Visioning 2026 Blog
Leadership Class Trends Revisited
These trend areas were taken from Rick Smyre's "Human Pinwheel of Survival" that was used as a basis for the 2nd Enlightenment Conference held in Columbia, South Carolina, in March of this year. Please visit the 2nd Enlightenment site.
1) Energy - changing from fossil fuels to hydrogen and alternate fuels
ex: Anything into Oil
What is the Hydrogen Economy?
Quote: As Jeremy Rifikin postulates in his book The Hydrogen Economy : “A decentralized, hydrogen-energy regime offers the hope, at least, of connecting the unconnected and empowering the powerless. When that happens, we could entertain the very real possibility of "reglobalization," this time from the bottom up, and with everyone participating in the process.”
2) The Limits of Representative Democracy - Representative Democracy confronts the challenges of accelerating change.
Ex: The Future of Advertising by Harry Webber
American Solutions
Quote: No part of the learning experience in the future will be more important than to learn how to transform our traditional democracy to a 21st century type of democracy....so that our citizens feel an ability to be directly involved with the decisions that will impact their lives at the local level. – Rick Smyre, Democracy in a Learning Mode
3) Global Warming - We face an increase of 2.5 degrees F to 10.5 degrees F over the next 100 years.
4) New Diseases - Unknown viruses and resistant bacteria are emerging.
5) Changing Demographics - The differential aging and youth of the world population creates an economic and social time bomb.
6) Reduction in Biodiversity - 1/2 of existing species could be lost in the next fifty years.
7) Technological Singularity - We are approaching a moment when runaway advances outstrip human comprehension and all our knowledge and experience becomes useless as a guidepost to the future.
8) Cognitive Complexity and Continuous Innovation - Real time change requires a new way of thinking and seeing connections as the world becomes increasingly complex.
9) Clashing Civilizations and Terrorism - The confrontation of Islamic and Western cultures will create an environment of mutual anger, distrust and even hate unless new types of bridges are built.
10) Three Economies in Churn - We are in a thirty-year transition from an Industrial Economy to a Creative Knowledge Economy to an Electronic Web/Network Economy.
11) National Boarders May Disappear - As poverty confronts economic affluence, communications connect and travel expands, immigration will overpower the capacity of borders to control human migration.
12) Artificial Intelligence Emerges - The concept of what it means to be human will change as a result of the rise of artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nanotechnology.
These trends will then be used to build scenarios for Norfolk in the next 20 years based on a concept by Dr. James Canton in his book Extreme Futures, called Kill Your Future Game.