Geopolitics:
A new cold war and another space race has begun:
China mocked officially and is overtaking US in scientific research. AI’s Sputnik moment. + | De-dollarization. | «The empire strikes back.» +Eurosclerosis:
Europeans are becoming poorer. | Is the Ukraine crisis the West’s fault? Maybe or maybe not.Demographic wars:
Are just starting.| Hints:
Sending asylum-seekers far away. | Aging Japan wants automation not immigration. | Democracy visa. | Cuisine bridges cultures.Edge cases:
Will tech corporations become «independent nations»? | The new military branch.
Politics:
Democracy is declining. Is globalization merging democracy and autocracy?
Autocracies may block Wikipedia but surveillance and cancelation spreaded to democracies and are official. The war on disinformation is a war on dissent. | «Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium». | Today’s selfie is tomorrow’s biometric profile. | Microchip implants with vaccine passport or tickets. | Free speech is declining even on universities. | Bad reviews can put you in jail. | Suppressing posts by poor or «ugly» people. | Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery.| Hints:
«Right to encryption», biometric mass surveillance ban and online freedom of speech bill. | Russians learnt to exploit it.The forgotten majorities and its rage:
In the end, the most intolerant wins.| Edge cases:
Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination and for black CEOs humiliation is a part of doing business.Edge cases:
Giving up right to vote to get student loans erased. | Private land has become increasingly concentrated. | Nationalizations. | Fund for future generations. | Lottocracy and Algocracy. | The rise of the «Liberaltarian» and the new corporate tyranny. | Regional inequality is ahead of personal inequity as a cause of revolt. | More than 1000 journalists were killed since 2010. | Journalism is activism now.
Economy & business:
All companies are technology companies now:
The Not-Com bubble is popping. | Two worlds. | Another mega corp + has been born.Capitalism 2.0 or surveillance capitalism is restrictions on free trade, universal basic income, geoarbitrage & demonetization:
The power of money depends on where you live. | Independently poor. | Software is no longer sold, is adopted. | The publicly traded company is disappearing.Economic (ir)rationality:
Most investments are bad. | 40% of foreign investment is tax dodging. | Empty homes. | Housing should be affordable except when I sell my house. | Bonuses on eve of bankruptcy. | Tesla makes more money trading bitcoin than selling cars. | $7.5b undo button. | Bringing back old features. | Shrinkflation. | Crowdfunding to minimize risk. | Eventually, everything will be a subscription even high end cars.
Society:
Life expectancy is growing:
Prisons are a haven for the elderly. | The corporatization of nursing homes.The global fertility rate is falling:
Will nations fund fertility?| Hints:
Pro-natalism.The «feminization» of society:
No one fails anymore, everybody «pivots». | The self-esteem craze. | Addiction to outrage. | Proof of X. | Parasocial relationships. | «Influencer» is the most desired occupation among youngsters. | Young female influencer is actually a mature man. | Instagram village. | Teaching kids how to be famous. | Flattery-driven open-source. | Elites may be displacing experts and may corrupt science.| Hints:
Teens who refuse to use social media. | No one answers their phone anymore. | Playgrounds a little more dangerous and agency.§ Male shaming:
Social perfectionism kills. | Hikikomori and incels. | Porno bans, sex doll brothel and AI girlfriend. Collateral damage: social exclusion fuels extremism in young men. | Boyfriend role-play. | Parents are more worried about their sons than their daughters | Young women are out earning young men. | A prenup is the latest must-have for tech startup founders.§ Individualism:
Children spend less time outside than prison inmates and it took just 4 generations. | Cousins are disappearing. | Dying alone.| Hints:
Tech workers and university graduate students plan to unionize.Edge cases:
Kids can be surprisingly mean to robots. | Sending more foster kids to prison than college. | Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce.
Work, education & skills:
Remote work is becoming the norm:
When you’re a «digital nomad» the world is your office. | Asynchronous communication is the real reason remote workers are more productive. | Dark side.Automation:
The workers at the frontlines of the AI revolution. | Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists? | Jobs are at risk as self-driving trucks become viable. Fortunately most people would rather lose their job to a robot than another human.Gig economy:
Is West discovering servants. | Focus and monetizing your knowledge has become more valuable than intelligence.Elite over-production:
Investing tuition costs nets a higher return unless you migrate for free college. | High-paying trade jobs sit empty, while high school grads line up for university. | Hiring anyone who applied, sometimes you’re not buying, you’re selling. Vs. Factory floors full of college-educated workers. | Web design work is drying up. | Even resumes looking like Instagram or Tinder may not save you.Didactics:
Remote learning didn’t work. | Hyperinflation means the end of grades. | «Woke» math. | Computer game on school reading list. | New classes on AI, mindfulness and how not to be duped by the news. | What is prompt engineering? | Vibe coding. + | Hand and writing skills are becoming rare.Edge cases:
Four-day week means «I don’t waste holidays on chores». | Robots controlled by paralyzed people.
