Name: The Future
Rating: 4 (13 reviews)
Author: Al Gore

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Understand why democracies are not that democratic anymore.

Someone once said that it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Today this is truer than ever, as this increasingly complex and interconnected world is changing at an unprecedented pace.

But out of this blizzard of moving pieces it is possible to identify six larger themes that will no doubt play a big part in shaping the future of humanity. If you want to prepare for the future, you need some kind of road map, and in these blinks you’ll find the makings of one.

In the following blinks, you’ll discover:

why, whoever you are, you may soon find yourself out of a job,
why the internet can spur revolutions as well as quell them, and
why the rising global population may mean we’ll soon run out of everything.

Key idea 1 of 9

Outsourcing and robosourcing are resulting in lost jobs and increasing inequality.

The first major theme to be examined is the new global economy.

Thanks to increasing free trade and advancements in communication and transportation technology, the simple truth is that the world as a whole is rapidly becoming a single integrated economy: Earth Inc.

This development has two major impacts for workers.

First, jobs are being increasingly outsourced to developing countries, where labor costs are cheaper. While this has improved the economic health of those developing countries and grown their middle class, it is also increasing unemployment in the developed world.

Second, jobs are also being lost to robosourcing, when machines and computers take over jobs formerly performed by people. And these machines are increasingly autonomous, so there are no new jobs to be had in supervising them either.

In fact, even service jobs – where one might have considered human employees essential – are being robosourced. For example, bank tellers and travel agents are already being replaced, and soon professional drivers may also face the same fate, given that self-driving cars are being developed.

It is true that outsourcing and robosourcing have created some new jobs as well – for example, in the financial industry, and in fact these new jobs pay very well. But as there’s not enough of them to go around, the high pay merely contributes to the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

As the middle class disappears, there will be fewer affluent customers to buy goods, and this in turn will be bad for the economy as a whole. There are indications of this trend in developed countries already, and eventually the now soaring middle class in developing countries will face the same fate.

The only solution is to redistribute the wealth of the richest few to compensate for the lost income of the people who become unemployed. Unfortunately, so far the rich have been resistant to the idea, and have used their political sway to prevent any government action.

Key idea 2 of 9

Global power is increasingly shifting to corporations and away from the United States.

As you might have guessed, the rise of Earth Inc. has not been bad for everyone: in this new dynamic, private corporations are becoming increasingly powerful economic entities. In fact, more than half of the world’s largest 100 economies are now corporations.

With this economic power corporations have gained political power too.

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Key idea 3 of 9

The internet is helping us improve our lives and encourages democracy.

Of course, one of the biggest global shifts that has occurred and is occurring is the rise of the internet. People today are connected to huge global network. In 2012, internet users numbered 2.4 billion, and as connectivity spreads to every corner of the world, we can expect virtually everyone to be online soon.

As the internet expands, it is also being connected to many new devices and systems, ranging from refrigerators in your home to packages sent in the mail. The sheer size of this network is producing vast amounts of data – so called Big Data – and it presents a fantastic opportunity to improve many facets of our lives.

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Key idea 4 of 9

Criminals and autocratic governments can also use the internet for nefarious purposes.

The previous blink outlined the benefits of the internet, but clearly there are also drawbacks.

First of all, as anyone with an internet connection can attest, it is easy to focus on the entertainment value of online content, remaining blissfully oblivious to serious political issues.

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Key idea 5 of 9

Biotechnology in agriculture and medicine holds much promise, but also many threats.

Another theme that is likely to have an impact on every area of our lives is biotechnology.

In agriculture, for example, food products made from genetically modified organisms or GMOs have spread far and wide. These are crops like corn or tomatoes that have had new DNA spliced into them in order to give them desirable traits like resistance to pests.

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Key idea 6 of 9

Runaway population growth is putting immense strain on our natural resources.

As citizens of Planet Earth today, one issue we simply must confront is the rapid population growth that’s underway.

Consider that the current global population stands at ca. seven billion people, and is expected increase by two billion in the next quarter century. The total population is expected to stabilize at just above ten billion near the end of the century.

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Key idea 7 of 9

Technology alone cannot save us; we must encourage policies to limit the consumption of resources.

As discussed in the previous blink, population growth is placing a tremendous strain on our natural resources.

But not everyone is worried about this.

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Key idea 8 of 9

The climate crisis threatens our food and freshwater sources, and renewable energy sources are the only solution.

Of all the issues the world will face in the future, perhaps the most all-encompassing is the climate crisis.

The climate crisis is caused by CO₂ and other greenhouse gases accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere and thereby raising planetary temperatures at an alarming rate: nine of the ten hottest ever recorded years since 1880 have occurred in the past decade.

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Key idea 9 of 9

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

The six major forces that will shape the future hold both threats and opportunities. The key to mitigating the threats and leveraging the opportunities lies in curbing the increasing political power that corporations are wielding in the Western world, particularly in the United States.

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The Future summary