What do you think will be the significant trends over next 5 years which will impact the life of a normal person across age groups ?

As year 2009 comes to an end, with that also comes an end of the first decade of the 21st century. In my view, the significant trend of this decade ( Year 2000-2009) has been the Digital Decade. To enable this, two important things happened .

First - starting with 1st wave of Dot.com having incredible and exception valuations of start ups ( and very few of them survived to see the middle of the decade ) , then the burst of Dot.Com era. Over the years, Internet based applications - Social Networking Sites ( Face Book, You Tube, Twitter ) ensured that everyone stays connected. In addition, the Business Applications also ensured that critical business applications which were earlier confined to only Green Terminals are now available to everyone through Internet with proper securities. These can be simple applications starting with E Mails, to Line of Business Applications.
In a way, availability of the Internet based tools contributed a lot for people to be a part of the Digital World.

The 2nd biggest change driver over the last decade was the availability of the various devices in different forms, colours, sizes, speeds, chips, technologies..to support the above applications such that people forgot for a moment that they are living in a digital world. The good ( or the bad ) part of this revolution is that these devices are becoming cheaper, rich in functionalities , smaller in size, shorter life cycles, every passing day. The way they are marketed and sold are also different.

The biggest impact of these two trends was that people simply dont exist in a non digital world at all now - be a 2 year old kid or a 70 year old grand mother !

So, what does next 5 year fold for us ? What will be the big Trends or Change Creators for a common man in the way he/she looks life day to day ?
(a) Will it be Climate related and impacting issues ?
(b) Will it be Sound Phyical and Mental Health ?
(c) Will it be backward and forward integration of communities in a country , countries in a continents , continents and across the world on issues and points of common importance.
(d) Will it be Terrorism which will have altogether new shape and form, not seen as yet .
(e) Will it be that people will run in serach of spiritual peace - which will off course, be difficult to come by.
(f) Will it be search of unknown by Man Kind - for example - space ?
(g) any thing else.

Lets build further on this. If you have any views , please post . Lets work together in establishing the trends .

- Uttam Soni, Mumbai, India ( uksoni@gmail.com )