The future is a foreign country

A Hewlett-Packard futurologist looks at the coming ‘Age of Scarcity’.

The novel “The Go-Between,” by L. P. Hartley, begins with the line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The same can be said of the future, it will differ significantly from today, but there are only a few times when, if you have the right kind of eyes, you can see the world change. In many ways the best way to characterise the future is as ‘The Age of Scarcity’ because there are already significant signs that a number of forces are driving increasing competition for, and hence, scarcity of resources. 

If you want to read it all, purchase the entire issue in pdf for just three euro