The World in 2024

Twenty years ago, I purchased The Economist’s The World in 2004. This was an annual one-off edition, whereby the journalists of The Economist made predictions for the year ahead across a wide range of subjects, from foreign policy to business and technology. Now, 20 years later, the same format was included as part of its weekly edition, this time titled, The World Ahead 2024.

The world has changed a lot in twenty years, and these two editions reflect how much it has transformed politically. Back in 2003, the period now known as The Great Moderation was soon to be ending with the financial crisis of 2008 and other subsequent political events. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, both democracy and globalisation had spread to many parts of the world. Back in 2003, there was some hope since the invasion of Iraq earlier that year, especially among neoconservatives, that democracy could spread in the Middle East as well. In 2004, there was going to be a trade summit at Cancun, Mexico and many commentators speculated that some kind of agreement there could extend the benefits of free trade further throughout the world. This sense of optimism was demonstrated in the Business section of The World in 2004 with an opening article titled: The third age of globalisation. At this time the Washington Consensus still reigned supreme, in part because there was still a unipolar world, with the USA in a hegemonic position of geopolitical power.

Fast forward 20 years and the political climate has changed enormously. The World Ahead 2024 leads with articles about Democracy in Danger, and a Multipolar Disorder. Not only can fewer countries in the world today be considered as democracies, but even those that do have elections no longer have substantial robust, democratic norms underpinning them. Back in 2003, Russia and China were seen as countries, under fresh, new leadership, with fast growing economies, that could be welcomed to form part of the existing world order. Now, The World Ahead 2024, has an article written by historian Niall Ferguson and former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, stating that American is in Cold War Two with China.

There are some similarities between the world then and now. In both times, the world was still reacting to an unexpected outbreak of war; the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Likewise, there had also been recent worldwide pandemics, with SARs back then, and Covid-19 more recently. From a business and finance perspective, after these recent shocks to the world economy, both the Economist editions in 2003 and now in 2023 predicted improved economic growth in the year ahead.

Another feature of the world in 2004 that most resembles our own situation now is that of technological innovation. The Economist writers back then didn’t know it, but in 2004 a certain young entrepreneur called Mark Zuckerburg would create Facebook. They did write an article about an impending internet boom, but they focused mainly on the triumph of Ebay, and how it probably wasn’t worth buying shares in companies such as Google, as that year had already seen scarily high price-earnings ratios. Conversely, the contributors back then did spot the potential of both 3G and 4G for mobile phone use. But the recent internet bubble bursting a few years earlier had created an air of scepticism around the earning potential for new tech start-ups. And yet, what they couldn’t have foreseen was the impact on society, only a couple of years later, of the smart phone and the numerous apps that would be used with it.

It is perhaps this last insight from 20 years ago, that of the unpredictability of technology innovation, that should give us most to ponder for 2024. There are six articles about the possible effects of AI in The World Ahead 2024. These range from AI’s impact on Hollywood, to how companies will adopt it, and to how AI should be regulated. Undoubtedly this new technology will be a game changer in some sense, but will it be as consequential for humanity as the creation of the alphabet or Guttenberg’s printing press? Only time will tell.

Let’s meet up, discuss about the year ahead and perhaps make our own predictions for what 2024 could bring us.