I Got Future

Lucas Frank

Description

Are you curious about how your life might look in twenty years?
Interweaving two decennia back and forth, building on his own cosmopolitan
experiences, Frank Lucas identifies trends which will directly impact him in the
last quarter of his life. International relations, demographic changes, migration,
technology developments and climatic disruptions will change our lifestyles and
impact all of us in different ways. Throughout this accessible narrative, the author
explores the interrelationships of these themes and the impact these will have on
his way of life in the next twenty years. Despite recent global crises and no doubt
future events, which we do not know about yet, his view on the next two decades
is positive and uplifting, building on his experience that people are resilient and will
continue to improve the lives of ever more people on our earth. In his third book he
outlines his view on his own and no doubt your lifestyle in the next two decades.

Sujets

• Climate Change
• Lifestyle
• Demographics
• Future
• Self-help
• Globalization
• Technology
• Technologie
• Migration
• Contrat à terme

Informations

• Publié par: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Date de parution: 26 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781543770858
• Langue: English

Extrait

I GOT FUTURE
HOW MY WORLD WILL LOOK
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Frank Lucas
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 by Frank Lucas.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-5437-7084-1

eBook
978-1-5437-7085-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore
CONTENTS
1       Introduction
2       International Relations
3       Technologies
4       Changing Demographics
5       People Migrations
6       Natural Environment
7       Lifestyles And Future Of Work
8       Global Crises
9       Skills And Learning
10     Summing Up
 
Appendix 1: My Future Lifestyle
1
INTRODUCTION
- Memories -
N ineteen-ninety-six was only a few years after the Iron Curtain fell in Europe. I turned thirty-eight and had grown up with the notion that the world was divided into two major spheres of influence: a democratic Western part led by the United States and the communist part led by the Soviet Union. The latter did not even exist anymore. The global community, whether experts in foreign affairs and politics or the general public, was still trying to understand how such a seismic shift could happen in an abrupt, yet peaceful manner. It was hard to believe that the Berlin Wall had fallen only seven years prior.
I understood that opening large parts of the world, which were closed for Westerners, created many business and private opportunities. Together with my wife and two daughters, I had already spent many years living and working in South Africa, the United States, and West Germany. I did not hesitate when the multinational company I worked for at the time asked me if I would be interested in joining a project team in the industrial heartland of the former East German Democratic Republic. I had been assigned a project there for a three-year duration. It was part of an unprecedented effort by the German government to unify the country and bring the standard of living of the former communist part of Germany up to the standard of its western counterpart.
The communist countries and their systems had imploded in 1990. Not only because of the enormous political and military pressure the United States and its allies had put on the Soviet Union, but their non-functioning economic system simply couldn’t take care of its own people. I had seen the latter with my own eyes when I entered the dilapidated chemical manufacturing site which our company was chartered to revamp and bring up to the latest technological standards.
Every morning, I drove to my office on water-filled potholed roads between smoke-belching production plants, underneath carbide clad pipe racks and across railway tracks. My office was inside a red-brick building, inaugurated in 1924 by the nascent Nazi Party. From my window I was still able to see the prison next to the chlorine factory, where every day inmates walked across bridges into the mercury-contaminated production units. The area was fenced off with barbed wire. On each corner was a watchtower. The prisoners had to work under unhealthy conditions. This prison, which was an integral part of the site, had been in use until just a few years before the end of the communist regime. I guess I witnessed how communism really had functioned as opposed to how it should have worked. This building was one of the first facilities we demolished as part of our reconstruction project.
The working environment I found myself in was challenging. Not only were the facilities in an unacceptable condition from an environmental as well as productivity point of view; we also had to deal with proud men and women, many of whom would lose their jobs. They and their parents’ generation had been through many profound upheavals in their lives: Nazi Germany, post-war Russian occupation, communist rule in the German Democratic Republic, and now they were in limbo between what had been familiar to them for many years and the new Western way of life.
Together with my wife and our two daughters the city of Leipzig became our new home. Living conditions for us as a young family were not less challenging. The city caused us a great deal of stress and inconvenience. I vividly remember the endless blocks of grey sameness. Row after row of buildings were clamped into scaffolding on which thousands of workers toiled. Uninhabitable houses were waiting for the demolition crews. Trucks bringing in the building supplies clogged up the already too-small cobblestone roads. There was no shortage of streets where the air shook with the noise of pneumatic hammers. Rain covered the streets, pavements, balconies, trees, cars, and roofs with brown mud, erasing the last few bright colours in this already grey city. Every city we ever visited and lived in had its own rhythm, a pulse that made it move. Back then it was the ubiquitous sounds of drills, jackhammers, pile drivers, bulldozers, the beeping of reversing lorries and building cranes which seemed to make Leipzig move from the old East to the newly unified Europe.
We were pioneers in a society being rebuilt after so many years in the communist sphere which defined the Cold War. Renovated apartments with Western standard amenities were rare; as were the local schools. The local traffic comprised of two-stroke “Trabies” which belched thick smoke from their exhausts, contributing to the polluted air. These cars, which could barely transport four people, came in two different colours and all featured “DDR” (Deutsche Demokratische Republiek) car stickers. The first Western-style shopping mall was about to be opened and the airport was a mere muddy field with a few grey buildings which they called the terminals. Because there were few landlines, the company provided me with my first ever mobile phone: a Nokia, which weighed half a kilo and on which I could send only a few SMSs per month, costing ten cents each. The internet was still an odd thing for a few tech nerds.
The world was in turmoil. Fortunately, this change of the international order was a peaceful transition, but it was abrupt. How would the former communist countries develop? Would the people migrate to the West?
This all sounds like a scene from a different era, but it was barely twenty-five years ago. We know our memories get worse as time goes on. Our recollection of what we did yesterday is a lot better than for the same day many years ago. That said, dare I say that I still remember many details from our experiences back then, having still friendships and pictures from that time.
Therefore, this is about as long ago as the period I want to look ahead to in this book. When we looked back just over twenty-five years in the time we lived in Leipzig, we thought of the stories our parents told us about their personal experiences during WWII, and later during the Cold War. After WWII, Europe was impoverished; my mam was not allowed to study, as she had to work to help her mam in the household. In the Netherlands gas deposits were discovered and my dad worked all his life for the national gas distribution company which supplied households with natural gas. My parents started to benefit from a newly established national health system and my siblings and I enjoyed free education. On Sundays, my mam was proud to serve meat for dinner and we enjoyed our first camping holidays. When my dad was thirty-five years old, he was able to buy his first second-hand car. I was eight years old when my parents bought their first black-and-white TV and saw the first man walking on the moon. Fifteen years later when I was a student, the world worried about a possible nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The sight of the Berlin Wall became all too familiar for me. We worried about acid rain and the depletion of the ozone layer, because of the emissions of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. Countries across the world successfully worked together to eliminate the use of these chemical compounds. Today, our children can no more comprehend our tales of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain than I could understand the tales my parents told me about their experiences during WWII.
When we lived as a young family in the former East Germany, we kept our eyes on one thing and one thing only: bringing up our children and pursuing an international career that would provide for all of us, curious about the rest of the world. But we spent little time looking ahead. Why would we? We were so busy with our own lives and had clear goals and plans focussing on our children. Their schooling, our housing, car, work, and families.
But a few times we, like so many of us, pondered what the world would look like when our children had grown up. Because my wife and I needed to decide what kind of education would be best for our daughters, we tried to look as far ahead as possible. What could we have predicted back then about how the world would look today? How we