Dr. Philip Kotler defined marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures, and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential.”

The future of marketing is pseudo-deterministic. In the future, it will be even more characterized by predictability – and randomness and uncertainty will be minimized. Using Kotler’s definition, there are three factors that will be differential in every marketing department of the future, with technology the key to achieving quality, reliability, and speed.  

1. Continued focus on the customer

Brands are nothing without customers and this will not change in the future. Thus, the customer must remain at the center of every marketing strategy. These customers will become increasingly sophisticated in their purchasing decisions, thanks to an unlimited amount of information at their fingertips allowing them to analyze products in a matter of seconds. Marketing professionals will need to stay on top of purchase drivers and ensure the brand matches them. Technologies such as machine learning will enable brands to optimize personalized customer segmentations and design customized marketing actions, for example through predictive modeling, which uses historical data to predict future customer behavior and preferences. At the same time, the IoT (Internet of Things) will become much more predominant. With more devices connected to each consumer, it will be easier to collect behavioral pattern data and thus facilitate more accurate and timely purchases.

2. Satisfying experiences at every stage of the buyer’s journey

Because technology will help brands connect with clients like never before, companies will need to create tailor-made experiences that exceed expectations and generate engagement, a sense of belonging, loyalty, and a positive reputation. Furthermore, in the near future, brands will be called on to build homogenous customer experiences across online and offline ecosystems. Extended reality will likely play a leading role. Not only will clients buy into a brand for its offline experience, but they’ll invest in its alter ego in online environments like esports and metaverses. What’s more, purchasing decisions will be much more influenced by social proof. In other words, we’ll see an “Amazon Effect” across all sectors. Bad ratings and negative user reviews will make products and services disappear so that they won’t be available as purchase options for future users.

3. Extremely sophisticated marketing processes

Marketing strategies help brands stand out and ensure that their products or services are the consumer’s first choice. This won’t change, but the processes that enable that differentiation will become even more decisive. Sophistication and speed will be crucial in reaching and convincing customers through tactical marketing techniques. In this case, AI-based technologies will help create and publish tailor-made content across different formats. What’s more, they’ll optimize processes related to client experience – from marketing campaigns to payment and logistics processes, customer service, and returns.

So, what does the future of marketing look like and, even more importantly, what shape will society take because of it? There will be deeper client-brand connections, experiences that delight customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, and an increase in refined marketing actions that reinforce brand engagement and loyalty. Furthermore, as marketing becomes ever more streamlined and predictable, it will relieve us of the need to make choices.

It’s rather easy to envision a future in which all our purchases are machine assisted, and not just products and services – even the decisions we make around relationships might very well be outsourced. This leads to the question: What will happen to our decision-making autonomy?

Despite all this, I allow myself to be optimistic about what lies ahead. We will be assisted in our decision making in ways that we cannot yet begin to imagine – in a manner that goes well beyond product choices – and this will likely enable us to pursue a full and productive life. While machines and algorithms will help consumers make smarter decisions and help brands anticipate customer needs, humans will never be fully predictable. The truth is that the majority of our decisions are based on emotions. It’s our human nature. So, ultimately, the brands that will lead the way are those that can navigate that balance between technology and customer, between the predictable and the unexpected.

© IE Insights.

In our increasingly divided world, free expression must be guarded, and creativity treasured. As our digital lives become further dictated by algorithms and echo chambers, it is increasingly important to break out into the real world and build more spaces for discovery, discourse, and dreaming.

Writers and artists are central. The shared experience built between writer, reader, artist, and audience, allows a collective imagination to thrive and empathy to blossom. In our cultural world, generations blend, borders are crossed, and walls collapse, as we imagine possibilities outside our own experiences.

Our need for cultural spaces will only grow. Spaces where great minds won’t always think alike, where imaginations roam freely, and where solutions to the biggest issues of our times can be explored without prejudice.

And this is especially important for the next generation who enter a world so different to the one we did. The pace of change may be fast and our challenges greater often than we can imagine, but with a wealth of human creativity to explain, examine and debate our potential can be limitless.

It won’t always be easy. Over the past 36 years of The Hay Festival, we have seen how writers, thinkers, and artists have been attacked and punished for daring the edges of imagination. It is our duty to guard them, to welcome their challenge, and to continue dreaming of and working for a better world.

