Douglas Coupland's guide to the next 10 years

. the collapse of the middle class will have easy to reduce the size of the professional class, in particular doctors and professors as noone will be able to afford their services

. everyone will continue to confuse having an smartphone and a flat screen with being rich

. cars and houses will become luxury items, we become a renters society (serfdom)

. the loneliness and islotation of the previous two decades will only accelerate and increase with the advent of more mobile powerful devices

. the quality of human relationships will continue to suffer

. this will effect politics in a profoundly bad way

. also, the birthrate will drop precipitously

. the gap between what we know we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know will grow even larger - more because of arrogance that we everything than humans actually learn more despite increased cheapness of information (inability to separate signal from noise)

. the principals of the enlightment will be essentially dead for the majority of the world

. something smarter than human will arise

. the power of transhumanity or AI will be restricted to a solitary few - noone will see why this is initially an incredibly bad development for all of the human race (well, maybe nobody outside this forum)

. a new dark age will arise as orwell's visions come to fruition

. the new dark age will be nice and short due to the effects exponential evolution