Books for decision makers: Vol 5-The Inevitable
12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Technological advances continue to have a profound impact on everything we do. New developments continuously change and improve the humans do almost everything and will no doubt take the world to new, uncharted territory in the years and decades ahead.
In “The Inevitable,” by founding executive editor of Wired Magazine ands technology guru, Kevin Kelly depicts 12 “inevitable” technological developments that will reshape society by 2050. With insight based on his personal immersion within the cybercultural community, Kelly asserts that these accelerating technological will continue to create interconnected channels where members of society flow, access and share rather than buy and own.
While he cautions that, “new occupations will be born and they will prosper unequally, causing envy and inequality,” he says it is paramount that we don’t refuse these forces and instead vigilantly accept them. Entire industries will collapse, while new ones appear; new competitors will emerge, and at the same time occupations will disappear. He calls right now the beginning of the human-machine civilization and sees great opportunity for innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, scientists and civilization as a whole if they are able to embrace the movement and build on the possibilities.
Before delving into these 12 technological forces that will shape our future, Kevin Kelly’s fundamental affirmations provide a good base to stand on. First, he states that technology is human’s accelerant and technological transformations will “drive a trajectory toward a restless, innovative protopia–more dynamic than any utopia or dystopia.Daily life will be continuously disrupted by the increased use and development of Artificial Intelligence and the cognified Internet of Things. This integration of AI into all of the things we use and interact with and subsequent interconnectivity with the Internet, will enable the world to grow and develop even more exponentially that it already is today. Human and machine minds are beginning to form a superorganism of sorts, that combined will question and disrupt old laws, standards, perceptions, and even national interests.
Now, let’s examine these 12 inevitable forces: “becoming, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, interacting, tracking, questioning, and beginning.”
1. Becoming
“Technological life in the future will be a series of endless upgrades. And the rate of graduation is accelerating. We will be newbies forever. That should keep us humble. Endless Newbie is the new default for everyone, no matter your age or experience”, he quips. Technology and culture keep evolving and rather than reach utopia or dystopia, we are forever in a state of protopia, or constant motion. We are in an era of new thinking –half man, half machine, with instant access to the world’s interconnected information, much of which is generated by individuals rather than institutions. “We are all becoming. It is the best time ever in human history to begin. You are not too late,” he assures.
2. Cognifying
Kelly begins, “It is hard to imagine anything that would ‘change everything’ as much as cheap, powerful, ubiquitous artificial intelligence. The advantages gained from cognifying inert things would be hundreds of times more disruptive to our lives than the transformations gained by industrialisation.”
AI is powered by cheap computers, with copious amounts of data and better algorithms that continuously make rapid advances and contributing to a cloud-based “superorganism” such as IBM’s Watson computer that self-learns medical diagnostics.
Still, new types of minds, intelligences and consciousness will continue to emerge. “To demand that AI be humanlike is the same flawed logic that artificial flying will be birdlike, with flapping wings. Robots, too, will think different,” Kelly surmises.
Of course many jobs will be impacted as some will be able to be performed better by robots than by humans, some won’t even be doable by humans, while other jobs humans will gladly give up and even others haven’t been imagined yet. He believes a major revolution is certain, but he does not believe it will be cataclysmic, if we, the humans don’t let it. “Let the robots take our jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters,” he recommends.
3. Flowing
The Internet is an endless chain or producing, copying, sharing and flowing updates. Music, videos and social media can all be streamed in “real time – as do on – demand services – from the cloud. Once it’s digitized and copyable, [...] consumers can sample it, edit it, remix it and mash it up – therefore expanding its scope through democratization.” People value flow for its immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and discoverability. Flows allow a myriad of consumers to tag, comment, translate, remix and recreate all types of media content. “In 30 years, the most important cultural works and the most powerful mediums will be those that have been remixed the most.”
4. Screening
“We are now People of the Screen,” Kelly says. Flows bring content and interaction to screens around the world in the blink of an eye that we are “screening” rather than just reading. Screening will change all types of media from entertainment to education, and eventually everything we share. Kelly even goes as far to declare, “the link and the tag may be two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years.” Screens will become the most important platform of the culture and while they are our instruments for now, they will eventually watch us.
