Large companies do still keep conference rooms for board meetings and client presentations, but the days of the private office for middle and upper management are largely over. This one is popular with the corporate world because of its clever use of acoustic materials that make the music loud in the public areas but much quieter in the discrete booths around the sides.
This makes it easier to talk in the booths, and hard to eavesdrop on confidential discussions from the rest of the shop. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, 3.
And business use of VoIP is growing too — according to technology research company Ovum, 20 per cent of companies in the UK have already adopted it. You spend the afternoon trying to get hold of a copy of a controversial biography of the Chinese premier. Eventually you manage to send a carefully worded email that makes it past the filters to a colleague in Finland who sends you a link to a file-sharing site that might work — once you get home, at least.
As its economy grows in prominence, this censorship is likely to become more pervasive, and the form of censorship used is likely to evolve. This looks like a home pregnancy tester, but instead of urinating on the stick, you use it to swab the inside of your nose. The one-use device then detects the presence of antigens on the surface of the flu virus particles.
Super-fast diagnoses for a variety of conditions are almost here. Currently, diagnosing something like swine flu requires a sample to be sent off to a lab, with the results taking hours or even days.
Ostendum, for instance, a spin-off company of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, has developed several prototype health detectors, and expects to have one on sale by the end of this year.
It can detect viruses and bacteria from saliva or any other body fluid. There are still several chains that offer staffed checkouts, and claiming to hate the automated desks is now as British as complaining about the weather. But no-one complains about the prices. Industry analysts expect self-service to grow in prominence.
Consultancy Retail Banking Research predicts that even by , there will be 15, self-service checkouts across the UK compared to the current Several broadcasters now transmit programmes simultaneously through the aerial and over the internet.
Commercial TV revenues continue to slide — fewer people are prepared to sit through live adverts now. On-demand TV over the internet is the broadcasting revolution of the moment. The number of videos watched online in the UK increased by 47 per cent between April and April , according to figures from internet research company comScore. And the line between the internet and your telly is already blurring. Samsung has signed a deal to provide bits of the web to its internet-connected TVs.
So in a few years, watching something from the net will be even simpler — fuelling the explosion in internet video. No more sitting at a desk to watch YouTube. The same study had shown that the brains of young people, while engaging with the remaining 5 per cent, were as active as those of older people reading printed books. People had also learnt to adapt to persistently high property prices.
Many had assumed that after the fall, the house price to earnings ratio would return to the long-term average of around four. But a lack of supply meant that in most parts of the country it remained closer to five. With sustainable home improvements also costing more, people lived on average four years longer in the same house than they did in The result was an increase in neighbourliness.
Whereas six out of 10 people did not know their neighbours' names in , now the same proportion did. The shift was small, but enough to mean that in more people reported feeling a sense of community where they lived than had done since These multiple-occupancy homes were most popular with single people under 35 and over 65, both of whom found that they could live more cheaply than they could alone, while remaining independent.
They had proven a good alternative for people who found living by themselves too lonely, although nearly a quarter of households were occupied by just one person, down only slightly from its peak. SADs weren't without problems though: in , a house shared by six pensioners made the news when their student neighbours complained to the council about persistent loud noise interfering with their studies.
Then there was the trauma of the Great Unforeseen Event of , but as with most disasters, things returned to normal surprisingly quickly. So on the whole, Britain in was quietly contented. But you can't please all of the people all of the time, and one group of dissenters had come to be known as the New Internationalists. Their argument was that Britain had become too comfortable, insular and self-regarding.
Compulsory energy-efficiency and widespread sales of fairly traded goods meant that most people felt they had discharged their responsibilities to the rest of the world. Global warming was still a reality, but it was happening too slowly for people to maintain interest.
With the economies of India and Africa both steadily growing throughout the decade, the developing world was no longer a priority for the hand-wringing middle classes. Instead, "ethical" had become synonymous with "local" and "natural", and that meant refusing to buy the GM crops which had helped to grow Africa's agricultural exports.
The New Internationalists' rallying cry, that the world's poor are "our neighbours in need", rang hollow. People had rediscovered who their real neighbours were. Those in other countries could look after their own. That summer holiday to Los Angeles booked for August has finally come around, but travellers had better take an extra day off work to ensure they board the flight on time.
Paranoia about terrorism has pushed security to new extremes: "naked" X-ray detection technology has become the norm at airports and see-through suitcases are compulsory. Hand luggage is a thing of the past, and every passenger has to undergo an interview before boarding. Nervous flyers are reassured by the presence of an armed guard, now a compulsory member of the cabin crew.
