Progress is never linear, hence the well-known literary observation “the future arrives unevenly”. In 2019 I developed a series of reports for Allianz Partners that were collectively entitled 'The World In 2040'. The aim of the exercise was to plot likely social trends and technological developments over the coming 20 years in healthcare, the home, travel and personal mobility.
The arrival of COVID-19 has completely changed the timeline of some of my projections. In particular the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the development of medical science and healthcare. It has also prompted profound changes in our working habits, our choices of location in which to live and our leisure travel plans.
Forecasters, social scientists and futurists regard COVID-19 as a 'Black Swan event'. It is the type of super-rare occurrence which, rather like its eponym, may never be seen in a single human lifetime. Other Black Swan examples would include giant meteorites hitting the Earth or super-tsunamis swamping the land. For these reasons such uncommon events, even if anticipated in general terms, can never be precisely predicted, and they must be disregarded by forecasters if any useful projections of future development are to be made.
