The Future of Migration

The author contends that the future of Global Migration is governed by two major drivers- Global Warming and the laws of physics that control the flow of information and knowledge across borders, which. will inevitably be followed by a flow of education and human skills on a global scale.

This latter scenario is based on the physics of the Least Action Principle, which postulates that any dynamical process, whether the trajectory of a ray of light or orbit of a planet, follows a path of least resistance or one which minimises the 'action' or overall energy expended.

Physicist Richard Feynman showed that quantum theory also incorporates a version of the Action Principle and underlies a vast range of processes from physics to linguistics, communication and biology. The evidence suggests a deep connection between this principle based on energy minimisation and self-organising systems including light waves, information flows and natural system topographies, such as the flow of a river.

Information is now flowing seamlessly to every corner of the planet and its populations, mediated by the Internet and Web; reaching even the poorest communities in developing countries via cheap PCs, wireless phones and an increasing variety of other mobile devices.

Half the population of the developing world in Asia and Africa now have access to the Web via inexpensive mobile phones. Individual local farmers and small businesses increasingly use them to transfer money, track commodity prices and supplier deliveries and keep in touch with relatives and their community. They are also the ideal medium for transferring knowledge as the basis of the education process.

In sync with the flow of information and knowledge there is now a global flow of educational material online including open access courseware resources. Courseware is a critical resource already offered by a number of prestigious tertiary institutions including- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Harvard, in addition to free knowledge reference sites such as Wikipedia.

The trend-lines in this open learning revolution are already evident and will become pervasive in the near future. They include online 24 hour access to the Web, open content via free courseware, and real-time wireless web delivery; making it much cheaper and easier for the flow of knowledge to reach previously illiterate societies and communities, particularly as a generational shift takes place.

At the same time the human learning process is being driven by the need to adapt to a fast changing work and social environment, to provide ongoing support for society’s needs in the new cyber-age. This shift in turn is being driven by the increasing rate of knowledge generation providing new opportunities.

By 2030 the full power of the Web will be deployed towards this new paradigm. At the same time work practices will become increasingly fluid, with individuals moving freely between projects, career paths and virtual organisations on a contract or part-time basis; adding value to each enterprise and in turn continuously acquiring new skills, linked to ongoing advanced learning programs.

And so by 2040, the flow of information followed by the continuous flow of educational courseware, together with improvements in standards of living, will have largely eliminated the inequalities of skills and training that currently exist between developed and developing nations.

The Action Principle will finally allow the developing world to achieve equal status with the developed world in terms of access to knowledge, training and the realisation of human potential and facilitate the free movement of human workers and their families between workplaces globally.

Already there is a large transfer of skills between countries like India, with a vast pool of engineering and computer science graduates, and the West’s need for such skills. This may be in the form of virtual outsourcing or physical transfers of a skilled labour force on short term contracts. The same process currently operates between EU countries to fill capacity shortages on a regular and continuing basis.

At the same time as the information/education/workflow convergence is occurring at a worldwide level, two other major drivers of global migration are accelerating - global warming and global conflict.

Planet earth is now reaching a catastrophic tipping point, where it is realised that humans have probably left their run too late to limit global temperature rise to the maximum safe 2 degrees centigrade and atmospheric carbon levels to less than 450 ppm.

The evidence is starting to become apparent from a number of sources. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and mountain snows feeding the major river systems in Asia and Africa, the disintegration of the northern tundra threatening the release of vast amounts of methane, the catastrophic loss of biodiversity, disruption of most ecosystems including the coral reefs and tropical forests, ocean warming, threatening the phytoplankton base of the food chain, and increases in extreme climate related events- droughts, floods, rising ocean surges in coastal areas, tornados etc. These are already threatening to overwhelm even the wealthier nations’ capacity to rebuild damaged and obsolete infrastructure.

Rampant global warming will inevitably lead to major disruption of the world’s food and fresh water supply chains, seriously affecting at least half the world’s population. This will result in vast migration movements as the rivers and food bowls of China, India and Africa dry up and deadly tropical diseases such as the malaria and dengue fever, spread.

In turn these factors will result in increasing social chaos and conflict unless managed on a global basis.

To stabilise the situation, the 1951 UN convention on refugees will need to be strengthened and expanded to establish a world humanitarian body with the powers to override national sovereignty and mandate the number of climate and conflict refugees that each region will be required to accept, according to capacity and demand.

Migration has always been a routine way of coping with floods and droughts going back to the earliest civilisations, when there were few borders and the numbers affected were trivial in comparison with today’s 7 billion population and its vast infrastructure.

The magnitude and frequency of environmental hazards is now beginning to place enormous pressure on the capacity of many communities to survive. The recent IPCC / Stern Review of the economics of climate change estimates that climate refugees will reach 200 million by 2050.

