Labor

Labor market has been disrupted with every new wave. And in each wave we have continued to be less tightly coupled. Labor between agriculture era to industrial have been starkly different. Couple that with near AI-fictation across industries will quickly break bonds between employers & employees. Technology will also increase skill gap & thus gap in kind of “gigs”, which would follow its own sine curve. This will have natural consequences on concept of income, where “medium term permanence” of it will no longer be valid. And to reckon with this the idea of “basic income” might be one that gets repeatedly touched on.

People would create more services & products, which would interact with other products & services. This would lead us to concept of Market Networks, where say services like uber may directly interact with food store service for delivery

Knowledge

Trends in Labor Market would also push education to more rapidly rethink its own models. Quantum of information that people would have to know would be much larger. With a lot of it being “basic knowledge” needed to remain relevant in the new economic models. This may push for greater decoupling of education from schools & colleges to more digital classrooms, with learning utilities that may even leverage techniques for accelerated learning of “basic knowledge” (say using neuroscience). Critical, creative thinking or more long running fundamental research is what may be left in purview of universities.

Ownership

Concept of ownership would change in many industries. Objects which are often our greatest investment will continue to be commoditized, but with greater degree of digital personalizations. We have seen it in air travel, airbnb, uber and will continue to see how self driving cars would change it further. Most expensive infrastructure of our lives might be the first to get commoditized. It starts with cars, but may soon move to homes & other objects as people would move more widely across geographies for short or medium term gigs. We will own less, but we will continue to find ways to personalize more.

Energy

Energy will also see greater changes. For any breakthrough that might happen in battery technology or transmission, will result in distributed generation & storage of energy. Energy Networks & Markets may become more universal, where people produce, store & sell the energy to distribution grids.

However more fundamental breakthroughs are required in this space than any other. Our energy consumptions will only increase & devices that would permeate our lives will start showing their own stake in consumption of it.

Trust

Trust which is today provided by institutions or government bodies would continue to be more “democratized & distributed” by blockchain or its derivative technologies. While idea or crypto currency has been going around for some time, smarter contracts, trading mechanisms would evolve to leverage this. A move in this space would impact finance, legal & other sectors which today act as broker of trusts. Evolution of trust would also impact significantly on legal structures of society, where need for 3rd party arbiters or judges would be replaced by validating algorithms.

Entertainment

And in midst of all these changes, how we entertain ourselves will change as well. For the longest time process of entertainment, except for games has been uni-directional & in 3rd person. With changes in VR & Augmented reality we will move from an observer to an in-person role, with greater ways to build fantasy or storylines beyond our day to day lives. And this new form of entertainment would not just be visual or auditory, but also tactile in some form or shape.