We ain't seen nothing yet.

Technology is changing the world with increasing speed, disrupting old ways of living and doing business. After the telephone was invented it took 50 years for half the homes in the US to possess one but it has taken a mere 20 years for the mobile phone to spread from 3% of the world population to over two-thirds today. The authors list 4 disruptions that are going to have a profound effect on the world. GDP growth will shift towards emerging economies which will see a growth of huge cities. Mobile internet will encourage new types of business but older ones will suffer, with loss of jobs. In 2013 60% of countries had fertility rates below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, which means that populations are getting older so that there will be fewer young people working and paying taxes to fund the pensions and healthcare costs of increasing numbers of elderly. Lastly, capital is flowing easily around the world and people are following. More than 1 billion people crossed borders in 2009, 5 times the number in 1980. Disruptions caused by new technology are difficult to deal with because no one has any experience with them, so we do not know what to expect. The disruptions are all the greater because a lot of the advances in technology are accessible to everyone and is free. So rogues and governments have equal access and, as the hacking of US government computers has shown, unexpected incidents become common. Just as the internet has created enormous opportunities it has also resulted in a vast increase in government powers of collecting information on its citizens, of pornography, of abuse and allowed terrorists, such as ISIS, to recruit more volunteers. The industrial revolution completely changed the world by giving us machines but also provided tanks, bombs and airplanes, which vastly increased the numbers killed in the various wars since then. Free flow of capital allows US companies to hold $2.10 trillion of their profits overseas to avoid paying taxes at home. As capital moves around so people follow, as is happening in Europe right now. As the numbers of locals fall due to lower birth rate the numbers of immigrants will increase, causing great social stress. Increasing armies of robots will reduce the cost of production and will be a cheap way to take care of the increasing numbers of old people but there will be large scale loss of traditional jobs. We do not know which way it will go. We could have armies of robots doing all the dangerous work, such as mining, no traffic jams as cars whizz round without drivers and endless free energy from the sun. Or someone could hack into missile systems with a stolen mobile phone and start a war. Perhaps it is good not to know.