Life In 2020: Visions Of The Future From The World's Leading Thinkers (VIDEO)

What will life be like in 2020?

To begin to answer this question, Ericsson interviewed 20 thinkers--including professors, inventors, 'futurists,' and digital experts--and probed their vision of the future.

Ericsson explains the project:

In 2020 - Shaping Ideas, we ask 20 thinkers to share their view on the drivers of the future and how connectivity is changing the world.

They describe a future where a growing population faces never before seen challenges and opportunities; where digital natives will shape their lives and the enterprises they work for, and where technology could create a global golden age.

We believe it is important to share our knowledge about the future. If we do, the future might not be a place we are going to, but a place we create.

See ten of the interviews below, then tell us in the comments below: What do you expect to see by 2020? What do you hope to see by then? (h/t Alyssa Milano)

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Jeffrey Sachs

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"Can we fight poverty with connectivity?" asks Columbia University professor of economics Jeffrey Sachs.

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[sophiahrel]

04:32 AM on 04/27/2010

It is not surprising that women are creating their own thing in business, women play a different game and given the choice, I know what I would do. Life is too short and too full of things to do, it is not about taken the shorter or wider path, but to select the one that you make your own.

[SILVANUS]

05:46 PM on 04/13/2010

And Clear Channel will force feed us The Jonas Brothers, Brad Paisely and Justin Beiber 24/7 with a gun to our heads, and rap will devolve into a beat machine with a woman screaming obscentities at her killer. Snuff Tv will be the rage. All Entertainment Tonight will rave about it all.

Ahh, 'The sounds of silence'.

[inthedesert]

08:16 PM on 04/12/2010

Technology will only INCREASE corruption and greed! The world of 2020 will be a very disturbing place to be.

[rickyclark]

05:18 AM on 04/12/2010

I see an expansion of the digitally technology and an invasion in the private life of citizens. But I also see continued hunger and poverty around the world. Technology will not stop corruption and human greed. http://www.digitalundivide.com

[Rickter]

05:07 PM on 04/11/2010

They said we'd be moving around in flying cars, living in the skypad apartments in Orbit City (just like George Jetson) and would have a faithful robot maid named Rosie.

So nope, not buying it again. :)

[ipv4]

08:49 PM on 04/11/2010

If you actually had even the slightest clue about technology at that time you would know that this would of never happened. Robots will be here in 10 years , a flying car does exist but can you imagine the accidents.(:

[nomadicus]

03:23 AM on 04/12/2010

let's think about renewable energies before talking about flying cars.

[gregstevens]

05:02 PM on 04/11/2010

Predictions about the future always amuse me.

The biggest thing that most predictions fail to grasp, in my opinion, is that technology surely will eventually become something we can't imagine, while our personal and emotional lives -- the human condition -- remains exactly the same.

But we always WANT to think that our position in history is unique, somehow. We are like the teenager sitting in the coffeeshop, writing bad poetry to his unrequited love, thinking to himself, "NOBODY has EVER felt as strongly as I feel before!"

And it never occurs to him that teenagers have been writing bad poetry to their unrequited loves 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, even 2000 years ago. The only difference is whether his forlorne face is lit by a computer screen, a gas lamp, a candle, or the moonlight.

[bleubunny]

11:55 AM on 04/11/2010

I'm kind of sick of hearing how women are all alike and we are going to do X,Y, and Z.

Women are all different. Men are all different. Deal with it. Everyone is unique.

However I do agree that women should just start their own companies and put those male dominated companies in the ground where they belong.

[javaman]

10:25 AM on 04/11/2010

that's nice, but how will any of this be built when oil is $200 per barrel?

[Furby2]

10:08 PM on 04/10/2010

These people are very optimistic. I agree when I look at the younger generation. They're creative and already as smart or smarter than we are and they're less than half our age. It gives me great hope. It's exciting to think that the world may soon see the good sense of empathic leadership, and women may rise in the power structure, not through male dominated agencies and companies but by creating their own. Wish I could live to see the day, but that might not be in my cards. That matters less than zero, as long as it's in our children's cards.

[neurolux]

07:44 PM on 04/10/2010

I've see the future. I can't afford it.

[bleubunny]

11:56 AM on 04/11/2010

We won't be living the way we are used to living. That's for sure!

[gregstevens]

06:20 PM on 04/10/2010

In the year 20200, the three remaining sub-species of human will be dealing with the problem of limited energy resources. The network of sattelites orbiting the sun and collecting its energy into the super-loop batteries that provide energy for the population of 4.5 quintillion people on earth, mars, and the Belt Colony Stations are getting old, and are under-maintained, and the doom-sayers are predicting that at the rate the population is expanding, their needs will overcome even the theoretical limits of the system. The "new technology" faction are pushing to abandon super-loop technology and instead work on a new system that would actually manipulate the magnetic field of the sun in order to channel its neutrinos into a funnel that could be directly accessed by tesla-hives on earth. But conservatives say that we are decades away from that being workable technology, and of course the super-loop lobby claims that technology is speculative and may not work at all.

Politically, there will also be trouble. The Azerbaij Empire, the only remaining superpower after the collapse of the Stolkish Federation, has to deal with repeated attacks of genetic warfare from the radical Mahkel Mah Frand religious group, who mainly have cells in the tropical jungles of Falklandarctica. They claim "The South Will Rise Again".

Wait.... what year are we talking about again?

[PlayTOE]

02:21 PM on 04/10/2010

I pay attention when Hans Rosling explains the future, because he tends to be right.

[Angelus2007]

01:06 PM on 04/10/2010

I am still waiting for my flying car. It was promised to us by year 2000....

[Rogo99]

02:23 PM on 04/12/2010

And my jetpack! They promised us jetpacks!!

[Tom95134]

12:34 PM on 04/10/2010

Hans Rosling and Carlotta Perez are asking the hardest questions. The rest of the people are just technologists which may be the reason we aren't thinking about where we, America, are going and where we will end up.

[Artos]

12:24 PM on 04/10/2010

I think that while many of us would like to hope for an "It's a Wonderful Life" future, the truth is that the future will probably end up more like "Soylent Green". I think that was the most farsighted film ever to describe the future and the human condition. Given what is going on even now and has been for sometime, I doubt that we will live in a wonderfully benevolent future. Humans just aren't that cooperative. Far too many are more interested in what they can do to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest. This will always be mankind's undoing. I can't remember who it was that spoke this quote " That when humanity dies it will go out, not with a bang, but a whimper.".

[Tom95134]

01:00 PM on 04/10/2010

T. S. Eliot, it is from his poem The Hollow Men (1925). While it is widely recognized to to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles it can just as easily be applied to where we are heading today.