STRONG NATIONS, WEAK STATES, SINKING DEBTS and RISING OCEANS Environmental Scan 2005 for The Judiciary of the Commonwealth of Virginia By Jake Dunagan, Jim Dator, and Jan Zastrow With Charmaine Crockett, Yenisel Rodriguez, Alexis Fredrick Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies Department of Political Science University of Hawaii Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 6 POLITICS & GOVERNANCE ........................................................................................ 12 Strong Nation, Weak State ............................................................................................ 12 Public Sector Outsourcing ........................................................................................ 13 U.S. and the World Order ......................................................................................... 13 Weapons and Wars ....................................................................................................... 15 Postmortem on Preemption? ..................................................................................... 16 New Nukes ................................................................................................................ 17 Other theaters ............................................................................................................ 17 Total Information Awareness ....................................................................................... 18 News... on the March ................................................................................................ 19 Pravda! ...................................................................................................................... 20 Smart sensors/ smart environments/ smart governance? .......................................... 21 Private Eyes... ........................................................................................................... 23 Smart Dust/RFIDs ..................................................................................................... 23 Global monitoring ..................................................................................................... 25 Internet for all? .......................................................................................................... 26 Information Aggregation—Prediction Markets ........................................................ 26 Crime and Law .............................................................................................................. 27 Prisons ....................................................................................................................... 28 Courts and Computing .............................................................................................. 29 Lawyer-Bots .............................................................................................................. 30 Unusual DNA Criminal Evidence ............................................................................ 30 Knife-Resistant Clothing for Kids ............................................................................ 31 Rights ........................................................................................................................ 31 E-voting and E-government .......................................................................................... 32 Clash of Fundamentalisms ............................................................................................ 33 Leadership ................................................................................................................. 33 Values ....................................................................................................................... 34 End-times Politics ..................................................................................................... 36 Cause and Effect ....................................................................................................... 36 L’age Noir ................................................................................................................. 37 Faith Tally ................................................................................................................. 38 ECONOMY ...................................................................................................................... 40 The Owe Society ........................................................................................................... 40 Debt Dangers ............................................................................................................ 42 Weakening Dollar ..................................................................................................... 43 Dream Society/The Icon-omy ....................................................................................... 43 Right-Brain Education .............................................................................................. 44 Right Brain Applied: Design for Increased Energy Awareness ............................... 45 Creativity Gap ........................................................................................................... 45 2 Not so Virtual Economies ............................................................................................. 46 Intellectual Property (IP) Wars ..................................................................................... 47 Personal Globalization .................................................................................................. 49 Neuromarketing ............................................................................................................ 50 TECHNOLOGY and SCIENCE ....................................................................................... 52 Bio-machine convergence ............................................................................................. 52 Living Machines ....................................................................................................... 52 Bio-printers ............................................................................................................... 53 Robots and Artificial Intelligence ................................................................................. 53 Digital and Cyborg Existence ....................................................................................... 57 Genetics: 46, 47, 48 little chromosomes... .................................................................... 59 The quick and the old .................................................................................................... 61 Death Becomes You ................................................................................................. 63 Life in a bottle ........................................................................................................... 64 Nanotechnology ............................................................................................................ 65 Nanoprecautions ....................................................................................................... 66 Big money for Nano .................................................................................................. 66 Space ............................................................................................................................. 67 The Red Planet? ........................................................................................................ 67 Around the world ...................................................................................................... 67 Private Space ............................................................................................................. 68 Teleportation ................................................................................................................. 68 The Neuro Revolution ................................................................................................... 69 Brain-Computer Interfaces ........................................................................................ 69 Neuropolitics ............................................................................................................. 70 Neurocops ................................................................................................................. 71 Cognitive Enhancement ............................................................................................ 72 Neuroethics ............................................................................................................... 74 Singularity ..................................................................................................................... 74 ENVIRONMENT, POPULATION, ENERGY, FOOD ................................................... 76 Limits to Growth Update .............................................................................................. 76 Governing Evolution ..................................................................................................... 76 Global Warming ............................................................................................................ 77 Is it hot, or is it just everybody? ................................................................................ 77 Tipping points ..........................................................................................................