Seven megatrends that will shape the next 20 years | Hacker News Reader

Seven megatrends that will shape the next 20 years

csiro.au

43 pointsManheim76 comments

> the pandemic-fuelled a boom in digitisation, with teleworking, telehealth, online shopping and digital currencies becoming mainstream. Forty percent of Australians now work remotely on a regular basis and the future demand for digital workers expected to increase by 79% from 2020 to 2025.

Is there any actual evidence digital currencies are "becoming mainstream" or they just threw that in because it sounds cool? I still see zero use for digital currencies despite initially trying to be an early adopter, but all I saw since then was digital currencies being used as "investments" like any shares, not as actual currencies.

Reports like these are written for clueless people who want to sound smart and "with it". When you're the CEO of a company that manufactures bathroom tiles still you're expected to have opinions about the future of big data and on how artificial intelligence will disrupt your industry.

It's a pretty safe bet that the most transformative changes in the next 20 years won't be any of those listed here.

No, and they're wrong about online shopping too.

Even in the middle of the pandemic, internet shopping never went above 40% of purchasing.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindust...

And as you can see, while it had a spike during the pandemic, it's roughly back to where it would be expected to be, growing, but the pandemic seemingly had no lasting impact.

The only statement about online shopping I find on that page is “online shopping […] becoming mainstream”.

Eyeballing that chart, if it’s at around 20% now and growing about one percentage point each year, it will be at 40% in 20 years time. I would call that mainstream.

You've cut most of the quote, it's:

the pandemic-fuelled (sic) a boom in digitisation, with teleworking, telehealth, online shopping and digital currencies becoming mainstream

That is their summary of the fifth "megatrend", "Diving into digital".

When you cut out most of the quote, unsurprisingly, you can claim anyone's wrong.

Logically, they make four claims in that statement:

    The pandemic made teleworking mainstream
    The pandemic made telehealth mainstream
    The pandemic made online shopping mainstream
    The pandemic made digital currencies mainstream

The last two of them are definitely wrong and that's what we're talking about. I cannot judge the first two having not looked into teleworking and telehealth.

I interpreted that in the context of “Seven megatrends that will shape the next 20 years”, and because of that, interpreted it as a prediction.

Rereading it, you’re right that it doesn’t say that, but I still think it’s intended as one.

The report (https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/Our-F...; there even is a .txt version) doesn’t add detail, though. IMO, that makes that prediction one of the “bloody obvious” kind. Digital already is mainstream, and I don’t think anybody thinks that will change soon (except, maybe, those predicting a major global collapse of society)

I give it another 5 years tops, before companies begin issuing their own "currencies". Amazon coin. You can buy anything on Amazon using it, and send it between Amazon accounts. Suddenly, other services/businesses will begin accepting Amazon coin as payment for goods. That there is real digital currency. Not block chain rubbish. But a corporation leveraging their extreme digital footprint to become a de facto currency issuer, in all but name.

Diem by Meta/FB tried this and was eviscerated.

Too soon? The graph of trust in corporations vs governments hasn't yet crossed over.

Isn't company stock pretty much this? Seems to get plenty of trust over government currency ...

I guess you could say it needs to be made more fungible before it would really have this function, but ...

Isn't this begging the question?

Some people's trust in governments has been going down, and some people's trust in corporations has been going up, but it's far from universal or strictly correlated.

Personally, I fervently hope that the general populace never becomes so deluded as to think that companies have our best interests more at heart than governments do. Even a corrupted government can, with effort, be cleaned up and made to function correctly again; a self-interested, fully-profit-driven, amoral company is working as intended.

This has far less utility than AmazonCoin though. The utility of fiat currency is the ability to pay taxes in it. The utility of AmazonCoin would be using it buy things from the Amazon store. What utility did Diem offer that other currencies do not already?

My point is that AmazonCoin as a medium of exchange for any kind of goods even off platform, would be a secondary effect. The issue with so many of these crypto projects is that they have no actual utility for anything from Day 1.

Amazon wouldn't even need to make it a crypto. Literally just credits on your account. The extra bit is being able to send those credits between arbitrary accounts.

Then Amazon has to abide by KYC and all its baggage

That's not a new requirement for amazon. It's needed for EU sellers

Is this like digital coupons?

