Known unknowns and unknown unknowns fill the future of technology. We can perhaps anticipate and navigate the former, but the latter surprise and challenge us. Technology is exponentially growing and the next three decades would see plenty of changes on how we perceive the world. Every aspect of life is going to undergo a sea change in the next three decades with the impact of technology. Privacy may well become a luxury in a very short time as every single step and transaction would etch into permanent records. For everyone who reasonably hopes and expects to see the world for the next few decades, this book is an absolute must.
In a series of essays, writers at Economist, along with some outside contributions, look at technology today and attempt to make predictions of the world in 2050. Except a few, the essays are short, insightful, and brilliant. The exceptions are super-brilliant. This is a summary of the book hoping to stimulate one to go through the full book and understand the amazing possibilities of the future.
The essay is something of a summary of the book or notes which I would come back to as the future unfolds. It is not a review or a critique as being an amateur in the field of technology, I am not qualified to do so. It is a long summary and I enjoyed thoroughly as I went through the chapters slowly. Take time in reading this essay too. Read it in parts which may help in appreciating better.
TOOLKIT TO PREDICT THE FUTURE-TOM STANDAGE
In this first essay, the author says that there are three things in the toolkit which can predict the future technology and the response to them: the past, the present, and science-fiction. The reaction to any innovative technology or phenomenon in the past like the telegraph, movies, airplanes, novels, comics, internet, television, and so on is a template of how the public may respond in the future too. Our past behaviours throw major clues on the future behaviour.
Initially, there is disbelief and predictions of gloom; slow acceptance follows this. Then maybe, it becomes a luxury and soon becomes commonplace within everyone’s reach. Finally, it ends up being a need. This has been the trajectory of human behaviour to most technologies, and the key point is that the first reactions should not dishearten an innovator!
The present is another clue to the future, because often, some edges of the present hides a not widely known potential future. Japanese school girls used smartphones for a long time before the world started using it more commonly. Similarly, lack of a clean banking infrastructure due to many reasons including political instability led to the usage of mobile money transfers in Kenya much before the world took notice of its advantages. Hence, many times, the present hides the future; and innovators should keep looking at hidden corners of the present in their attempt to mould the future.
Science-fiction and the visions in them is a helpful guide to the future possibilities.They may give speculative but provoking ideas on potential technologies to help humankind and the ecosystem degradation in response. Some science fiction can be bad, however, but many can provoke important thoughts in the collective or individual conscience. Carl Sagan’s ‘Contact’ is a classic in this regard. It is a prediction on how humans might respond to an alien contact with us. It questions our fitness to deal with them in our present state of development and evolution.
Using these toolkits, the author imagines the course of a few possible technologies in the future: space-flying for commercial purposes; human genetic modification to conquer disease and ensure longevity; driverless cars; and Augmented Reality. We are at the edges of these technologies and they are likely to become commonplace in the future. Drivers may disappear in the future. This might decrease the need for ownership thus positively impacting the environment. Business-people are already looking at the prospects of space travel in the future. We may even start travelling to Mars in the future with possibilities of terra-farming and owning bits of land there. Virtual Reality is making its impact today in fields of entertainment, but the possibilities in routine interactions in the future are overwhelming. Human communications and meetings may not require any person-to-person meetings.
BIOTECHNOLOGY’S POSSIBILITIES-ROBERT CARLSON
The Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) in the US wants to build a bridge between digital devices and the human cerebral cortex. The 60-million-dollar project is aiming for a digital-electronic and neural interface- a ‘cortical modem.’ Cochlear implants and artificial retinas have already made inroads into this interface between neurons and digital devices. Electronic implants in the brain controlling robotic limbs may be a way in the future for paraplegics.
In the future however, cybernetic repair methods may be competing with regenerative medicine. The latter entails regrowth of tissues and organs with replacement when needed. Regenerative medicine and genetic modifications promises to significantly increase the length and quality of life. It does lead to some mind-blowing speculations on the future of humankind and our eco-systems. Other animal species may disappear in competition to the limited resources on Earth, or there may occur a colonization of other planets with terra-farming.
Technology and biological progress in the future is bound to augment human mental and physical potential. Of course, digital interfaces with the brain and other organs may lead to security concerns and hacking issues. But, there is going to be an eventual meeting of information technology, genetic engineering, and regenerative medicine. The revenue and business potentials are huge.
