This was originally written for a competition run by the Global21 network, asking students to imagine life in 2021, which it won. 

The world is coming apart at the seams, and we couldn’t be happier.

That’s true on two levels. We’re enjoying a radical democratisation of many aspects of our society, dismantling restrictions and giving everyday citizens more power than ever to connect and communicate. But on another level - and I’m ashamed to admit this - I know our happiness is partly the result of head-in-the-sand avoidance of some potentially catastrophic problems. Decentralisation cuts both ways, and the torrent of always-on media distracts many of us from the destructive potential of unproductive political dialogue and fast-moving technologies. Let me explain what I mean by filling you in on the state of the world, today in 2021, and how we got here over the last decade.

At the centre of everything is the Internet. Some have called it a new wonder of the world, but in reality it is the polar opposite of the Pyramids or Hoover Dam. Rather than a grand monument built to glorify a bygone king or government, it is the sum of many billions of individual contributions: small dreams with a big outcome. It continues to have profound effects on the way we trade, communicate, and teach. Most of the world now has access to education of a standard once restricted to the aristocracies of rich nations. Instead of this knowledge remaining centralised in the ivy-clad halls of a few institutions, it has been launched into the heart of developing nations by open-access initiatives. A student at an internet cafe in rural Ghana can learn philosophy from Oxford or government from Harvard. Subjects needing expensive facilities, like medicine, remain out of reach, but we’ve come a long way.

The Internet’s influence on our personal and political communication has not been so unequivocally positive. Social networking has been growing since the turn of the century, but in the last decade it has asserted an unexpected dominance over our lives. Mobile computers are everywhere, from smartphones to tablets to the new wearable systems built on gesture recognition and display glasses. This has extended social networking into the real world: where it used to be a pastime for people in their homes, interacting theoretically in a poor simulation of actual contact, it has now become an integral part of socialising in person too. My friends and I rarely have to plan to meet because we always know where everyone else is, thanks to our location-aware systems. Some originally baulked at giving up their privacy in this way, but were soon won over by the social exclusion that inevitably came from being “off the grid”, as well as the dozens of free services that software start-ups were able to offer when supported by a goldmine of contextual advertising. Still, plenty of traditional-values coalitions have railed against what they see as a sort of informational promiscuity. Most people of my generation aren’t concerned.

What truly is hard, however, is processing the huge quantities of information that we’re bombarded with. When everyone has a voice and can make it heard, the crowd becomes deafening. A lot of people have reacted by unconsciously retreating into “echo chambers” – filtering their news so that they’re only hearing from members of a like-minded community. This is not entirely new: for years, TV networks have employed pundits for their ability to please a target audience rather than soberly discuss facts: ratings, not reality. But with the continued decline in reflective print journalism, and the sheer mass of news, opinion and commentary to be digested, most people have no choice but to select a trusted gatekeeper, and in so doing shut themselves off to a world of frightening counterarguments.

In some societies, this has diluted democracy, with governments punished at elections for adopting centrist policies, which may work but don’t energise either political army. A prime example is climate change. Copenhagen failed in 2009, Mexico City failed in 2010, and on it has continued, year after disappointing year – Tokyo, Rome, Sao Paulo, Kuala Lumpur; a global trail of gridlocked negotiations and broken promises. Every nation has talked the talk of environmental responsibility, impressing the majority of voters demanding some sort of action. But the nexus of Wild West free-marketeers, implacable deniers of the underlying science and cashed-up industry lobbyists has ensured that no government has had the confidence to stride out with strong unilateral measures. With voters drowning in a sea of think-tank nouns, from emissions trading schemes to clean development mechanisms, the difference between truly decisive steps and hedged half-measures has been hard to discern. The result: a depressing dance of aspirational goals, minimal targets and finger-pointing. The politicians haven’t made much headway, and the global framework is not much better in 2021 than it was a decade ago.

But hope is not lost, and again it comes back to my initial sentiment about the double-edged sword of decentralisation. Fragmented domestic politics and a multipolar international climate contributed to our failure to hammer out a solution, but the climate problem is still being solved – a little at a time, by technological innovation from Silicon Valley to Shanghai and the Sahara. Gleaming white forests of wind generators have sprung up all over the world. The emirs of the Middle East, blessed with perpetual sunlight and sensibly investing for life after oil, have funded the construction of solar farms in the sands of northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula, funnelling the power across the Mediterranean to hungry European markets. Much of the entrepreneurial effort has been aimed at picking so-called low-hanging fruit through energy efficiency and technology transfer. Developing countries reliant on outdated and polluting tools, like animal-dung briquette burners, have welcomed advanced but rugged replacements, from solar concentrators for cooking to self-contained hydro generators that can run in small streams. The sheer volume of these markets has created a new generation of tech billionaires who were able to make their fortunes without charging extortionate prices.

And there is another force coming to the rescue of my generation, from an unexpected quarter. Retiring baby boomers, with time on their hands, deep pockets, and a desire to leave a better world for their grandchildren, have become an active component of civil society groups. Thousands of small efforts – to set up a teaching clinic in Bangladesh, say, or fund the distribution of cheap pharmaceuticals to a city in Botswana - have combined to make a measurable impact on lives all over the world. I concede that there is far more to be done. Vigorous community involvement is not an excuse for government inaction, and there are still billions living in extreme poverty who we could help more effectively with a clearer global plan. But the immensity of these challenges forces us to ignore the big picture and just do what we can. We have a long way to go, but I’m optimistic.

So that’s the world today, in 2021. How about looking forward – where are we going next? On the whole, I think the future is bright. Continued innovation is going to make our lives far more comfortable, with abundant clean energy giving us the licence to use it freely, and more companies accepting virtual telecommuting as a valid way of working, cutting one of the major stresses of the past. Commercial spaceflight has started to enter the price range of the upper class, and it will continue to become even cheaper, so I’m anticipating my first zero-gravity ride before this decade is out.

There is one major storm looming on the horizon, though. While many of our emerging sciences – robotics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering – will provide vital armaments in the wars on poverty and AIDS and ageing, they also have the potential to create weapons of a much more vicious variety. If they are not properly controlled, we run the risk of placing unimaginable destructive power in the

hands of every hate-filled ideologue or crazed cultist. But Pandora’s box has already been opened and I don’t think that simply banning all research into those areas is the answer; imagine telling a Parkinson’s sufferer that we’ve decided to stop looking for a cure. Science has too much to offer for us to give it up, but we must carefully control its dissemination and ensure that our defences – enabled by the very same research – remain a step ahead of any surprise arsenal that could be used against us.

Life in 2021 is a rich and happy experience, both in developed countries and a reassuringly growing number of developing ones. There is perhaps too much shallow consumerism, but that isn’t fatal to a society. We have significant challenges ahead, but they don’t seem insurmountable, buoyed as members of my generation are by our global connectivity and belief in the power of our ideas. We will ultimately be saved by our ability to rejoice in the breaking down of walls and building up of new linkages - to make full use of the entire fabric of humanity.