The Next Three Decades

 is a series of eBooks appearing in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

The Next Three Decades - Where Will We Be in 2050?
It is located in office 23 of Sarif Industries Headquarters.

Transcript:

Where Will We Be in 2050?

''There was once a time when we believed that the world would become a monolithic nation-state, a kind of 'United States of Earth', brought together under the global aegis of a super-governmental body. But now that prediction seems quaint and hackneyed.''

''The reality is that we live in an era where sovereign nations and the formal governments of countries are little more than lines of demarcation upon the world's maps. More and more citizens of the world lend their loyalty not to a flag, but to the only true trans-national entities that still thrive - corporations. We thus foresee a time when people will be citizens of their employer's 'nation' rather than Chinese, French, Canadian, etc. And in this world, what we have thought of as traditional nation-complexes - such as America - will fragment in order to find their own equilibrium.''

The Next Three Decades - The Future To Come
This one can be found in Hengsha Downtown Apartments complex, in an apartment near the exit to the Youzhao district.

Transcript:

The Future To Come

A natural outgrowth of today's increasing fragmentation of governmental/national structures will be a return to a concept that was once a key part of medieval and renaissance era cultures - the city-state.

''Narrowing a focus to more local issues instead of "federal" mandates is a common reaction to a threat mindset. Several cities, most notably Seattle and Dallas in the United States of America, have already adopted a fortress mentality, effectively walling off their dominations to become a minor nation of their own.''

''On one level, a loss of centralized control is inevitable; but then a greater degree of autonomy can also bring greater benefits in terms of resource allocation and population control. It is estimated that by 2050 this city-state model will be typical, with larger metroplexes such as New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Moscow incorporating in such fashion.''

The Next Three Decades - In sickness and in health.
Volume 3 can be found in an office in upper Tai Yong Medical.

Transcript:

In sickness and in health.

The horror wrought by the Malaysian H5N1-variant viral outbreak in 2018, coming less than a decade after the 2009-2010 Swine Flu pandemic, showed the world that despite advances in medical technology, we as human beings as still just as much the prey to disease that we were during the era of the Black Plague or 1918's influenza occurrence.

Scientists claim to be closer than ever to cures for cancer, for the AIDS/HIV virus and other disease vectors, and we might hope that in the next thirty years these killers might be finally put to rest; but we must also consider that our changing world brings with it old iterations of old pandemics, and so we as a species will remain under the shadow of a threat from some new and as-yet un-encountered confluence of viral forms.