The futurist Richard Watson kindly added a comment to my recent blog about the World Futures’ Society ‘top trends’ pointing me towards his ‘extinction timeline’. It’s designed to provoke rather than predict (well, there are no future facts), and deserves a little more prominence.

The extinction timeline (opens in pdf) runs from 1950 to 2050. Blogging and spelling are likely to die out shortly after copyright, around 2020. Richard’s innovation timeline (also opens in pdf) runs from 1900-2050.

The latest post on his blog has first thoughts on his trends for 2008, which certainly look more promising than those from the WFS, but are currently just a little too sketchy to engage with.