The Market for Ideas
Imagining the future is frequently a delightful pastime, as evidenced by the numerous science-fiction works that have been published over the last century. The various authors pondered how humanity and the role of human beings (both collectively and individually) will be shaped by the interplay between technological advancement, societal dynamics, cultural trends, political reorganisation, space exploration and environmental change. It would not be wrong to state that some of these works have anticipated or even encouraged the development of some of today’s mundane features: the internet and wireless communication, gadgets with ever-increasing computational power and storage capacity, artificial intelligence, the search for intelligent life in the universe, plans to colonise other planets (i.e., Mars), genetic engineering as well as the negative impact of human activity on the environment and the climate. Of course, while predicting the future is challenging for even the keenest and most knowledgeable of scholars, educated guesses and analyses are still welcome and well-worth engaging in. Below are several takes by Romanian students from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, the Master’s Programme “Geopolitics and Business”, on various issues of interest and how we can expect them to impact the world of less than three decades from now. In short, it is more or less on “their life in 2050”. The selection, assumedly casual rather than scholarly, is based on their subjective current concerns with regard to a future to be objectivated one way or another, which some of them perceive as implacably possible / plausible / probable, whilst others envisage as preferable and somehow influenceable. And if there is one thing to known for certain about the(ir) future, it is just the certainty of its arrival. More
