- Hardcover: 472 pages
- Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0470710144
- ISBN-13: 978-0470710142
This is quite an intriguing book, and an excellent one at it. If you have no time for details, just flip all the way back to Appendix A: The 100 most dramatic events, 2010 - 2050, to get a summary and gist of it all. Otherwise, the chapters itself are mind-numbing at most parts.
Split into 5 parts, the salient parts are summarized for my future understanding and reference.
1) Superscares
Crises:
- A great explanation of business cycles by looking at inventories (4-5yrs), capital spending (9-10yrs) and property (18 -20 yrs).
Money and Assets:
- MV = PQ.
- Money flow can dry up very quickly and assets with huge values (i.e. property) can drag the economy down fast
Bubbles, Scares and Crashes:
- The fact that these exists does not mean trends will not continue.
- The key thing is to realise if trends end or they are over-inflated
2) Supertrends
Population growth, female emancipation and aging:
- Global population will rise but stablised, however urban population will increase dramatically with focus on emerging markets.
- More will progress up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, fueling explosion of leisure activities.
- Increased female emancipation leads to less children plus decreasing workforce ratio rapidly later.
- Huge increase in aging support.
Globalisation, urbanisation and wealth explosion
- Growth explosion by emerging markets as they leapfrog with better technologies than the past with no legacy infrastructure
Intelligence, knowledge and innovation
- Moore's law in practice for many technologies (compounding effect due to meta-ideas)
- Meta-ideas fueling increase in IQ over the years
- Focus on genomics and computing
Environmental and resource strain
- Increase in population plus longer lives
- A good comparison was done of various stands on global warming. Author seems to be inclined that this is a scare and would drive bubbles in commodities and alternative.
3) Superempires
Tribes and Empires (a good historical narrative was shared)
- Empires decline due to the disappearances of the following: the need to achieve, the will to achieve, the opportunity to achieve and the incentive to achieve
- Future empires will not be geographical but economical and through social fascination (social fabric achieved by certain ideals or way of thinking)
War, terror and the bottom billion
- Most wars will be civil and terror-related
- The bottom billion will have missed the boat, as they are locked out due to a vicious cycle of problems (landlocked, conflicts, natural extraction economies, bad governance and bad neighbours)
- Drivers of war and peace was nicely presented
4) Supersectors (7 of them in the order below)
Shape of things to come
- Most technologies are S curves
- 2 key factors - rapid growth and a great profit model
- Categories - Asset, network, speed, customer relationship, cost-cutting, financial timing, financial arbitrage, active financial
- 20 drivers of civilization summarized (as above)
1. Finance
- Controls everything. Has strong entrenched network effects
2. Real Estate
- Residential property is a business cycle kick-starter; commercial property is a lagging indicator
- Increase in holiday homes and global tourism due to increasing middle class
- Focus on urbanising cities, cities where people want to work, high IQ areas, network effect areas + scarce land
- 3 crucial aspects of property markets: location, valuation and property cycles (a 30-step review of timing is provided)
3. Commodities
- Many commodities are unlikely to face an end limit; we will be able to replace with alternatives or extract better
- We become more effective in growing food
- Energy will have alternatives before we finally break the fusion barrier.
- Pressure for commodities will get greater due to increase in population and urbanisation but we will be able to cope.
4. Alternative Energy
- Going solar and being more efficient
- Debunking hydrogen
5. Genomics and Biotechnology
- Essential an Information Technology
- Gene manipulation to improve food production and longevity
6. Information Technology
- Will continue to explode, reaching human brain capability by 2030
- RFID, GPS and mobile phones (location technology) will provide new possibilities
- IT will become more unbundled, atomized, instant, mobile, contextual, autonomous, virtualize physical items and more real time
- People must focus on creativity for jobs
7. Luxury
- Driven by growth in wealth, especially in emerging markets
8. LifeStyles
- IT will shift the focus of jobs to service and creative sectors
- Future economy will be storyteller economy (luxury, finance, sport, health/food particularly)
- Focus on the experience!
5) Superbrains
- Virtual/microscopic developments follow aggressive progression curves whilst physical/industrial technologies are much slower
- If a human need can be met by IT or molecular technology, solutions will evolve much faster than demand
- There are 5 rules for intelligence
- Happiness stems from having a (1) pleasant/comfortable life (2) engaged life and (3) meaningful life. Essentially, freedom (particularly economic)
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