As a conclusion of a teaching unit about "Europe's changing economy - Europe and the World" pupils of the classes 9a and 9b developed scenarios under the title "In the year 2025....Living in Europe in the Age of Globalisation" about what the future might hold for them.
(I.Bödeker)

In the year 2025

 

Dear Diary,

today was the long-awaited class reunion. It was not easy to get all our classmates together, because they were distributed all over the world. We had not seen each other for eleven years and I was happy to see them all and it was interesting to see how they all had changed.

  I saw my former friend. She lives in America now and she told me about her life. She had met her husband for the first time in a computer chatroom. In the beginning they used the Webcame to get to know each other and then they had a date in a cafe. After 10 dates they fell in love and after 1 year they married in a diving ceremony. Now they have work stations at home and communicate with their company via their intranet. Moreover she has got only one child. He is seven years old. he is taken to school by a community plane. he does not need any books at school, they have got modern touchpad-laptops. Their son is in a basketball club and in his freetime he plays lots of computer games.

I was very happy to see my classmates again, but did not recognize my classroom. On every desk there was a laptop and it was very well equipped. So this day was full of events. After the classmeeting I went bac to my hotel and tomorrow a plane will take me back to my family.

A lot of time has passed. many things are different now. Now we do not have Kings and Queens anymore, anywhere. Many former coastal countries have been flooded and do not exist anymore, because of the climate change. People have moved to interior areas which are overcrowded now.

It is midnight now, I must stop writing.

Good night!

 

FROM: Lisa, Abinaya, Elena and Maria  

Dear diary,

in the morning I woke my children and made their favourite breakfast. Then a special school bus took them to school, where they spend the whole day.

The school is very modern, every child has his own laptop and every classroom its own beamer.

There are no teachers anymore, only a man on the laptop who teaches them. The tests are written on the laptop, too. In one class are no more than ten pupils and most of the time they work in groups.

After the kids took off to school I went to work. On my way to work I only had to put my destination on the computer of my car. Then it drove me there all itself.

At lunch break I read the newspaper on my I-Pod. There was a picture of our new Prime Minister who we elected last month. On the next page I saw my husband on a photo. He works in China as an architect and he is at home at the weekends only. I met him on an internet dating page five years ago. He designed a modern multi-storey building of China´s most important companies. Meanwhile China is the most important country in the world, especially in the economy sector and its economy is still growing.

On the last page of the newspaper they reported that the war between Palestine and Israel has ended and the German army is back from Israel.

Back to the hospital I had to do an operation. As a surgeon I miss my colleagues but I only have to steer the robot when doing an operation.

When I arrived at home, dinner was just ready, because cooking is computer-controlled, too. I programme it in the morning so that it knows when I come home. I only have to put the pots and pans on the cooker, before I leave for work.

While I was laying the table, my children came home with a special school bus. It takes them directly to their homes.

After dinner we watched a film on our 4D TV. That is a new kind of TV, there are different kinds of special effects, e.g. your seats are moving during the film.

Right now I am writing this text on my mobile diary. But now I must finish, because I´am very tired.

 Julia, Marie, Rebecca, Dijana, Jaimie

How the world will change in 15 years: Class Reunion in 2025

 Names:

Lee Feng

Mascha Willegor

Samantha Brown

Marie Müller

 

C: You are Marie, right?

K: Lee, I have hardly recognized you. How much change in 15 years…! You also have   

    changed very much.

C: Right.. (laughing) Have you already seen the others of our clique?

K: Emm… Right over there.. I think it‘s Samantha, isn‘t she?. And behind her is

    Mascha, right?

A: Hello, you are Lee and Marie, right?

K: Yes, and you are Samantha, right? How are you?

N: It‘s so nice to see you. The last time I saw you was in 2010 at our graduation. What       

     are you doing at the moment?

C: I live in Berlin and right now work on a research project.

A: In the past you wanted to be a journalist and now you are an academic.

N: What are you researching?

C: I‘m working on a hydrogen-hybrid car. It‘s very enviromentally friendly and our 

    aim is that it can fly short tracks. What‘s about you, Samantha?

A: Normally I live in the USA with my husband and my two children. At the moment

    I‘m in Germany, because my company has got a foreign contract here.

K: What is that contract about?

A: It‘s about a new house construction scheme, where the energy is only provieded 

    by the sun and by water.

N: That sounds interesting. And what about you, Marie?

K: I don‘t work at the moment, because I‘ve got a seven-month-old child. Before that I

    worked in a 3- star restaurant. We haven‘t heard anything about you, Mascha.

N: I am married to a millionaire. He‘s the producer of  5-D glases and earns so much  

    money that I don‘t have to work.

C: Wow. What a great life!

A: I think we will meet later again. I will go around and look how many of the

    others I recognize.

K: And I will phone home to hear from the nanny whether my daughter sleeps well.

C: I‘ll do the same as Samantha.

