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This article, third in a series of six, describes Life Sciences Era activities. Life sciences, rapidly gaining momentum, will begin to dominate US economic activity by 2100, then predominate well into the following century (see Figure 1). Massive advances will follow as the 140 000 genes, and 3 billion molecular units (base pairs) comprising the human genome are plotted in rough draft before 2001, and definitively charted by 2003. Once laid out, comprehending genetic patterns provides the means to govern many of the 75 trillion parts in every human.

As Earth’s resources decline in the coming centuries, those of other planets will be ever‐more coveted. The commercial exploitation of space will meanwhile continue, with private sector investment in a wide range of leisure and security applications. Is the driving force of this innovation the knowledge that ours is a doomed planet? And if so, can we colonize others in time?

This second article in a series of six focuses on leisure as one of the impending waves of economic activity projected to dominate the advanced economies over the course of the new millennium. Leisure will begin to dominate jobs and economic activity in the USA around 2015, the date when “free time” will occupy over half of total individual lifetime activity. Businesses providing goods and services to meet leisure‐time demands that will account for the dominant share of gross domestic product (GDP), jobs and livelihoods during the 21st century include: recreation, hospitality, entertainment, travel and tourism, adventure seeking, to name just a few sectors.

Thermonuclear fusion is on the way, and beyond it the promise of limitless power derived from hydrogen in water and air. The challenge for the next few years will be to eke out our fossil fuels, and the most plentiful by far is coal. So how to reform a fuel that has long been considered the most environmentally unfriendly of them all?

This introductory article, the first in a series of six, will describe the impending waves of economic activity projected to dominate the advanced economies over the course of the new millennium. Successive economic shifts suggest how investment opportunities and dead‐ends, new growth sectors and declining ones, jobs and livelihoods, and the overall socioeconomic scaffolding of advanced nations will change in the centuries to come. This coverage will shed light on the changing landscape of economic developments, indicate a sense of timing and importance, and provide perspectives on new potentialities.

Hi‐tech communications transform the market‐place, demographics alter consumer demands, global and regional developments recast world dynamics. The USA is enjoying a “Goldilocks economy” – neither too hot, nor too cold – and global trade has tripled over the past twenty years. The factors driving this sustained growth are many, technological, demographic as well as social and behavioural. This article examines the trends driving the economy, especially the impact of information and communications technologies and globalization on business activity with special emphasis on the banking and finance sector.

This fourth article in a series of six focuses on mega‐material technologies. Offering the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct matter at atomic and sub‐atomic levels to achieve desired properties, mega‐materials are set to radically transform the physical sciences, realising an alchemist’s wildest dreams. Advanced understanding of the bio‐chemistry of life’s instructional genetic codes will be followed by parallel developments in physics and chemistry involving mastery over quantum mechanics, to enable the construction of “designer” materials. Harnessing nanotechnologies will introduce new and novel types of artefact that were previously the stuff of science fiction. Fully understanding and adroitly manipulating sub‐atomic matter will take time, but these technologies are expected to move to a dominant position in the economy between 2200 and 2300.

The Need for Anticipating Public Policy Change. In today's fast‐paced world merely muddling through—benevolent neglect, as some have described it—is too erratic, too costly, and too dangerous a course for arriving at sound public policy decisions. Reliance on little‐understood forces—the “silent hand”—posited on innumerable unstructured events which somehow tote up to effective action, is increasingly outmoded. The management of massive, modern, complex, and qualitative technologies requires much more time and attention. Careful anticipation and explication of our problems is needed, more than ever before.

The coming world struggle for food will be closely interwoven with inflation, with naked political power, with oil, with horrifying, excruciating choices for America, with basic challenges for science, with changing weather systems, and with desperately needed capital formation. Its outcome is not clear, yet the future economic and political power of North America, and, in the longer run, the survival of mankind, are tied up in it. At its root is population growth.