An idea of the coming wave of human migration can be glimpsed from a sample of recent natural disaster statistics, which do not include earthquake, volcanic or tsunami events.

Mexico was a source of 1 million environmental refugees a year during the 1990s with increased hurricanes and floods also the root cause of its economic crisis.

Large-scale government enforced relocation programs in Vietnam and Mozambique moved hundreds of thousands of people to cope with worsening floods and storms in 2000.

Six million environmental refugees in China have been created by the expanding Gobi desert. Migration in China and India has also been greatly amplified by development of projects such as China’s Three Gorges, which displaced 2 million people.

The 1998 monsoon floods in Bangladesh covered two thirds of the country and left 21 million homeless.

In 2008, floods following the Burma cyclone forced hundreds of thousands to flee, with little assistance from the Burmese junta.

In 2010, record monsoon rains in Pakistan caused the Indus River to burst its banks, causing millions to relocate.

Although most of these events created internal rather than external migration, it is unlikely that this will continue to be the case, with rising temperatures forecast to force tens of millions to move from tropical to more temperate regions, due to ongoing droughts over the next twenty years.

There are also an increasing number of conflict refugees from autocratic and despotic regimes and failed states. Tribalism and fear and suspicion of the ‘other’ is still strongly embedded in the DNA of human evolution, leading to scapegoating of migrant groups in tough economic times. Examples include Muslim harassment in Christian countries, Neo-Nazism in Europe targeting African refugees and inter-religious conflict in Asia and the Middle East.

The refugee diaspora has greatly expanded in conflict zones across the globe over the past two years, driven by upheavals in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast, as well as persecution of ethnic minorities in China, Burma and Bhutan. Criminal violence, as now endemic in Mexico, is likely to add to this misery.

It is estimated that almost a million people are smuggled and trafficked across international borders each year, using increasingly sophisticated methods by criminal organisations linked to a range of other crimes- identity theft, corruption, money laundering, and violence ranging from debt bondage to murder- earning of the order of $10billion.

By 2030 mounting humanitarian crises are likely to make assistance to all climate and conflict refugees mandatory as it is realised that a piecemeal national approach will result in far worse disruptions to society in terms of the uncontrolled spread of violence in a very unstable time.

Any country that avoids its international obligations and attempts to free ride the system will be ostracised and severely sanctioned.

Europe already contends with a growing number of refugees from North Africa, which include economic, climate, disaster and conflict refugees, but with the upturn in Middle East violence and difficult economic times is battling xenophobia in its member states.

By 2040/50 most of the new migration infrastructure will be in place and communities will have to adjust accordingly. In an already largely globalised multicultural world where most nations have already accepted other cultures for several generations, even if begrudgingly, this will not be as revolutionary a development as many might expect.

It is therefore likely that the paradigm of controlled but flexible migration worldwide will cease to be controversial, endorsed and managed under the auspices of the UN, as a globalised One Planet philosophy gains traction.

It will be the only solution capable of managing cross border refugee flows in a time of looming climate disruption, but also the most economic means of allocating valuable human resources in a globalised educated world to areas of greatest need, as humans fight to save their planet.

The Future of Tourism

By 2015- the nature of traditional Tourism will have radically altered in many ways.
There has already been a reduction in overseas travel and this trend will accelerate, as more travellers become aware that air travel contributes 3%-4% of global carbon emissions. This will increase the popularity of local destinations in all countries, including exploring local wildernesses and heritage sites, as well as exotic city theme parks. Communities in city and country areas with common interests will also take advantage of local resources to a much greater degree, creating their own local travel themes independently of the larger operators.

Travel will also need to become more eco-friendly and socially responsible, with travel operators offering a choice of carbon offsets such as tree planting. And as tourists also contribute to the risk of damage to fragile archealogical sites and pristine wildernesses, they will be encouraged to volunteer their skills to remediate the environments they visit, as part of a holiday package.

By 2030- many ecosystems will have disappeared or be at risk- reefs, coastal areas, forests and glaciers etc, while thirty percent of animal and plant species will have disappeared or be endangered. Tourists will be banned from most national parks and will rush to visit the last great cultural sites and wildernesses on earth before they disappear or are closed to humans. Following today's trend, most wild animal species will be viewed solely in zoos and theme parks.

Major cities and surrounding areas will become the main tourist hubs, offering not only traditional entertainment and cultural experiences, but previously outdoor physical activities such as surfing, skiing, fishing and golfing; but now in controlled managed environments.

By 2050 tourism will have fragmented into myriad exotic experiences often transacted in virtual and augmented realites- simulating extraordinarily realistic and immersive environments,involving all the senses. Gradually such travel experiences will be indistinguishable from previous realities- allowing unlimited options- trips into space and under the oceans, back in time to historic events and forward into future civilisations.