5. Accessing
Possession and ownership matter less and less. Access matters more than ever. For example, Airbnb doesn’t own any houses or hotels; Netflix viewers don’t own the movies they watch; Organizations and users don’t need to maintain or store goods, thus access replaces ownership. Five trends are expediting the ability to access:
Dematerialization: Products are improved by adding intangibles such as algorithms and apps for smartphones. Tangible products – like cars – transform into intangibles, where services like Uber are able to meet people’s needs more efficiently.
Real-time on demand: “To run in real time, our technological infrastructure needed to liquefy [...] Fixed solid things became services.” Uber’s ride sharing service provides this.
Decentralization: Blockchain technology is decentralizing money and other trust-based mechanisms as it’s cryptographic trust ledger eliminates the need for regulators.
Platform synergy: Platforms like Facebook and Google sell services that encourage user marketing based on sharing and application programming interfaces (APIs).
Clouds: Services based in the clouds that ease the storage on local devices and encourage access, collaboration, backup and flexibility.
6. Sharing
Sharing media across borders is easier than ever. Kelly explains that this “digital socialism is socialism without the state”.Community sharing and coordinating allow people to collaborate and more efficiently improve upon things that they wouldn’t be able to on their own. And while sharing is bound to challenge copyright laws and the overall meaning of property, it also will lead to improved outcomes of things vital to society including health care and education. Crowdsourcing empowers innovators. Crowdsourcing, a system for peer-to-peer shared investments empowers innovators and further increases productivity. Collectively owned groups will revolutionize businesses, economies and society as a whole.
7. Filtering
With so much content and flows, filtering options are a necessity: gatekeepers, curators, brands, friends, cultural environment and even government.Recommendation engines use algorithms to offer suggestions and personalization across music (Spotify) and posts (Instagram) among other things. Often unbeknownst to them, users collaborate in refining their own filters simply by using certain platforms and give their preferences to Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. Filters define who we are as consumers in terms of our preferences. This information is extremely valuable to advertisers and companies competing for our business.
8. Remixing
We are living in an age of remixing. Readily available content and easy access to music, movies, literature, art and more lends themselves to be borrowed, altered, joined and reconfigured to in an attempt to create a new alternative. “The best works may be those that are remixed the most – but there will also be challenges to existing IP regimes.” User remixing challenges intellectual property laws and the overlying concept of owning a unique idea. Remixing will boost the value of originality, but laws must also be able to recognize the added value of creative transformation. The music industry is ripe with lawsuits of artists “biting” a certain sound or rhythm from a previously recorded track.
9. Interacting
Virtual reality and augmented reality promise to increase the interaction and endless flowing, sharing, mixing and matching of information. They will alter the way we view, perceive, buy and sell goods and services.
Computers are everywhere and into our bodies is where they are heading next. The brain-machine interface will cover more senses, expanding on the immersion and intimacy experienced. “Affective technology” systems such as eye and facial recognition scanner allow access to our devices and even respond to the emotions that are detected. Gesture and voice-controlled systems increase interactivity. Wearable technology places sensors on the skin and is making waves within the sports and healthcare industry. Virtual reality systems will give people unprecedented types of experiences via first-person viewpoints. Augmented reality “overlays virtual elements on top of reality.” By the year 2050, “anything that is not intensely interactive will be considered broken.”
10. Tracking
More and more everything we do is being tracked. People can monitor their heart rates, diets, sleep patterns, exercise routines, and mood among other things in great statistical detail. One’s digital footprint logs the websites they visit, interactions they have and gives a fairly accurate description of who they are as a person. The Internet of Things will drive tracking to new levels. Monitoring, surveillance and privacy matters will all be contentious matters up for debate. People say they want privacy, but more often than not they freely relinquish through their us of social media without thinking twice about it.
11. Questioning
With each new thing, more questions arise as Kelly observes, “the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. A good question creates new territories of thinking. A good question is the seed of innovation.” As human and AI minds continue to explore and expand with knowledge and unknowns will cultivate deeper questioning. This in turn will produce a seemingly endless pool of “technically impossible” possibilities where people will value the power of a never-ending debate.
12. Beginning
The convergence of these technological forces is creating a new beginning. A complex matrix of interconnected humans and machines where some stand to benefit more than others. Kevin Kelly concludes that things that once seemed “impossible in theory are possible in practice. Certainty itself is no longer as certain as it once was. The improbable is the new normal.”
Tyler Krebeck
Chief Content Editor
Florianópolis, Brazil
October 4th, 2019