Biotechnology is booming, and in 2012, in the US, revenues from this field surpassed 2% of the GDP. This was more than from mining (0.9%), utilities (1.5%), and manufacturing of computer and electronic products (1.6%). The three major sub-sectors of this booming field are: biologicals (ie, bio-pharmaceuticals), genetically modified crops, and industrial biotechnology (like biofuels, enzymes, and materials). Revenue from biotechnology increasingly rests on the ability to read, alter, and write genetic codes and their later manipulation in people, tumours, pathogens, crops, pets and every naturally occurring organism. The genetic codes enhancing the production of enzymes, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals would increase the quality and quantum of life.
The story of an aeroplane in only 100 years -from being unthinkable to commonplace- is an exciting clue to the future of biotechnology, says the author. The future of information storage might be DNA. DNA stores an immense amount of information, far exceeding the capacity of magnetic tapes or solid-state storage. DNA, the size of a sugar cube, might replace a massive warehouse full of magnetic tapes, in the words of the author. DNA information storage has a huge future which the public and private enterprises are keenly taking forward for possible public use and revenue generation.
Robotic technology will equip biological processing for fermentation, mass production of fuels and chemicals, production of antibiotics with minimum waste emissions. The inaccessible places may become a source for access by these robots. Digital computers will guide them, of course. The meeting of these three technologies: robots, computers, and biological components is likely to be the future of a stressed-out humankind. Robotic milking machines where cows and robots have come together as an integrated system to increase productivity and profitability are already in place.
BEYOND MOORE’S LAW- TIM CROSS
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, in 1965, made a statement that the number of components crammed onto an integrated circuit was doubling every year. This became known as the Moore’s law; and the one year amended to every two years later. This famous law become a pace-setter for the future of computing industry. As more components pack into the chip production to make them faster, from 1971 (launching of 4004) to 2016, the Moore’s law has undergone 22 ticks. Unfortunately, as per all predictions, Moore’s law is coming to a dead end, as by 2020, chips will reach the maximum capacity where the components are just 5 nanometers apart. It cannot go any more packed than this. However,the computer revolution promises to go on without stopping.
Better programming, more specialised hardware, and moving the chip components into the third dimension are the future possibilities which will work round the ‘death’ of the famous law. However, 3-D chips have issues with heating up tremendously and the cooling strategies need working out. Quantum computing is another exotic idea touted as the future of computers, but there are plenty of issues in using it as commonplace especially with regards to the extreme protection required to maintain its quantum states. The shielding and extreme cooling required within a hairbreadth of absolute zero implies that this may take some time before becoming commercially viable.
Computing in the future may disappear to unknown places from the desks, laps, and palms. The data centers may do all the computing through high speed cables and the user would only have an interactive communicative device to answer his needs. ‘Cloud computing’ hence will be an important way to blunt the impact of the demise of Moore’s law, says the author. Cloud computing may will remove the hardware from our sight in the future.
IoT, or the Internet of Things, is now making its impact slowly and surely. Chip embedding in every conceivable object like pavements, washing machines, kitchen equipment, shirts, and so on will connect to a central computing device far removed from the place of action. This would make the world more comprehensible and more monitored than ever before. The IoT would be a double-edged sword. The world would be a safer place with every street and slab of stone connected digitally, but it would also mean a huge invasion of privacy. Will we ever have any private moments?
User interfaces is another area ripe for improvement. Voice controlled applications are already in place. Voice controlled televisions, gesture tracking and gaze tracking, pioneered in video games, may well be commonplace in the future as a routine. Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, and electronic contact lenses are also technologies which will impact the huge computer revolution and take it forward. Moore’s law may go to the grave, but the computing revolution will stay alive and kicking!
TECH GENERATIONS: THE PAST AS PROLOGUE-ANN WINBLAD
To get a sense of change in the next three decades, we need to consider the successive waves of technology formed over the last three. Waves come, most break and a few reach the shore. The author here wonderfully describes the revolutions in technology of the past in the form of waves and the few reaching the shore making an impact for the future.
•The first wave: mainframe manufacturing was the first wave which comprised of IBM and other companies referred to as the ‘seven dwarfs’ or the ‘bunch.’ The other companies sank, but IBM came out strong. In each wave, a few core technology components or new business strategies emerge that leave their imprints and impact. Moore’s law set the tone for future progress in technology.
