I’ve been traveling a lot in the last 3 months: China, Pacific Islands, Singapore, USA and the Caribbean. It’s been an interesting time to just observe and not spend too much time thinking and writing. It’s been an amazing decade, the noughties, a time of profound shifts and shocks.

The nineties seemed so easy in comparison…yes some financial disasters but they are part of the regular boom/busy cycle..but in general times were good and there was an air of stability. Y2K came and went and in all the excitement we had ourselves caught up in a huge stock market bubble…..the tech wreck….horribly followed by 9/11 and the start of a new era in US expansionary policy.

The last decade saw the financial system gutted from the inside out. That it is still standing is a testimony the the magic that one can weave with numbers. The spread of social media and the growth of the internet was nothing if astonishing. The ability to communicate 24/7 took many by surprise and for some completely took over their lives. The rise of Apple….and the iPod generation transformed music, computing and basically created a whole new industry in itself…mind you was it much different to the Walkman and its introduction? Yes Google, Apple, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter brought the world of media, in all its forms, to a completely new level. But that’s what technology does…we’re just moving at an exponential rate.

China and the rest of the BRIC gang really came to the party. The US ended the decade on its knees…wrapped up in wars it cannot win, with a financial system in disarray and an economy on its knees. With Japan the first industrialized economy to fail and the US not far behind, the global shape of international relations has changed. Multi-polarity is an uncomfortable idea for many and how that works out will be a real test.

On that subject climate change continues to take center stage notwithstanding the inevitable failure of the Copenhagen talks. The records all show the noughties being the warmest on record but the small matter of fiddling numbers won’t have helped bolster the case of extreme action. When arguments hinge on tiny fractions any question on their veracity can have serious consequences. As a researcher in this area for sometime i must admit even i have become somewhat sanguine over the whole thing.

When I look back over the last decade and forward to the next, it seems as if the same themes will recur:

- Financialisation of Economies: Can we remove the yoke of derivative financial instruments from the real economy?

- Technology: Will social media enable the development of a networked based economy?

- Global Politics: Can we move to a multi-polar world without the necessity of the United Nations as a de facto world government?

- Climate change: How do we manage the change in our climate and the resulting shifts in population and its attendant baggage?

There’s plenty of hope in those questions for moving to a more sustainable world. But any one of those we get wrong could easily send us into a period of darkness. Let’s hope we don’t end up taking this road.

I will explore each topic in more detail over the next few weeks.