Health:
Challenges:
Death rates rising for all americans. | Sperm quality declined on dogs also. | Inflammation seems to underlie all sickness and fasting to regenerate the immune system. | Microplastics found on blood for first time.Physical health:
Regaining sight with artificial cornea implantation. | Myopia correcting «smart glasses». | Instead of filling cavities, dentists may soon regenerate them. | Walking again thanks to 3D printed spinal implant. | Pig kidney successfully transplanted and a bioartificial one is on tests. | Young blood rejuvenates old tissues. | Lab-grown blood is near.Mental health:
Transgender and gender-diverse individuals with elevated rates of autism. | Decline in teen drug use + is not helping their mental illness epidemic.| Hints:
Cellphones detox centers. | Unnecessary medical care is harming patients. | Travel prescriptions. | Ditching daylight saving time.Viruses:
COVID-19 coronavirus is here forever. | Mobility Index. | mRNA COVID-19 vaccines herald a new era for vaccinology. | Promising vaccines for HIV and malaria. | Ebola is now curable.Genetics:
The human genome is finally complete. | The slow frontier of genetic choice.Edge cases:
The case for showering less. | World’s deadliest animal.
Sports:
- Two-hour marathon barrier breaked.
- Soccer is not a sport anymore.
Media:
Ad-supported media:
The internet of creation disappeared. Now we have the internet of surveillance and control. | Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor. | SEO is gentrifying the internet. | Click farms booming in China. | We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. | Netflix saves kids from up to 400 hours of commercials a year. | The great race to rule streaming TV.Democratization:
Self-publishing. | Superstars are losing market share in streaming. | The dark side: media as food.Edge cases:
Slow Television or confort TV. | The lonely work of moderating a web community. | Media languages. | Vinyl set to outsell CDs.
Culture, beliefs & ethics:
Aesthetics:
Less colourful world. | Normie Minimalism and Farmhouse Chic took over contemporary design. | Aging parents with lots of stuff and children who don’t want it. | Vaporwave.Faith:
Communism, sharing economy and vegetarianism. | Eco-anxiety and getting vasectomies to save the world. | Greta Thunberg. | Neutral gender marker available on US passports. | First temple to Norse gods since Viking age and statue in honor of bitcoin creator.Law & ethics:
Web scraping is legal. | Should I block ads? | An autopilot killed two people. Is the driver guilty? Apparently not. | Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab. | Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts and most violence is motivated by moral sentiments. | Are all world leaders psychopathic?Edge cases:
Japan’s police hunt for things to do. | Hedonism, sex and fear – why the Weimar republic is in vogue. | The escape room games industry and loot boxes. | Who killed the rave? Late-night dancing falls into global decline. +
Tourism:
Too many people want to travel:
and it is silently changing the world. | Seaside’s appeal.| Hints:
90-day minimum stay in Airbnbs outside resort areas.No one wants to be a tourist anymore:
The anti-tour. | Chernobyl’s «stalker» subculture. | Star wars galactic starcruiser. | Pandemic walks. | Randomized living. | Crowdfunded wandering. | Voluntourism. | Begpacking. | Lifestyle business tourism.Coming back?
Night trains and canteens.
Retail:
Democratizing lazyness:
Amazon hires half million people in 10 months. | Shopping sucks now.Edge cases:
Physical shops return to rural but are now staff-free. | Only the fanciest shoppings are expanding. | Are the hyper-specialist shops the future of retail?
Reduce, reuse & recycle:
The «plastic age». Its end is nearer:
Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water. | 91% of plastic isn’t recycled. | Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic. | Most plastic recycling is dumped in landfills.| Hints:
Phase-out of lightweight plastic bags and end consumer plastics. | Recycling waste plastic into strong cheap bricks.«Right to repair»:
is as important as innovation. | 40-year-old tractors are a hot commodity. | EU introduce rules for appliances and Apple announces self service repair.Edge cases:
People are recycling too much garbage and it’s threatening the industry. | The war on food waste is a waste of time. | No one wants your used clothes anymore.