Becoming mainstream in this case probably means central bank digital currencies, not Doge being accepted by cafes. FWIW the CSIRO was effectively purged by the previous AU government and the people that are left are... people who are useful to politicians.

> CSIRO was effectively purged

We're going to need version numbers and/or hashes to accompany organization names.

There are slow but steady legal changes being made globally to enable CBDCs.

Global CBDC tracker, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker/

CBDCs on HN, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

>> Is there any actual evidence digital currencies are "becoming mainstream"

Two countries have adopted Bitcoin as an official currency. I would call that mainstream.

But in practice they're not actively used there, or anywhere else. It's a bit like pointing that the UN deems internet access a human right.

What can you buy in Bitcoin these days?

In those two countries, you can pay your taxes with Bitcoin apparently. That passes the bar for mainstream for me.

What other currencies that people can currently use to pay their national taxes do you also consider to be outside of the mainstream?

You are allowed to do it. How many people actually do it? Last time I checked, there was very little Bitcoin use in day to day life, and it was on a downward trend.

Or in other words, could you survive there if you insisted to pay everything with bitcoin and nothing else?

From what I've read, cryptocurrency there was more like a pipe dream or a failed bet than an actual second currency that people want to use.

"One in five Australians report high or very high levels of psychological distress".

This is probably caused by people making insanely hyperbolic lists about the future.

While some of the measurement methods can be debated, pretty much all mental health metrics down to medication prescriptions I've seen over the last few years can best be described as "alarming". I don't have very substantiated or strong opinions as to what's causing it, I don't know if we're just better at treating stuff people would have had to just soldier through 100+ years ago, but it gives me a weird feeling about the world.

I'd say it's more than that. These lists aren't hurting us. I think caused by the kind of people who write or give heavy credence to these to kinds of insanely hyperbolic lists about the future employing the authority to do stuff like:

-Push to tell you when you need to wear what

-That you need to put something in your body

-Say whether you can/should go outside

-If you can have what job

-Whether you can do business

-Whether you can travel

And if it's not you, it's someone you know and love and care about. Perhaps you have nobody you know or love or care about due to atomization and then the source of the distress would be obvious. It's further caused by the fact that this willingness to employ the authority at the state, employer, and organizational level is active all the world over, and isn't going away. You can agree with the authority's reasoning, you can value the importance of public health and sustainability. You can trust these authorities deeply. You can vocally champion the authority's legitimacy. It won't erase the pressure's effect on you emotionally and spiritually underneath all that.

I say this as I struggle to cope with the fact that in my personal life an local authority figure who I love and respect and overwhelmingly agree with is becoming more authoritarian. Authority doesn't stop taking territory from us, in pursuit of its vision for growth and success. It doesn't relinquish control. That's a ratchet that won't go back and stay back without breaking it. Authority will go as far as dehumanizing you, and openly mismanaging your resources if it feels doing so is a safe way to prove a point of its own victorious supremacy over you. What I'm experiencing is that when you live under a growing authority who holds your community in grasp, here's what will happen: doubts, fear and despair will threaten to rule your heart. It's really hard to be strong to that. Some people can't seem to do it on their own, and need each other's help and the help of those who love them unconditionally. Because authority and its figures will too often act as if they love you, only conditionally. Legalistic authority is deeply scared of how border-transcending solidarity and love resurge from the darkest depths of death.

Take care, to all of you. You're built to love and be loved, even if you absolutely hate this post.

You have to understand, these aren't trends these are MEGAtrends thus we these article are critically important.

An ageing population is sometimes axiomatically considered to be a problem. However, Japan, S. Korea and Germany do not appear to be suffering from a lack of GDP growth compared to the OECD as a whole. Perhaps a growing productivity per worker is able to compensate for fewer workers?

Indeed, there may be advantages to declining populations, such as reduced environmental pressures and reduced demand for housing...

As GDP includes earnings from investments in foreign countries (which at least Germany does plenty of), this is a somewhat moot point.

The ageing population only becomes an issue once the ageing population reaches retirement age and can't participate in the work force. Even though there is already a shortage of workers in Germany, it is expected to get worse in the next decades.

Yes.

check out Japan: its workforce problem will peak around 2038 according to the UN Pop estimate[1].

1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...

Move the slider at the top to 2038.

The survival curve of Western populations is "squaring", i.e. the age of the oldest is not increasing as much as the average age. You can see this effect for England and Wales in the graphic below [0].

