--- title: "‘101 Things We Know About Our Future’ – An Esoteric List of Things That are Happening Now and Next!" canonical: https://jimcarroll.com/2021/12/101-things-we-know-about-our-future-an-esoteric-list-of-things-that-are-happening-now-and-next/ updated: 2022-04-01T10:49:20+00:00 --- # ‘101 Things We Know About Our Future’ – An Esoteric List of Things That are Happening Now and Next! My mind all too often races with ideas; I think too much. The busy activities in my head lead me to regularly scribble down lots of thoughts about the world around me. Overall, as a futurist, it’s a remarkable time to be alive – and with that in mind, here’s a list that I’ve accumulated as to ‘101 things we know about our future.’ ![](https://jimcarroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ThinkBIG.jpg) Some are obvious, some are not so obvious. Let me know what other ones you think about. [Contact me.](https://jimcarroll.com/contact/) - - We’re obviously shifting from driving cars based on gas and internal combustion engines to those based on batteries and electric – and it will happen faster than you think - Energy grids are shifting from mostly one way distribution to massively two way interconnected systems - We’re entering the era of connected agriculture, in which a kid who grew up playing Farmville will define the future virtual farm - Oil is over. It’s a sunset industry in decline as renewables come to dominate all future spending - Solar power generation is growing faster than any other form of energy - Constant bio-connectivity body monitoring, such as done through your mobile device, will forever transform healthcare - Connected pharmaceuticals will one day soon report on how well they are working inside your body - Africa is the next big economic powerhouse - We’ll never go back to the world of in-person retail shopping like it was before Covid - You are surrounded by modern things right now that will become ‘things from the olden days’ during your lifetime - Most major companies will be at risk of failure through computer security hacking issues – until security becomes a Board of Directors responsibility - The fact that there are ‘fitbits for cows’ is a trend that is helping to accelerate battery storage technology - The next generation has no attention span whatsoever: and this has big implications for everything! - We’re moving from a world in which we fix people after they’re sick – to one in which we know what they are going to become sick with and act accordingly - There will soon be a lot of weed-zapping robots on farms, along with tiny robotic pollinating insects - Change-resistant baby boomers are starting to leave the economy, making things even faster than they are - Machines are starting to think on their own a bit more. We don’t yet know what this means. - Most successful companies today will eventually go the way of Sears, Blockbuster, and Kodak – because of leadership complacency and hubris - Right now, someone has the perfect idea in mind to put your business model into a death spiral – and you might not notice till it is too late - The concept of data-transmitting crops is a marvelous thing – and we’ll see it in our lifetime - We will soon have windows most everywhere that generate solar electricity, simply by being windows - Car companies don’t know how to innovate at the speed of Silicon Valley. This is a BIG problem – for them - Insurance is moving from looking at the past performance of something to looking at real-time indicators from that thing - Baseball bats, golf clubs, and footballs will have spatial connectivity technology as a built-in feature – providing for a new era of sports and exercise feedback - We’re quickly moving from ‘learning how to drive to ‘learning how to supervise a car’ - Batteries are at the heart of most significant future trends - Manufacturing is no longer about mass production, it’s about mass customization - We’re moving to a world of 24-hour farming – autonomy means that we no longer have to farm only when the sun is up - In the near future, you’re going to eat “who you are”, with daily food plans based on your personal DNA profile - There are a lot of things you will use in 10 years that have not yet been invented. - Just-in-time insurance will dominate the industry within a decade - You might one day golf with a personalized drone flying overhead, filming your round - Most kids today will work in a job or career that does not yet exist - Your business model won’t last next 10 years - Bionic, artificial eye implants will soon bring eyesight to the blind - One of the biggest energy opportunities in the next decade is to be found in an integrated home-energy wind/solar/battery/thermostat/iOT integrated system. - Your car dashboard of today will be obsolete in but 18 months, just like your smartphone - There is someone in a garage at this very moment with a really great idea that will become a billion-dollar company - Half of the knowledge we get in the first year of university or college is obsolete, or out of date, by the time we graduate - Urban farming within the 35 megacities of the future 20+ million people will change our entire concept of agriculture - Norway will hit 100% electric vehicles by 2025, and other nations will soon follow - It’s pretty likely that the US will follow the trajectory of the Roman Empire as its democracy goes into its death spiral - One day, the road on which you drive will automatically charge your electric car - In the future, you’ll be able to buy a DNA sequencing machine at Dollar General - Most regulatory bodies will continue to act slowly in a fast-paced world – and the disconnect of today will have bigger implications tomorrow - We’ll probably soon have little robotic micro-drones regularly tending crops in agriculture - The acceleration gap between the speed of change and our ability to deal with it is big — and getting bigger - Technology oriented seniors community care is a ‘next big thing’ – and will come just in time to deal with a massive flood of Alzheimer’s’ patients - Much of what you know today is already obsolete – you just don’t know it yet - Most of the cost of equipment in every industry will be within the software and the chips – and not within the other hardware - Most new homes will have driveway drone pads with