Postscript by way of a new post:
I mentioned the old right-wing vs. left-wing arguments, well, in a more neutral aside, I also think there's a big idea hole we're overdue to fill.
In the mid-19th century, you saw the thinkers and writers appear whose thought had been shaped by the then-well-established industrial revolution. They had significant impact on world history and politics from a few years before the mostly failed revolutions of 1848 to the mid-to-late 20th century. We've been riding those ideas long enough now that they're pretty well-worn, and the digital revolution has been underway for a few decades now, so I think we're well overdue for some new "-isms". What I don't really know is what shape they might take or from what quarters them might come.
The one vague idea I had myself is an ideology that combines leftist and rightist thought under an umbrella that focuses on maximizing returns across society.
See, societies that have prospered have always seemed to me to maximize the potential of their members. They had low unemployment and high levels of engagement, they were cosmopolitan (or, relatively so for their epoch and location) which minimized "real dollar" losses caused by cultural failings, had comparatively good levels of education and cultural literacy (again, relative to the epoch and location), and so on. Failed societies seemed to perpetually be in internal crisis, have high levels of waste and corruption, severely limiting (or even fatal) cultural failings (for instance the original Greenland settlers had a taboo against fish), and large numbers of idle members who invariably wrecked shit on a regular basis.
I can see such an ideology being pushed based on the new and growing tools of customization and personalization in order to best use the talents and abilities of each person. It would of necessity be heavily dependent on and intertwined with cheap, abundant, and extremely robust computing power.
Most of the world has probably plucked the low-hanging human fruit. People with minor disabilities can (for the most part) obtain, glasses, medical care, certain medications, etc. which allow them to more-or-less effectively function as a person without disability. Mass public education has probably been pushed about as far as it can go in raising broad educational standards (leaving aside more local issues like the "broken" public education system in the US, overall the effect has been mass higher education).
The step that comes next would be to try and reclaim the more marginal cases - that means mental and economic supports for the mentally ill or borderline cases who would normally fall between society's cracks or place a heavy burden on their friends and family. It also means trying to better fit people for careers and public living. The increased costs would be borne by a reduction of the deadweight burden on society of people who are effectively non-functional but still members (like a homeless dude who runs up an entirely preventable $200,000 hospital bill which is then borne by the state, or the hard-to-quantify drag caused by broken homes and failed lives), or better returns at companies by workers who actually give a damn (or who are at least in a position or field that matches their talents). It means much more customization in education and much better analysis of a person's strengths and weaknesses in childhood.
Beyond the individual, such an ideology would also seek better, more effective, and more scientific long-term planning, in order to maximize returns to society, individuals, and businesses for each dollar spent. It means more integrated planning, such as better city design to improve physical heath (this is being tried of course, but only in a very faint and piecemeal way).
I think, like socialism or capitalism, it has a strong attractive element that people can believe in, while combining elements from both the left and right. I think it also has the capacity for abuse (as befits any great ideology), though I'm less sure of the exact pitfalls it might have (certainly, it has a huge impact on privacy).
This is not something I'm personally pushing and I can't even say I really believe in it, but I was really struggling to catch a dim vision of what genuinely fresh ideas people might try to bring forward in the next decade or two and it seems like this is one of the more obvious ones waiting for a charismatic champion to ride it to fame.