So the extent of the "problem" (if it is one) will not continue to increase at the same rate in the future as it did in the past.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/ONRm4Ep.jpg

I am not quite sure what this is saying.

It seems to be that 'years ago most people died before 60, now most people live to 80, in theory everyone will live to same age then die'

But I am not sure how having more people live to 80 will improve the demographic situation if the total number of young people is less than the number of old

It implies that the "burden" of an ageing population is capped, i.e. the rate of the increase in the elderly proportion of the population will slow down from about 2030.

In fact it already seems to be occurring, with several countries reporting that they are no longer seeing gains in live expectancy, for example "The big slowdown: 6 reasons why UK life expectancy growth is stalling"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931920-100-the-big-...

But is the burden due to ever increasing age, or rather due to ratio of young to old?

I think I am asking that if the ratio caps out at 1:1 (or if I understood Hans Rosling, there will eventually be equal sized aged cohorts (same number of young, middle aged and old people), is that ratio sustainable? Can we actually have the 20-60 aged people support the 0-20 and 60-80 cohorts?

Sadly it seems we won't have to deal with immortality for a while yet!

As to the issue of sustainability, Japan seems to be answering that question (so far): yes it is sustainable.

The "western solution" to this is to simply open the immigration taps - the thinking being there's an endless supply of young people from other parts of the world and you can just siphon some of them off as your new tax base to avoid dealing with the problem.

Except the entire world is having less children and becoming older. 50 years ago India had 5.473 births per women, now they're below replacement rate at 2.19. Even West Africa is declining: fertility rate chart-toppers Niger peaked at 6.762 in '79, they're down to 5.144 today and set to go below replacement rate (2.5) well before this century is out.

> the thinking being there's an endless supply of young people from other parts of the world and you can just siphon some of them off

The assumption is also that the transition towards them can be smooth and that ties are easily replaceable. As far as I know, consistent family ties still play a major role in succeeding at work, even 20 years deep into the adult age.

How is 2.19 births per woman below replacement rate? Do they have a very high number of male children born, or is life expectancy dropping, or something?

Mortality before reproduction.

Or no reproduction. Not everyone can or will have children.

You need more than 2.0 to compensate for child to young people death.

The replacement rate varies per country, details here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility:

“The United Nations Population Division defines sub-replacement fertility as any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman of childbearing age, but the threshold can be as high as 3.4 in some developing countries because of higher mortality rates. Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement was 2.33 children per woman in 2003. This can be "translated" as 2 children per woman to replace the parents, plus a "third of a child" to make up for the higher probability of males born and mortality prior to the end of a person's fertile life. In 2020, the average global fertility rate was around 2.4 children born per woman.”

A little excess over 2 is necessary, due to the people that end dying before reproductive age.

Surely that's factored in in "per woman"?

But not into "births".

Turns out it's "per woman of childbearing age," so thus excludes infant mortality.

Germany is unusual because they are enormous net exporters. Not every country can be a net exporter.

When you have an aging population the ratio of working people to elderly people will shift radically. Healthcare expenses ratchet up every year, crowding out other government expenditures. It's not a recipe for a healthy economy. And it's not easy to invest in the future when older people outnumber younger people and are more likely to vote and lobby for their (class) interest.

You need a lot of innovation to compensate for these secular headwinds.

I think there are two trends missing:

1. Immigration. The global worker shortage will result in countries competing for workers. Many young people will move to the country that offers the best quality of life. Global wage discrepancies will disappear, and high-tax countries need to justify their high taxes by offering more services to workers.

2. Energy. While in the short run there's an Energy crisis especially in Europe, there is so much money being invested in research that sooner or later new technology will offer an abundance of energy. 20 years may be not enough to reach that state, but energy abundance will have an enormous impact on humanity and even the prospect of it will change thinking.

I hope you're right on number 2. We have to make sure that environmentalists don't succeed in demonizing whatever technology comes out on top. Now, at last, many young, educated people, especially with a technical background, are pro-nuclear. So, I am cautiously optimistic.

> We have to make sure that environmentalists don't succeed in demonizing whatever technology comes out on top

If (and only if) that technology is a major safety or environmental hazard, then it should receive all the criticism that it deserves.

