Forecast

The subjects I have picked have been boiled down a little more in my horizon scanning to more tangible definitions which I can look into, the big picture has now become the future of media technology, medicine however has become the future challenges medicine will face. The horizon scanning therefor will look into projected technological advances in the next five years along with projected population figures and future troubles medicine expects to face.

Through this I hope to define a problem that medicine will not be able to fix in the future.

(Disturbed, 2009)

I have placed this song in the blog simply because the lyrics and themes of the music seem to be accurate to the fear which I have predicted for the next 10 years.

First of all population, according to the information I have already mentioned in this blog the population is said to reach 7,714,932,861 by 2017.  (U.S. Census Beuro, 2011)

This is to be our largest problem, there will be too many people and not enough resources to survive, I do not believe however there is any policy that could be put in place by any government that would actually stop this problem from developing. Nobody is going to agree to a policy that has attached to it even the most remote chance of that person being killed for some strange form of the greater good.

For this reason I think this problems resolution will have to come under the guise of something else, I believe that in the not too distant future there will be specially made diseases to cull population figures, most likely this will be done as an act of war simply because killing people who do not agree with you ensures your followers are the majority. This will lead to a larger amount of xenophobia in the world as a whole and most likely a 2nd rise in the acceptability of racism, as other cultures become more and more associated with the deadly diseases made to kill them. This will greatly decimate the population but it will never wipe out an entire race, simply put a virus is a parasite and must always ensure its survival by keeping at least a few of its hosts alive.

(FunnyPictures.net, 2010)

Lets explore this concept further, so why not another method? why not just solve this with war? well war has been our answer to overpopulation (and any other problem we have with other people) in the past, however I think war would be ineffective as a solution for overpopulation. It seems that these days less people die in wars due to the advent of technology, due to the change in the way we have wars we do not need to throw endless amounts of troops at our enemy's to win, so victory is not dependant on a large number of casualties as it used to be. Also times of war is when our technology advances the most, as a result we might exit the war with less deaths from natural causes which would only lead to make the problem of overpopulation worse!

(Teachers Resourses. 2009)

I suppose that I should have a reality check and try and conceptualise a more tangible possibility for population growth...or at least one that sounds nicer. Anyway another possibility is mandatory sterilisation, although very controversial if done judiciously it could completely solve our overpopulation problems in one lifetime...and if done realistically it could solve it in 4. However this method also has problems, mostly that it has the heavy potential to get rid of the variation in our gene pool by removing the ability to breed from certain groups of people. Its all a slippery slope however with this more sanctioned method of population control nobody will be murdered because there are too many people, they just wont be born...

Image of a protester from a news report

(Lake F, 2011)

As for other problems that medicine will have to face?
I predict that the other problems that medicine will face other then the fallout of these tailor made virus is the possibility of other infections destroying the rest of the human race as the tailor made virus cull the population. Its a dangerous game making an infection that will kill human beings as if it works well it could mean the end of us all, for that reason it seems like an act of hubris to create the infections in the first place, however it is very necessary.

Perhaps before the infections are made for cultures they will be made to specifically target the old or perhaps to target people with a certain unimportant but common gene
(however this would possibly lead to an ever so slight stagnation of the genetic pool).
The other fear is that this illness will mutate into something unstoppable, perhaps by infecting an animal or another race for which it was not intended, this process has lead to some of the most dangerous infections of recent years, such as swine and bird flu and aids.

A media example of the Tailor made virus's meant for warfare and going wrong is the quite recent film the crazies, where American towns are culled as a virus makes people murderous psychopaths.

(Eisner B, 2010)

As for the predictions for the future of technology? Well its a lot nicer then the forecast for medicine! If Moore's law is to be followed by 2017 technology will be 32 times better!
We will have holographic televisions and be starting to play with integrating our own nervous systems into the games controls in small ways. If nothing else we will have mastered and more openly marketed motion capture controls.

This should mean the complete end to the controller for anything! This should mean a move to biometric locking systems instead of traditional keys, all of these ideas and predictions would mean we would be carrying a lot less around with us as we moved around!

(Cannon R, 2009)

This image is a fantasy image which represents one of the ways we perceive the future of virtual reality technology.

I believe however the idea of actually "plugging in" our bodies into technology is a little bit archaic (for future technology that is!)
I believe by the time we have the capacity to reasonably imitate reality we should be able to transmit the information without a hard wired connection. Its a brilliant idea, making computer games a lot more social and bringing people together! every game will become an mmo which anybody can play! holidays and tourism will become slightly obsolete however...

And there you have it!
What I seem to predict for the future is that we shall fear overpopulation of the planet and running out of resources as it becomes more of a realistic truth and we can deny it no longer. Technology should advance to a great degree in this time and we may even solve the problem of a lack of resources or space with technology but it is doubtful. I also predict that medicine will be called to account for the problem of overpopulation as it has been one of the main causes of our "over-survival".

Throughout this blog I have also proven that all the best horror franchises have been based upon real genuine fears, even ones we have had a long time ago seem to be valid. They only become more popular as the fear becomes more of a reality. I think with this I can create a good IP.