N: OK, see you later.

One day in the life of Phillip Hoffmann

In the year 2025

By Mario Wendtlandt, Patrick Milne, Jannik Ostmann, Lennard Naumann

 

5.30 am in Oslo: Phillip Hoffmann is woken up by his PDA. He works in a lawyer’s office for product counterfeiting, which got out of control in the last few years. Phillip enters the kitchen and makes coffee for him and his wife Angeline. Angeline is from France and she works as a specialist for genetic engineering and in-vitro fertilization. Angeline and Phillip have two children. The older one is disabled and goes to a school for mentally handicapped, the younger one is healthy and goes to a normal secondary school. Phillip and his wife have decided against genetic engineering, although it is legal. Phillip says goodbye to his family and gets into his hydrogen car. His younger son packs his laptop in his bag and takes the next underground to school. Angeline takes the older son to school and then she drives to work herself.

Since the cities are totally overcrowded there is a traffic jam every morning, so that most of the people have their breakfast in the car on the way to their work. Many illegal immigrants are standing on the wayside and selling coffee, rolls and bagels.

After one and a half hour Phillip arrives in his office. In 2025, everybody has accepted that the whole city centre is monitored by cameras.

At 17.00 he drives home. Also Angeline has finished working. She fetches the boys from school and buys food at the Organic McDonalds. Meanwhile Phillip is watching television and surfing on the internet, both at one control, which reacts to their eyes movements.

In the news he gets to know, that the American President has invited the two World War powers India and China to peace negotiations in the White House. The war is basically about drinking water and land, but also about the question, who has to take all the refugees from the flooded Bangladesh.

On the monitor frame he can see his wife activating the finger scan and opening the front door. The security arrangements were intensified since street gangs got more and more violent in the non-monitored parts of the city.

The children take their meal to their rooms and Angeline sits down next to Phillip and they eat together. After the news there is a report about the expected economical crisis. Many people think, that Norway will get in trouble in the future because the international demand for petroleum, which is Norway’s biggest source of income, has dropped drastically. It is also speculated, whether the state is able to afford the disproportionately expensive buildings of dams around Norway. At 23.00 h Phillip falls asleep under the sound of the city’s sirens. 

A Dialogue

 

 A:  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our programme “VIPs in your city”. My name       

      Kent Brockman from FOX Television and it´s the 15^th August, 2025. Today I have an interview with a former student of Heepen Grammar School, Bielefeld, Germany. Okay, let´s start with the time after leaving school.

B:  Hello, Kent. Okay. After I passed my Abitur I studied medicine at Münster University.

A:  How long did you have to study?

B:  I studied medicine for 6 years. After these 6 years I wanted to go abroad as a fresh doctor, and decided to move to somewhere in America.

A:  As we can see you really moved to the USA. How did you get settled in America?

B:  I got a job in a big hospital. After 7 years I didn´t have to do much anymore. They got robots which did the operations you just had to program them and look after them. So I now have much time at work, which I use to communicate with my family, mostly with my children, they are spending a year abroad.

A:  Oh, your job sounds easy.

B:  That´s true, but the robots cannot do all jobs, I have much work, too, visiting patients , preparing them for operations, programming the robots or something like that.

A:  You sound so modest! You are known to be one of America´s best medicinal programmers! Is there time left for your private life?

B:  Life at home is very relaxed. I programmed my house. When I come home the tea cooks and the water runs into the tub at a temperature of exactly 40°C.

A:  And what´s about your wife?

B:  She works as development aid volunteer here in L.A. and manages the work in Bangladesh. When she comes home we watch TV. It is very comfortable with the speech control, and then we have dinner together, home-made, we don´t like this tin food. By the way, would you like some tea?

A:  Yes please. Thank you so much.

B:  Here you are. Genuine European tea. Europe is a nice continent but I was surprised that they included Turkey into the EU. In 2010, there was no way they could come in, they must have improved their situation.

A:  Yes the main reason was as you surely know the flooding in 2017. Turkey helped with much money.

B:  Oh yes the flooding. Europe overcame the flooding amazing well. Oh sorry they need me in the hospital; maybe we can continue the interview later.

A:  Okay thank you.

B:  No problem.

 Von Daniel Willems, Patrick Janz, Lennart Weigel und Niklas Gelzenleuchter

Focus Special: The last 15 years

 

In this special we report about how the world has changed in the last 15 years.

 A teacher talks about how life at a high school has changed: “The most important change was the using of computers. Today it is natural that every student has his or her own computer at school, but 15 years ago it was not so. The school classes were much bigger than they are now. That is the effect of the general decrease in population. In general I would say that the life in school was updated and optimized.”

 The power production has changed in Germany. Dr. James Patrick comments: “15 years ago three quarters of Germany’s electricity was generated by nuclear power stations.

In Germany all nuclear power stations have been shut down, but France has 5 stations, which are still working. Nowadays Germany gets its electricity from renewable energies.”