The Future of Cars

By 2015 most cars will be powered by electricity with advanced lightweight lithium batteries capable of being charged rapidly at power outlets as well as by hydrogen cells. The new electric vehicle infrastructure enabling simple recharging and replacement of batteries and liquid hydrogen storage will be well advanced in major cities.

Computer systems will increasingly control all vehicle functions as standard- including those already in use for navigation, entertainment, collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control, anti-collision radar, safety crash protection, stability and automatic parking.

By 2020 in most larger cities, small efficient electric cars including single and dual passenger variations will be available for flexible and inexpensive hire for local transport needs via smart phone managed pickup pools, servicing urban neighbourhoods (Ref Future of Cities).

The major advance however will be in the form of fully automated cars capable of navigating autonomously, guided by sensor/ processor embedded smart roads and transit corridors; obeying traffic laws and avoiding collisions with other objects and vehicles. They will also be capable of interpreting traffic forecasts and communicating via local networks with other vehicles to reduce road congestion. In addition they will be responsive to passenger requirements, linked via the wireless Web to their activity profiles- appointment schedules, regular destinations such as schools, child minding centres and leisure centres etc.

The car of 2020 will also be capable of providing and monitoring in-vehicle entertainment and communication, emergency assistance, scheduling and payment services for power charging, parking, security etc. Automated transit control will facilitate traffic streaming and congestion management, with specialised car, bus and cycle transit lanes in operation throughout most urban areas.

By 2030 individual cars will have transformed into autonomous transport pods or capsules for individual passenger urban use. Pods will link seamlessly to other minimum carbon-emission forms of transport for local neighbourhood and inter-urban movement- light metro rail, electric cycles, scooters and bicycles. Pod streaming infrastructure will link to smart transport hubs, providing automated fast electric urban and intercity pod/light rail/bus services.

By 2040 the car as we know it today will cease to exist in the developed world’s urban areas. In its place will be multipurpose intelligent transit pods- systems seamlessly linked and customised to individual and community needs. Most ground-based vehicles except for bicycles will be totally autonomous and humans will become passengers only. All instructions managing human and urban infrastructure interaction such as pick-up/destination location and schedule requirements will be relayed by mobile links and automatically accessed by the pod system via the Intelligent Web 4.0.(Ref Future Web)

By 2050 the first vehicles to take advantage of 3D transport will emerge. Multilevel transit systems will be suspended above the transport routes of cities with lower levels restricted to bicycles, scooters and walking. All levels will link with major transport hubs and metro trains for super-fast autonomous intercity and new low energy system air travel. All service and logistical decisions will be managed by adaptive algorithms via dedicated secure virtual networks of the Intelligent Web.

Humans and their transport infrastructure will be seamlessly and permanently networked.

Future of Education

David Hunter Tow, Director of the Future Planet Research Centre forecasts an education revolution over the next 30 years that will include whole of life learning and personalised instruction in any topic, anywhere and anytime; driven by the knowledge explosion, the new social media and Intelligent Web.

Over the coming decades the process of learning and education will undergo a profound shift, from the traditional classroom/face to face method of knowledge transfer to a much more abstract model, where teaching will be largely separated from its current physical infrastructure, such as classrooms and campuses, in much the same way as the content of a printed book is becoming abstracted from its physical medium in digitised eBook form.

The human learning process will be driven by the need to adapt to its social environment; primarily the increasing rate of change in the knowledge and skills required to support future civilisation’s technology, culture and services. This will occur in tandem with society’s immersion in an increasingly cyber environment.

The Education Revolution is therefore inextricably linked to two major drivers -

The Knowledge Revolution- the hyper-fast generation of information and knowledge processes;

The Cyber Revolution- the transformation of the world’s knowledge base, including all processes and services to digital form, distributed via the Web.

The trends in this revolution are already evident and will become pervasive in the near future on a global basis. They include online teaching access, open content, real-time wireless web delivery, independent courseware provision, virtual reality teaching environments and lifelong education at a personalised level.

By 2020- online education will dominate university and school learning. This will allow resources and investment to be more effectively applied to the quality and delivery of courseware- anywhere, anytime.

Already a growing acceptance of online learning in major universities and schools, has generated the development of hybrid curricula- a combination of online options and traditional face to face classroom teaching and tutoring. However some institutions such as the global Phoenix University already operate solely as virtual campuses, offering global online courseware.

This shift will have many beneficial flow-on effects for both individuals and communities, including reduced travel time and more flexible delivery of courseware, making learning more affordable and accessible, particularly for working and part time students.

Studies have already suggested that students in online learning environments perform as well as or better than those receiving face-to-face classroom instruction. Traditional teaching institutions therefore will find it increasingly difficult to compete with online cyber innovations on a cost, convenience and quality basis.

