Cloning, and other forms of reproduction

How are babies made?  Simple enough, female and male, egg and sperm.  It’s worked that way for jillions of years, right?  But all of that may change in the next decade, in two possible ways…

(1) Human Cloning

Do we have the technology to make a living human clone right now?  YES.  After Dolly the sheep, and quite a few other mammals, we can certainly clone a person.  Have we done it yet?  Apart from one aborted try in 2004, probably not.

Will we?  I would guess that the answer is yes (regardless of the laws in many countries against such a thing), but not how one might think.  We won’t have the crazy dictator cloning himself.  Instead, we’ll have a clone born to help save the life of a “sibling”.  We may never hear about such a thing, though, since disclosure would lead to prosecution.

(2) Non-traditional reproduction

By this, I mean male-male or female-female reproduction.  Are we there yet?  No, but we’re pretty close.  Ten years?  Possibly.  Thirty years?  Definitely.  I would bet somewhere in Europe, with some publicity.  Remember Louise Brown, the first “test-tube” baby?  But this will be a little different, with publicity for the doctors, but privacy for the parents, due to threats on the life of their child.

Hairstyles

Hairstyles come, and hairstyles go, but they do follow a pattern.  Straight or minimalist hair, then add a little body to get it wavy, then go all out and pouf up that do!  Then back to straight, as girls rebel against poufy hair.

Below we have:

1900s-1910s: big hair, per an ad
1920s: straight (bob) - Louise Brooks
1940s: wavy - Heddy Lamarr
1950s-early 1960s: big hair - Dusty Springfield
Late 1960s-early 1970s: straight hair (at Woodstock)
Late 1970s-early 1980s: wavy hair (the flip) - Farrah Fawcett {and more facial hair for men, a la Frank Zappa}
Late 1980s-early 1990s: poufy hair - Madonna
Late 1990s-mid 2000s: straight hair - Jennifer Aniston
Late 2000s-2010s: wavy hair - Katy Perry {and heavy facial hair for men, a la Zach Gallifinakis or Casey Abrams}

The prediction for 2020?  Big poufy hair again!

Food, Glorious Food!

Unlike batteries (energy for our toys and tools), food (energy for us) is one product where we should expect significant advances on quite a few fronts over the next century.

Food Production

The biggest changes to food production in recent history have been the Agricultural Revolutions.  First came the Agricultural Revolutions in Europe from the 1700s to the 1900s that spread to rest of the western world.  Still, the majority of the world faced periodic starvation, until the Green Revolution (1940s-1970s) in Mexico, India, the Philippines, China, and other countries.  The massive increase in world food output has limited much of the threat of mass starvation to some countries in Africa (where the Green Revolution has been less successful), poor countries after natural disasters, or isolated cases of poor governance, often due to totalitarian governments (Cuba and North Korea in the 1990s).

The biggest driver of world food production increase in the near future will be due to three factors: the continued propagation of Green Revolution ideas across the African continent, improvements in desalinization technology, and the spread and eventual acceptance of some higher-yield and stress-tolerant genetically modified (GM) crops.  Farther into the future and we start looking at more novel ways of creating food: vat-grown protein (open question: would vegetarians eat this?), kelp ponds, vertical farming.

Crop Terrorism

Unfortunately, food production can be disrupted through relatively small efforts.  (Remember the California fruit fly?)  If terrorist organizations survive the military and ideological wars, they may branch out from bombing buildings (high shock value, but low strategic value) to attacking crops (high strategic value).

Individual Diets

One new concept in the world of nutrition is that of an individualized diet, based on a person’s genetic profile.  Sure, we knew that some people were lactose-tolerant or lactose-intolerant, but now we are finding out that there are many more food categories that are better- or worse-tolerated by people based on their individual genes.

As individual DNA-testing becomes for genetic diseases becomes common, we should expect to see this testing branch out, with personalized diet profiles (a.k.a. "nutrigenomics") as the logical next step, probably within the next few decades.  For only a few hundred dollars, you can find out if the reason PB&J always makes your stomach upset is due to the peanut butter, or due to the bread.

My Battery Is Dying Again...

In the last 60 years we’ve seen amazing advances in computing, communications, gaming, and entertainment.  Recently we’ve even seen the trusty old light-bulb get a facelift (as CF or LED bulbs).  But all of these are dependent on power, and if you’re going to unplug from the wall, you have to have a battery.

How much has battery technology improved in 60 years?  Well, sure, they’ve gotten smaller, and we have a lot more options in rechargeability, but we’re near the limit.  Ultimately, a battery is a device that stores electrical energy as chemical energy, and there’s only so much chemical energy you can get out of an object of a particular size.

Unless we can make mini nuclear power plants the size of a D-cell, don’t expect much improvement on the battery side of things any time soon.  There is no Moore’s Law for batteries, sorry.  Longer battery life is really dependent on (1) less energy usage/wasteage from a device, and (2) getting energy or recharges from other sources, such as wearable solar rechargers, motion charging similar to some watches, or even a little mechanical energy from the user.

Chinese Relatives, or the Death of the Chinese Uncle…

Welcome to the People’s Republic of China!  One child per family, please.

Since 1979, much of the urban population of China has been restricted to having just one child per family.  What has this done to family relationships in China?  By the 1980s and 1990s, there were a generation of schoolchildren without brothers and sisters.  In the 2000s, Chinese children were born without aunts and uncles, and cousins were nowhere to be found.

