The future continues to wax and wane.

Always in motion is the future.

If you are designing a product that will be on the market 5 or 10 years in the future, you want that product to do well in the world to which it is introduced. How different will that world be from the one we inhabit today?

Six months ago I started a serious look into the future. Apparently the teacher took my quest seriously. Every week I was introduced to another view of up and comming technologies, each more startling than the last.

I was fascinated, but the cumulative learning threw me into future shock. Within the span of an average lifetime, we are in for many deep and profound changes. Absorbing this much realization caused psychic indigestion; mild depression.
(if you are compelled to do this; for a start, google Spiritual Machines and NanoTechnology and Desktop manufacturing and Space elevator Each of these will profoundly change our economic and social environment.)
Like fire or water, these forces are equally powerful for good or evil. The net result is that we are in for very positive and exciting changes, if we don't blow ourselves up first. I'm not going to try to detail them here because it would take several in-depth conversations for anyone to even begin to believe it.

Added to these technical changes, many ancient and modern religions predict that these are the end times. Economic patterns suggest hard economic and political times in the next 15 years.

Bottom line forecast:
Be prepared for hard economic times.
Be prepared for great economic times.
Be flexible, resourceful, out of debt, close to the earth.