The Open Content movement is also generating momentum in the new educational universe. Open content allows all sectors of society, including poorer populations in developing nations, to benefit from the education revolution, using the Web to deliver the collective courseware of major teaching institutions across the globe, free of charge.

This valuable resource is already offered by a number of prestigious tertiary institutions including- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, and Harvard. In addition the Open Courseware Consortium now has 200 members, 4000 courses and 44 sources in 7 languages

At the same time the development and provision of formal educational curricula will no longer be solely the preserve of schools and universities. Most larger business enterprises already provide in-house training and even accredited degree programs in specialised areas related to their own services, such as computer communications and hospitality. There is also a trend towards companies offering supplementary training on a modular basis, credited towards traditional graduate and post-graduate qualifications.

In addition, knowledge reference sites such as Wikipedia are providing free semi-structured online courses and books by aggregating existing reference material. This trend will continue, with independent courseware developers eventually dominating the growing market for expanding on-line content.

Developing countries such as India and China are also funding massive expansion programs in their schools and universities, for example graduating over 250,000 engineering and computer science students each year; rapidly catching up with the West in the quality and innovation of teaching methods.

To compete with the rise of the new breed of online training institutions, traditional institutions have linked with global partners, as well as fostering local community and business relationships. This trend reflects the shift in urban environments towards lifestyle autonomy, incorporating the full range of essential support services for local communities, including- education, health, leisure and knowledge access, primarily utilising the very high bandwidth of the Web. Such centres will typically combine online training with practical vocational and workplace experience.

Learning technology will be dominated largely by the new social media- social networks, augmented reality, virtual worlds, video gaming etc, delivered via smart mobile multi-purpose devices connected to the web.

By 2030 the full power of the web will be deployed towards this new learning paradigm, including powerful simulation training environments based on immersive virtual reality.

Augmented and virtual realities will allow procedures and knowledge to be absorbed within 3D virtual worlds and games, capable of simulating most services and applications; supporting the full range of training needs from trade apprenticeships to strategic management skills.

The benefits of teaching in such VR environments include the capacity to explore real life situations without risk, as is currently practiced by pilots using flight simulators and the more objective and automatic monitoring and assessment of performance criteria.

The application of virtual worlds to education will become a standard function of school and university teaching and research in the near future. Users are already using such technology to socialise and connect through personalised avatars. These worlds can therefore be quickly adapted to provide learning support and feedback between students, with the added potential to create teaching avatar support. Gaming environments can also be adapted to offer student support for the solution of complex real world problems in areas such as conflict, climate change and economic analysis.

Traditional human teaching supervision with still be vital for young children, but games already play a large part in their development and this role will accelerate in the cyber age.

Social media sites are also creating environments where scientists can experiment with new research techniques, by applying intelligent agents to simulate interacting populations. These methods are increasingly being applied to studies of educational modalities between students and teachers. Worlds such as Second life are already providing virtual campuses for some of the world's most prestigious universities such as Harvard and Stanford; offering a research environment in which to come to terms with the transition from the traditional to the new networked cyber campuses.

2030 will also see the acceptance of two additional trends- whole of life learning and personalised instruction. Both will be driven by the exponential rate of change in the social,work and cyber environments. Whole of life vocational learning will become both essential and natural as it is realised that secondary and tertiary learning is just the beginning of human cognitive challenges. This trend is already underway, facilitated by the web’s pervasive access to the world’s digitised knowledge storehouse.

Enterprise organisational boundaries and work practices will become increasingly fluid and porous, with individuals moving freely between projects, career paths and virtual organisations; adding value to each enterprise and in turn continuously allowing workers to acquire new skills, linked to ongoing advanced learning programs.

Work and education patterns will therefore gradually adapt to a cycle of seamless knowledge generation and acquisition which in turn will trigger the need for more personalized education. This will be facilitated by the Web’s pervasive social reach, providing flexibility of learning options- mixing and matching with an individual’s lifestyle and experience.

By 2040 it is anticipated there will be a scramble within public teaching institutions to fill emerging educational and training gaps in courseware at all levels- primary, high school, undergraduate and post graduate studies. But the knowledge explosion will now be too fast for traditional course development and management methods, demanding support for constantly emerging cross-discipline training, combined with an emphasis on general problem-solving and creative skills.

Most institutions will be under enormous pressure to keep up with the demands of the medical, legal, science and engineering professions, incorporating the latest technologies; with capacity seriously lagging the accelerating knowledge advances.

It is realised that catch-up can only be achieved by facilitating the development of Web-generated courseware, combined with continuing global open content accessibility; largely driven by automated methods and delivered on demand.

This period will mark the beginning of the end for the traditional one-trak qualification pathway. Instead, performance assessment will be based on the quality, relevance and value of an individual’s skills and capabilities in relation to business, professional and social requirements; whether applied to medicine, astrophysics or cabinet-making.

