Unfolding Future Trends

Now that presumably the rest of the entire world’s gotten over their predictions for 2006, let me try introducing our own format, which, hopefully, will provide some value in the year just embarked upon.

Principally local—meaning Ohio, Indiana & Kentucky—and more specifically, Greater Cincinnati & Hamilton County, Ohio—we’ve delved into the wash of prognostications and sought out common threads. The test will be how close we are, and if we are we’re going to be posting corresponding pathfinders, possibly on our web site. Stay tuned.


The Economic Advisory Committee of the American Bankers Association in their regional economic outlook summarizes Ohio’s progress as “on track, but glacially slow.” Indiana “has been among the stronger performers in the Midwest, despite the auto-related soft-patch afflicting many of its neighboring states,” and Kentucky’s “expansion’s proceeding at a steady, although unspectacular pace.”

The Enquirer at the beginning of the year, in overviewing predictions for Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and principally Paul Barada of the Greensburg Daily News in Indiana, came up with health care issues—especially for those of us in the “baby boom” generation— and school funding & public education, as the predominant, shared major concerns among our three states in the coming year. Ohio and Kentucky are going to be concerned with developing the riverfront as well.

The National Conference of State Legislatures on December 29th. published a list identifying what they considered key issues for 2006. Public education was on their list as well. Other concerns noted by the NCSL were eminent domain, immigration, sex-offender issues.

Mary Campbell McQueen, President of the National Center for State Courts, in the preface to NCSC’s “Future Trends in State Courts” 2005 report, says “Courts are traditionally conservative institutions that run on precedent & procedure. But ‘the only thing constant is change,’ and courts also need to anticipate the future, rather than just react to it when it happens…. The implications of some issues such as our aging population, increasing cultural diversity, and identity theft are fairly clear. But the implications of others, such as bioethics and nanotechnology, aren’t as yet—but courts need to be aware of them.” The Future Trends report has articles on population demographics; political, social, & judicial trends, economic conditions, and technology & science, including public access & data regulation, electronic filing, and trends in identity theft.