The future is 90% familiar, 8% predictable, and 2% weird stuff you couldn’t imagine. So my formula is to start with the present day, add the predictable stuff — faster computers, hotter media, unstable climate and so on — then try and identify the scope for really peculiar second-order effects to crawl out of the woodwork and bite us on the futurological ass. Finally, add a couple of bits of random-to-the-point-of-surreal shit and bake until cooked.

As for looking like a nebbish because you guessed wrong — that’s not going to happen this decade. Frankly, so few people are even *trying* to engage with the near future that readers cut you a lot of slack.

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PS: “Rule 34″ isn’t out yet, but I’ve *already* been sandbagged by one of the near-future predictions I made (cheap DNA testing being used to identify delinquent dog owners from their pooches’ crap).

The fundamentals haven’t been addressed at all,” Wilkinson, a London-based partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said in an interview at the Hotel Morosani Schweizerhof. “The things that caused the previous crisis – loose monetary policy and trade imbalances – they’re actually bigger now than they were then.