Looking Ahead to 2099

If we look towards the past, it soon becomes clear how radically the world has changed since the time in which our grandparents and great-grandparents grew up. Similarly, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will one day look back on our present as a past that feels infinitely distant and no longer has much in common with their lives. The Kultursymposium Weimar ventures a look ahead to 2099: will we all only work fifteen hours a week because machines will take over most of the tasks for us, or because we will have finally recognized that we need to rethink the concept of work? Will the idea of a universal basic income have taken hold – at least in some parts of the world? Will we limit growth, returning to traditional and indigenous techniques that enable a different, resource-saving economy? Or, on the contrary, will it be technological progress that helps us to solve the great problems of humanity, opening up entirely new possibilities? Historian and author Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists), architect, designer and author Julia Watson (Lo–TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism), and ethnologist Björn Theis, head of corporate foresight at Evonik, will discuss what kind of world our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live in. Rutger Bregman will be available after the discussion for a twenty-minute Q&A.

Host: Katja Kessing, Goethe-Institut