While the past has historically been a benchmark and general indicator of future development, the situation today is uniquely influenced by the rise of ubiquitous personal computing and connectivity in the First World nations, affecting lesser-developed nations as well. There is increased volatility to a degree that makes ordinary prediction models unreliable. So I’m not going to try to quantify what will happen.
The explosion of data and the inability of gatekeepers to suppress information to the extent they did traditionally contains greater danger—everyone is now a criminal and is vulnerable to personal destruction; but in the social macro, technological information aggregation also drives its own solutions, by forcing a new kind of transparency. Solutions get demanded. Criminals get caught.
I dread the emerging supercomputer systems of the coming decades because I do sense we are close to the end times predicted by scripture, in which everyone will have either a chip or some other tracking tech resulting in no privacy, no individual agency, and worldwide oppression. The most primitive peoples will have more freedom for longer than the people of the highly developed technosocieties.
I suppose every age thinks their is heading into the end times; but there have never before existed the means for worldwide instantaneous communications that exist today. However, scripture also predicts a divine solution to the anticipated period of tribulation. Therefore, I’ve put my energy into scripture study now that retirement affords me the time; clearly, political solutions will be increasingly temporary and unmoored from objective standards.