Formal education will have reached a critical threshold as it is understood that ongoing personal learning is an essential driver for human survival and progress- and always has been. Education will be seen not as a sub-set of techniques that is applied only within a formal qualification factory. It is an essential component of each individual’s development regardless of age, position or ability within society.

Such an expanded view will also generate new modes of alternate education, nurturing creativity and encouraging learning for learning’s sake. For example the Free/Slow University of Warsaw- FSUW-offers an informal, non-profit centre for interdisciplinary studies; providing for student participation on the basis of the excitement of knowledge discovery and cultural experience for its own intrinsic sake, rather than for the pursuit of profits alone.

By 2050 the intelligent Web 4.0 will be capable of autonomously generating knowledge in synch with new work patterns and individual requirements, delivered directly, eventually through neural as well as sensory interfaces.

The Web will generate, host and deliver best practice training material autonomously, as it is beginning to do for information resources in a service economy. Over time this will be develop consistent quality outcomes competitive with most traditional options and encompass the complete spectrum of learning, distilling the best techniques from both human and artificial intelligence. This trend towards automatic algorithmic knowledge and pattern discovery is already evident in the sciences- biology, physics and astronomy.

By 2050 the abstraction of learning from its traditional infrastructure of classrooms and campuses will be complete in most advanced nations, with the major teaching institutions morphing into community support centres for research and services integration. The role of the Intelligent Web within the educational universe will have been transformed into that of a senior partner with humans, continuously forecasting new skill requirements and generating the required support programs; creating new courseware as a public resource, belonging to the global commons.

This will finally allow the developing world to achieve equal status with the developed world in terms of access to knowledge, training and the realisation of human potential.

The Future of Globalisation

The convergence of two brutal triggers affecting the social fabric have provided the catalyst for the acceleration of the process of globalisation to a new level - Hyper-Globalization. This effectively marks the emergence of cooperation and synchronization of the major practices and protocols for nations on a grand scale.

It will involve the intermeshing of not just trade, but decision-making on all critical issues- social norms, conflict resolution, environmental protocols etc- including the management of energy, food, water and air. It will also require the rapid creation and strengthening of common frameworks for managing commerce, education, science, technology, legal, financial, health, computing, communication and engineering processes on a world-wide scale.

The first trigger- Global Warming- now requires the synchronized efforts of all nations to fend off the biggest catastrophe likely to befall the inhabitants of any planet- a runaway extreme climate- threatening to destroy the ecosystems, environment, habitats and social networks of many life-forms.

Of course our earth has been through many natural catastrophic cycles in the past- from freezing to sauna weather conditions. The last ice age ended 14,000 years ago, having caused serious dislocation to life on the planet, including our own species, which came precariously close to annihilation. But soon after, our modern civilization got off to a flying start with the gift of an unimaginably rich natural environment waiting to be exploited. And exploit it we did.

In addition there have been at least five previous major life extinctions over the past 540 million years- the last causing the demise of dinosaurs 65 million years ago; triggered by mega volcanic, meteorite, plate tectonic and weather events. But each time life effectively regrouped after its near-demise and powered on, resulting 200,000 years ago in the evolution of modern humans.

The difference of course between those previous extinction events and our current pending apocalypse was that they all occurred when there were no human species around to feel the effects. But this time it’s different, with a population of 6.5 billion and rising. Now the sixth mega-annihilation event is on us, with the likelihood that if not averted in time, billions of humans and hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species will disappear.
Only cooperation on a global scale to reduce high levels of carbon emissions can avert this scenario.

The second catastrophe likely to trigger hyper-globalization has been the current collapse of the world’s financial and economic systems. After a number of false and fragmented starts, the framework for a global solution has been signed and sealed by the G20- the group of the 20 largest nations in terms of GNP, accounting for 85% of world trade.

Over the last two years the crisis has deepened, with frantic efforts by individual countries to avoid the worst of the financial tsunami engulfing them, by pumping trillions of dollars into the world’s crippled financial institutions, while at the same time shoring up jobs through massive infrastructure and subsidy programs.

Finally it dawned on the largest players – the US, EU, China and India, that the only chance for redemption was global cooperative action. This time around, solving the effects of a lethal firestorm on a national or regional basis, by building currency and trade firewalls, was just not going to work.

The Global Framework arrived at by the G20, includes the following five components-

Recapitalise and repair the financial system to restore lending
Strengthen financial regulation to re-build trust
Fund and reform international financial institutions to provide better global support
Promote global trade and investment, avoiding protectionism
Build a recovery that is inclusive, green and sustainable

Each of these elements demands globalized action, revolving around two major institutions- The International Monetary Fund and Financial stability Board.
Financial resources available to the IMF for lending will be increased to $750 billion and Special Drawing Rights- SDRs to $250 billion.

