I am not very good at predicting the future. I don’t even think too much about it most of the time, I am too busy trying to keep my life on track. We live in such turbulent times and little in life seems to carry the weight of longevity, maybe it’s because of the ever-evolving technology we use. I remember watching Tomorrow’s World on the television when I was growing up and marveling at the predictions, most of which I don’t think came true.

Predictions of the future tend to be linear extensions of what we are experiencing today. We have this so in fifty years it will turn into this. In the 1950s everyone predicted we would have people living on the moon by now, but here we are, still stuck on earth. The future is usually simply reduced to just more technology, bigger and faster.

Change is always a curve ball; it never comes at us directly. Events occur, ideas emerge, and through a strange, and usually unpredictable, development we find ourselves experiencing breakthroughs that no one could have imagined even a generation before. Think about the Internet for a minute. It was made for military purposes, with never a thought for civilian use, why on earth would ordinary people need to be able to communicate on a global scale at incredible speed? Welcome to our globally connected, interdependent and wired world.

But when we come to the end of another year, like most people, I think for a minute about the past and the future. I wrote something in my journal that some wise soul said about the future- “the best way to predict the future is to help create it.” Now there’s a future I can participate in, a future of our imagination. So here are a few future trends that might happen if we can set our minds to make them. In so doing, we might the world a better place.

• Just do it…yourself.
  Max Weber called the modern age the age of the bureaucrat and the expert. Not so our times. This is the age of the self-motivated entrepreneur. All the tools we need are already available. You don’t have to do wait for someone else to do it for you, you can do it yourself. The web is a dream machine for anyone who is inspired enough to start surfing. Need information? It’s available, usually for free. Need to find someone else who’s done what you’re trying to do, just a click away. Some friends of mine decided to reclaim an area of their community that had become an unofficial dumping area. They cleaned away the rubbish and turned into a park for the community. Now they’re working on beautifying another part of their town. The message is this. Act now. Start the change you want to see in your own life and world.
• Just be…yourself.
  We were all given the gift of life so that we could be ourselves. No two human beings are exactly alike, difference is in our genes. Make it your mission in life to be true to yourself and not to what others think you should be like. We have lived too long under the tyranny of conformity. John Wesley the founder of Methodism said, “Every man (person) should strive to be a voice and not an echo.” The modern era was characterized by mass production, but today’s world focuses on the particular and the different. We celebrate difference now, so celebrate yours and strive to become an authentic human being. Authentic people change the world.
• Just…get spiritual
  . After a few centuries off the track we are finally rediscovering a balance between matter and spirit. Science and religion are talking once more and finding common ground. Advances in physics and biology show us that we are all connected on a deep molecular level. Society is not simply a material structure of organizations, taxes, roads and buildings. It is first and foremost a network of people, spiritually connected in this journey called life.
• Just…get civilized.
  The family has been the bedrock of human social organization for as long as we can remember. But family is no longer simply a group of people related by blood. In an increasingly globalized world we are growing into multidimensional people with a broad range and need of social networks that extend the idea of family beyond immediate kin, and national identity, to connect us to a web of relationships that will help us to grow and serve the emerging global community. Civilization has to mean something new as well. We speak of ‘civilized’ nations, but let’s face it we aren’t that civilized are we? We still are way too quick to pick up our guns. Civilized people don’t kill each other. It is time to put an end to violence, injustice and inequality. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization he replied that he thought it would be an “excellent idea.” It is still an excellent idea and one that all of us can participate in creating. The network world is a democratized one where voices from the margin have increasingly as much access as the voices of the middle-=it’s time to make you r voice and life be heard.