1 like, 1 prediction for the 2020s

1. Emigration from the United States will become a trend, especially among those with some means/credentials. There will be intentional diaspora communities, like interwar Paris and the Interzone. Central/Eastern Europe and Latin America will be destinations to watch

2. Temporal biology will inform design. Interior spaces will be designed with customized lighting that varies its type of light through the course of the day, to adapt to the circadian rhythm. OLED ribbons kind of like the f.lux software. A product idea I've had for a while.

3. The US really is in a massive conjunction of Happenings, possibly the greatest since the Civil War. Impossible to say how exactly it will play out. But people have already started to adapt to it. It will even be welcomed as a possible end to the nihilism of the prior era

4. A form of neo-Luddism will flourish. Cities and economic zones will be divided on their adoption of 5G and IoT. Logistics industry developments and labor actions are useful to watch

5. The pendulum will swing back somewhat on the Web 2.0 era of centralized platforms and smooth UX design. Zoomers and beyond will make personal websites great again. Amazon will probably become even more of a behemoth than ever (a gimme prediction)

6. There will be checkpoints for entry into many geographic zones/subnational entities. Covid-19 has kickstarted this. This goes along with point 4. I could see cities like NYC and SF issuing their own passports.

7. Basketball will become even more of a global phenomenon, and will surpass American football as the most popular US sport. There will be a sudden Rugby craze in the US as well.

8. As the CHAZ discussion has shown, squatting is the next frontier for global radical/anarchist tactics spreading to the US as culture war lightning rods. Massive real estate apocalypse looms. Oceans of vacant offices, retail, & housing, occupying them won’t be such a big deal.

9. Blockchain tech takes off in Africa (perhaps Kenya and Tanzania, early adopters of mobile payments). Some of these places will embrace 5G as well and get lucrative deals on the infrastructure from Huawei, but with enough opposition that it may be contained to certain zones

10. With the post-corona fallout and closure of many public spaces, the next frontier for “third place” public gathering spaces (like cafes or pubs) centered around legal cannabis will open up. A new localist pub culture forms

11. By 2022 there will be a hit song using OpenAI Jukebox or something similar as an integral part of its production. AI will be used to make art. Not necessarily generating it entirely wholesale, but as an adjunct, a muse, assisting in the creative process

12. Korea and Ireland make serious moves towards reunification. There will be a successful separatist movement in a relatively wealthy country (something like Scotland, Quebec, or Catalonia). Our globes and maps will need revision by 2030

13. Biology will be to the 21st century as physics was to the 20th. DIY biotech will take off, people will make their own medicines to go around the system (some trans people already do this). Embryo selection and CRISPR will launch a renewed conflict over eugenics / bioethics

14. A big seismic event will happen on the west coast of North America. Maybe the Big One, Cascadian Subduction Zone earthquake. Since the PNW is both a hotbed of radical politics and contains some of the highest concentrations of capital on Earth, tremendous consequences follow

15. Somewhere in continental Europe/Eurasia will become a more autonomous geopolitical pole. Probably France (Gaullism always plays well and they already have nukes), Poland, and/or Turkey. Nuclear proliferation continues, as a guarantor of sovereignty https://twitter.com/palladiummag/status/1272945524140847105?s=20

16. Drones will become more and more commonplace. Many people will have one of their own, like PCs in the 1980s. They will be used for many different purposes, from deliveries to spying.

17. “Toobin” or “pulling a Toobin” will become a common turn of phrase for an unfortunate teleconferencing incident

18. ARM is about to give x86 a run for its money. Buy stock in Nvidia.