Page 22 - CSA Speaker Bulletin January 2017 | CSA Celebrity Speakers

FUTURE
The Trends of 2017
For over 30 years Ray Hammond
has been researching, writing and
speaking about how future trends
will affect society and business.
He is Europe’s most experienced
and most widely published
futurologist.
The most noticeable short-term
trends of 2017 will be continued Europe. I am afraid that additional
disruption in the politics of
Western nations, the probable
retrenchment of the Eurozone
and the possible beginning of a
reformation of the European Union
itself.
The wild card of the year, the joker in
the pack is, of course, the presidency
of Donald Trump.
As the great futurist Alvin Toffler
predicted in his eponymous 1970
book, the peoples of the developed
world are suffering from "Future
Shock" - more or less on the timeline
he predicted 47 years ago.
For many adult voters, the future
is now coming at them too fast
and too hard. Although few of
those feeling discomfited would
identify the forces of exponential
technology development (and the
rapid globalization that it produces)
as the cause of their resentment
at their own lack of social mobility
and the increasing loss of low-
skilled jobs, these long-term trends
are the underlying causes of their
unhappiness.
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The reaction produced by Future "anticipatory democracy". His hope
Shock is the rise of so-called was that informed governments of
"populist" politics in Western societies the 21st Century would anticipate
which led to the UK's unwise vote the social changes wrought by
for Brexit, the hate-filled politics of technological disruption and would
the USA which led to the even more plan social alleviations and solutions
unwise election of Donald Trump accordingly.
and the rise of both right and left-
wing populist movements across But the governments he imagined
- advised by social scientists,
social damage is likely to follow as futurologists and technologists - have
more working people feel unsettled, not materialised. If anything, I regard
displaced and undervalued as the most of today's western governments
arrival of A.I. and automation reduces as more technophobic, incompetent
opportunities for human employment and short-sighted than they were
and advancement still further. when Alvin Toffler was writing his
prescient masterpiece. Having been
In both the UK and the USA the an advisor to Western governments
percentage of adults who have on future planning, I am sad to report
attended university or college is about that very few politicians care about
one third; most of this group are in any issues with implications further
work and are socially mobile, at least ahead than their own next elections.
for now. Read more. n
But the less-skilled two thirds of the
population that did not benefit from
further education find employment
either unrewarding or impossible
to find. Those working are mostly
stuck in jobs that pay little more
than the minimum wage, have few
opportunities for promotion and are
faced with competition for their jobs
from keen, lowly-paid immigrants
or automation. This two-thirds of
the population also votes, and it is
their dissatisfaction, their reaction to
Future Shock, that is now disrupting
domestic politics.
Alvin Toffler suggested that a
new form of governance would be
needed for this period; he called it