Dear subscriber of the Plausible Futures Newsletter,
To understand my intentions with the Plausible Futures Newsletter (PFN) I need to draw up the history of this project. It all started during my studies at the University of Oslo (political science, history and later journalism) in the mid-90’s, an era defined by the first internet connections and for me the first opportunity to run a newsletter with an international reach. My golden years of unbounded optimism.
2001 version of the newsletter (I believe I had aprox. 30K unique visitors per month at the time):
After a few years of running the website on the university servers, and later on a dedicated server, a group of professional futurists in Norway hired me to work as a researcher for their scenario projects.
To make a long story short, I did research for scenario workshops for different industries (e.g. oil&gas, banking, education) and ended up as a journalist doing editorial and commercial content for a wide variety of customers. You can read more about my services at olepetergalaasen.com.
The Plausible Futures Newsletter has grown to become a professional platform for reporting on wild cards, technological breakthroughs, scenario planning and even science fiction. This will also be the focus of this newsletter distributed by email and available on plausiblefutures.substack.com.
Now, let me get back to the header - Corona, Crypto and Coups:
Corona
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a trial for the entire planet. Thanks to futurists and scenario planning several possible situations like this has been described for many years. See COVID-19: A review of pandemic scenarios. Hopefully this pandemic will strengthen international surveillance, health care respons, logistics and general resilience against similar outbreaks in the future.
Crypto
Digital currencies and blockchain-based tokens is the future of money and financial instruments. The recent rise on the price of Bitcoin, and later alt-coins, shows that the adoption of these technologies takes time, but when retail and institutionalized markets load up, it’s time to take crypto seriously. Bitcoin may be the new gold and many of the alt-coins have the potential to disrupt different industries, mostly in relation to logistics, anti-piracy, identification and certification, but also with advanced decentralized computational tasks.
Coups
The election of Donald Trump and the rise of the militant alt-right have shown us that democracies are fragile. In my view the U.S., like many other western democracies, had reached its peak-globalization phase. Multi-national mega-corps are reaping the benefits of global trade and international markets, while the middle class enjoys the ride until their jobs are automated or inflation eats up their salary. All political parties must confront this fundamental weakness in the current global economic paradigm.
The opposition in Hong Kong were rounded up in the exact same time period as “the siege” in Washington, this is usual tactics among totalitarian regimes and an early warning for western democracies.
Perspectives on 2021
Both Covid, Crypto and Coups will of course continue to play out during 2021. Effective distribution of the vaccine is first priority to reduce mortality. As I write this most of Europa are on different levels of hard lock downs. With the current rate of vaccination the first half of 2021 will probably be the worst of the pandemic.
Crypto is hard to forecast, but could continue adoption both in retail and institutional markets. I expect further growth in decentralized finance (DEFI) and a range of new tokens and derivatives. The wild-card for crypto is always “regulatory risk” from governments. Meanwhile China launches a digital Yuang with international ambitions.
Coups will hopefully be a thing of the past and “the siege” should lead to a debate on the role of social media in politics and public discourse. The issues facing the U.S. right now is beyond the scope of this newsletter, but maybe a topic for future editions.
Most importantly world leaders need to build robust models of their environment and theater of operations. 2020 has proven that scenario planning, risk awereness, early warning systems and applied foresight is fundamental for survival in turbulent times.
Possible topics for coming newsletters:
Main driving forces of 2021/22.
Series of industry-specific scenarios for 2021/22.
Book reviews ranging from academic literature to science fiction.
The history of professional future studies.
Philosophy and future studies.
Pandemic-proof business models (interview with entrepreneur).
Material science will advance with 3D-printing bordering on molecular manufacturing (interview with scientist).
Chinese military ambitions.
Please send suggestion for topics to olepetergalaasen gmail com
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