Fifty years time 2059 in
The population will rise to eighty million plus because everyone wants to come to
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My starting place is to compare what life was like at fifty year intervals from 1809, pick the main threads and extrapolate those changes into the future. 1809 – World population 1 Billion – 1801 Napoleonic Wars, 1812 1815 English language and industrial revolution well under way, 1819 tarmacadam roads, 1821 Famine in 1831 Cholera epidemic, 1835 Railways boom, 1859 – World population 1.3 Billion, UK Population 20 million Queen Victoria, Dickens, horse-drawn carriages, no pavements, children in the mines, life expectancy 48 years, slums, workhouse, mills, coalmines, iron and steel, pre-gas, pre-electricity, sailing ships, opium wars, grain races, china clippers, first translantic cable, 1909 – World population 1.7 Billion, UK Population 1901 32.5 miliion Horse-drawn carriages, no pavements, children in the mines, basic education, life expectancy 48 years, retirement at age 70, slums, workhouse, mills, coalmines, iron and steel, pre-gas, pre-electricity, steel battleships, sewage systems, motor cars just starting, 1959 – World population 3 Billion, UK Population 49 million Schooling and healthcare, Black and white TV, telephones, cars, trolley buses and trams, jet aircraft, oil 3$ a barrel, food rationing ended in 1952, life expectancy 68 years, translantic traffic, as many books published between 1955 and 1970 as in the whole world upto 1955, (1973 oil 13$ pbl), 2009 – World population 6 Billion, UK Population 62 million computers, internet, global village, English is the global language for the whole world, satellites, Google Earth, blog and twitter, oil $40-$140 a barrel, life expectancy 88 years, mobile phones, knowledge still growing exponentially, power of computers still growing exponentially, 2059 – World population 10-12 Billion, English is the Global Language. Price of oil is $1400 - $4,000 a barrel, ($2009) Space planes are in ordinary use, Holographic imaging is available, Video phones are standard, Computers are in use as brain enhancers, with direct access to your own personal data in ‘The Cloud’ |
The mavericks are Russia is not a world player, they have sunk back to subsistence China and India are now the primary producers of pollutants, ten times more than the rest of the world together. They also consume vast amounts of world resources. The Life expectancy at birth is 108 years, retirement age is 95. People work as they want to, for as long as they want to, Physical and mental health are seen as ‘one’. National Cybernation Audit service has been set up. 2 million extra people, mainly wealthy people from around the world have come to Britain because of the quality of life, of the safety and protection our police and armed services provide and of course the tax regime. Knowledge keeps growing exponentially on all fronts. We have an extraordinarily good life, one we could not have imagined in the depths of the 2009 global depression. The challenges we face today in 2009 are to: - attain self-sufficiency and sustainability in food (for eighty million people) - attain self-sufficiency and sustainability in power and energy - maintain and develop a powerful defence force - re-establish our excellence and our pre-eminence in telecommunications and air transport - satisfy a need for thirty per cent more housing So how does the We are the centre for the English Language. We are all driving the knowledge-based economy in languages, law, finance, entertainment, culture, cuisine, sport, design, health and education, illness, engineering, all largely from our offices at or near our homes. We have language universities. While we may do some serious metal based manufacturing, the real thrust is in development (the IPRs) only of high value requirements. New developments in Nano-technology, lasers and tunnelling, intelligent computers, medicine, The key to our society is service, whether financial services, conference centres or entertainment or the arts or sport or buildings maintenance or restaurants or tourism or software or new knowledge or new materials or helping one another, everything is about quality of service. The key to quality of service is education so each person needs to receive the best education for them
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Everyone is British; the official language is English; everyone celebrates their uniqueness, and lives in harmony with their neighbours. The Northern Irish Protestants, Taiwanese, Israelis and Free Dutch have settled in, many on the land reclaimed from the sea; millions of people looking for safety for their families and their wealth have flocked in; new towns have been built where the storm gates in the sea defences are; new towns have been built over and under the motorway junctions.
Meetings are all held in rooms equipped with audio-visual panels, scent banks and with artificial hands for personal commitment and welcome, supported by massive broadband connections; Parliament meets once a month; MPs run their constituencies from their own local offices. My PDA gets smaller and its power and facilities increase. Optical recognition software can now identify a person from my database and ‘whisper’ their name to me plus their data; it also keeps me up-to-date with FactsOnly (a subscription news service) and GoogleNews. All labelling shows water and energy used as well as materials and for food the ingredients, allergy and nutritional information. People use public transport as they no longer need cars or car parks; they walk to meetings, to the shops, to the entertainment, either physically or virtually. Railways have been tarmac-ed over to become express coachways. Existing towns and cities modernise where the people want that, they become culture, entertainment or sport centres; otherwise they become history centres and tourist attractions. The City of Each cluster of tall eco-towns includes: audio-visual meeting rooms with ‘vision walls’; schools; colleges, hotels; restaurants; escalators down to the express buses; spacious open village shopping, multi-screen cinemas, office rooms in every home, gymnasia, balcony gardens and roof gardens, climbing walls, facilities for cyclists and motorcyclists to enjoy their sport and leisure; car parks for out-of-towners to use; car clubs for those wanting independent travel; high level bridges between towers; ski jump ramps for private jets jut out from some buildings; solar panels, heat pumps, lift units going sideways as well as up and down; The new lakes / reservoirs at the seaward end of the old river estuaries are popular for sailing, water-sports, fishing and fish farms; The two new harbours in the Huge refrigerated ships bring food in from Ships ply to and from Our armed services have recruitment, activity and anti-cyber warfare centres in all towns and cities. They are on guard night and day; on land and sea and in the air; equipped with the best our society can develop or buy-in, protecting our people, our data and property, our lifelines, and helping our military customers. People flock to - we provide freedom of speech; - we protect our people and their property; - we have the finest education, health and medical care; - we have the best culture, sport, leisure and entertainment and - we’re a successful nation with low tax and minimal government interference We have re-invented the British people, to again be powerful, fair, and honest. |
Protection of our people - Build the two aircraft carriers etc as soon as possible, - Recruit and train infantry so that we can make our armed forces available for guard and defence duties wherever we have a client - Develop more UAVs - Institute a Coastguard service for immigration control and fisheries protection - Allow self-checking of personal data held by the security services - Institute immigration limits on reading and writing English, personal wealth and commitment to law Self-sufficiency in power and energy - Increase the use of public transport - Reduce commuting distances - Build on all existing car parks - Build clean coal-usage, nuclear and gas-fired power stations as near to the conurbations as possible, - Instal domestic solar power units for as many homes as possible Self-sufficiency in food - Construct a rampart similar to the one round the Zuider Zee in - Reclaim all the land inside these ramparts and convert largely to agricultural and fish farming uses - Adapt the average diet so that people eat less red meat - Follow international experience with enhanced foods - Re-create our own fishing fleet Additional housing for our people - Create mini-towns at each of 200 motorway or other junctions, building four mini-towns each year, they will each need to house and provide offices, restaurants, shops etc for one hundred thousand people (say thirty thousand homes) - Build towns into the ground (as - Provide express buses to link them with the existing cities and with rail and air transport facilities, - create powerful new audio-visual conferencing, meeting and education multi-purpose rooms to reduce the demand for personal transportation - Create a minimum 30mbs broadband service network along the motorways linking these mini-towns, plus along all the new sea defence ramparts to give an inclusive network, and build additional international connections.
The scenario starts bringing into focus the choices we will need to make, though I think protecting our people is the primary objective. We have the manpower, the skills and the ability to do all this. All we need is the decision to do it. |