Technology will keep changing everything— and will do it faster

It is impossible to predict what the accelerating pace of change in technology will lead to in the next twenty years. However, one can already foresee some potential geopolitical and societal impacts building on current technological developments, such as faster computers, wider and more advanced use of 3D and 4D printing, ubiquitous robotics, enhanced mobile computing with the individual at the center, widespread use of virtual and augmented reality, and creation of new designer organisms with biological building blocks. In this report, writer and independent consultant Banning Garrett lays out how these technologies are combining to create new, disruptive breakthroughs with potentially unforeseen second- and third-order effects that will alter the way we live forever.