Futurist Charlotte Kemp maps 2025 through two continuums: scarcity to abundance, and binary to fluid. She plots AI across a 2x2 matrix to show how the same technology produces wildly different outcomes. In scarcity-binary, AI widens inequality; in abundance-fluid, it unlocks creativity and reshapes identity.
I apologize for the clickbaity title, but it is a trend that people normally engage with titles that are a little bit more controversial, and it is that time of the year when people start to ask futurists and consultants and anybody in the know, what are the trends we need to know about for this coming year? And it's one of the worst questions that can be posed to me because the answer is so dependent the context. Knowing a trend is happening is very different from knowing what to do about that trend. I'm Charlotte Kemp. I'm a futurist keynote speaker and executive leadership coach, and I'd like to tell you about these trends. Trends happen in context. The best social media platform for 2025 is going to depend on you and your audience and where you are in the world and what you're trying to achieve with it. And trends are also affected by other trends by the PESTLE drivers of change: politics, economics, social, technology, legislation, environment. It's also impacted largely by the worldview that we have or the place where we are located, the worldview that is predominant there. It could also depend on the myths and metaphors that we have in our part of the world, in our culture, our religion, or in the company or organization or industry that we're in. All of this impacts trends. So having said all that, let me present to you my 2 trends that I believe will impact everything that we see in 2025. It will explain how all these other trends are engaging with each other and with the very complex, strange world that we are in at the moment. These 2 trends run on a continuum. The one is from scarcity to abundance, having very little of something to there being an overabundance of it. The second trend is a continuum of binary to fluid. Binary is black and white, right or wrong, yes or no, and fluid is recognizing that everything is connected and there are no simple binary definitions. So when we take these 2 trends and we plot them out on a 2 by 2 matrix, we come up with a number of different scenarios that could explain the intersection between, for example, abundance and fluid or scarcity and binary. And everything that we look at is going to depend on where we are plotting that particular topic on this graphic. So let's use artificial intelligence as an example. AI is in itself neutral. It is a tool. It's not good or bad. It's not evil. But how we use it depends on what we're going to achieve. So for example, if we were looking at artificial intelligence but up in the quadrant that compares binary and scarcity, so a scarcity mindset and with very rigid categories, we would be hearing things about AI widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, making humans obsolete in the workplace, and AI decisions are black and white and often wrong. If we move this conversation down to the scarcity fluid part of the diagram, then we start to see that we're embracing complexity. AI will erode personal privacy in ways we can't control is the litany that we're hearing. AI creates a scarcity of trust in a world of deepfakes and disinformation. AI will stretch the limits of creativity, but only for the privileged few. If we move this conversation up to the binary abundance space, we have an abundance mindset, but still defined by rigid categories. Then we're hearing that AI will ensure efficiency, But at the cost of humanity, AI will create solutions, but only for normal, regular problems. AI can mass-produce innovation, but after a while it all starts to sound the same. But people having this conversation in the abundance fluid part of this diagram start to explore something really interesting. They're saying AI will unlock infinite possibilities for human creativity. AI lets us tailor reality to everyone's unique needs, and AI will redefine what identity means itself. Context is essential. There are no neat answers. We need to learn how to embrace these questions. We need to use these 2 trends to understand the world that we're in, and only then do we develop thinking that is fit for the future. To find out more about these 2 trends and the upcoming book, there's a webinar, and there will be sector and function-specific content that will be posted to the Futures Alchemist website. Please subscribe to the site for more information.
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