 Dr. Prof. Ostmann reports about the most important innovations in the last years.”The first man on Mars 2 years ago was a big step forward for the space exploration. The natural resources on the Earth have come to an end, so we have to look for alternatives. Before people can settle on Mars there will be many years of research necessary.”

 The climate has obvious changed in the last years. A Climatologist: “Nowadays the summers and winters are more intense than in the year 2010. The differences in temperature, in summer are about 5°C, in winter 4°C. The coastal countries in the year 2010 were located completely above sea level. Now 10% are located below sea level.”

 In traffic the differences are enormous. An economic expert reports:”15 years ago people couldn’t imagine that someday nearly all people go in cars with electric drive. Because of this, Christian Horners innovation in 2018, the electronic drive is more efficient than an old diesel- or petrol engines. Because of this change the oil states have become, because their oil is not needed any longer.

 All in all we can say that since 2010, there were lots of positive and negative developments that changed the world and our lives.

                                                                                                 Tim Schuwerack, Sven Grabbe

Technical and social development of the last 15 years – A newspaper article

 All over the world many things have changed in the last 15 years The most important developments are listed in this article of the magazine “Global Times”.

 The number of unemployed has risen steadily, because more and more the workers are replaced by machines.Dirk Blesius, owner of Blesius-Industries, says: “My company is currently very busy, because many broken electronic articles need to be repaired.” Many jobs have been lost, because the nuclear power plants were replaced with solar plants in the Sahara. The majority of workers in the tidal and wind power plants have been replaced by robots.” Currently it is very difficult to find a job on the labour market, because nearly all the simple work is done by machines”, reported Kai Mohnfelder from the “Argentur für Arbeit”. As said by the Federal Ministry of Labour, in the next 15 years about 20% of the work will be done by machines. But the employees of the cities have to fight their problems: the giving up of public transportation. Sven Kische makes the Hydrogen-cars responsible for the losure of the public transport. “Only a short time ago, I was a bus driver in Paderborn. But because of the switch over to the Hydrogen-cars, the public transport was no longer competitive. And unfortunately the Hartz IV-rates were lowered”. Also other economis problems appeared, like for example in the retirement field. The pension funds now have problems, because there are not enough young people, who pay into them. At the same time, many older people are dependent on their pensions.Because of the increase in the percentage of eldery people, many schools must be closed or combined with other schools. Because only the demanding works are carried by humans, the pressure to perform well is very high for the few students.

 Lars Peter + Alexander Döring

2025

 The story is about Alan Withe, a single engineer, who creats new flying cars for Audi. The sea level has risen by 3.5 metres, the Netherlands has drowned.

 7.00            Dream program ends, wake up

 7.15            Get my breakfast by a lift from the German Food company

 7.32            Get up and go to my office in my flat

 7.39            Start Windows 12, open work program 

7.40- 13.40         Dictate the computer new ideas for more efficient nitrogen cars produced by Audi

13.41         Go to the toilet (cleans automatically)

13.45         Call Hermsburger, Germany´s leading fast food producer and get a salad and a Vegieburger by a pipe

 13.59         Meet friends, go by serviceplane to the Sauerland, snowboarding on artificial pistes

20.30         Fly back at home in my private plane. Start Autopilot, watch news about Far East War between North- and South Korea, Africa has bought all Arabian Emirates

20.45         Fly to my best friend´s apartment and watch 4-D films

22.20         Fly home. Go to my waterbed, start dreaming program   

What will be in 15 years? Radio news in 2025:

 “Good afternoon Germany. It is 3 o’clock and your listening Radio FWG.

 North- and South Korea have signed a peace treaty together with China, Japan, America and Europe. In the last months all these countries and continents waged war, because North Korea didn’t want to disarm their nuclear weapons. Now they have to pay the costs for the expenses of the other members that took part in the war. North Korea will be under the control and regime of South Korea.

 10 years ago the world population rose to over 8.5 billion people. This is

absolutely a high number of inhabitants per town. The most populated country is India with nearly 2 billion people and every day hundreds of babies are born, so this number will always rise, which means that we need more nurses, but there aren’t enough applicants who want to do this. So more and more robots are used for taking care of the babies, a measure already known from old people’s nursing.

 In Dubai the last oil plant had close, because there isn’t any oil any more. So the world absolutely has no oil and must rely on the research work. With this a period of reliable fuel supply has ended and a new era of uncertainty begins.

 This morning the car producer Mercedes showed its new hydrogen car.

It is less polluting than all the other new ones, but expensive, too.

It costs 30,000 Euros at the moment, but includes 10 airbags, a tom-tom, an

air-conditioning and two television sets at the back of the car.

 At 8pm the polling stations in whole Germany will close and with a big probability the Bündnis ‘90/Grüne will win the election again.

The voter turnout is the biggest since the existing of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

 By Sandra Süsselbeck, 9b