What the future holds for humans
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by Surya
Kolluri
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In the future, four to five decades from now, in the middle
of the 21st century, humans will be irreversibly transformed. People will augment their minds and bodies
with genetic alterations, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil, the Chief Technology Officer of Google (at the
time of this writing), predicts a technological singularity in the year 2045, a
point where technological progress is so rapid it outstrips humans' ability to
comprehend it. Once the Singularity has
been reached, Kurzweil predicts machine intelligence will be infinitely more
powerful than all human intelligence combined.
It is risky business
trying to predict the future. But we can
take a careful look at current mega-trends and try to imagine what the future
might look like.
That is what this
chapter aims to do through 7 Megatrends..
1. Manufacturing and Supply Chain
The Economist
magazine had a cover story on 3-D Printing this issue. They have been
beating the drum on 3-D printing for nearly a decade now. I finally got
curious and decided to do a little exploration, being an old manufacturing hand
myself.
I came upon a
demonstration of 3-D printing that looked totally magical. An actual real
life, honest to goodness tool, a wrench is actually replicated by a printer.
The apogee of modern
manufacturing is the perfected, gigantic global supply chains. Epitomized
by the US based retailer Walmart and their partnership with manufacturing in
China. Walmart being the gigantic outlet selling the products at the
cheapest possible price by beating up suppliers and and making the supply chain
efficient. And China, as we have all come to know has been dominating the
manufacturing side of things.
But it is now
popularly known that the value, for example in the case of the Apple iPad is in
the majority in the design and the applications and the manufacturing cost of
the iPad itself is in the approximately 10% range of the product.
Imagine a world,
where each of us has some version of this 3-D printer in our garage. (We
own a car worth a lot - so imagine a ‘replicator’ at that cost). We would
be paying for design (a sweater for example) - and replicating it ourselves.
In the least, you can imagine, local 'printing villages' where everything
is produced.
In this world, there
is no need for global supply chains, large box stores. The value is for
the intellectual capital and the production is highly customized and highly
local.
Today's
manufacturing and global supply chains have perfected what Henry Ford started.
Tomorrow, we might finally realize a series of interconnected villages,
in a way fulfilling Mahatma Gandhi's vision - but in a 21st century way.
2. Education
To this day, we are
all striving for and aspire for our children the best education at the best institutions.
A degree from an elite institution like the IIT or IIM or in the US, an
Ivy League, undergraduate or graduate. That is the stepping stone.
But right under our
noses, information, education, know-how is exploding through multi-media - be
it podcasts, youtube lectures or TED talks.
Bill Gates wrote
about Salman Khan, the creator of the Khan academy in one of the most prescient
articles about education that is worth reading.
Another example is Harvard Professor Michael Sandel's lecture on Justice
- that has been viewed more that 3.5 million times! One of the most
powerful lectures on ethics and moral reasoning you will ever hear.
In such a world,
what is the value of college education - particularly when the cost of
education has been outstripping inflation multiple times every year for nearly
two and a half decades?
At some point,
society is going to challenge the notion of an expensive donation to a college to
get admission. A challenge to education,
by professors interested more in research and less in teaching, when most of
the content is all around us anyway. (As
a child reared in an academic household, in an academic environment, I say this
with full awareness of the import of this point).
3. Environment
Not a day passes,
when our son does not remind me of some aspect of our behavior that is not
environmentally friendly.
Between mining, and
dumping and garbage creation, we have been flooding the planet with waste -
including nuclear waste. At the same time around the world we have been
denuding forests at an alarming rate. Glaciers are disappearing in front
of our very eyes.
But the environmental
consciousness has been rising so that if not in our generation, in the next, we
could well see the return to more preservation and less exploitation.
With accelerating
economies in China, India and Brazil - there won't be enough oil and coal left
to fuel rapid growth. There is no question that out of sheer necessity we
will need to shift to solar, wind and other renewable resources.
Most corporations
are already getting serious about 'Green' and the carbon footprint.
Imagine a time, when you are in a meeting - and NO ONE brings paper -
NONE.
How about if the Prime
Minister of India or the U.S. President issues an edict just to his executive
branch - no paper in any meeting.
Can you imagine if
the Indian Government stopped using paper? It is not inconceivable that
this could happen!
