New Scientist: Brilliant minds forecast the next 50 years

In the New Scientist a number of well known scientists try their hands at predicting the future in their fields. Obviously, telling the future 50 years hence is an invitation to say something that, in hindsight, will sound quite silly.

I only skimmed the names and the sciences represented in the article. I particluarly liked the contribution by Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist. He wrote:

"I absolutely refuse even to pretend to guess about how I might speculate about what, hypothetically, could be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years. This is an invitation to look foolish, as with the predictions of domed cities and nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners that were made 50 years ago.
I will stick my neck out about the next five to ten years, however"

Geoffrey Miller, another evolutionary psychologist, foresees changing attitudes of people once they have become aware of the evolutionary history of social behavior:
"Applied evolutionary psychology should revolutionise life in three ways by 2056. First, Darwinian critiques of runaway consumer capitalism should undermine the social and sexual appeal of conspicuous consumption. Absurdly wasteful display will become less popular once people comprehend its origins in sexual selection, and its pathetic unreliability as a signal of individual merit or virtue.

Second, studies of human happiness informed by evolution will reveal ever more clearly the importance of "social capital" - neighbourliness, close-knit communities, local family support, and integration between kids, adults and the elderly. This will, I hope, lead to revolutionary changes in urban planning, leading to a New Urbanist revival of mixed-use landscapes. Enlightened citizens will demand to live in village-type spaces rather than alienating suburbs of single-family isolation and unbearable commutes."

Chemical engineer, mathematician and zoologist Robert May is concerned with social institutions; he writes:

"We live longer and healthier lives, food production has doubled in the past 35 years and energy subsidies have substituted for human labour, washing away hierarchies of servitude. But the unintended consequences of these well-intentioned actions - climate change, biodiversity loss, inadequate water supplies, and much else - could well make tomorrow the worst of times.

The significant breakthrough we really need is better understanding of human institutions, particularly of the impediments to collective, cooperative activity in which all individuals pay small costs to reap large group benefits."

The french sociologist Bruno Latour hopes that we (not me in 50 yrs!) will be able to visualize organzation-technology networks:

"In 50 years, social scientists will be able to visualise the connections between human organisations and technological objects. Today we know how to visualise technological systems using scientific images and technical drawings, but we have no idea of how to hook those designs up with the arrays of emails, spreadsheets, blogs and pieces of paper that organise the people who operate those systems."

RAEM