These five interlinked revolutions in information, food, energy, finance and ethics are opening up opportunities for communities to co-create new ways of being that work for everyone. This year we could discover that the very disruption of capitalism itself is part of a major tipping point in the transition to a new post-industrial, post-capitalist paradigm.

Far from implying the end of the world, some economists see the current era of slow growth and austerity as part of a momentous, transitional shift to a new form of civilization that could either adapt in the face of natural limits and prosper, or crumble in denial as nature restores its own balance. So could 2015 herald the dawn of a new era of prosperity, or the breakdown of the global economy?

"The jobs that are going away aren't coming back," says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of "Race Against the Machine."