The World in 2030

The World in 2030 35
Globalisation must now be extended to specifically
include the bottom billion, otherwise their vengeance on
the rich world will become a seventh major factor that will
shape our future – and for the worse.
5. Accelerating Technological Change
There will be more technological change in the next twentyfive
years than occurred throughout the whole of the last
century. And that was the century that produced aeroplanes,
cars, plastics, nuclear power, television, the computer, the
internet and mobile phones.
The reason I forecast such extreme change ahead is that
the speed of technology development is itself accelerating.
The key to understanding why this is occurring lies in realising
that, a) technology development is itself an extension
of human evolution and, b) the speed of technological
development is the direct product of the rapidly increasing
speed and richness of information flows around the world.
The noted American futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil 65
has pointed out that since humans first began to extend their
biological powers by inventing technology, technological
innovation has itself been accelerating at an exponential
rate. He writes:
An analysis of the history of technology shows that
technological change is exponential, contrary to the
common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t