I’m not sure whether this is a purely UK phenomenon but it appears that, in Britain, society has created a lost generation of dissatisfied, disengaged and disaffected young men. Perhaps through parental neglect or stupidity, or external pressure from the media, government and other institutions, we have bred a group with misplaced ambition and no motivation.

Asked by pollsters what hopes they had for the future, 11% of 16-19 year olds in one recent survey answered, “waiting to be discovered” (by a reality TV show). A further 26% thought a well-paid career in sport or entertainment was a good option. Many of these young men seem to believe they are somehow owed a celebrity lifestyle without having to put in any real effort. They have a strong sense of entitlement and this has been indulged until recently by relatively affluent parents (and governments). Sitting around doing next to nothing, waiting to be discovered, has become a career option.

Perhaps young men have simultaneously lost both their sense of fear and their sense of ambition. Global connectivity (Facebook, Twitter et al) has become an accelerant for a kind of fear, which is loss of face. Ten or twenty years ago, individuals could try new things and fail without anyone noticing. Nowadays, loss of face can be instantly amplified by network effects, and the internet will never forget. Best, therefore, to simply keep your head down and do nothing.

Doom and gloom is a growth industry. Just scan the shelves of your local bookstore and you’ll be assailed by titles such as; Is it just me or is everything sh*t? The Long Emergency: Surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century and my own particular favourite, How to Survive a Robot Uprising.But is life really getting worse? There are indeed many things to worry about. Melting ice caps, influenza pandemics, the erosion of privacy, terrorism — even high interest rates that would make second homes unaffordable. We’re all agreed then, right?Wrong. A lawyer in his seventies recently accused me — in the nicest possible way – of living on another planet. Where was this anxiety that I was talking about? Where is evidence of life speeding up and how could I compare a fear of terrorism with the threat of total nuclear annihilation which he had lived through during the nineteen fifties and sixties? Fair point. Life is not a single experience and even people living in the same street will view events in totally different ways. In other worlds, we don’t see things are they are, we see them as we are. If you have grown up through a world war – or heaven forbid, two — our current anxieties are a sideshow compared to what you would have endured. More importantly, we have become paralysed by future possibilities. We have become so afraid of worst-case scenarios that we have all but forgotten present realities. The air we breathe is now considerably cleaner today than it was fifty or one hundred years ago but many people think the opposite. Equally serious crime and acts of serious sexual violence against children are at the lowest level for years but we choose not to believe it.So what is all this ‘miserablism’ about? It seems to me when it comes to the future, it’s safer — and lazier – to be a pessimist. Optimism takes work, it requires commitment. Our parents made sacrifices and remained optimistic because they believed there was a world worth fighting for. So do yourself a favour. Learn from people much older and much younger than yourself. They get it. We don’t. And if you don’t like the way some things are heading do something about it. Get involved. Get angry in the nicest possible way. Above all remember in times like these that there have always been times like these.

Psycho what? Psychological neotency is a theory developed by Professor Bruce Charlton at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (UK) that says that the increased level of immaturity among adults is an evolutionary response to increased change and uncertainty. This initially sounds like a ridiculous suggestion, but it does make a certain amount of sense if you stop to consider the argument. Humanity has long held youth in high esteem, originally because it was a sign of fertility and health, which were important prerequisites for hunting and reproduction. In ‘fixed’ environments, psychological maturity was useful because it indicated experience and wisdom. However, sometime in the latter part of the past century, child-like youthfulness started to have a new function which was to remain adaptive to a changing environment. In other words, if jobs, skills, and technology are all in a state of flux it is important to remain open-minded about learning new skills – and the best way to do this is to retain a child-like state of receptivity and cognitive flexibility. Previously the phenomenon of adults behaving like children has been seen as a negative trend, but it may not be such a bad thing after all. For example, retaining the adolescent attitudes and behaviour of youth (for example, short attention spans or novelty seeking) could be seen as essential prerequisites for innovators. Equally, there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that the most creative thinkers in modern society are ‘immature’ compared to historical precedents. Of course this theory also justifies lying around doing nothing, so perhaps more research is required.The only problem is who should do it – immature professors or immature students

It would obviously be too simplistic to carve up the world between America (and its allies) and the rest of the world, but some people see it that way. So far protest has been limited to street demonstrations and the launch of Muslim brands of Cola, but anti-American (and anti-Western) sentiment could go a lot further. Links with globalisation, localisation and ‘glocalisation’.

How can you have a list of top trends and innovations without mentioning Apple’s i-Pod somewhere? The i-Pod is an excellent example of all sorts of trends including place shifting, device convergence, Moore’s Law and miniaturisation. However, the most interesting thing about the innovation is that it personifies personalisation.Globalisation creates commodification and homogenisation, which in turn creates the counter trend of personalisation as people react against standard issue products. Add a dose of technology and hey presto you’ve got a product that users can tailor to their own tastes and needs. Expect dozens of products in different markets to offer a similar degree of personalisation in the coming years as customer desire meets technological possibilities.

They used to say that when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. These days we all get to see and hear that cold in real time. Everything from countries and computers to industries and gadgets are increasingly linked together. In the future you can expect to see this trend accelerate even more thanks to everything from RFID tags to smart dust. This is both good news and bad. It’s good because information (good and bad) will travel around the world instantly. This means everything becomes transparent. It’s bad because in the future there will be little or no privacy and, since everything is connected, if something fails in one area the whole ‘network’ can be effected (‘cascading failure’ is the term used by some people). This explains how SARS can travel around the world at such speed and also how innovations are copied so quickly. We are assured that the Internet and devices such as mobile phones are immune from such networked failures due to their design. We disagree. Expect a catastrophic (but recoverable) failure within the next ten years.