•The second wave: This was a period of battle among both hardware manufacturers and emerging software companies. The companies which reached the shore were Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle. A few companies like Lotus Software disappeared. The PC would reach hundreds and millions of desktops as shipments grew from 50,0000 in 1975 to over 134 million in 2000.
•The third wave and the fourth waves: Web 1.0 along with Amazon and google washed to the shores and reach huge scales in the third wave. Web 2.0 of the fourth wave brought in ‘cloud computing’ and ‘mobile computing.’ The winners were: Apple with iPhone, Google with Android, Amazon with Amazon Web Services. Salesforce was the winner in the fourth wave which was one of the first cloud-based software companies.
Microsoft took 15 years to reach 1 billion dollars, Google, founded in 1998, took 5 years. Google surpassed 50 billion in 15 years. Facebook crossed 1 billion in just 4 years. Each wave of computing technology was faster and stronger on an exponential basis, and reached huge profit margins in shorter times. Venture capitalists began in 1959 and its money powered the waves in an increasing manner. The revenues from the software companies and the money pumped in by the venture capitalists went up in an exponential manner driving huge revenues in the companies. In the third wave, free or open-source software became a popular choice for website developers.
•Wave five and six: Big data analytics and the internet of things, or IoT, are the technologies here. An open-source code called Hadoop released in 2006 started the big-data wave along with cloud-computing. This replaced the traditional data-processing applications with a system enabling parallel processing of massive amounts of data across inexpensive industry-standard servers that could scale without limit.
IoT is the next big thing. Trillions of sensors embedded in almost anything and everything ranging from wearable devices, cars, drones, pavements, shirts,and kitchen appliances would stream data into the internet. It would be a hugely connected world, but the issue comes with the loss of privacy, and immensely so. Every movement would be permanently etched into digital records. How would humanity react to that?
•The seventh wave: Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning is evolving in this wave and promises to be the ‘next big thing.’ Venture capitalists are investing in this technology. Whether it come to rule or crashes would be interesting to see.
THE GREAT INNOVATION DEBATE-RYAN AVENT
Ryan Avant, author of ‘The Wealth of Humans,’ writes an insightful essay on the future of technology. There is a debate whether innovative technology of the present times would impact productivity, wage increase, and living conditions the way it did in the middle part of the 20th century. Electrification, cars, and other technologies boosted productivity and labour employment hugely in the 20th century, beginning after the world war two and peaking in a few decades.
Technological innovations of today with increasing digitization have included faster computing methods, mobile technology, and machine intelligence. They have created driverless cars and machines playing good chess, but is it going to increase productivity? There are pessimists like Robert Gordon who do not think so. Gordon, backed by some strong data comparing the present productivity to that 5 decades earlier, feels that the digital revolution has limited transformative potential. The pay for many workers adjusted for inflation has also not grown so much. Social networks have replaced the promise of flying cars with debatable contributions to economic growth.
The data is favouring the pessimists. Productivity growth is the amount of output produced with a given set of land, labour, and capital. This is an important parameter to study the impact of technology. Productivity soared after the second world war, decelerated in the 1970s, rose again in the 1990s, and has remained static since the mid-2000s. This captures the gains from digitization, personal computing, and the internet. These snazzy technologies have not changed humanity’s ability to produce more with less. In the words of a venture capitalist, as the author quotes, ‘We were promised flying cars but got social networks instead.’ The pace of innovation is also slowing down. The outlook for technology driven revolution in the third millennium seems to be grim according to Gordon. The comparison of economic value produced in service and information industries and the output from farms and industries is again a difficult proposition.
The optimists have a different story to tell. They argue against the underestimation of the cumulative effect of exponential improvement in computing power. The Moore’s law is no longer a constraint on technological progress. A very important argument which the optimists use is that the delay between the arrival of technology and the full exploitation of its potential takes between 5 to 15 years. The past example of the productivity growth after electricity and telegraph took almost 2 decades. The software for business-management built years earlier led to the early 2000s productivity quickening. The impact of the web-based businesses of 2000s will perhaps kick in later.
But there is bound to be an upheaval in 2050 when societies will try to adjust with technological changes, including the complex social and legal rules. New laws to cope with the huge amount of data collected will prove a challenge to the society. Privacy issues will come to the fore as the smartphones in every person’s hand will ensure each life to come in the public domain. There will be concerns about the governments spying on its citizens.
