20 Predictions For The Next 20 Years

- Robert Safian

The doctor handed me the scissors. As I pressed down the blades, snipping the umbilical cord, I looked up at my wife. She was smiling, holding our newborn son.

That was 20 years ago. Our baby is now 6 feet tall and a junior in college. When I look at him, I see all the stages of his life in one continuum, the toddling and the tantrums, the laughs and the arguments, the late nights coaxing a crying infant to sleep and waiting for a teenager to come home.

Fast Company turns 20 this month too, and the world has changed dramatically since the cover of issue No. 1 declared “Work Is Personal. Computing Is Social. Knowledge Is Power. Break the Rules.” Yet that manifesto is more relevant than ever. How we interpret those words has evolved— we did not predict an App Store or an Oculus Rift—but their spirit has become central to our culture.

We celebrate birthdays to remember all that has gone before, and also what is to come. This month, with issue No. 201, we recognize Fast Company’s 20th anniversary by looking toward the future. The dynamic change of the past two decades is just a warm-up for what is still to come.

I talked recently about this with CEO Hans Vestberg of the Swedish communications company Ericsson. Because Ericsson builds products for the major telecom providers and cell-phone makers, as well as hundreds of governments around the globe, Vestberg has inside knowledge of everybody’s plans—information he cannot specifically reveal but that informs his thinking about where our world is trending.