50 Big Ideas for 2019

A few days ago, LinkedIn posted a piece by Isabelle Roughol on ‘50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead’.

Some of them seem fairly obvious (‘Generation Z will outnumber Millennials’; ‘The economy will slow down’; ‘Brexit will continue to consume the European political scene’).

Some of them are related to changing patterns in technology (‘We are finally going to spend more time online than watching TV’; ‘Inclusive design will go mainstream’), many of them to do with AI.

As might expected with a piece published on LinkedIn, many have to do with the workplace (‘Automation will disproportionately impact women’s jobs’; ‘What will matter at work is your humanity’; ‘Companies will speed up diversifying their workforce – or will be made to’; ‘The office will empty out’; ‘CEOs will work hard to become more inclusive leaders – or leave’; ‘Gig economy jobs will get less miserable’).

Others reflect broader societal and global changes (‘We will reach peak outrage’; ‘Immigration to the West will get harder, and refugee crises will hit poorer nations’; ‘We will ask ourselves hard questions about what free speech means’; ‘Employers will make room for neurodiversity’).

Others are intriguing, but hard for me to judge (‘The battle against extreme poverty will heat up’; ‘A “me first” world will be harder to steer’; “The high street will band together’; ‘For respite, we will turn to inspirational commerce’; ‘Don’t even try to guess the price of oil’; ‘You’ll eat that bug in your salad’).

Others, frankly, I find more difficult to accept much change in 2019 (‘Your next vacation may be to space or undersea’; ‘We will stop living an Insta life’).

I enjoy these types of pieces, even though I’m never quite sure what to make of them. On the one hand, I don’t feel clever enough myself to engage in this sort of futurism; on the other hand, I’ve been round the block enough (read: cynical) to know that, humans being humans, the fundamentals of life will stay pretty much the same. For all that, an interesting read.