an automatic storage locker as a standard feature - Real-time analytical predictive insurance underwriting will be the only actuarial insurance model in the not-too-distant future - We’ll one day use 3D skin printing technology to deal with medical burns and other complex issues - Rather than megabits and terabits, you’ll be talking about yottabits. Hint: look it up - The volume of known medical knowledge is increasing 48% annually, going from 153 exabytes in 2013 to 2,514 exabytes in 2020 - Smart, connected contact lenses will soon be able to monitor your health, such as with diabetes - We’re quickly moving from a world of computer code written by humans – to code-written-by-code-and-data - One day, Apple will be delisted – every company eventually becomes irrelevant - 40% of the big car makers of today won’t exist by 2030, because they weren’t able to make the shift to technology-focused electric vehicle technology - Some kids born at this very moment might very well live beyond the age of 125 years - Human brain augmentation technology will become a mainstream industry within the decade - A ‘next billion-dollar industry’ will be fully integrated home microgrids – with renewable energy (solar/wind), batteries for storage, tech to direct it directly into your car, all managed through a thermostat like a device - The cost and complexity of car maintenance will have collapsed with the arrival of electric vehicles because there is really nothing to maintain - The arrival of a faster future means the arrival of new insurance risk – and insurance companies will have to ensure for forms of risk that don’t even yet exist, not even knowing what they are insuring for! - Your car will have credit card capability embedded into the dashboard, in order to streamline drive-through and curbside pickup interactions - The 40 mega-cities that will account for the majority of the earth’s population 20 years out will grow most of their food within the city, including within 100 story high ‘vertical farms’ - Most of your clothing will be smart, connected, aware – helping you with fitness, health, and safety - Your self-driving car will ‘talk’ to a lot of the other self-driving cars around it in order to figure out where it is going and how to safely get there - Much like you might have a domain name or email address today, tomorrow you’ll have your very own light spectrum on the infinite fiber-optic Internet, which will be reserved solely for your encrypted use on global optical networks - By 2030, most actors have mostly become irrelevant – instead, avatars and deep-fake personalities will be purchased off the shelf, ready to be turned into the next great performance. - The newest trillion-dollar company that will be common in 2035 came from a product that didn’t exist at the moment you read this - Likewise, one of the most important technologies in your life in ten years does not yet exist - Personal health concierges will be one of the fastest-growing career professions - We won’t find it unusual at all to know that a child in the future might actually meet their great-great-great-greet-great-great-great-grandparent. - The volume of medical knowledge will have doubled by the time you re-read this post 78 days from now - There is a child alive today who will receive the first cranial brain implant - Vision care will transition from the prescribing of eyeglasses to the basic procedure of preparing an implant of bionic eyes - Many crypto-currencies will become viewed much like tobacco, due to their destructive environmental impact - Knee replacements will be grown at a bio-tissue farm, with customization based upon your specific DNA. - The TV show the Jetsons will soon seem like it too is from the olden days - Most major shopping malls of today won’t fulfill that function tomorrow – they’ll be something else altogether. We don’t yet know what. - Some of the most respected democracies in the world will go full-fascist, leading to really challenging political realities - You’ll have a custom 3D food printer in your home as you become a part of the world of real-time, customizable food programming - Human longevity in industrialized nations will undergo the first significant decline, dropping an average of 10 years, mostly with those who think science is not a thing - We’ll find that the hyped ‘metaverse’ didn’t happen with avatars, but did with heads-up displays and similar technologies - The concept of ‘just-in-time learning’ will come to dominate most of our education system in the years to come - We will soon be growing human body parts in labs for use in many major surgical procedures - Someone will figure out how you can spend an actual hour inside the very mind of your pet, thinking and seeing the world exactly as they do - 50% to 80% of the revenue that a company will generate by 2030 will come from a product or service that does not yet exist today - Many of the trucks in the industrialized world today will be driven by virtual drivers on the other side of the world tomorrow - What we did for heart health in the 20th century, we did for brain health in the future - Every single device that you use day today will be a featured piece in a museum in less than 25 years - Most car dealers don’t yet accept the inevitability of the demise of their business model - In the future, the idea of a ‘lighter than air’ plane will not seem ridiculous. - The world of science will have taken us from 19 million known chemical substances today to 5 billion by 2100 – and this will lead to the birth of countless new billion-dollar industries - One day, you’ll wonder whatever happened to the idea of ‘change management workshops - We will have figured out how to stop light in its tracks, which will have big implications for the future of all computer and chip technology - 50% of Wikipedia will be useless within 10 years because of ‘link-rot’ - Right not, there is a company that does not yet exist that will build a product not yet conceived, using material snot yet invented, with a methodology yet to be discovered. - We will still be talking about how committees are evil well into the future – because stupid companies will still form committees - Fifty years out, people will still write lists of ‘101 things’ because it provides a nice structure for creative thinking