Happy New Year!

I’m Azeem Azhar. I’m exploring how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies and other trends. I convene Exponential View to help us explore these topics.

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We’re at the start of new decade so I would like to look out for the next ten. It’s a departure from the usual format of this newsletter. Please enjoy it, comment and forward this to friends.

*Update* read here the review of my 2020 predictions six months into the year. Part 1 and Part 2.

Photo: Ishan @seefromthesky

What do the next ten years hold?

Making predictions is complicated once we understand that the system we are trying to predict is a complex one, of interwoven forces that affect each other, each layering one atop the next. And that we don’t have clarity of when certain technical breakthroughs will occur or how political forces will shape the implementation of technologies (or vice versa).



Then presenting predictions as a list, a set of steps, in this case one to ten, is necessarily a shallow representation of this dynamic system built up of feedback loops of uncertain gait.



And then the prediction-maker is faced with the next challenge. At what level of abstraction should one make predictions? At the atomic level of technological progress (that chips will get faster, the cost of genome sequencing will decline), or at a highly macro level that describes population aggregates. I think the mezzanine layer that sits between the micro- and macro- is most relevant for understanding how our lives will change. This is where things get complicated and where our social institutions (like cities, firms, industries, communities) exist: where, in short, we spend most of our time.



Today, in the shadow of the climate threat, there is no guarantee of a naïve direction of aggregate progress, the sort of simple analysis which merely tracks longer lifespans, larger populations, wealthier societies. Wealth and health are undisputable markers. In the last century we did pretty well on that basis; we increased global GDP per capita on a purchasing-power-parity basis 5.7 times while increasing human population 4.1 times.



A climate catastrophe could unpick that simple teleology and reverse it sharply.



And, of course, values and beliefs change. The wealthiest societies in the world now have fewer children, absolute population levels are no longer a marker of bounty and power. The richest nations have lower birth rates, many with declining populations.



One of the largest collective fictions we’ve engaged in, the nature and operation of the economy itself, is ripe to be unpicked. It will be clarified by new methods from science and social science that better help us understand the processes that underpin economic behaviour and outcomes. This rethinking of economics will happen, given urgency by our collective experience at the sharp end of neoliberal, financialised economic thinking.



Many of these dynamics will result in the transfer of power from one group to another, some equitably, some less so. I can’t gauge accurately how willingly those transfers of power will occur.



We do have some clear choices, forks in the road, up ahead.

My suggestions for the shape of the next decade are based on what I consider a roughly optimistic reading of those choices. I’d welcome your comments, particularly from members, below.

What didn’t I talk about in the ten points above?

I couldn’t speak about the change in the nature of science, how the combination of computation, better search algorithms and data allows for a new type of empirically driven discovery and could herald a new age of rapid scientific discovery. I didn’t get a chance to talk about the potential for blockchain to enable new types of decentralised apps, or the increasing use of state-backed and independent cryptocurrencies. Nor did we speak about the scale of disruption that will hit incumbent firms in sectors beyond media and retail, but reaching deep into finance, transport, energy and beyond. And thus, concomitantly, the opportunity for entrepreneurs to craft new propositions.



I also didn’t have a chance to really zero in on what the new rules and norms of the coming exponential age need to be. In the face of all-seeing algorithmic systems, how we need to rethink the nature and extent of individual rights and the processes by which we protect them. Or what our intellectual property laws should look like as our economies continue their rapid shift towards intangible rather than tangible assets. As work shifts away from the bundle of full-time employment and a welfare net, a new, post-Fordist bundle will be required—I didn’t discuss this in my predictions (but you can hear a great conversation about it here.) Nor did I say much about the nature of identity-driven politics vs. cosmopolitanism, although I reckon that the underlying technologies favour homophily rather than integration.



I didn’t talk about inequality. I expect that globally fiscal policies will move to roughly tackle economic inequality. However the rapid rate of innovation will mean that improved products and services will be made available at a faster rate to those capable of paying. Some of those services, particularly those relating to healthcare (and genomics), education, and wealth management, will allow the very well-positioned to cement structural advantages across generations well beyond any increases in their tax burden.



At more than 2,400 words, I feel like I’ve gone on for long enough. If I could summarise the next decade: it will be ten years of very interesting times. Of difficult, complex systems problems that will demand deeper thinking, more reading, nuanced approaches. We’ll need to stand up against agnotological cynicism and simplism, both of which anaesthetise our human capacities. I hope we will be able to!



And please, I’d love to read your suggestions for the shape of the next decade in the comments below.



Happy 2020!



Best wishes,

Azeem 🤩

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Dig deeper

Trend 1: How to think about energy transition and climate change:

Trend 2: How to think about the fragmentation of geopolitics?

Trend 3: How to think about the shape of the economy?

Trend 4: How to think about the new digital commons?

My conversation with Trent McConaghy: Creating the Data Economy

My conversation with Emil Eifrem: Making Sense of the Data-Rich World

Trend 6: How to think about cities?

Consider these two books: Geoffrey West’s Scale, which describes the superlinear characteristics of cities and Ramesh Srinivasan’s Beyond the Valley on innovation across the globe.

Trend 9: How to think about AI?