Just as social media has redefined our lives, a new set of challenges confronts us and futurist Ross Dawson has been investigating.

He offers a unique perspective on the important issues coming up, where we are headed, and where we’ll be in a year’s time.

Having previously anticipated the phenomenal rise of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, Dawson’s thought provoking analysis for 2012 is a must read for those who care about the future.

Below are six of his top 12 themes for 2012.

The ten-speed economy

Forget the two-speed economy. As the pace of change in the business environment accelerates, the divergence in performance between companies increases. As people focus on the relative performance of countries, states, and industries, the bigger trend is the rising gap between those businesses that are being left behind by change, and those that are nimble enough to take the massive opportunities created by those shifts. The consistent increase in turnover in ASX leadership will accelerate. Expect dramatic business failures, while others thrive.

Privacy vanishes

Our privacy has been gradually eroding for years, as social networks mine and use our personal information, and marketers piece together the profusion of data they have gathered on who we are and how we buy. Now our anonymity is compromised further through extraordinary advances in facial recognition technology. Now that our faces can be recognised from billions, pervasive video monitoring out cities means we can be tracked every moment we are outside our front door. Facebook uses extremely accurate facial recognition technologies while Apple and Google own advanced platforms they are not yet using. Governments and some corporations are accumulating databases of our faces. The implications for our privacy are profound. While so far few have objected to the gradual erosion of our privacy, this is about to move to the centre of the agenda.

Crowd work

In a connected world, labour is a global game, and talent can be anywhere. Small businesses are now able to draw on low-cost skilled workers to extend their capabilities and grow faster. Large companies, from Procter & Gamble and IBM down, are recognising that even they need to go beyond their employees to innovate fast enough. Creative industries and increasingly media companies are drawing on crowds to generate ideas and content. The first crowd-sourced ad agency, Victors & Spoils, is attracting marquee clients such as Coca-Cola and Harley-Davidson. Australia is in the vanguard of the global shift, with a number of the world’s most prominent crowd-sourcing platforms, such as Freelancer.com, 99designs, Kaggle and many more based here. With three quarters of Australia’s workforce in some form of service industry, there is a threat of many roles shifting overseas, but also the potential for the country to move to the centre of the emerging global talent economy.

Consumer heaven

As consumers, we have never had it so good. Whatever we want to buy, we can select from any number of local and global suppliers. Mobile apps allow us to scan anything we see in a store and instantly find out where we can buy it for less. Deal sites proliferate to offer discounts based on time, location, and community. While the woes of some sectors of retail such as traditional department stores will continue to mount, new opportunities are emerging. ‘Social shopping’ usually refers to the rapidly rising domain of interacting with friends while you are buying online. However some retailers such as Diesel Jeans and H&M are using innovative approaches social shopping that help people connect with their friends as they buy in stores. The best shopping centres and suburban shopping districts will thrive on experience, community and uniqueness.

Cyberwar

As technology and information flows create more value for us we become increasingly dependent on them. For those with nefarious intent, the first point of attack is now often on technology. Governments are developing their capabilities to attack infrastructure and commercial interests of their foes, as we have seen with the Stux virus that attacked Iraqi nuclear facilities. Terrorists are not far off from developing similar capabilities. The rise of ‘hacktivists’ such as Anonymous and LulzSec is likely to result in an increasing number of large organizations attracting their attention and sometimes highly destructive attacks. From now, digital worlds are where battles will be fought, won, and lost.

Transformation not apocolypse

Some believe that the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 heralds the end of the world. Others have long pointed to 2012 as the year of the ‘Singularity’, when exponential technological growth finally creates a world beyond human comprehension. The world will not end, but it may well be transformed. While we will likely still recognise most aspects of our world a year from now, the accelerating pace of social as well as technological change may well mark 2012 as a turning point in human history.

The complete list of themes can be seen at http://bit.ly/2012themes