I have this feeling that the 2020 presidential election in the United States will be unlike any in my lifetime — and not only because it will likely involve Donald Trump running as an incumbent — he alone is a one-man, three-ring circus — but also because the huge issue that should have been the focus of the 2016 election will be unavoidable by 2020. That is: How do we govern the “Next America’’?
“You know William Gibson’s line, ‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed’? Well, the future is here, and now it’s starting to really get distributed. This is the Next America. But our institutions and political parties have not adapted to it,’’ Gautam Mukunda, a Harvard Kennedy School Research Fellow and the author of “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter,’’ remarked in an interview. By 2020, it will be impossible to ignore the Next America. “The basic premises of how the economy works have shifted under our feet and the government will have to respond.’’
This Next America will raise a whole web of new intertwined policy, legal, moral, ethical and privacy issues because of changes in technology, demographics, the environment and globalization that are reaching critical mass.
Where do I start? A good place is with 5G — fifth-generation wireless systems. With the two telecom giants Verizon and AT&T now beginning to deploy 5G technology across the country, the metabolism of business, entertainment, education and health care will dramatically accelerate in the Next America, beginning around … 2020.
