Horx noted that people tend to regard future pessimistically, while a realistic picture can be perceived through the so called megatrends, which bring fundamental changes to society.

As regards globalisation, surveys have shown that people have pessimistic expectations: "Everybody thinks that the world is polarising, but in truth differences are getting smaller."

He said that the negative perception of the trends stemmed from occasional crises and the shift in people's perception of the world from the western hemisphere to a more multi polar world.

Horx also does not believe that nationalism will threaten globalisation, but a change is in the making. The old globalisation, which sought cheap labour force in less developed countries will end, and economies that will know how to diversify their resources will become the most successful.

Touching on the other major topic of this year's conference, the speaker said that fears about robotisation and digitalisation were unfounded. Robots will likely perform more and more jobs, but whether they will replace people depends mostly on the evolution of jobs.

The digital and the analogue will fuse into a new complexity and complement each other, he also said.

The conference, organised by the newspaper Finance and the Ljubljana Faculty of Economics, is entitled Living among Giant Cyclops and Robots and runs for two days.

Rounding off day one, economist Veljko Bole will give a lecture on what Slovenia, Europe and SE Europe can expect next year, focusing above all on elements driving what seems like a new macro-economic paradigm.