By the 2020s we’ll start seeing urban Chinese children without great-uncles and great-aunts, and even second-cousins will be nowhere to be found.  When these children think of “family”, it will only be of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  I found a nice website with 102 categories of relationships in the Chinese family; by the 2020s, 76 of these will be obsolete in urban China.

And so we say goodbye to the Chinese Uncle, and the extended family as a part of the Chinese psyche.  And hello, to a country of only children.

Fecal Transplant

“You’re kidding, right?”  No, I’m not.  Turns out you can cure people from some pretty serious intestinal infections using feces (yes, “ewww” factor and all) from a healthy “donor”.  The key is not a single bacterium, but more a competitive culture of dozens of different bacteria, keeping each other in check.

Expect the concept to be expanded significantly beyond donated feces to a standardized competitive culture (already in use in livestock), and then possibly to skin infection treatment, anti-acne creams, and maybe even mouthwash and shampoo!

Still in its infancy though, and there are quite a few sham probiotics out there that are either useless or harmful.  Wait for the scientific testing to catch up with it.

Future Attitudes

Kind of a weird topic for most futurists, eh?  We talk about global warming and cybernetics and colonizing Mars, and we even talk about future demographic changes.  But what about the attitudes of the people going through all these changes?

Measuring “attitude” is a bit less precise than measuring something like population or GDP, but some social scientists have found some repeating cycles that explain quite a bit about national moods and perceptions of external events.  (Note: even though I’ll be concise, it’s a little bit of a walk from here to the full theory, but definitely worth coming along.)

First, quite a few historians noticed that the history of the United States seems to have some very large “external” type events at fairly regular intervals.  The American Revolution (1770s-1790s), the Civil War (1860s), The Great Depression and WWII (1930s-1940s), and now 9-11 and The Great Recession (2000s-2010s).  Every 70 to 80 years there seems to be a large crisis, we all have to pull together, and hopefully it turns out well.

Strauss & Howe, and Cycles

Standing on the shoulders of some earlier research, William Strauss and Neil Howe dug into the data into great detail.  One of the things they found was that about halfway between these “Crisis” times, there seem to be large-scale internal upheavals, sort of a spiritual “Awakening” of the population.  In the 1820s-1830s there was the “Transcendental Awakening”, with Utopian communities, early feminism, the founding of Mormonism, Thoreau and Emerson, and the foundation of abolitionist societies.  The “Third Great Awakening” of the 1880s-1900s saw the beginning of Christian Science, the establishment of the Salvation Army in America, and the Restoration Movement in Christianity.  In the 1960s-1970s, we saw the anti-war movement, the new feminism, rock-n-roll, more Utopian communities, and wide-scale drug usage.  Again, the timing was every 70 to 80 years.

Looking deeper, they found more historical cycles: times of economic growth but social restrictions and stagnation (think of the post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s, or of post-WWII 1950s) leading into the Awakening, and times of failed wars, social fragmentation, decay and skepticism (think of WWI and Prohibition in the 1910s and 1920s, or of the first Gulf War and the Culture Wars of the 1980s-1990s).

Generational Personalities

Importantly, they also found four “generational” personalities: a pull-together, let’s-win-this-thing “Civic” group (think of the young men enlisting for WWII).  Civics are followed by a caught-in-the-middle “Artisitic” generation (think of the beatniks and 1950s feminists and civil rights workers) who shape the upcoming Awakening.  Next come the “Prophets”, those young idealists who want to tear apart society and reshape it in their own vision and who grow into visionary leaders (the Baby Boomers).  In the shadow of the Prophets are the “Nomads”, those dumped-on, low-expectation kids who grow up skeptical, wary, and ultimately very efficient and worldly and good at making things happen (think of the Lost generation of Hemingway who ended up as critical sergeants and colonels in WWII, and the Gen-X “slackers” who are now hard-working middle managers).

Predictions of the Future

What does this mean for our future?  We’re currently in Crisis mode:  9-11, War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arab Spring.  Boomer leaders and Gen X managers and Civic-minded youth willing to pitch in and work together, while Artist children are raised by their Gen-X parents.  Sometime in the next decade or so, we will move on to Gen-X-style leadership: social restriction and economic growth (and possibly a new push to space like back in the 1950s), with Civic Gen-Y managers, Artistic young adults sowing what at first seem harmless seeds of a little rebellion, and spoiled Prophet children.

Twenty years or so after that (maybe in 2040?) the Gen-Y Civics will come into power, and will be befuddled by their teen and young adult Prophet children, who seem bent on tearing society to pieces (based on the ideas of Artists from a few years back), while middle-aged Artists are stuck in between.

Then in 2060 or so, social decay and skepticism and failed wars set in again, with Artist leadership.  Problems that should be addressed (Germany in WWI, or Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s) are instead delayed, building up to the next big Crisis…

Hmmm… are you sure these guys are right?

Well, here’s what they wrote in their first book, Generations:

 “Suppose authorities seriously suspected that a band of terrorists, linked to a fanatically anti-American nation, had smuggled a bomb into New York City…  Boomer leaders in their sixties...would exaggerate the threat…and tie it to a larger sense of global crisis.  Unifying the nation as a community, these leaders would define the enemy broadly and demand its total defeat – regardless of the human and economic sacrifices required.”

They predicted (in fact hoped) that this crisis wouldn’t hit until around 2020, but their description is a pretty accurate one for 9-11, and Boomer President George W. Bush.

(By the way, they published this scenario in Generations in 1991.)

Check out the sites and the books (Generations and The Fourth Turning), I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the future or history.