The FSB will collaborate with the IMF to provide early warnings of excessive financial risk and the actions needed to address them, as well as extending regulation and oversight to all major financial institutions instruments and markets, including hedge funds. It will also establish a single set of high quality global accounting standards.

But this hastily prepared agenda may not be enough to save the financial and economic infrastructure and may require a complete scientific rethink of the forces shaping markets and capitalism as well as the basis of traditional economic theory in general. With some notable exceptions such as China and South East Asian economies, Australia, Brazil and Germany, most of the rest of the world is still at risk two years later of slipping back into negative growth.

The combination of global warming threatening the planet’s natural environment and the massive financial collapse affecting our economic and institutional environment, has created a perfect apocalyptic storm.
All future global policies and processes will be both constrained and driven by these two potentially terminal shocks to human civilization.

On the upside however, solutions to both will ensure future massive benefits for our 21st century civilization through cooperation and globalization supported by an exponential increase in knowledge and innovation.

Neither solution can be allowed to fail.

The Future of Economics

The recent failure of classical economics to predict and manage the catastrophic failure of the world’s financial system has triggered a re-evaluation of the whole basis of current economic theory, which has been applied to sustain capitalism for the last 100 years. .

By the end of the 20th century traditional economics was dominated by the classical paradigm based on notions of rational consumers making rational choices in a simple supply/demand world of finite resources, with prices constrained by decreasing returns; all driving the economy to an optimal equilibrium point.

Twentieth century economists had finally realised their dream of creating a rational, rigorous and well-defined mathematical model for describing the workings of the global economy. This standard model has been applied by business leaders, finance ministers, central bankers and presidential advisers ever since.

Up until recently classical economic theory has appeared to work adequately by a process of trial and error. In times of growth people are generally optimistic and the theory describes reality reasonably well. But in extreme circumstances panic quickly spreads and the theory fails spectacularly, amplified by the performance of the quantitative risk algorithms beloved by hi-tech stock market traders.

Unfortunately such a clockwork model has proved over the last four decades to be seriously out of synch with reality, as global markets have been roiled by a series of disastrous credit, market, liquidity and commodity crises. The predictions of the standard model have failed to match real world outcomes, generated in succession by the Savings and Loan, Asian, Mexican, Dotcom and now GFC bubble disasters.

In this latest incarnation of excess greed debacles, high risk mortgage loans were repackaged many times over into opaque risk financial instruments, such as Collateralised Debt Obligations or CDOs, which ended up through an unregulated banking system in the portfolios of nearly every bank and financial institution around the world. Because of lack of controls, members of the shadow system such as hedge funds and merchant banks borrowed scores of times their own worth in cash. When the CDOs finally failed, the losses rippled through the world economy. The banks stopped lending, leading to further business failures and investors were then forced to sell previously sound stocks causing a stock market crash.

But this crash was far more serious- perhaps even more so than the Great Depression, as it could be contained within borders as easily or so simply solved by pump priming mass lending and job creation programs. Now we’ve seen the biggest banks, car manufacturers, miners, energy suppliers and national economies toppling like dominoes around the world, under trillions of dollars of debt.

The current global interventions have now staunched the haemorrhaging but not cured the disease.

The stronger economies of China and south east Asia, Brazil and Germany, less affected by the carnage, have bounced back. But the European economy is still fragile, with Greece, Spain and Portugal and other smaller nations struggling to contain debt; while the recent G20 summit in Toronto failed to enforce the rigorous regulation and improved economic governance previously mandated. The US recovery is also weak, with the latest OECD report predicting that the US employment rate will not fall to pre-recession levels before 2013.

In fact a number of interdisciplinary thinkers, starting in the seventies, began to question the credibility of the entire basis of the classical economic model, likening it to a gigantic academic think tank experiment rather than a serious science. And it gradually began to dawn on this group that at a number of the key premises or axioms underpinning the existing model were seriously flawed.

As mentioned, the first is the assumption that humans are rational players in the great game of market roulette. They are not. Behavioural scientists have shown that while people are very good at recognising useful patterns and interpreting ambiguous or incomplete information in their decision-making, they are very poor when it comes to performing complex logical analysis, preferring to follow market leaders or flock according to the latest fashion. This can further amplify distorting trends.

The new theories of behavioural finance argue that during a bubble the rate of buying and selling can become manic, resulting in irrational decisions. Making money actually stimulates investor’s brain reward circuitry, causing them to ignore risk- increasing the difficulty of valuing stocks accurately.

But perhaps the most critically flawed assumption is that an economic system always reaches an ideal equilibrium of its own accord. In other words, the market is capable of benign self-regulation- automatically allocating resources and controlling excesses in an optimum way, best effected with minimum outside interference.

Since the nineteenth century the fundamental principle underpinning economics has therefore been based on the mythology that the economy is a system that moves from one equilibrium point to another, driven by shocks from external disruptions – whether technological, political, financial or cultural- but always eventually coming to rest in a natural equilibrium state.

