Experts say the year 2025 will be even more technology-driven and present even greater challenges. People will have far fewer friends, as relationships are diminishing due to the lack of regular personal contact. I think the somewhat neo-traditionalist intense focus on the couple and the nuclear family will be stifling. Life will be even more technology-driven, bringing even greater challenges.
By: Priyanka Saurabh
Whether one expresses optimistic or pessimistic views about the year 2025, it is true that these thinkers have also expressed their concerns for the near future of humans and digital technologies. Most of their concerns center on the growing power of technology companies that control the flow of information in people’s lives and their ability to compromise the privacy and autonomy of individuals. It is highly unlikely that there will be a successful movement anytime soon to change market capitalism and the competitive imperative to make profit a primary priority. Solutions to this problem have a double-edged quality, as the opportunity and challenge are equally present. The spread of falsehoods through social media and other digital platforms will harm social, political, and economic order. Some possible solutions may impede civil liberties.
The unstoppable flow of lies, misinformation, and disinformation online is divisive, dangerous, and destructive. The health-monitoring, work-monitoring, and security solutions that could be implemented would expand mass surveillance, threaten human rights, and make more and more regions of the world more authoritarian. The rapid automation of more business systems and processes due to telework is reducing the number of jobs available for humans. Additionally, people’s mental health is being affected by such a period of extreme isolation. Who will take action to bring about the positive changes needed to tackle all these obvious issues?
The confluence of deteriorating economic conditions, civil unrest, and uncertain long-term pandemic outcomes seems to me as more likely to lead to technology-related harm and abuse, especially as products come to market with less rigor on threat modeling, risk assessment, etc. Technology will become even more pervasive in our lives, in every aspect. It will enable work, more choices, and better service, but it will come at a great cost. Increased surveillance, loss of privacy, greater risk—both for individuals and political systems. The confluence of deteriorating economic conditions, civil unrest, and uncertain long-term pandemic outcomes seems to me as more likely to lead to technology-related harm and abuse, especially as products come to market with less rigor on threat modeling, risk assessment, etc.
The vast and largely unregulated power of technology companies operating with little or no transparency, accountability, or oversight worries me. The nexus of these companies with authoritarian and anti-democratic forces everywhere worries me. 2025 will be worse for the average person based on economic, health, and well-being factors, resulting in impacts such as increased debt, lower savings, and lower wage growth.
Women with children have faced a lot of pressure to drop out of the workforce or work part-time to cover the childcare gap that has been created by school closures and their male partner not taking 50/50 responsibility for their children. This will result in lifelong financial impacts and a sense of hopelessness. There is a significant possibility of ongoing disability following a coronavirus infection, given what is coming out about medium- and long-term lung damage and chronic post-viral fatigue. People will have a lot fewer friends because relationships are diminishing because of the lack of regular in-person contact. I think there will be a somewhat neo-traditionalist intense focus on the couple and the nuclear family that will be quite stifling.
The monopolies of technology companies will grow; a lot of activity is concentrated in four or five megacorporations. Look at the negative impact of Amazon on the broader retail sector. There is a lot of reliance on these companies’ platforms; there will be a screen-centricity for everything, whether it’s social life, entertainment, work, or art. There is too much emphasis in society on what technology can do well, i.e., convenience, rather than what it cannot do, such as the level of interaction or quality of experience. Only we can save ourselves. The ‘new society’ is a society that is more divided than ever in history. We are already recording every breath, every step, every heartbeat. Which will also be quite dangerous.
The writer is Research Scholar in Political Science, Poet, freelance journalist, and columnist.