© IE Insights.

An institution like IE University must fight each and every day to ensure that the wisdom and success that comes from maturity and experience does not also build walls that keep change and the future at bay, and that the institution and its activities continue to transform the lives and education of its students. I believe that we have successfully anticipated key questions, such as how entrepreneurship, internationalization, innovation, diversity, and humanities act as motors that drive change in education, creating a foundation of learning and an instrument of differentiation and forward thinking.

As an academic institution, we live permanently in a world where ideas need to change at light speed in order to lead educational platforms. And now, at a time when we again ask ourselves where to direct the university, my first idea is that IE University must move now commit to artificial intelligence, which will be the basis from which the education of the world’s students will move into the future.

With this in mind, four months ago I asked the now-archaic ChatGPT 3 what it had to say about me. It created the following paragraph:

“Diego del Alcazar has been a major advocate for higher education in Europe. He has worked to promote the development of quality higher education and to ensure that all students have access to quality educational opportunities. He has also been a strong advocate for the development of research and innovation in Europe, and has worked to ensure that universities are able to attract the best talent from around the world. He has also been argued for the development of international collaborations between universities, and for the development of new technologies and approaches to teaching and learning”.

When I fed it more data about myself, it gave me an increasingly complex answer. When I asked it questions about education and IE, it “spat out” its thoughts, which you can read here.

All this is to say that artificial intelligence will inevitably be the backbone of production, education, and other fields. This tool will bring an impressive transformative power to almost all human activities. We must therefore push for it to become a medium that is easy for students and teachers to use, a cutting-edge resource to achieve differential goals. There is no end to how education and artificial intelligence will interact in the future and, thus, IE University should manage and embed it in everyday life and ensure that it drives our already well-established best practices. The future of education will be based, in any case, on artificial intelligence – as core and as a tool.

Perhaps with this choice, for my part, it is time to mention that AI will be the source of other technologies such as blockchain, the internet of things, big data, and virtual or augmented reality.

These new tools will give us the ability to develop different skills at an unprecedented level: from telecommunications to the development of protein structures in the field of medicine, as well as helping us to optimize the blockchain to avoid excessive energy consumption, and also to create technological systems that provide access to art, culture and literature. Educational institutions will be responsible for providing young people with the tools necessary to develop the critical thinking needed to ensure that AI will always be an adjunct to human endeavor.

Note that my aim is not to forget these other important sectors, but instead to point out that digitalization has reached a plateau and that it will be on top of artificial intelligence that the new technologies will be developed and that we should therefore focus on teaching our students and professors about the potentialities of artificial intelligence.

© IE Insights.

The book that rested on his chest slid to the floor and violently hit the mat. The blow woke him with a start. He opened one slightly bleary eye and was suddenly invaded by a feeling of resentment, of subtle restlessness.

The crackle from the fireplace, of half-consumed firewood, soon soothed him. He managed to get up out of his chair, slowly, that pain in his hip forever limiting his movement. He opened his mouth in a full yawn, scratching the double chin that the years had drawn on his face, now aged and languishing. He looked around trying to orient himself from the deep lethargy that clung to him; those naps always kidnapped him.

His dazed look drew a glossy library, where he used to spend hours submerged between the pages of books, subjugated by the smell of wood and resin. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,” he laughed to himself, remembering Borges’ quote, as if he hadn’t woken up from a nap in this life but in the other. He looked down at the floor and saw the culprit of his abrupt awakening, an old copy, almost a hundred and fifty years old now, by Aldous Huxley. He adored those first editions, and when it was published way back in 1931, Brave New World was quite a revolution. Although he wasn’t born until fifty years after that milestone, literature was eternal, making him feel optimistic, humbly victorious.

He picked the book up from the floor and inspected the worn cover while meditating: society was safe from the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon, those demonic breeds masterfully described by Huxley. Then he questioned himself: was it possible that today’s society had not yet eradicated wars or poverty? That we still struggled not to harm the environment? That we continue to be vulnerable to disease, far from the utopia of immortality? He had come to accept the imperfections of coexistence, that education was not the backbone of current societies, that happiness (oh, such a capricious yet comforting concept) did not shelter each individual and each community with its mantle… And, even so, even knowing that the world was far from those ideals, he felt proud because we had not fallen into the devilish temptation…

– “Do you need something? A coffee, perhaps?” – the metallic voice of his Artificial Friend interrupted him. Helpful, submissive.

