Look east

In Chapter Nine of The Noughties I covered the dramatic economic shifts that took place in the decade, mostly to the advantage of China, India and other nations we still insist on describing as ‘developing’. Further hints that the next decade could see Asia pushing ahead of Europe as a global financial centre: business confidence in Shanghai and Mumbai makes London and New York look timorous.

The end of the world as we know it

In the Conclusion to The Noughties, I indulge in a little amateur futurology, while acknowledging that such a practice leaves the author open to any amount of retrospective embarrassment. I wonder how, in four decades’ time, we’ll perceive Michael Hanlon’s Daily Mail article on the perils of the Internet:

It is a Britain, indeed a world, where the private individual has ceased to exist, and one in which an unholy alliance of the state and Mammon rules our lives with powers that would have made Stalin sick with envy.

Fear and technology indeed...