While there are of course radical environmentalists whose position often have little to do with actual environment protection, most people wouldn't object to a technology just because it is new. But of course, if it is really bad for the environment, people will rightfully object.

And while nuclear is low-carbon, what certainly is of high importance, there are serious environmental concerns. It is not crazy nor demonizing, if you raise those.

Re: 2.

Abundance of energy is never gonna happen. Entropy is a bitch. Its always going to be a struggle.

The Sun is going to last a few billion years, we can worry about entropy later.

You are misunderstanding me if you jump to that specific little application of entropy. Entropy is like a thing every-time, including right now. It sort of guarantees us that there isn't much free potential energy laying around our planet.

The planet has a constant supply of an incredible amount of energy from the Sun.

Most forms of energy we can tap into can be traced back to the Sun, except for maybe nuclear.

Then try to use it! Its an uphill battle against the second law of thermodynamics. Thus no abundance, ever.

> 1. Immigration.

Hm... I think in Australia this is old news and doesn't even deserve a mention on a paper talking about future trends... every year Australia gets hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly highly skilled people, and this has been going on for several decades (see https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/immigrat... - "migrant population" has gone from 1.7 million in 1960 to almost 7 million in 2015, or 28% of the total population...)!

Australia used to advertise heavily for people to come to study and work in Australia (not sure if that's still going on lately... I myself migrated there decades ago but left since - though may come back one day).

First point is gibberish, we are heading towards global recession so last thing affected countries will want to do is pour hundreds of thousands of people completely out of touch with given country and its customs and history, often not knowing language well and their skills are OK only on paper. Every country is and will be citizen-first.

Wage discrepancies disappearing is another wishful thinking, I don't think you understand where it comes from. Yes the differences will possibly become smaller if current trend will continue. Other than that it can go in any way, and we're talking more on scale of centuries here.

More likely will be accelerated brain drain into mega cities who will offer more quality of life (ie less pollution, faster better public transport etc.) so rural areas will be more rural. Everybody will be renting. For every digital nomad settling there, there is 10 folks going the opposite way for work that can't be remoted or simply because they like it in the city more.

> we are heading towards global recession

Possibly, but I don't think it will last 20 years. Also, a recession could make people from worse affected areas move to those that are less affected.

>completely out of touch with given country and its customs and history

I think that is the main factor that is diminishing. Young people today are better suited to move to another country than 20 years ago, and there is no reason why this development shouldn't continue.

>Wage discrepancies disappearing is another wishful thinking

Disappearing wage discrepancies are a consequence of increased mobility (and, to a certain degree, greater acceptance of remote work, even though there are still lots of hurdles for remote work across countries and even more so across continents).

>More likely will be accelerated brain drain into mega cities who will offer more quality of life

I wouldn't bet on this. The possibility of remote work, more digital entertainment options and autonomous vehicles will make rural or suburban areas more attractive for many people.

Larry Marshal gave a pretty good speech at the National Press Club to release this report. If you listen close, he talks about being at the beach in the future, when the beach now starts a few streets back from where it is today. You then get a message from your watch that lets you know you've gotten to much heat exposure and need to cool down. So you take a swim.

I found some of the imagery pretty sad to be honest.

I think it was lost on the journalists in the room what he was saying. Wet Bulb temperatures are going to kill people all the time. So much so, that being at the beach may be lethal. And anyone who owns land on the beach is going to not own land anymore in the future.

Also I'll be 150 before aggressive actions today results in a better climate, so....

I hope Australian can take the opportunity up to become a renewable super power. Seems like we'll just be leaving money on the table if we don't.

There is a growing trend that could upset/cancel every one of these megatrends: nationalism.

The world is currently in a power struggle between nationalist and globalist concerns. If the globalists manage to stem the tide of nationalism, then these trends make sense. Otherwise, the next 20 years will see trends that don't show up on this list such as a shift in imperial power from West to East.

Internet archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220726223809/https://www.csiro...

The TLDR for those who read the comments first (or only), the seven themes summarised and paraphrased:-

1. Adapting to climate change (weather volatility and extremes).

2. Resource constraints: more recycling, plant proteins over meat, net zero/renewable energy taking over. (So lower coal and natural gas exports and domestic use, possibly lower meat exports.)

[Water constraints not mentioned in the presser. Wheat and rice exports are threatened.]