“I need you to shut up. Don’t bother me.” His response was dry and dominant.

He picked up the glass of wine that he had set, before his nap, on the modern edition of Goethe’s Faust. His daughter had given him the book for Christmas and on the cover was the black silhouette of Mephistopheles on an indigo blue background. Yes, our society avoided a pact with the devil, he thought, and although technological advances were a never-ending source of temptations, we knew how to bend them to our will, to recognize the infinite risks they present. These days, technologies, digital or biological, were at our service, not the other way around.

Also, he smiled to himself, we’ve avoided succumbing to the cosmetic and self-imposed happiness with which we were invited to taste the apple, that neo-inquisition of “correctness” that would have turned us into servants, into castes of nothing, as in the book of Huxley. Rather, we dedicate ourselves to more humble, more respectful deeds, such as the care of seeing, of understanding, each individual, of delving into their singularities, their nuances. We are now far from the pestilence of those who sought to cancel behaviors that were not perversely stereotyped. Even so, one had to be alert, he said to himself, remembering Camus: “stupidity has a knack for getting its way”.

If fifty years ago he had had to guess at the current world, he would never have foreseen the speed of change (and back then, there were plenty of visionaries). It is thanks to literature, among other arts, that we have managed to preserve our memory, feed our imagination, and promote common sense, without which we would never had been able to guard against that threat to the essence of human nature.

Our society was imperfect, he smiled proudly.

© IE Insights.

The past is catchy, like a song, or as historians put it more formally, history repeats itself. The universal rule applies to major occurrences and small incidents alike.

The question of the past coming back – the myth of the eternal return, of palingenesis – has been raised in every latitude. In the West, the Stoics created a theoretical formula for the repetition of the world, an idea that was already circulating in Egypt: the world is extinguished through a great conflagration that in turn restores everything to its origin. In this way, events and happenings happen anew.

Meanwhile, in the East, life is well understood as cyclical. There is the representation of life in yīn and yáng (阴阳) and in Chinese cosmology, events and happenings repeat eternally, but with an added nuance. Repetition polishes events to perfection. The eternal return does not simply mean repetition but a moving towards perfection.

The snake that eats itself has also been represented, with slight variations (a serpent or a dragon, for example), in all cultures. The Ouroboros symbolizes our eternal yet futile struggle against the repetition of things. The word comes from the Greek βόρος, which means to eat, and from οὐρά, meaning tail. It was the concept of Ouroboros that led Nietzsche to the realization that it is not only events and incidents that repeat themselves, but also thoughts and ideas. Faced with the prospect of doing the same things over and again, Nietzsche’s superman (the Übermensch) can only be free by abandoning his fear of repetition.

Now, at present, there is a recurrent idea, one that has continually surfaced since the invention of the modern state (provoking any number of headaches), and that is nationalism. No matter where in the world you look, there it is, the great snake of nationalism biting its own tail. Every country has its measure but, as in all things, the degree of danger varies according to size. These days, there is no more pernicious nationalism than that flourishing within the two world superpowers, the United States and China. It would be naive to see the danger solely as one of military escalation. Ideas shoot first. It is the ideological escalation that sets military escalation in motion. Ideas are the trigger of conflicts.

American nationalism was relatively contained until President Trump let it off its lead – and it’s important to note that a characteristic of nationalism is that once its growth gland is activated, it never stops, resulting in what we might call nationalist acromegaly, or gigantism. Chinese nationalism, also relatively contained until recently, is showing signs of exponential growth in the Xi era, producing that pernicious escalation of ideas. It is a prelude to the worst portents.

What looms ahead for China, the United States, for the world? There may indeed be a tense decade before us, marked by national security, a decade in which an atmosphere of extreme suspicion and distrust reigns and, as the Chinese adage goes, even every blade of grass and every tree will be seen as an enemy soldier (草木皆兵 cǎo mù jiē bīng). Perhaps the decade will be shattered by an actual war confrontation, caused by a simple mistake or war hawks on either side.

