By 2121, money will no longer motivate people, climate change will become the main agenda for governments and companies, and any decisions will be made on the basis of data. Russian futurologists at the “100 Years Horizon” foresight told what the world will be like, and “Hi-Tech” retells their main theses.
Cross-cutting global politics: what the new globalization will be
In the next 100 years, humanity will be faced with a new class of phenomena – end-to-end global politics (CCWP). In the first wave of globalization, such a cross-cutting policy was mainly financial policy – the dollar economy. Then a new type of connectivity appeared – via the Internet. In the coming years, the world will be looking for a new model of globalization.
Until 2035, carbon footprint policies will play a key role. Gradually, the world will move from green bonds and certificates to a different logic – when any action will be recalculated across the carbon footprint. Perhaps a Carbon ID will appear – it will be implemented in finance, the state budget, companies and even individual houses. This is the second universal value equivalent and will gradually emerge over the next 15 years. Changes will not happen quickly, because there are no benchmarks and benchmarks at the micro level yet, but they already exist at the macro level. For decentralized systems for calculating and recalculating the carbon footprint, blockchain is extremely convenient and profitable.
Carbon footprint policy is very attractive because it provides a tool that can be used to negotiate at the global level of elites and to influence the life of every citizen, regardless of their income level.
Around 1950, total reboots of the human rights model are expected. “The human rights model that took shape 70 years ago, after the Second World War, will be rebuilt into a different model, which is connected with the right to access to clean air, to food, with the provision of other basic rights, including the right to territory. They are developing along with the recalculation of the carbon footprint, the ocean, space, and global human rights are added to them, ”said Dmitry Peskov, special envoy of the President of the Russian Federation for digital and technological development.
Political actors for new spaces
According to the forecasts of Russian futurologists, network, virtual states and extraterritorial cities may appear in the future – they will change the balance of power in global politics and macroeconomics. Business and citizens of nation states will create virtual states with their own values, rights and orders, an emphasis on private entrepreneurial initiative and self-realization. These states will become the basis for states of a new type at the expense of new territories that do not now fall under national regulation, experts say. It’s about the ocean, space and Antarctica.
Not all experts agree that extraterritorial cities and virtual states will become the new political entities. “States will remain basic providers of sovereignty and identity, but each of us will have multiple loyalties. Only states in the next 100 years will be able to ensure the right to violence on their sovereign territory. New subjects will emerge exclusively in empty spaces such as the ocean, but technologically this whole story is not yet ready to launch. This is not a question of the near future, ”Peskov said.
Preventive “assimilation into the future”: the great migration of peoples
Researchers predict another great climate change-related migration that could affect over a billion people. Climate refugees will become a source of international tension and put pressure on countries that are less exposed to climate risks. When resettled, refugees can reassimilate in the logic of old cultures – or be the first to accept the principles of a new socioeconomic order, become the vanguard of a “new civilization”. For this, the institutions of “assimilation into the future” should appear.
Regenerative economy. From consumption to recovery
In the modern economic paradigm, every major city is a plant for converting natural resources into large landfills and landfills. Man takes soil, water, wood from nature, and then consumes and returns as waste. A regenerative economy does not deplete or destroy nature, but returns to it what it takes for its needs. The new economy is moving from linear models to recovery based on the use of renewable resources and closing the cycle from production to disposal. The basic norm of any organization or company is the requirement to restore living and social systems, whose resources were used.
“In the West, society chooses more environmentally friendly products, the green agenda is not imposed from above, it is a struggle for customer loyalty. Responsible consumer consumption forces the business to rebuild the model, optimize production and make it its mission, which can be announced to the public. After all, if you are not green, they simply won’t buy you, ”noted Pavel Luksha, a leading Russian futurist, founder of the Global Future of Education initiative.
The Economy of Sufficiency and Self-Realization: An End to Unlimited Consumption
Throughout history, humanity has struggled to survive and only recently overcame massive hunger and epidemics of infectious diseases. The modern economy is no longer about survival. The new goal is human prosperity. If you look at Maslow’s pyramid, for the first time in history, most of the basic needs of all people on the planet are met.
But humanity is faced with a new challenge – unlimited consumption and constantly growing needs: you want a bigger apartment, a car is more expensive, a phone is better. This model will be replaced by the economy of sufficiency – when a person consumes only what he needs to preserve life and maintain health, beauty and diversity. Companies no longer manipulate the consumer, forcing him to chase the attributes of a beautiful life and indicative consumption.
“The basic idea is for a person to become richer and not only think about how to achieve material wealth. Now he has the opportunity and time to satisfy higher needs – in self-realization, creativity, knowledge and service, ”notes Luksha.
Some countries are already testing mechanisms for the transition to a new economic model. For example, Germany has launched a program that creates part-time jobs. This is how the state helps to earn money, but at the same time leaves time to manage its projects. France is providing social grants and is discussing an unconditional basic income project. Proponents of the idea believe that it will give people the opportunity to be creative. But so far, experts are not sure that this measure will be effective.
Emission of new values. From dollar to biodiversity
On the horizon of a hundred years, money will no longer be a measure of value. New types of capital will emerge that reflect the natural, cultural, social and intellectual wealth of a society. It is in them, and not in the amount of dollars or gold lying in the basement of the Central Bank, that will be the main value of the 21st century. Radical economic changes will make it possible to move away from the ideology of GDP growth towards an increase in the value of ecosystems.
Natural capital will include the carbon footprint, fertility rates and biodiversity. To measure new forms of capital, new measures of value appear that are not reducible to money, but freely convertible into each other on a planetary scale.
In the new model, societies will stop thinking about their actions in economic terms, digitize biological diversity and understand how much rivers, water, untouched ecological corners of Kamchatka, Altai, the North Caucasus and Karelia cost.
Homeostatic Growth Techniques: Human Managing
The new paradigm of economic development will help overcome the limitations of both the planned economy and the free market. This will happen thanks to data-driven governance. Regulation in the new post-market and post-capitalist economy is moving to the level of exchange protocols, humanity will be able to use data and predictive analytics to control economic growth, and on a global scale.
For the first time, humans will begin to assess and manage ecosystems and the physical parameters of the environment. This process will be launched, among other things, thanks to the carbon footprint policy and the emergence of new sensor systems.
Over the next decades, platform economics will evolve: they will become increasingly pervasive and increasingly automated and automated processes.
“On the one hand, on the platforms themselves, the user will perform less and less independent actions – for him they will be performed by artificial agents configured for a personal profile. The same will happen at the level of production systems, where a significant part of transactions will generally be made without human participation. A person, in fact, will adjust his preferences, his lifestyle, taking into account the options available to him for his age, merit, knowledge and other parameters, ”explained Pavel Luksha.
Overproduction crises will be a thing of the past, supply chains will be optimized using algorithms. Manufacturers will be able to track in real time the quantity of goods in warehouses, demand and change their business model in accordance with the data. The new economy will arise from the combination of the best that was in the planned economy and the free market.
The researchers note that these predictions are an aid to long-term selection strategies. Forecasts and data may affect the place of residence, the choice of a diesel or electric car, and a change in profession. Such trends are also important for the next generations – they make it clear what kind of world they will live in, what to expect from it and how to be in demand even in the future of the next hundred years.