4. Work
Work as we know it
today was epitomized by Gregory Peck in the movie 'The Man in the Gray
Flanneled Suit.' A company man, loyal to his organization - making a
work-life balance choice.
With the world
economy in the condition it is, there is increasing necessity to find work that
best suits your skills. The imperative is building a career that best
fits your needs.
Our son's ski
instructor during the summer season is a race car driver and during the fall an
automotive consultant. That is NOT a man in a gray flanneled suit!
For two decades now
we have been talking about the transition from manufacturing to a service
economy.
We are headed from a
service to a knowledge economy. WIth service being delegated to robots
that can do everything from keep your house and refrigerator at the right
condition to vacuuming your house.
This is not far
fetched at all. Just think about the amount of tasks you can do now just
with our iPhone or Android that required service workers. Banking,
shopping, Reading, Listening. Well Siri is not there yet. But any
doubts that Siri 2.0 is round the corner?
5. Longevity
There are more
trends that can be brought up. Longevity. Human longevity has
increased by leaps and bounds and it is no longer surprising when we regularly
cross 100 years old. That is 35 years past traditional retirement.
In fact traditional retirement is near being retired.
The notion that we
might live after the age of 65 for as long as we had worked until that point
gives rise to reasons to re-think everything from financial planning, to
activities and responsibilities.
With regard to
financial planning, it seems to me to be pretty clear that it is not enough to
have a 'number' - i.e. assets in the portfolio when one reaches a
pre-determined age. But rather infuse it with meaning from the past and
the future.
With the population
in the oldest segments growing fastest around the world, policy makers are
going to be pressed to come up with ways of addressing new issues - such as
delivering elder related health care services at scale.
6. Security
The technological
progress that we are enjoying, and its exponential progress we are experiencing
all around us, represents a profound threat - as counter intuitive as that
might sound.
Marc Goodman is the
founder of the Future Crimes Institute and a former INTERPOL and FBI agent.
Marc Goodman explains a litany of threats facing us for a full ninety
minutes. Here are some examples what has already happened in terms of crimes:
ATM Thieves: Fake ATMs where installed at a
shopping mall. When shoppers used these ATMs, their card numbers and
pin's were recorded. They got an 'out of order' message on the ATM.
The thieves then used these numbers to withdraw cash elsewhere.
App Thieves: Recently there was a fake HSBC app on
Android. Similar to the above example, people entered their data into it
and were subsequently robbed.
Target Stores: 100 million credit card numbers were
stolen just in the past month.
Telephone Network: The Mexican drug cartel has its own
installed telephone network and use autopiloted vessels to transport drugs into
the US
Mumbai 2008
Attacks: Marc Goodman
was in Mumbai the second day of the attacks and was describing how the attackers
had guns and PDAs and were getting directions from a command center in terms of
how to navigate and where to shoot.
He talks about the
dark web, which is not the web that we use on a day to day basis. But
here illegal and illicit activities take place and is perhaps even bigger than
the visible web.
If the above list is
unpleasant, here is what is in store for us based on the new technologies that
are being developed and disseminated.
Fake cops: With 3D printing, anyone can print
out fake Police Badges. They can also print guns. How is an ordinary
citizen to know the difference between a fake police badge and a real one, if
someone knocks at their door?
Tailored bio
weapons: Substances
can be developed that are fatal to just one person based on their DNA.
This way bio-killing can be tailored.
Gas attack: The Japanese subway had a scary gas
attack a year or two ago. These days, the chemicals are so much more
potent that the scale can be unimaginable.
Cyber weapons: Suppose you are wearing an insulin
pump. Some guy created a radar-gun, that when pointed at a person wearing
such an insulin pump and shoots at it, will accelerate the release of insulin
in 24 hours rather than 2 weeks and thus be fatal to the person.
Girls around us
App: With new social
media, there are apps that based on other people's FaceBook entries, can show
the app user where there are girls (by name and photo) in the various coffee
shops and stores around where he is. Imagine this in the hands of a wrong
guy!
Elder Abuse and
Elder Fraud: With an
aging and retiring population. This is a very high priority worry for
government agencies. Elderly citizen, by definition are sitting on nest
eggs be they small or large. And they are the most vulnerable to
electronic fraud on the one hand and abuse by care givers on the other hand.