Still, from this, there might be a path into the future that after a decade (or more) of fierce competition constitutes renewed cooperation. After the wildfire, there is new growth. Will it lead us to repeat the same thing or allow us to get a little closer to perfection? This thinking seems reserved only for those ultra-optimistic hopers, awaiting a World Government, as proposed by Einstein, or an Earth Constitution, as proposed by the Italian jurist Luigi Ferrajoli. Unity might only come from a more imminent danger directed at Earth, like a giant meteorite!

In any case, the future will come for us, so let’s be on the watch, as Charles Bukowski advised:

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it might not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch…

© IE Insights.

In the next 10 to 50 years, we can expect to see continued advancements in technology, advancements that could solve major world problems and also make some of our current science fiction possible. These advancements depend on our ability to manipulate information (AI), extract clean energy, and converge information systems with biology.

Artificial intelligence will become increasingly sophisticated. We have already been able to collect and store information on behalf of virtually every person and machine on the planet. The internet has now become a massive library that can increasingly be used to find or predict information to make decisions automatically. This trend will not only continue but will drive a global change larger than the Industrial Revolution. We see this in the possibilities of ChatGPT, avatars, and machines that will seamlessly interact, like with humans. These ideas have been illustrated in sci-fi movies such as iRobot, Her, Ex Machina, the Matrix, and others that combine AI with robotics, virtual reality, and increasingly powerful computing.

Another major theme of science and technology is the possibility of new energy sources, ranging from clean hydrogen to cold fusion. Energy, particularly clean energy at a low cost, is not only a driver for the economy and global sustainability, but also for clean water, which is abundant if energy costs become negligent. Our energy currently comes directly from the sun like solar cells; indirectly from the sun like gas, oil, etc.; or from within the structure of atoms such as nuclear. So far, the most inexpensive energy source has been from carbon-based fuels. However, the cost to transform the sun’s energy directly to electricity, or to synthetically produced fuels, or to use fuel cells, has been decreasing. In the near term, cheaper carbon-free fuels are of course needed for global sustainability. In the longer term of 50 or more years, cold fusion, dark matter, or other atomic-level energy sources could provide an almost limitless source of clean energy, which could enable a new economy, global sustainability, limitless clean water, amplification of our food production, and low-cost manufacturing and supply chains.

The third breakthrough in science and technology is bio-convergence, which is also related to synthetic biology. Bio-convergence refers to the integration of biology, engineering, and computing to create new technologies and solutions. Advances in synthetic biology, biotechnology, and genomics will make it possible to manipulate biological systems, such as cells and organisms, in new and innovative ways. If we can connect our computer systems to brain and nerve interfaces, we will enable prosthetics that a person can “feel”, replacements for eyesight, digital twins of humans that can speed up drug discovery, and accurately predict the outcomes of medications. The ideas related to bio-convergence can also be seen in sci-fi movies that examine genetic engineering and cyber-biological systems such as Gattaca, Elysium, Minority Report, and Jurassic Park.

In conclusion, incredible science and technology-based advancements are possible from AI/computing/robotics systems, energy sources, and bio-convergence.

© IE Insights.

May 10th, 2073. Madrid, Spain.

Estimated total population on Earth: ten billion five hundred and thirty-two thousand, six hundred and twenty-nine people.

People on Earth suffering hunger: none.

The emergence of the first cells on the early Earth was the culmination of 750 million years of chemical and geographical processes. Another 3.5 billion years of continuous learning, spontaneous mutations, and natural selection were needed to allow complexity to thrive, and to enable massive biodiversification of organisms during the Ordovician period. Unsustainable human activity could have washed out years of evolution in a nano-fraction of time.

On another time scale, in 1977, Frederick Sanger developed the first DNA sequencing technique. It took scientists 26 years and three billion USD to fully decipher the human genome. But once we had figured out the code, in less than five years, the world’s first genetic modification of human embryos was reported, unleashing a new era of possibilities for humanity. Events causing major exponential (non-linear) change are known to be disruptive. And once triggered, they’re unstoppable.

Back in 2023, finding a model that allowed us to shift sustainability from a “cost” to a “driver of growth and value creation” was at the top of everyone’s mind. Climate change was threatening the global economy. At a time were 40% of the food generated was thrown unused, how could we starve out 3.1 million children every year? As suggested by Voltaire, common sense isn’t so common.

The question became, how could we evolve from a culture of extraction to monetizing regeneration? How could we bring the systems of Earth back to health to revert the situation?