Energy:
The beggining of photonic age:
Solar has a better return on investment than oil and battery costs have plunged. | The new «gold rush» for green lithium. | Renewables became cheap very fast. Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? | Electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars. | Balcony solar. + | Supercomputer can now run on light.Nuclear power is viable option:
Mini-nuclear plants. | Largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly. | Major breakthrough in nuclear fusion.Edge cases:
The Crypto-Chernobyl and heating homes by mining crypto currencies. | Iron as a fuel. | Plastic waste in the fuel tank. | Heat pumps are becoming the technology of the future. | What’s an ambient superconductor?
Ecology:
Climate change is water change:
Earth is greener than 20 years ago. Plant life is expanding and trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances. | CO2 in the atmosphere is beating records. | Buying cheap clothes has a price. It emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The same with cement.| Hints:
The dream of carbon air capture is becoming reality. | Anyone can make a difference. | 350 million trees planted in one day and could use wastewater.Fauna & flora:
Insect and bird populations are declining but conservation efforts made wild mammals to comeback. | Bugs are evolving to eat plastic and Chernobyl black frogs reveal evolution in action.Edge cases:
Plastic rocks. | Shortages make water a commodity. | Electric cars are starting to be taxed too.
Farming:
Farming drives toward «precision agriculture»:
Floating farm. | Urban rooftops. | Vertical farm out-produces flat farm. | «Planting» solar panels as water supplies dry up.Is organic agriculture better for the environment?
True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises.«War on meat» is official:
How to lower the price of plant-based meat? | The promise and perils of insect farming. | Lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time.
Urbanism:
In a world of digital nomads many will be homeless:
Living on pennies with a million-dollar view embracing van life. | Dorm living for professionals. | Big cities no longer deliver for low-skill workers.The city of the future:
May have way less parking once cars are not yet optimized.| Hints:
E-bikes and fare free public transport could be the revolution cities need.The suburb of the future:
Brings a tiny house trend but there are still too many too big houses. The allure of small towns for big city freelancers.Is 3d printing the future of construction?
Printing a tiny house in 24 hours or a two-story house is already possible. | The smart home still sucks.Edge cases:
Wooden skyscrapers or village on top of a mall. | Underwater datacenters. | Movable housing for scalable cities. | Crypto cities. | Why the line.
Transports:
The age of car electrification:
Corporations are embracing it and Europeans are leading. | Pickup trucks.Eco-friendly long travels are on the way:
Electric flight. | 1000km/h maglev trains. | Longest undersea rail tunnel.Private space exploration started:
Two humans into orbit and contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon.Edge cases:
Affordable personal flying vehicle and submarine are in production. | Energy storage on auto bodies. | Electrified wingsuit. | Flight by light or windowless. | Klimaticket.
Drones, robotics & AI:
Artificial inteligence:
Research was stagnant and used to be useless for business but it changed, 2023 is already marked by a major breakthrough.Drone revolution:
Autonomous drone navigates through the forest and may fly for days. | 20-pound load delivery becomes a reality. | Drones can seed a forest, 100k trees a day or kill weeds and invasive nautical flora. They can even rescue swimmers and lost hikers, map slums for land titling or be used as sheep dogs. The dark side: tracking cars and people, scaning faces and license plates and armed with explosives.Robotics:
Boston Dynamics is finally selling. | Hydrogel interfaces for merging humans and machines.Self-driving vehicles:
Autonomous trucks are real but boats seem more solvable.
Tools:
Computers:
Your phone vs Supercomputers. | ARM got so successful without the public noticing. | Apple M1 means Intel’s disruption is now complete. | Using a Raspberry Pi or a iPad Pro as a main computer.Timeless tools:
Lego, paper and spreadsheets.Blockchain is getting mainstream:
Crypto index funds and relevance vs fiat money.§ The quest for use cases:
Web3. | Bitcoin is a hyperobject or even the singularity. | NFTs are the new conceptual art. | Leverage for dreams like life extension. | A good use case for blockchains is reward points.Edge cases:
Transistors are civilization’s invisible infrastructure. | Computer files are going extinct. | Super App. | Privacy tools. | Analogic resistance: replacing touchscreen controls with mechanical ones and an hardware pedal for improved text editing.