would have obvious military and security, as well as control, legal and ethical, implications.

We have genetically modified Ãœbermenschen. Khhhaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!!!!!!!

The application of advanced genetics could challenge current assumptions about human nature and existence. Initially employed for medical purposes, breakthroughs in these areas could be put to ethically questionable uses, such as the super enhancement of human attributes, including physical strength and sensory perception. Extreme variation in attributes could arise between individuals, or where enhancement becomes a matter of fashion, between societies, creating additional reasons for conflict.

Lou Dobbs turns out to have been right all along:

A growing Hispanic population in the US might lead to increasing social tensions, possibly resulting in an aggressive separatist movement. Unlike the Black Power militants of the 1960s, this movement might focus on geographically-based self-determination as its aim, threatening secession by Hispanic-majority states. Confronted by this threat, the US might become increasingly introspective, withdrawing from all non-essential overseas commitments. In the wider world, other states and non-state actors could take advantage of the US withdrawal or break-up, using violence to pursue objectives that, otherwise, might have provoked a US military response.

Security cameras with the voices of children are just the beginning:

Technology will enable pervasive surveillance in response to terrorism, rising transnational crime and the growing capability of disparate groups or individuals to inflict catastrophic damage or disruption. Coupled with intrusive, highly responsive and accessible data-bases, the emergence of a so-called ‘surveillance society’ will increasingly challenge assumptions about privacy, with corresponding impacts on civil liberties and human rights. These capabilities will be deployed by the private as well as the public sector.

Thats all just the tip of a very scary iceberg. I might grab a few more choice cuts later.

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