The exponential rate of discovery in the coming decades of the 21st century will be extraordinary. Those of the Phoenix Generation will be born into a world where new technologies of communication and collaboration will enhance the connection with the world around them. Theirs will be a tech-assisted lifestyle like never before. They will grow up accustomed to interfacing with technology in ways we have yet to foresee. The new young minds of the Phoenix Generation will have an unprecedented relation to technology and its implications. The following gives a brief outline of the changes we are likely to see:

Fears over privacy, data-collection, and a surveillance society will give way to technologies that enhance transparency, connection, and collaboration. The old paradigm use of technology, which played a role in neo-liberal globalization and authoritarian governance, will at first fight the rise of ungoverned social networks. These struggles may be dominant in the early stages until the new thinking is able to align technologies with models of transparency and open cooperation. Technologies will then be developed that will lay the framework for a planetary society based on an ethics of sharing and openness alongside the respect for privacy. Technologies of communication and connection will continue to foster a sense of togetherness amongst people worldwide. The open-source culture will become dominant among the younger generation as they collaborate to develop and share technological innovation and progress.

The online ‘cloud space’ will become the dominant domain for the storage, transmission, and interaction of information. This will further add to the sense of moving through a ‘seamless’ environment where technologies will increasingly be embedded into our everyday world. This will nurture the sense of living in a ‘quantum’ era where instant connectivity and sharing will become second-nature to the younger minds. It will become increasingly evident that our human technologies external to us are only manifesting a reality that already exists within

Simultaneous and instant communication across space and time will nurture within the Phoenix Generation a sense of living within a planetary society. They will feel in constant contact with like-minded people across the world. This physical connectivity will help to stimulate and catalyze collective empathy as people will feel an innate sense of being energetically connected to others. The instinctual intelligence within the younger generations especially will be shared around the world almost instantly. This fostering of collaboration will lead to an acceleration of inventions and new discoveries.

Quantum computing will be a main driver in the development of a new generation of technologies. This will emerge alongside the new sciences providing quantifiable evidence, as well as the applied understanding, of quantum energy (that is, the scientific ability to see and measure quantum energy). This will pave the way for a re-write of human scientific knowledge. Quantum computing and quantum science will work to form the foundations of an era that at its heart will radically change the way human beings communicate and interact with their environs and the living universe. It is likely that during this time a form of quantum communication will be developed that will allow humanity to attempt contact with other intelligences in the galaxy. This physical technology will exist alongside our ‘internal technologies’ that will also be opening up to greater forms of contact (including telepathic). It will be evident during these later years of scientific discovery that humanity is not alone within the cosmos. The next evolution of quantum technologies will be the breakthrough we have been waiting for in our bid to make verifiable contact with other intelligences in the universe.

The Phoenix Generation will also be part of a new generation of biotechnology. The old model thinking of biotechnology was focused on modifying the function and behavior of microbes and living organisms to improve performance. This ranged from enhancing the human body – recombinant gene technologies and immunology therapies – to bioengineering. The future of technology, however, will not be centered around upgrading current capacities but in their cross-convergence. The whole plethora of emerging technologies – nano/bio-technology; synthetic and quantum biology, quantum computing, etc – will increasingly merge so that the very definition of ‘what is life?’ will be questioned. The new era of technological innovation and progress will be the beginning of bringing technology ‘alive’. As DNA becomes increasingly merged into computing and synthetic biology, we will witness the early stages of a new bio-tech creation phase that will mark the birth of a new era in living technology. After this time the chief feature of modern technologies of human civilization will be the fact that they will be a part of the Earth’s living eco-system

It will be difficult to underestimate the role and potential of technology in the years ahead. Not only will technological development be a central hallmark of the era of the Phoenix Generation – it will also define the future evolution of humanity.

To summarize:

Fears over privacy, data-collection, and a surveillance society will give way to technologies that enhance transparency, connection, and collaboration.
The online ‘cloud space’ will become the dominant domain for the storage, transmission, and interaction of information.
Simultaneous and instant communication across space and time will nurture within the Phoenix Generation a sense of living within a planetary society.
Quantum computing will be a main driver in the development of a new generation of technologies.
The Phoenix Generation will also be part of a new generation of biotechnology.