Given that western fantasy has been swiping concepts and elements from eastern cultures for decades now, I wholeheartedly endorse the elimination of "cultural specificity" in D&D, especially in regards to power sources.
And I say that as someone who very much enjoys European fantasy all by itself. However, I can see the value in the fantastic hodgepodge
WotC is pushing. One example of a work that has done this sort of cultural hodgepodge (though not everyone enjoys it) is Robert Jordan's
Wheel of Time series. It has elements borrowed from Japanese culture, arabic culture, and various others. They're all thrown together and it is sometimes hard to identify where each piece comes from. The whole is more fantastic and original than just "Europe with a fantasy overlay."
As far as D&D itself goes, given that the monk was introduced to the game decades ago, and the last few editions gave us various celtic archetypes using scimitars, I think we're long past any "cultural purity" in D&D. Hell, one of my first homebrew items back when I was new to D&D was adding a ninja class.
Which is a long way of saying that I highly doubt we'll see a "Ki" power source. We may see the monk reappear as a psionic striker or a martial striker. On the other hand, the class we get may more closely resemble the swordsage instead.
I think it's highly likely that somewhere along the way, we'll get a class that closely resembles Jedi. As far as role, it might be a striker, or a defender, with or without a sub-role that has aspects of control to it.
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