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The big questions for 2008

These are the questions that fill television, newspapers, seminars, meetings, and so forth in this year 2008. I claim that we are fascinated with the particular and the dramatic and we are missing the great currents that will shape our future. I set out here five events in 2008 that are far more important than the politics, economics, and wars that so fascinate us.

Forrest Cookson
Forrest Cookson
THE air is full of chatter about politics and economics. We have elections in the near future for Bangladesh and > the United States. The emerging line up of the political parties in Bangladesh is obscure. We do not know who will be the Democratic party's candidate for president of the United States.
The world economy is slowing down, but how fast?The oil price is rising, but how far? There is a world-wide inflation of food prices, but how long will this continue? .Armed conflicts continue in five or six locations with other spots ripe for outbursts of violence.
These are the questions that fill television, newspapers, seminars, meetings, and so forth in this year 2008. I claim that we are fascinated with the particular and the dramatic and we are missing the great currents that will shape our future. I set out here five events in 2008 that are far more important than the politics, economics, and wars that so fascinate us.
Indian Premier League: ThelPL has started and promises to revolutionise cricket. The move to Twenty20 format for matches allows the cricket fan to see a complete game in a few' hours rather than one or more days in the usual formats. Mass paying audiences are hardly possible in the old formats, the number of matches is limited by the physical strength and endurance of the players.
India has moved to restructure the game to raise the money earned; increase the number of players that can participate; increase the number of matches played, and make the game more exciting. Things will be further enlivened by the move of some of the teams to have cheerleaders to work up spectator enthusiasm for their team. American coaches arc already at work. Money is pouring into this league.
While there is a loud outcry against change favouring traditions that do not provide a reasonable financial base, the modernisation and change of cricket has a good chance of being successful. It is a different cricket world coming --riskier batting and running, more chances for the fielders, it will become a far faster sport. For South Asia the success or failure of this effort to change the face of cricket is the most important thing going on. Kashmir will not change, but cricket wall. Politics pales in comparison.
The Higgs particle: Located astride the Swiss-French border is CERN, the European centre for nuclear research which is complet ing the construction of the most complex machine every built by humanity. This great particle collider, the LHC - large hadron collider - will go into operation during 2008, culminating years of work and billions of dollars spent by all of the participating nations. The design of this machine was built on one key objective -- to find the Higgs particle.
Between 1925 and 1985 scientists had constructed the most elaborate and beautiful theory of nature that has ever existed, it is remarkably accurate in what it can calculate, but when it reaches its limit no one knows how to go further. Key to this so-called Standard Model is the existence of the Higgs particle. This particle is essential to make sense of the Standard Model but it has never been observed as our existing colliders or accelerators are not large enough to reach the energies where it can be formed. The LHC is large enough to produce the Higgs at the mass where theorists believe it should be found. The discovery or nondiscovery of the Higgs will be the greatest and most important achievement of 2008. Watch for it!
Drugs and the Olympics: In four months the Olympics will take place in Beijing and thousands of athletes from all over the world will compete in a bewildering number of sports. Watch for how many records get broken and how many cases of drug abuse arc detected.
The more drugs are used, the more records will be broken, and the more people will be caught. Why is this important? Making of drugs to change human beings is looming before us. 1 am not talking about medicines to cure disease, but rather drugs that will increase our memory; make us do mathematics better; raise our intelligence level; enable us to run faster, throw further, hit a ball harder, etc.
It is at the Olympics that we will be able to see how much progress is being made to develop these drugs. These life- changing drugs are here to stay and will shape the nature of human beings. We may not breed a new level of humanity, but we can drug ourselves into it. Keep an eye on the results in Beijing and assess how rapidly this new world is coming.
Shift in the key currency: The fourth question for 2008 is whether the key currency of the world is going to shift from the dollar to the
euro? The 19th century key currency was the pound sterling, replaced by the dollar during the first third of the 20th century. The financial world is changing rapidly and the dollar is weakening quite sharply. The euro is worth almost twice as much with respect to the dollar as it was several years ago. The time when everyone wanted to hold dollars is fast coming to an end and the demand for euros will grow rapidly.
During this year we should see signs that this is really going to happen. What to look for? We should see: a continued depreciation of the dollar with respect to the five important currencies -- the euro, the pound sterling, the Indian rupee, the Chinese yuan, and the Japanese yen. If the dollar depreciates against the euro by 20%, i.e. one euro is two dollars then the sign will be clear what direction the currency world is shifting. If the depreciation of the dollar is less then there is still uncertainty as to whether the shift in the key currency is going to take place.
Communication explosion: Almost everyone in Bangladesh has participated in the first phase of the dramatic changes in communications now going on. The data collected in the LHC is so vast as to exceed every few minutes all the written records of mankind! Part of this information is being dispersed to a number of universities and laboratories for analysis.
The sheer volume of this infor- mation staggers the mind. The ability of our technology to handle and transfer such a volume of data is a clear signal of what the future holds. If the CERN plans for handling all of this data work in 2008, we can be confident that we are not far from the ability to educate at a distance, provide medical care including operations from afar, provide enormous computer power to everyone, and keep track of economic change at a scale we cannot imagine at this time.
Satellites that can count the area planted to rice, that can tell from
the spectral signatures of the rice the yields, not only in total, but in every location.
Maintaining records of all telephone calls and the location all the time of every mobile telephone.
Providing virtually instant access to all of the written materials in the world.
Enabling everyone with a mobile telephone to pay bills, transfer money, access virtually any movie, any television program, any musical performance or any written material.
This is already beginning to hap-
pen; it is probably going to take place on an even more rapid scale. As the price of communication continues to fall even faster, the traditional controls that governments try to enforce will be blown away. Watch for the success of CERN’s data management program.
These are the big things in 2008 -keep your eyes open for them. The result of the Bangladesh and American elections will be insignificant in 100 years, but we will still be celebrating finding the Higgs particle. Forrest Cookson is an Economist