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What Do Timelines Tell Us about the Next 100 Years?
Forecasting history-changing discontinuities—revolutions, wars, or major cultural shifts, for example—can be difficult if the complex interplay of social, technological, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) factors is poorly understood. Social Technologies’ timeline, entitled Major US and Global Trends and Events, 1750 C.E. – 2100 C.E., is unique in its use of quantitative and qualitative data across all five STEEP domains, to provide both a historical and a futures perspective of where America and the rest of the world are headed.
The 2008 edition is the latest update of a groundbreaking timeline first published in 1994 and originally updated in 1998 by Peter von Stackelberg, now a senior futurist at Social Technologies. The latest edition—released in July 2008—expands upon von Stackelberg’s earlier work, looking at how long-term historical patterns of change dating back to 1750, or even earlier, can be used to identify the changes that are likely to occur through the remainder of the 21st century.
What does the timeline tell us?
Some of the possible futures indicated by the current timeline include:
- A long economic boom beginning around 2010 and lasting through about 2025, followed by an increasingly challenging economic climate lasting at least a decade
- A shift in American politics from right of political center to left between 2005 and 2030, followed by a swing of the political pendulum back to the right from the mid-2030s through the early 2050s
- Decline of America’s global leadership and the rise of one or more challenger states between 2010 and the mid-2030s, with heightened risk of a major global conflict around 2040
- Declining influence of the religious right on American politics through the mid-2030s and continued growing interest in alternative spiritual experiences
- Increasing social tensions in the US between 2010 and the mid-2030s
- Maturing of the communications and information technology sectors and the emergence of the Molecular Age, which will be the key driver of the technological, economic, and social change through the end of the 21st century
Why timelines?
Forecasting complex changes on a national and global scale over the course of decades is difficult. Yet timelines can be a powerfully effective tool for analyzing events—both in the past and the future—providing insights into long-term changes and provoking thought and discussion about the future. We feel that our timeline offers greater insight than many others, with its uniquely rich overlays of events, trends, drivers, and archetypal patterns of change spanning America and the world.
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