Tensions existed between the sustainability goals that climate activists were imposing and general business objectives. At least, it was seen this way from a corporate perspective. But, of course, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. Tricky, but true. Many times, it’s a matter of using the right lens, zooming out, or changing the time horizon. Is it us who impact? Or are we about to be impacted?

Wicked problems are always my favorite. The trouble with these mysteries was that the theory is so complex that no human mind can integrate all the variables and anticipate scenarios of the consequences that possible solutions can bring.

The goal back in 2023 was to achieve resource maximization to drive systems change towards regeneration, basically to generate a synthetic ecosystem they called “The Matrix”. For this, a pilot study was launched in the south of Spain during the summer. Excessive groundwater depletion was jeopardizing water supply for industries and citizens in the region. The idea was that the Matrix could have control over resource allocation and pricing; materials and energy would flow from one unit to another according to production and consumption demands. It was to be a perfect coordination where modularity enabled a set of distinct yet interdependent organizations to work together without adhering to hierarchy. The ground rules were simple: maximize material and energy, and prioritize transformation over extraction. No leaks and maximum efficiency. There was resistance in the beginning. Governments, private companies, and local owners wouldn’t fully disclose information. but, without this information in full, the system would never find its way through for joint value creation – so to avoid public disclosure of private data, blockchain was used to ensure transparency, immutability, and autonomy of data, materials, and products along the value chain. Applying the blockchain and big-data technologies also helped determine fair pricing and trading schemes.

The results were positive. Groundwater storage levels were recovering, and the units involved (public or private) had seen significant cost optimization. The Matrix unit was replicated throughout the world. However, there was no global interconnection between them and the model therefore failed to reach its full potential.

Einstein died with an unresolved equation, “the theory of everything”. The equation intended to be a coherent theoretical framework of physics to fully explain all aspects of the universe, how each component is created and all the links and interconnections. Putting this theory into practice would be reverse engineering, akin to mimicking the superpowers of mother nature. This, in fact, is what quantum computing is all about, it manipulates the quantum state of atoms, in a controlled way, to process huge amounts of data very efficiently and a million times quicker than the silica computers we used back then (microchips) in the first quarter of the century.

April 22 now marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern quantum environmental movement. No one knows who switched on the quantum computer, or why they did it without consent, but once it became active, all barriers vanished. The Q-Days had arrived and they are here to stay. Since then, things have changed, some say for the better, others for worse. It’s a matter of perspective and appreciation (it always comes back to our way of seeing). The fact remains, though, that in less than 30 years, natural recovery has skyrocketed. We all have food to eat, water to drink, and a decent life to live. I guess Nature and Quantum are indeed soulmates and they finally found a common language to save us all.

© IE Insights.

Music as an art form has always been driven and furthered by innovation. From the microphone in the late 1800s to the electric guitar in the 1930s, from the popularization of analog synthesis in the 1970s to samplers in the 1980s and digital audio workstations in the 1990s, and most recently, the internet and social media over the past 20 years, all these innovations have contributed to democratizing music. Today, there is more music being recorded and released than ever before, with reports stating that 60,000 tracks are now uploaded to Spotify every day.

So, what does the future of music hold? The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) into the public realm has been a much-discussed and divisive topic in the audio-visual world. Over the next few years, the impact of generative adversarial networks (GANs), which can create new music by analyzing existing compositions and using that data to generate entirely new pieces, will be felt. This impact will hit hardest for commercial and advertising composers the most, as it will make unique yet derivative music instantly and cheaply available at the touch of a button. In terms of music as art, it will raise discussions on copyright and plagiarism, as AIs learn through analyzing artists’ discographies and back catalogs to reproduce songs “in the style of…”. Therefore, AI is likely to cause a reactive resurgence in artists playing live instruments in live settings as the audience places more value on something that is “human.”

In addition to live instruments, I see electronic music moving towards a more multimedia arena, with a popularization of music installations that incorporate many different mediums, including sound, video, light, and virtual reality, to create a fully immersive experience. We are already seeing a prominence in “virtual reality” nightclubs and concerts, where artists and audiences congregate online to experience a live music broadcast in a virtual environment, and this will only expand.

