A recent book explores aspects of a broader Convergence story. The book – 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything – was authored by Mauro F. Guillen. In exploring a number of trends, he shows how the only effective way to understand the global transformations underway is to think laterally. Said another way, we need to think at the systems level. Understanding pieces in isolation blinds us to the combinatorial nature of change. The book abstract says it this way:

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That is, using “peripheral vision,” or approaching problems creatively and from unorthodox points of view. Rather than focusing on a single trend―climate-change or the rise of illiberal regimes, for example―Guillen encourages us to consider the dynamic inter-play between a range of forces that will converge on a single tipping point―2030―that will be, for better or worse, the point of no return.

2030 is a date that many have focused on. Economists see a number of the trends described by the author through a similar lens, with 2030 as the place in the future where the world looks very different. The book provides examples of this different world, where a new reality takes hold, and before you know it:

• There will be more grandparents than grandchildren
• The middle-class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the US and Europe combined
• The global economy will be driven by the non-Western consumer for the first time in modern history
• There will be more global wealth owned by women than men
• There will be more robots than workers
• There will be more computers than human brains
• There will be more currencies than countries

The topics covered by the author include: global fertility rates, aging, the middle class, women, global warming, sharing economy, automation, blockchain, and digital currencies. Explore how these trends collide to reshape 2030. I recommend the book and have added it to my Library.