The outlook for commuters is not much better. It has led to record amounts of scrap metal, but the rise of "car graveyards" in many major cities has become a new problem for councils. Zippy electric cars have also become a ubiquitous presence on the roads, as have charge points, which have been built into parking meters, street lamps and every Tesco and McDonald's parking space in the country.
It has also led to the unlikely comeback for the Segway human transporter. The electric two-wheeled devices, which are driven by leaning backwards or forwards, initially struggled to sell when they were launched in the Noughties, hampered by laws banning them from roads.
However, they have become a familiar sight after the Government finally changed the rules to ease the reliance on petrol.
With the high-speed rail link between London and Scotland still five years from completion, pressure on Britain's already creaking rail network has increased still further. Trying to force commuters to travel at different times seems to have failed. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the continent of Africa would add 1. Close, but no cigar: The world's population is 7. The report expects the population to grow by 2 billion in the next 30 years.
Speaking of China Though the U. Recent reports predict that China and India will overtake the United States by Kind of: Dozens of companies — including Tesla, Google spinoff Waymo and ride-sharing giants Uber and Lyft — are testing self-driving vehicles in select locations, such as Boston, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Columbus, Ohio. Widespread use of a truly autonomous vehicle is not yet here: Experts say it might still be decades before we see a car that can drive anywhere it pleases.
Self-driving shuttle: Why a Rhode Island police officer pulled it over. In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would have fully self-driving cars ready by the end of the year and a "robotaxi" version — one that could ferry passengers without anyone behind the wheel — ready for the streets next year.
Tesla owners can "summon" their cars, which can drive themselves from parking spots to the curb, where the owner is standing. What about flying cars? Porsche and Boeing partnered to create "premium urban air mobility vehicles," and Uber plans to launch a flying taxi service in Planes are landing themselves.
In his book "The World in ," British commentator and editor Hamish McRae foresaw retirement ages reaching 67 to Governments feel that if retirement ages are not raised, the burden of paying pensions will be so high that working people will not be prepared to pay the tax levels necessary to fund them," McRae wrote.
That number has stayed relatively steady for men over the past few decades but has increased for women. For full Social Security benefits, the age is slowly climbing and depends on the year that you were born. Some European countries set 67 as retirement age , the earliest age when citizens can start withdrawing pensions, and several plan to raise the age in the next few years, according to the Finnish Center for Pensions.
For many Europeans, the topic is a matter of fierce debate. As the millennial generation comes of age, they'll be able to vote electronically from home, Schwartz and Leyden predicted — possibly as soon as the presidential election of Not yet: Amid fears of foreign interference in U. Proponents of online voting say it could improve turnout and prevent voter suppression at polling stations. Last year, West Virginia began using Voatz for absentee voting for military personnel stationed overseas.
In one Utah county, citizens with a disability were able to vote electronically on their smartphones in a municipal general election. Schwartz and Leyden predicted that, despite taking "draconian measures" to avoid an internal crisis in the first decade of the new century, China "is generally acknowledged to be on a path toward more democratic politics — though not in the image of the West. Not really: China faces scrutiny over human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong and against nearly 1 million Uighurs , a predominantly Muslim population, members of which have been arbitrarily detained and imprisoned in "reeducation" camps in China's Xinjiang region.
In his book, "Business the Speed of Thought," Bill Gates predicted personal devices that "connect and sync all your devices in a smart way, whether they are at home or in the office, and allow them to exchange data. When you go to the store, you can tell it what recipes you want to prepare, and it will generate a list of ingredients that you need to pick up. It will inform all the devices that you use of your purchases and schedule, allowing them to automatically adjust to what you're doing," Gates wrote.
Though Alexa isn't sorting through your emails that we know of and your smart thermostat isn't tracking your purchases, Gates isn't far off. Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and an array of smart tech in the Internet of Things readily exchange data with your other devices and respond to commands. Schwartz and Leyden predicted that by , "hydrogen would be processed in refinery-like plants and loaded onto cars that can go thousands of miles — and many months — before refueling.
What's the future of the auto industry? Hydrogen cars appear to give way to electric. Not yet: Toyota and Honda lead the hydrogen-powered car market , but it's an uphill battle against competitors peddling battery-powered electric vehicles. In , the Harvard School of Public Health and the World Health Organization predicted that by , the world's top two causes of the global burden of disease — a measurement of the number of healthy life years lost because of sickness, disability or early death — would be ischemic coronary heart disease and unipolar major clinical depression.
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