Advances in technology will signal an even more significant increase in the volume of music being created, so there will be more reliance on “experts” or “tastemakers” to filter out what is deemed “good”, as opposed to a reliance on algorithms which cannot make value judgments. This is something that is already prominent, through mediums like Spotify playlists, and this concept increase will only increase in importance as technology develops.

Music, like all art, is a reflection and reaction to wider developments, good and bad, in other spheres of society. The changes in politics, economics, and social interaction will continue to influence the direction music moves in, but despite technological advances, the human will remain at the center of the art form.

© IE Insights.

Nowadays, organizations and society rely on technology – and where there is technology, there are concerns about cybersecurity. The industry is currently at a crossroads. Heightened concerns over cybersecurity, coupled with an ongoing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, will drive changes to cybersecurity strategies. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cybersecurity analyst career is expected to grow by a whopping 31% between now and 2029. This is much faster than the average of all other careers.

One of the major issues is that cybersecurity is still heavily reliant on human behavior and manual activities such as password entry, as well as human decision-making and reaction. The ‘human factor’ has been identified as the weakest link in the development of safe and secure digital environments. According to a study by IBM, human error is the main cause of 95% of cybersecurity breaches. In the long run, cybersecurity will shift from being human-dependent to being human-focused.

Emerging technologies such as quantum computing, embedded devices, biometrics, and artificial intelligence will all have a significant impact on cybersecurity.

The future of cybersecurity is undeniably artificial intelligence (AI). Humans are incapable of performing detailed and repetitive tasks. AI will aid in the automation of many cybersecurity tasks while also increasing detection, prevention, and anticipatory responses. AI Security technologies that run continuous data analytics on monitored security event data can detect new threats much faster than humans. AI will also play an important role in advising and alerting humans in real time about specific cyber risks.

Quantum computers will be able to solve problems that classical computers are incapable of solving. This will benefit cybersecurity by improving encryption systems as well as detecting complex cyber threats. The race to become the quantum and AI leader has only recently begun, and governments and corporations are making significant investments in the field. Recently, the United States Congress passed a $280 billion technology bill, with the majority of the funds going toward semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

To return to the password issue, will they vanish? I am afraid not, with the digitalization boom in the last years, we have more passwords than ever before. They will not go away anytime soon, but they will change. We will have more ways to authenticate without them, as well as the ability to combine them with other biometrics data. A futuristic approach identifies human evolution as human-cyborgs, which is a promising approach for securing systems in terms of privacy and security. In the future, we will be more like cyborgs, with embedded chips and devices that will allow us to use alternative authentication mechanisms.

So, the one million dollar question: Does it means that all these new technologies will solve all cybersecurity problems? Actually no, because new cybersecurity risks will evolve as new types of cyberattacks etc. As companies and users update their cybersecurity systems, hackers also learn new ways of attacking. Furthermore, the development of the metaverse, virtual avatars, and digital twins will cause security issues with our virtual humans.

There is no 100% secure system but we can use technology to mitigate most of the common cyber risks. Cybersecurity is something that demands, without a doubt, continuous attention.

© IE Insights.

You are what you speak. If you ask people around the world what groups they belong to, many will name a linguistic one. Danes, Catalans, Tibetans, Kurds, Arabs, and so on are, in large part, what they are because they speak Danish, Catalan, Tibetan, Kurdish, and Arabic. Unfortunately, our linguistic identities are often in conflict. Spain is one place where such issues are in the newspapers almost every day.

How will this change in the next 50 years? One prediction is that machine translation will soften such conflicts. Many people already use tools like Google Translate on a daily basis. Some even use the tools in which you can speak one language into your smartphone, and it will speak the translated sentence a moment later. These are bound to improve, so much so that some people think that this will replace the need to learn foreign languages. Everyone will understand everyone.

I am not so sure. For one thing, smaller languages are badly underserved by such technologies. English-to-Spanish automated translation is good; Basque-to-Icelandic is rather worse. Second, this prediction treats language as, primarily, text. But people will still want to have warm, face-to-face conversations. Imagine a first date mediated through the translation on even a miraculously improved smartphone, and you will have a sense of why a universal translator in your pocket will not remove all barriers between people.

Another prediction is that English will sweep the world, becoming everyone’s second language. In this scenario, it would become less and less associated with Britain and the United States, and instead what was once dreamed for Esperanto: the neutral language that a Pole uses to talk to a Brazilian. The valu