Block 9. 2020 Vision!

We always like to end the unit looking forward into the future which is set to be yours rather than ours.

• What will your working world be like?
• How will you respond to the pressures upon you?
• What are likely to be the major trends in society and how will they affect you and your job?

So, to get you thinking, please read SCENARIO 2020 below and consider how museums, documentation and archives centres will fare in such a world: what will be the challenges to be overcome.

We have produced this scenario deliberately to be provocative.  As Arthur C. Clarke (scientist snd architect of the geo-stationary satellite communication system, sci-fi writer and futurologist) once put it:

‘The future will not only be stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we are capable of imagining’.

1. Elitism Rules.  In France as in much of the EU, by 2020 the rich had got richer and the poor even poorer.  There is a distinct feeling in society that ‘culture’ can only be afforded by / is only for the rich minority and that the average and poorer majority is largely excluded from cultural events and centres.  Although society still affirms Liberté, it is becoming incresingly concerned about Equalité / Egalité.   The state is being forced by popular pressure to address this matter: if culture no longer belongs to/ is accessible to all of us – then why should the State continue to fund facilities and services for a rich minority.  Why don’t the rich pay?  Why aren’t the poor subsidised?

2. Transport costs are increasing dramatically as a result of:

• oil shortages
• green / pollution taxes

the result of which is that day visits of any distance where there is not low cost public transport are reducing dramatically.  People cannot afford to travel as much or as far as they did. Rates of physical visits to tourist attractions and museums are falling and show no signs of stopping.

3.  Stay-at-home leisure is increasing dramatically as a result of the third wave of ICT hitting the home.  People spend more of their leisure time at home and are becoming more insular and permanently plugged-into home ‘Edutainment’.  This is also happening because of increased transport costs which militate against leaving the home.

4. Most products and services are purchased online and delivered by post/courrier/internet as it is both cheaper to buy and to have delivered than it is to go out to purchase.

5. Unemployment rates reach an all-time high in the EU at levels rivalling the Great Depression in America. The state is forced to invest heavily in education to give a raison d’être to those disaffected and unlikely to find work.

6.  Society is becoming more incoherent and less unified: there seems to be far less that binds us together – far less that we share.

7. Heritage knows no borders. Just as multi-national corporations emerged and came to dominate global trade in the latter part of the 20th century; like university research facilities,  museums, archive & documentation centres are coming to realise that their futures potentially lie beyond artificial national boundaries.