Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years, by Richard Watson
£9.99 NICHOLAS BREALEY PUBLISHING
There’s a page in Richard Watson’s book on which the renowned trend watcher offers an ‘extinction timeline’. It shows things that we currently take for granted but that are likely to disappear by 2050. Some of them are fairly obvious: ‘letter writing’, ‘fax machines’, ‘coins’, ‘oil’. And then suddenly one stops you in your tracks: ‘Belgium’. Has anyone told the Belgians they’re likely to become extinct sometime around 2049?
To say Watson’s book is thought-provoking is an understatement. We all like the idea of peeking into the future and Future Files is positively Nostradamian in scope, looking at trends and innovations in a whole host of areas, including finance, the media, retail, travel and more.
Although the five major trends identified will not come as a surprise (an ageing population, a power shift eastwards, greater global connectivity, the convergence of computing with robotics and nanotechnology, environmental issues), it’s the more small-scale predictions that have the power to amaze. For instance, Watson suggests that one day soon we’ll be able to “interrogate” mince in the supermarket freezer to find out where it’s from and which pesticides the cattle may have been exposed to. And are you ready for a robot to give you financial advice? This is a highly entertaining book jam-packed with priceless nuggets of information.
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