One in nine seniors reported being abused, neglected or exploited
in the past twelve months. And cognitive impairment and the need for help
with activities of daily living make victims more vulnerable to financial
abuse.
Bitcoin and other
online currencies:
This is the point about government backed currencies being a 'political
statement.' With online currencies like bitcoin, both the web and the
dark web can carry on commerce with no traceability!
CaaS Crime as
service: There are
online portals available where you can order crime!
In as much as the
big companies and big governments are planning excellent defenses against
hackers, individuals and their identities, their information and savings are
extremely vulnerable to this onslaught.
As we read this,
there are thousands upon thousands of hackers and criminals and miscreants
creating viruses, probing systems, planning malefeasance. In the days of
the horse buggy it was a man with a knife asking for your wallet.
But based on the
above, we can see that crime and its impact has grown exponentially. This
is the new world we live in and we need heavy investment in new techniques to
keep the miscreants at bay.
7. Genetics
We are unraveling
the 'toolkits' within the gene (and not just human genes) that are responsible
for various things including growing organs. Imagine organ farms that
grow organs that we need.
Sean Carroll is a
Professor of Molecular Biology ('EvoDevo') at the University of
Wisconsin. Carroll is at the forefront of a field known as evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo"). Evolutionary developmental biology is a
field of biology
that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to determine the ancestral relationship between them, and to discover
how developmental processes evolved.
Synthetic life.
We are creating micro-organisms from scratch that can follow instructions
and do various tasks for us. Craig Vetter who pioneered the unlocking of
the human genome is at the forefront of this work. He foreseees creating new life that can be
put to work like reducing carbon content on earth.
A strawman vision
It is of course
tough to predict what date and time these will converge and what shape the
converged outcome might take. But one
can sketch out a vision - a strawman, as we say in business circles.
Imagine in the
future we will choose to live in smaller communities. We won't go to
college, and we won't work Nine-to-Five. There won't be large factories
spitting out product. There won't be defined careers either. There
won't be any mega stores to go to. Neither will there be paper or plastic
much around. There won't be paper currency either.
Here, we would be
living in a highly inter-connected world, plugging into knowledge and education
uniquely tailored to each individual and paced accordingly. Value will be
based on unique and new ideas contributed to human understanding and endeavor.
A designer will come
up with an idea, it will show up at everyone's home electronically (perhaps
even through holograms). And we would pay for the idea and have it
locally produced - maybe in your garage or in the village central - and the
most of the value would be for the design and not the material or the
production.
The information
about the earth, its waters, its bio diversity, the map of the universe with
its galaxies would all be digitized and be at your fingertips (literally).
You could
communicate with anyone anywhere (five years ago, my brother was able to send
me a mobile message from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!) about what's happening.
In this world, we
would be free in the truest sense of the word, to pursue what we each individually
like and derive value to the overall network of knowledge contributors (not
workers) around the globe and a silent, virtual exchange of digital currency.
Lest this be
confused for a 60s commune, this is not 'give up everything' idealism.
Rather a convergence of amazing knowledge, scientific progress and
technology that will allow us to jump in headlong into human affairs, but not
be caught as a cog in a giant wheel.
In the future, 'Gone
Fishing,' might not necessarily mean absconding from your responsibilities.
It might mean you are doing the most natural thing in the world.
You could be ninety
years old. But you can go hiking wearing
your exo-skeleton. While out there on
the mountain, you find a brook, fishing rod out, with a gentle breeze swishing
by and your dog Rover lolling in the sun; you might have an Emily Dickinseon
insight (in tune with, 'I'm nobody! Who are you?'), and oh by the way post it
on the future generations' version of facebook for friends, family and the
general public to react - and they might credit your account should they feel
it have value!
Summary
Nanotechnology.
Computing power. Digitization of information. Private space
flights. Mining Asteroids. There is even more! But overall, both
individual and societal trends are converging.
An ever present
caution. One does hope that the Yang, that will accompany this Ying, with
bad guys having access to the same technology and knowledge can be kept at bay!
But looking, reading
and absorbing these trends, it is pretty clear that we are nearing an apogee in
human affairs. Apogee in the sense that we have pushed twentieth century
organization, scale manufacturing, global supply chains to its limit and that
perhaps now events will start reverting in an evolved sense and headed back to
a perigee where things are more localized and customized.
This is going to be
fascinating to watch unfold.