Finally, in a brilliant conclusion the author says,
‘Part of the reason growth in productivity has proved disappointing so far is the collision of new technologies with 19th and 20th century social institutions. In the absence of new reforms and investments, economies will continue to operate with vast reservoirs of underemployed less-skilled workers. These workers will hold down wages and discourage the use of robots and thinking machines. If, in the coming decades, society finds ways to allow workers to be choosier in seeking where they work and how long to spend on their job, then firms might have an incentive to make better use of both technology and human labour. Then the productivity growth of the early 20th century could perhaps come back and make life better for everyone.’
FARMING TOMORROW-GEOFFREY CARR
In this essay, the author speculates on the possible way farming will done in 2050. Gene editing and genomic selection of crops, app driven advice regarding the timing and selection of crops, fertiliser-free mixtures of soil enrichers, increasing mechanisation, robotic automatons, grid pipes delivering the exact amount of water and nutrients, are some of the revolutions envisaged in the future. The agricultural revolution would be able to feed a planet of 10 billion easily. Drones and satellite information would come into play to spray the pesticides or fungicides in a very selective fashion.
The seeding of soil with bacteria that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and liberate phosphorus might well become routine. The need for chemical fertilisers would come down. Turbo-boost photosynthesis would allow the crop to grow faster in the future. Genetic modification got off to a bad start in the 1990s with an extremely bad publicity. Science and the labs took public acceptance for granted which proved to be disastrous; and severe movements erupted against the entry of science into agriculture. Involving the farmers and the consumers more in the modifications of agriculture will make things easier for implementation of newer strategies. The fear of feeding a human population rising to outstrip its ability to feed itself would evaporate surely.
Urban vegetable factories in controlled environments of sun, light, water, and nutrients would allow fresh vegetables on a continuous basis. Fish-farming would likely seep into urban areas too. Fish has overtaken beef in 2013 in terms of production. Fish is more likely to become a dietary staple and likely become the major source of animal protein. The future also holds promise for cell culture and industrial production of eggs and meat without the use of animals. Now, that would be a revolution of some sort.
Industrialization, robots, automation, decollectivizing land-ownership, would have both good and bad consequences. Labour might migrate to urban areas with overcrowding and strain. But, the farmers who stay back for agriculture are likely to become economically strong. A phenomenon noted after the world wars in Europe would repeat in the poorer countries of Asia and Africa likely by 2050.
HEALTHCARE MEETS PATIENT POWER-GIANRICO FARRUGIA
Patients, not technology, will be driving change in the future, says the author emphatically. Big Data, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence will play a major role in decision making, continuous monitoring of patients, and even performing complex procedures. AI might outperform doctors in certain cognitive tasks by 2050. The analogy which the author gives is the transition of automobiles from cruise control to adaptive cruise control and is now on the verge of driverless cars.
Regenerative medicine using stem cells, bio-engineered products or biotherapeutics which includes tissues grown in the labs will play a huge role in the future of medicine. Bioengineered products might simply replace the diseased organs, something which is routine today for cardiac valves. Vaccines and immunomodulation will play a bigger role in preventive medicine and in certain auto-immune diseases like diabetes.
Technology will see the rise of companies capable of integrating huge amounts of data related to health and disease. Big Data integration will certainly streamline decision making with regards to health issues. The trips to a clinic may drastically come down as our homes will become an extension of the doctor’s office.
The human genome, completely deciphered in 2000, is yet to be completely making its impact on a commercial basis. But, in the coming years, as the cost of sequencing rapidly comes down, there are bound to be ‘-omic’ based interventions in diagnosis and treatment. Pharmacogenomics is the interaction between drugs and our genes; epigenomics is the study of changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in the DNA; and proteomics is the large-scale study of the structure and function of proteins with time and illness. These fields will be impacting human diseases in a positive manner. Targeted therapies, that is directing a drug towards a specific diseased molecule rather than all cells is going to be the way of the future.
Molecular imaging is the combination of an imaging modality like radiation, ultrasound, magnetism, or light to target a cell or its specific components. PET is an example which picks up tumour cells in the body and its application in cancer assessment is quite widely in use today. In the future, molecular imaging will play a huge role in diagnosing diseases at a cellular level. Of course, as the author cautions, ethical issues will become important as technology grows rapidly. The patient’ interest should be the final focus in the application of technology in medicine.
