Remember, when you were a kid, how far off the 21st century seemed? It doesn’t matter whether you were born in 1928 or 1982 — the year 2000 (or 2001 for purists) was sufficiently far away to make dreams of flying cars, interstellar tourism and Rosie the Robot seem plausible, if not downright likely.

Of course, most of us were way off in our visions of the future. Perhaps that’s because we were imagining what we wanted our future to be, and not actually paying attention to where real science, demographics and business was heading. And who could blame us? We were kids, after all.

But even for people whose job it is to analyze current trends and extrapolate them into a plausible scenario for tomorrow, the task is difficult. Figuring out what’s going to happen even 10 years from now, let alone in a half century or more, is a crapshoot, at best.

Sometimes, the professionals miss the mark by as much as we did as kids: In 1984, scientists questioned the need for briefcase-sized computers, and film critics declared that interest in the Star Wars franchise was dying. Millions of laptop owners and billionaire George Lucas would respectfully disagree.

And sometimes, the predictions are dead on. In her breakthrough 1992 book, The Popcorn Report, trends guru Faith Popcorn predicted Americans in the 1990s would begin to realize the need to protect themselves from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world, and begin “cocooning” within their homes. The subsequent rise of gated communities, telecommuting, home theater and even pre-cooked supermarket meals speak to Popcorn’s foresight.

In this month’s cover story we take our own stab at predicting the future. We spoke to futurists, authors and other experts to find out what the next 10 years may hold for the service industry.

We share their findings, and some advice: The future can be bright for any building service contractor who looks beyond today and at least thinks about where they want to be in a decade. It’ll be here faster than you think, so plan now, even while taking our experts’ predictions with appropriate skepticism.

The world is rapidly changing, and 2013 doesn’t seem as far off as 2000 ever did. The future will be here sooner than you think.




POSTED ON: 11/1/2003