ABSTRACT
The intention of this chapter is demonstrate, as far as is possible in a few pages, how many of the ideas discussed earlier can be used. The title may convey the impression of a series of scenarios but that is not my intention, and scenarios will not figure in the text. The intention of the title is to convey the notion that situations run in cascades and that frequently a ‘scenario for 2030’ is nothing other than a static photograph of a set of ideas, this despite that a scenario should be the skeleton of a play that demands dynamism. There is a second reason for not presenting scenarios: the magnitude of the task. To develop a set of dynamic scenarios exploring the cascade of situations indicated in the chapter’s title is a book in itself. With the purpose of the title in mind, the chapter begins with a necessarily short résumé of how humanity has arrived at the position it is in at mid-2007; from most points of view it will be incomplete, to some people woefully so, but it is the first step towards appreciating the unknown territory of the future. It will be followed by that nebulous notion of ‘understanding the present’, before moving on to longer horizons indicating some markers at a level of generality that may enable appreciation of the unknown territory of the future.