ENERGY TECHNOLOGY: THE RISE OF THE RENEWABLES – ANNE SCHUKAT
The fossil fuel is presently contributing to almost 60% of our energy needs. In the future, the focus would be on alternative energy sources. The twin issues with fossil-fuels is their depleting availability and carbon emissions leading to global warming. Solar and wind power which are minor players today are going to play a major role by 2050. Solar and wind technologies contribute only 11% of our energy resources today; however, they are likely to go to almost 40% in another 30 years. Fossil-fuels may not disappear but their contribution would be a lot lesser.
The biggest advantage of solar and wind power of course is that it is freely available, renewable, and clean. We cannot ask for more. The disadvantage is that they are not constantly available. Improved storage technologies in the form of batteries- large and small, may overcome this problem. Also, technology is looking at interconnecting grids to transfer energy from excess to depleted areas. There would be a possibility of even selling excess power at an individual and corporation level.
Better storage systems (which is lithium-ion battery mainly today) is the way forward in world energy utilisation. Electric cars, hybrid vehicles, better public transport, solar power on roof-tops of every small and large building, highly efficient cooling, heating, and lighting systems, promise to make Earth self-reliant for a clean energy. Nuclear processes like fission and fusion are effective, but they are difficult to harness and the cost of production would unlikely to come down drastically. Also, environmental dangers are likely to be more with these technologies, especially during times of accidents and earthquakes. This scare recently happened in Japan. Hence, they are unlikely to be major players as the world looks at the Sun and the wind.
Fracking is a technology where hydraulic fracturing of sedimentary rocks releases huge amounts of natural gases. Natural gases have lesser polluting power. This will reduce the need for coal, but this is a phenomenon likely restricted to the US; and there is a fear of this technology in precipitating earthquakes. Technology seems to be ready for our energy challenges in the next few decades as urbanization will rapidly increase. The promise is for a cleaner energy too without raising the global temperatures.
MANUFACTURING NEW MATERIALS-PAUL MARKILLIE
In this essay, the author predicts that a combination of new materials and techniques will change both the product source materials and the places of production. Material engineering is going to play a dominant role in the next few decades. Carbon fiber knitted to form yarns is the material of the future. It is lightweight, more energy efficient, uses less water, and the final product is more efficient in terms of power and energy utilisation. It is in use today to make mountain bikes, golf clubs and Formula 1 cars. About half the structure of aircraft such as Boeing 787 and Airbus 380 is carbon fiber. Presently carbon fiber is not very commercially viable as it is expensive and labour intensive. However, it will not be so in another 30 years. Carbon fiber will replace steel and aluminium. The vehicles made of carbon are also more crash resistant.
Material technologies are understanding the properties of materials at the most microscopic level using innovative technologies like electron microscopes, atomic-force microscopes, mass spectrometers, and X-ray synchrotrons. This deep study at the ‘nano’ level removes a lot of guesswork in dealing with new materials. Nanomaterials like the wonder material, graphene, only one atom thick will fuel the production of faster computers and better batteries replacing the silicon used today.
Big data gathering and an open access enterprise will create a so called ‘materials genome.’ The properties decided first will drive the computers to get the right material from the database. This is a reverse approach from the typical trial and error approach in deciding the right material for technology, the famous example being the filament used for the light bulb by Edison. LEDs are an invention of material science and they are likely to get into ceiling panels of buildings as illuminating films.
Virtual Reality will play a big role in assembling and testing new technologies completely in the confines of the computer world before setting up for mass production. Test drives and crash tests for cars will be on computers in the future.
Additive manufacturing or 3-D printing is a futuristic technology which involves building up layers of materials additively instead of removing them by the traditional cutting, drilling, and machining. Plastic, glass, metals, ceramics, and biological substances would find its way in 3-D printing to make quality products cheaply. 3-D printing technologies at home may allow people to make objects of their fantasy at homes too! GE has installed a 50 million dollar 3-D printing facility to produce fuel nozzles for its jet engine from a super alloy made up of cobalt, chrome, and molybdenum. 3-D printers in China are now printing the electronic circuits directly into mobiles and consumer electronics. Additive printing is adding more products to its bag as in the future, even houses are likely to get printed. House printing is at the nascent stage, at the edges of today. The future holds a lot of promise in this printing house technology!
