Fault-lines of globalised civilisation

A popular genre among professional futurists is trend extrapolation, identi fying those aspects of the present that are likely to become dominant in th e shaping the future. These are more likely to be eutopic than dystopic, an d so the client receives some mild uplift, which is after all what the futu rist is being paid for. This paper offers an alternative approach, which is to see what sorts of things might go wrong in the next century. It makes n o claims about the likelihood of any particular one of them occurring, but aims to present a structured List that could be helpful in alerting us to t he opening of any one fault-line to a significant degree. There may be an a ccumulating sense of gloom as one works through this analyses; but that sho uld not be interpreted as doom. All societies have their ailments, most of which are not lethal and some of which are actually resolved in time. (C) 2 000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.