The new emerging evolutionary paradigm however postulates that economies and markets, as well as the web, enterprises and the human brain, are all forms of complex systems in which agents dynamically interact, process information and adapt their behaviour to a constantly changing environment; never reaching a final stable equilibrium or goal.

In biological evolution, the natural environment selects those systems that are best able to adapt to its infinite variation. In economic evolution, the market is a combination of financial, logistical, cultural, organisational and government regulatory elements, which adapt to and in turn influence a constantly changing ecological, social and business environment.

In essence, economic and financial systems have been fundamentally misclassified. They are not perfect self-regulating systems. They are enormously complex adaptive networks, with topologies that include decision hubs, relationship connections and feedback loops linking multi-agent groups which interact dynamically in response to changes in their environment; not merely through simplified price setting mechanisms, tax and interest rate cuts, liquidity injections or job creation programs. They must be understood and managed at a far deeper level.

Modern evolutionary theorists believe that evolution is a universal phenomenon
and that both economic and biological systems are subclasses of a more general and universal class of evolutionary systems. And if economics is an evolutionary system, then it follows there are also general evolutionary laws of economics, which must be understood and harnessed if it is to be effectively managed.
This contradicts much of the standard theory in economics developed over the past one hundred years.

The economic evolutionary ecosystem is now fed by trillions of transactions, interactions and non-linear feedback loops daily. It may in fact have become too complex and interdependent for economists and governments to control or even understand. Therefore, as several eminent complexity theorists have recently stated, it might be on the verge of chaos. Too much or not enough regulation can distort the outcomes further- creating ongoing speculative pricing bubbles or supply and demand distortions.

There is now an urgent need to understand at a much deeper level the genie that modern capitalism has engineered and released. This can only be done by admitting the current crumbling edifice is beyond repair and building a radical new model from the ground up; a system that incorporates the hard sciences of network, evolutionary, behavioural and complexity theory.

Tinkering around the edges with the old reactive tools is not an option anymore.
To have any real chance of harnessing the economic machine of the 21st century for the benefit of all human society, not just the wealthy, it must be modelled at the network level and managed autonomously according to adaptive evolutionary principles.

If a business as usual economic philosophy prevails, it is likely that the resulting ultra-massive waste of resources and social turmoil of a second GFC would be catastrophic for our civilisation.

The Future of Health

A dominant partner role is forecast for the Intelligent Web 4.0 in healthcare management by 2050, as well as a significant increase in human longevity in developed societies to 150 years and the emergence of Transhumans.

By 2020 most developed countries will have established comprehensive electronic Health Record systems to track lifetime patient medical and general population health histories, including personal DNA genome sequences and SNP microarray test results. An individual’s medical records will then provide personalised drug and vaccine protocols based on genetic response variants. Whole-of-life e-health records will be accessible across the developed and much of developing world, eventually allowing the creation of online global networks of population health records from pre-birth to death.

Global e-Health archiving will also accelerate the provision of expert biomedical advice and services to populations across the planet, utilising the communication modalities of the Web and smart mobile phone technologies. These will also function as personalised helpers, performing real-time monitoring and transmission of vital patient status data including images, via ubiquitous sensor networks. These will forward continuous data to government and private healthcare hubs for expert online assessment and intervention.

In addition, health and lifestyle support will be managed increasingly in conjunction with global professional care and patient social networks. Such networks operating via the open standards of web-based technologies will promote collaboration between patients, caregivers and health providers, offering interactive exchange of case information- symptoms, diagnosis and treatment options; improving lifestyle outcomes and ensuring individuals feel less isolated.

By 2025 A Universal Health Grid will be in operation connecting e-health client records seamlessly across all nations; providing ubiquitous communication support for the acquisition and delivery of life enhancement knowledge on a global basis. In addition, scanned images will be linked in vast virtual databases providing remote expert support to local medical teams and practitioners. This will facilitate advanced surgical techniques, applied remotely using robotic, virtual and augmented reality technologies.

By 2030 tens of thousands of human genomes from diverse populations will have been sequenced and made available online for research into the genetic basis of common diseases. Analysis will have moved from understanding the role of single gene mutations to the highly complex networks of multiple genetic interactions. Polygenic natural selection has allowed new traits to rapidly sweep through populations in the past, allowing humans to adapt to extreme climates and new food sources.

The genetic basis of the major diseases and injuries afflicting humans will have been traced and effective therapies addressed covering- Neurodegenerative - such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimers; Pathogenic and parasitic based- - including malaria, dengue fever, cholera and lyme; Cancers and auto-immune diseases; Organ failure- such as heart, pancreas, lung, liver and kidney; Injuries to the nervous system, joints and bone- spinal cord trauma and arthritis.
Improvements in these therapies will continue at an accelerating rate.