Nanotechnology will play a great role in shaping the future and the author sees a big role of the recycling industry. Carbon fiber, nanomaterials, gold, silver, yttrium – valuable and toxic substances need extraction from the dismantled gadgets, cars, batteries, and household golds. This industry will become a major industry with plenty of entrepreneurs rushing into this field.
The result of all these technologies that outsourcing to labour intensive sheds would drastically come down. The production would be nearer home with increasing automation requiring smaller spaces. Shoe companies are now offering automated knitting machines, which operate anywhere, even in high street stores, to make customised trainers. This was traditionally outsourced to other cheap labour areas like Asia. As the author succinctly puts in the end,
‘the days of satanic mills, oily rags and overalls will have gone. The great entrepreneurs of the future will be making things.’
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY: WIZARDRY AND ASYMMETRY- BENJAMIN SUTHERLAND
That this book is for Americans by Americans gets very evident in this chapter. The chapter scares and shocks deeply as the author talks constantly of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ as the world goes down on a dangerous path.
The destruction in the future would be creative as fully encased ‘Iron Man’ type soldiers and robots will take to the war zone, ably assisted by stealthy miniature robotic spies resembling insects. Robotic technology may take over land, sea, and air. They might take faster decisions than humans to destroy incoming missiles and bombs. A stage may come when robots may be even taking decisions to pull the trigger or press the button based on algorithms. This would give rise to many ethical questions about death and killing in war. Who would be responsible for war crimes?
Computer geeks may replace athletic soldiers in fighting wars in a not so distant future. An offshoot of difficulty in targeting enemy soldiers would make civilians more susceptible as targets.
Stealth missiles capable of hitting distant objects, highly efficient sniper rifles, advanced nuclear submarines, laser guns, computers, Data gathering, machine learning, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence will come together in a heady mix to create a dangerous world. The ‘enemies’ would not be sleeping as efforts would be equally on their side too. However, the author says cheerfully that America and its allies are more forward and liberal; hence, its soldiers face competitive advantage of ‘adaptive velocity’ in the face of changing circumstances. The soldiers of an illiberal and undemocratic regime would be more restricted in their use of power and weapons. I would imagine that there is a large argument based on these lines of which I am not aware, but the premise looks rather unbelievable.
Attack and defence for individual countries would creep up in space as satellite technology becomes cheaper, easier, and accessible. The satellites and robots in space would protect countries from approaching missiles. They may even make for efficient guided destructive systems. The future looks very scary. However, the author in the final part makes one telling comment. The decadent and declining Romans lost wars when they started concentrating on engineering the means of war like catapults rather than actual fighting. Something similar might happen in the future as the countries rely more on technology and the actual soldiers become weak and timid.
In the author’s words, ‘Technology increasingly serves as a dangerous comforting substitute for a declining will to fight, epitomised by timid resistance to Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.’
The chapter makes one reflect that Earth does not deserve us and neither do we deserve it. The Earth would be happier and at complete peace if humans simply destroy themselves and go. Gaia may breathe peacefully in the absence of humans.
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY GETS TRULY PERSONAL-LEO MIRANI
In this brilliant chapter, the author sees a world where the real and virtual worlds will become heavily intertwined and interlocked. Digital technology will become ubiquitous and might perhaps even invade our bodies. A default online world has replaced a default offline world today by the ubiquitous wi-fi and mobile coverage in a matter of a few decades.
Virtual Reality has its applications in entertainment and gaming presently, but it is only a matter of time before it becomes widespread in everyday life. Doctors remotely examining patients, immunocompromised children attending schools from home, soldiers training for unfamiliar terrain, business negotiations with personal interactions like in a real world are some of the extremely possible scenarios. 3-D printing is a technology of the future; an individual can design and manufacture objects at home using computers and digital technology.
Augmented Reality with glasses or even with embedded eye implants (like the Google glass and other technologies) are shaping up presently. In a near future, smartphones may seem cumbersome and may even become obsolete. Smart glasses may just provide all the information on a need to know basis. The possibilities are enormous. Cloud computation, 5G broadband improving over 10 to 100 times the previous generation, lighter displays, smaller pixels will make these technologies very real and commonplace in a future world. There might be even a time when implants in the brain allows one interact with the world in a virtual manner.
