My calls:
1) Barter: Here to stay, like I said a few years ago. Next on the
menu, if the gov't doesn't stop it: Ubiquitous business-to-business
miniature futures contracts. Following that: Complex barter futures,
probabilistic spreadsheets.
2) Venture capital: The big trend towards "popularization" of venture
capital is the tiniest first step on an enormous curve. Venture capital
will continue to grow until either the returns drop down to 7% or there
are venture-capital savings accounts at your local credit union.
3) Stock market: A vast bubble that will keep looking like it's about
to pop until it finally does, sometime between tomorrow and twenty years
from now.
4) Labor: Enormously tight labor market and rich techies eventually
results in democratic, employee-driven pseudo-corporations being formed,
run to suit the employees, and worklife finally becomes livable. We're
starting to see the gradual transition to this state now. These "open
corporations" will start out as havens for the enormously experienced
ultra-in-demand programmers who can afford to call the shots, and wind
up being as ubiquitous as b2b barter, minifutures or venture capital.
5) Marketing: Collaborative filtering rules the world. Customer pull
replaces advertiser push. Approximately one-fifth of the economy
becomes obsolete; whether the shock can be absorbed will depend on how
far along the other processes are running.
6) Nanotech and AI: Ultraproductivity kicks hell out of the economy.
Depending on how far advanced the other items are, and how much the
gov't tries to interfere, we'll either all wind up unemployed;
alternatively, "work" will cease to take center place in our lives, in
the same way that "farming" has gone from 98% of the economy to 2% of
the economy.
7) Big breakthrough nobody expected: Neurohacking.
8) Singularity: Still scheduled for sometime between 2005 and 2020 if
we get out and push; set for 2020 to 2030 otherwise, and you won't like
what happens in the meantime.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Member, Extropy Institute
Senior Associate, Foresight Institute
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