Much has been written about the disruptive shifts in many industrial sectors, from retailing, publishing, manufacturing, entertainment, medicine, law, architecture, transport and public services caused by computers, automation and the digital revolution. Since the robotization of automobile production in the 1960s, debates have raged over the social impacts on employment, cities, education, technological obsolescence, socio-economic policies and globalization. Now the two pillars of all economies are falling: energy and finance.

Conventional economic theories assured us that these technological and global changes would lead to creation of as many or more new jobs as older ones were lost – with whole new industries created and growing our economies. Futurists like me saw the possibilities of growing leisure societies, with new opportunities for personal development, wider education, travel, knowledge industries, along with global tourism, arts and entertainment. Some of these visions materialized: tourism and entertainment are major global industries; worldwide trade and supply chains created new jobs, albeit with lower wages, and brought millions into the middle class, especially in China. We futurists saw redesigned economies where basic guaranteed minimum incomes would augment shrinking wages and jobs, to maintain purchasing power and aggregate demand to buy all the cornucopia of new goods and services from those automated factories.

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