3. Escalating health problems (psychological; infectious disease (due to climate change); antibiotic ineffectiveness). [Aging not mentioned here.]

4. Geopolitical shifts. Increased "defense" (i.e. military) spending; more cybercrime [by state-supported actors implied]. Lower willingness to engage in rules-based international trade.

5. Tele-everything: telework, telehealth. Also crypto.

6. AI/internet of things.

7. Decreasing citizen trust in the political class and institutions; increasing internal unrest.

As Insru noted, population aging is absent. Australia is fairly old as a population (although not up there with Japan, South Korea, and Germany) and aging fairly quickly. Historically it has attracted immigrants to bolster its workforce; this policy is meeting increaasing resistance.

Question for Australians: what about population aging? I believe it will be huge problem in Germany. Is Australia doing fine with this?

Agreed. A big problem in the UK. People retire too early for their life expectancy today so massive pressur eon Pension pots, lots of pressure on Nursing Homes, particularly those provided by the state that will cost more, in some circumstances, than the guest has paid in taxes in their entire life. Also, lots of issues with beds in hospitals that are full of the elderly with all kinds of old-age medical issues but who might not be dischargeable until there is some kind of assisted care available.

I can't see there is any obvious solution other than raising retirement age and even having our National Insurance system more like real Insurance where the costs reflect the risks so that Joe Public realise how much healthcare actually costs.

Opening up immigration for young people abroad to aging countries would also rebalance the age distribution.

Uk seems to be going backwards on that front.

I don’t see how raising the retirement age would solve anything (except making the early retirement deduction higher, if that’s a thing where you are). Just because people live longer doesn’t mean they’re fit to work longer. Or could even find work in the first place.

> Just because people live longer doesn’t mean they’re fit to work longer.

That's true as a matter of logic, independent on any other information. But we have other information, at least in the U.S., and that information is that the percentage of people 65+ working has more than doubled since 1985, a trend that seems to be quite steady through the decades. Moreover, there's a trend of people 65+ individually working more hours.

Even if these trends magically stopped today, the fact remains that there are substantial fiscal improvements that could be had by restoring the status quo ante regarding actual retirement age in practice and legal qualifications for retirement benefits.

Sources: https://www.aarp.org/work/employers/americans-working-past-6..., https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/20/more-older-..., https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=s2301&tid=ACSST1Y2010...

Ex-pat Australian - maybe Australia is slightly less worse off than Germany when it comes to an aging population.

Quick Googling suggests Australia’s +65 year old population is expected to be about 25% by the 2050s [1] while Wiki suggests Germany in about the same period is expected to be about 37/38% [2]. It’s something that has been discussed in Australia for decades but the country still seems to be less impacted than Germany and some other European countries right now.

1: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/32...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe#Germany

Unfortunately Australia has the highest rate of immigration amongst developed countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_by_country#Oceania Government fiscal policy appears to be 'just add people' instead of anything clever. I say this is unfortunate, because more people are being affected by climate change as housing extends into flood plain (esp. Western Sydney) and larger rural town are affected by drought (Dubbo almost ran out of water). The housing market was also out of control.

I've been studying the WEF lately and it seems they've seized the creative vision of all futurists. These 7 goals all seem like they're just a rehash of the WEF vision even talking about ESG by name. Can't somebody go somewhere that's a bit more gonzo please? Maybe it's just that the WEF have so much money and power that everyone academic thinking about the future is drawn to their vision because it's so lucrative.

Where's the update to cyberpunk or this generation's Phillip K. Dick or John Brunner?

Moreso, thinking the WEF are some kind of visionary force is equivalent to thinking IBM will create the next killer application

Funny to see something from CSIRO on HN. I have an indirect connection with them (client wanted to integrate with one of the tech companies they sponsor).

Agree with most of their list, save 7 - they've made a diagnosis but think there's still a cure. I don't and reckon it's probably worthwhile to start thinking about a peaceful path forward when public trust reaches critically low levels, rather than letting something happen "spontaneously".

This is an important list, but water is perhaps the single most important point of focus for the future. Places are legit having water shortages all over the world and population+heat+private corps trying to buy up rights+misallocation means it's going to be a big effing deal.

I haven't seen the list yet but if demographic shift/collapse isn't at the top of the list, I'm skeptical.

Shorter HN: generalized global goals remain largely unchanged, decades after decades.

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