In addition, the power of the web will be supported by a new way of unlocking a deeper understanding of nature and its evolution in the form of Systems Biology- already marking a paradigm shift from traditional reductionism to a more holistic level of understanding of biological phenomena. This approach interprets organisms in terms of information processing networks at the system rather than component genetic, protein and environmental level. Systems biology also marks the beginning of a more quantitative science, highlighting the causality and dynamics of biological interactions by applying mathematical models and the capability of simulating interactions at all levels- cells, organs and the total organism.

Stem Cell therapies, including both adult and embryonic stem cell differentiation, will be commonly applied to the repair of human tissue and organs including— skin, cartilage, blood vessels, bone, eyes, spine, pancreas, liver and heart muscle. The future treatment of diseases such as heart failure and breast cancer will be revolutionised by such technologies, with the option of growing new organs and tissue inside the human body using the patient’s own stem cells and biodegradable scaffolds to avoid immune rejection.

Stem cell technology will complemented by Molecular Engineering techniques such as gene therapy, involving the correction of genetic mutations by inserting reengineered genes into cells. Molecular engineers are already beginning to create custom-built proteins with enhanced functions, including the capacity to correct disease genes causing hemophilia, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia.
Understanding the role of RNA in cells will also be vital in understanding gene silencing and targeting cancer and other diseases.

By 2035 Cyber-Human symbiosis will also be routinely applied, allowing the direct linkage between computer-electronic control and virtual reality technologies and human biological systems. This science is already includes the use of -
Sensory augmentation implants such as early retinal and corneal implants;
prosthetics such as a neurally-controlled limbs; brain interfaces, overcoming paralysis using brain signals; artificial hippocampus- assisting patients with memory deficits; brain image extraction and reconstruction and interactive humanoid robots to provide human companionship and physical support.

By 2040 Neuro-Engineering technology will be commonly applied enabling enhancement of human intelligence, memory and creativity. Significant advances are already being made towards simulating the brain’s capacity for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, using advanced 3D fMRI and Optogenetics technologies,allowing better analysis of neural circuits to reveal new neural regulation and drug treatment targets.

Cognitive enhancement compounds will also be widely used. These will be applied to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia as well as generally enhancing human decision-making, alertness and memory capability. The impact of cyberspace on the evolution of the brain is also likely to be very significant over the coming decades. Children are constantly being neurally rewired as the interactive Web becomes an essential part of their lives in the form of virtual realities, multimedia and social media/ networking.

Brain simulation is also a nascent field offering huge future potential. A brain with a billion neurons and ten trillion synapses- equivalent to a cat’s cortex or 4.5% of a human brain has been simulated by IBM; while a team of European scientists have taken the first steps towards creating a silicon chip designed to function like a the cortex of a human brain.
With research and development converging on all fronts in this field, both at the hardware and software level, it will be only a matter of time before a brain with mammalian and eventually human-level complexity is scaled up for experimental use.

Molecular biology has largely been applied as a reductive science but now synthetic biologists are beginning to build machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells, deriving energy, processing information and eventually reproducing. Flexible reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components from the ground up..

By 2045 the nanobiotechnology revolution of new and enhanced life forms will be common. For the first time in human history an artificial life form with synthetic DNA has been created by Craig Venter This will open a portal for the explosion of human potential beyond the confines of biological evolution alone. In addition, Medibots are being designed. These are tiny robots only a few millimetres in size that can work internally and are designed to enter the body through the mouth, ears, eyes or lungs and swim through the bloodstream.

These will be widely used to conduct robotic surgery, install medical devices, including a camera in a capsule small enough to be swallowed, deliver drugs and take tissue samples. Nanoscale machines and motors will be inserted inside cells which can then self-assemble and seamlessly integrate with other cell functions. Smart implants and tiny biological fuel cells are also on the drawing board, capable of producing electricity from glucose and oxygen in the bloodstream.

By 2050 the super-intelligent Web 4.0 combining human and artificial intelligence will be ubiquitous, powered by a smart computational sensory, grid/mesh, enveloping and connecting all human life and encompassing all facets of social, technological and scientific knowledge- always on, aware and available.

This capability will be essential for supporting the immensely complex decision-making and problem solving requirements essential for civilisation's future progress; including applying algorithms to manage medical research, diagnosis and treatment. The Web will then have emerged as the senior partner in complex medical diagnosis and specialist intervention, as well as genetic discoveries, driving healthcare advances into the future.

Within 40 years the rate of medical/health progress will have accelerated knowledge discovery to the point where it will begin to eliminate most human diseases, doubling human lifespan to 150 years. Combined with accepted human cloning and breakthroughs in organ replacement and cognitive enhancement, the stage will be set for the emergence of a new generation of Transhumans.