Factoid:
The U.S. population today includes 65,000 people aged 100 and over, 0.02 percent of the total. By the year 2100, the over-100 population is expected to grow to 5.3 million, 0.9 percent of the total. -- U.S. Census Bureau, Jan 2000
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Factoid:
In one year, between 1997 and 1998, the number of U.S. households declaring a net worth of at least one million dollars rose by 26% to a total of 6.7 million, according to Washington's VIP Forum.
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Quote:
"I'm not talking about a perfect world. There will still be unhappiness, broken marriages, crime, death and taxes. But I am talking about a safer, better, more prosperous world than the one we have now." -- Peter Schwartz
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A Vision of a Coming Age of Prosperity
In 'The Long Boom,' author Peter Schwartz and colleagues argue that economic and social conditions could get steadily better for the majority of Earth's people in the years ahead.
By Uri Geller
Start Date: 1/25/00
[GSReport thanks London-based news columnist Uri Geller for sharing this review of a new book, "The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity" by Peter Schwartz, Peter Layden and Joel Hyatt (Perseus Books, 1999).]
I'm an optimist. But am I optimistic enough to think that I'll live for 1,000 years?
The Long Boom theory of economics says my chances are looking very good. Not just my chances, but the future of at least half the world's population, including hundreds of millions of people currently mired in the planet's direst poverty.
Within 20 years, according to Long Boom thinking, three billion people could be part of the global middle classes, with access to medical care, good housing and limitless electronic communications networks.
Gene repairs will make their bodies endlessly renewable, beyond the reach of death. Brain implants will connect their thoughts to the internet.
War is over, disease and starvation are defeated, the environment is safe. That's the Long Boom.
It sounds much too good to be true. And even the theory's inventors, three California dreamers, admit it isn't true. Not yet.
But for the first time in history, we have the potential to create Heaven on Earth. Futurist Peter Schwartz, a 53-year-old economics analyst who first propounded the Long Boom in a 1997 magazine article, says: "I'm not making a prediction. I am merely saying that things have the potential to be this good if we don't screw them up."
Schwartz, the son of Auschwitz survivors, was born in a post-war relocation camp in Germany. His reputation as a business seer soared when, as a Shell analyst in the Eighties, he helped the company make billions during the oil market crash of 1986. With journalist Peter Leyden and law-firm entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, Schwartz has written a book and launched a web site exploring how the Long Boom could work.
Visitors to http://www.thelongboom.org get an introduction to the economics behind the idea, plenty of mind-popping one-liners, plus the space to contribute their own visions and notions to the mix. That's feedback. The Long Boom cannot happen without it.
Leyden calls the theory a "meme" -- a contagious idea that can quickly spread around the world and influence what people think and do.
And this is a powerful meme, because it is so positive, so upbeat. It's the kind of idea which, the minute you have grasped it, makes you want to call friends and explain it to them. The concept is enough to make anyone smile. It's laughable, and yet it seems so plausible, so possible...
Some of the main ideas are:
- Technology: Within half a century we will use Ideas Tools, radio chips embedded in our minds to project our thoughts to computers built into everything around us -- all of them online.
- Ecology: Competition and consumer pressure will force producers to build clean, sustainable factories.
- Capitalism: With knowledge and innovation as the currency of the future, everyone will invest in themselves by acquiring education and tapping into global communications.
- Energy: Fossil fuels will be replaced by powerpacks that create no pollution.
- Famine: Genetic engineering will develop wonderplants to feed the planet.
- War: When all the world is a single, wealthy market, without trade barriers, war will be unthinkable.
- Feminism: Women and childen worldwide will achieve equal status with men as the information society spreads.
- Health: The current generation of adults can expect to live to 120. Our children might even hope to be enjoying life in the 31st century. And people with a 1,000-year lifespan will have a massive stake in world peace and global ecology.
Peter Schwartz is convinced this miraculous era is already underway. It began, he believes, in 1980, when free market economics took power from the old "no-can-do-chum" institutions and handed it to the entrepreneurs, the "anything-is-possible" people. It gathered speed as the Soviet Union imploded, and it smashed through the sound barrier with the creation of the worldwide web.
Schwartz emphasizes that four decades of buoyant financial markets will not make every single person loving and kind.
"I'm not talking about a perfect world," he insists. "There will still be unhappiness, broken marriages, crime, death and taxes. But I am talking about a safer, better, more prosperous world than the one we have now."
The website is just as cautious: "The Long Boom is not a prediction. It's a first draft idea, with the emphasis on 'first draft'."
For this new era of hope to dawn over the whole planet, we must all play our part. We can all think positive, if we have the courage. We can all be optimists, if we dare. It's a great idea, a mesmerizing meme. Now it's over to you.
[Uri Geller's novels "Dead Cold" and "Ella" are published by Headline at £5.99. "Mind Medicine" is published by Element at £20. Visit him at http://www.urigeller.com and e-mail him at urigeller@compuserve.com.]
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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