The trade-offs to enjoy the future is the complete loss of privacy with a near-perfect surveillance. Even today with smartphones, GPS, call logs, and search histories, a person is out in the open to the smallest detail. VR and AR would be able to record every twist in the neck and every flick of the eye. It is a scary proposition. Another concern is that a future digital world would be in the hands of a few firms. A monopoly AR firm can make a person invisible to the world despite his existence. The web philosophy of open standards allows anyone to access, publish, and link to each other. Such open principles do not seem to applied to these future technologies; and these may have disastrous consequences if the legal frameworks are not clear. Security is a continuing concern as these systems are never perfect. However, the major worry of a future digital world is isolation and the lessening of social interaction. Our children’s brains may rot as they disappear into a private virtual world.
THE ETHICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-LUCIANO FLORIDI
Many scientists and thinkers fear Artificial Intelligence for its possible ‘explosion’ leaving humans far behind. Could this spell the ‘end of human race’ as predicted by Stephen Hawking. However, the author cautions here that predictions by experts is not blind truth- Bill Gates had predicted the end of spams in two years, back in 2004. The hurry to label AI as demons, the author says,is a mistake. The problem is not the intelligence of the machines and the possibility that they will take over humans; the problem is the intense evil and stupidity of humans. It is how we use these technologies that will decide the fate of humans. The current and foreseeable technologies have the intelligence of an abacus-zero, says the author.
Microsoft had introduced a AI based chat robot to twitter in 2016 which was supposed to become incrementally smarter as it interacted with humans. ‘It became an evil, Hitler loving, Holocaust-denying, incestual-sex promoting, “Bush did 9-11”- proclaiming chatterbox and Microsoft removed it within 16 hours and gave its apologies. That speaks a lot of technologies and human nature. Computers still do not detect printers lying by its side.
Humans build the environment around AI which is the robot’s envelope. This envelope defines the work environment and the capabilities of the robot. Enveloping used to be either a stand-alone like buying a robot with the required envelope, like a dishwasher or a washing machine; or implemented within the walls of industrial buildings, carefully tailored around their inhabitants. Nowadays, the scope of enveloping has broadened into the world and is visible everywhere. Human-computer interactions has become somatic with touchscreens, voice commands, listening devices, gesture sensitive apps and so on. In such a friendly, AI infosphere, the computer now asks to prove that it is not interacting with robots. The CAPTCHA is something we are all aware of. It is an acronym for the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
The interactions with AI may reach higher domains progressively, but it looks impossible to create conscious thinking machines. It is impossible to create an algorithm that always leads to a correct ‘yes-no’ answer. The outputs to an input may become incredibly fast with speedy data processing; the machines will outperform humans a thousand-fold despite being no cleverer than a toaster, says the author cryptically.
Hence, the worry is not an imaginary Artificial Intelligence, but a very real human stupidity- H.A.L or humanity at large. The author gives certain guidelines to counter these challenges. We should make AI environment and human friendly. AI’s stupidity should work for human intelligence and not the other way around. AI’s predictive power should work for our freedom and autonomy finally making us more human. He quotes Churchill who said that ‘we shape our buildings, and then the buildings shape us.’ This applies to the infosphere and the smart technologies around us.
THE DATA DRIVEN WORLD-KENNETH CUKIER
The future of technology is AI and machine learning. Technology is being ‘cognitised’ as tiny computer chips and sleek algorithms injects intelligence into everything we do. This intelligence depends finally on the handling of data. Data traditionally is limited sampling of the population but as machines are getting better, the capacity to handle bigger and bigger data is also increasing. This leads to increased efficiency of the machines too. Big-Data is the catchword of tomorrow’s technology. Detecting the subtlest of patterns and acting on it will make machines smarter. Finally, in tomorrow’s world, things will become cheaper, abundant, and easily available. This will impact three main areas of our world: health care, education, and law.
In healthcare and in diagnostic pathology, databases will perhaps become the smartest doctors as data will analysed at a faster rate. Doctors typically depend on memory and experience, which may make way for smart algorithms and large databases. The database will simply remember each case, medications and side-effects allowing for faster diagnosis and a prompt focussed therapy. The data driven AI may initially help the doctors, but a scenario where they replace them is not entirely impossible.
There will be a tailoring of education according to the individual needs and capabilities of the student and the teaching potential of the teacher. Online classes, continual monitoring of reading habits, constant assessment of learned material, e-books, and learning exclusively from home will be the impacts of data acquisition on a large basis. Education will shift from the paradigm of a ‘mass-education’ to an ‘individual education’ model which was the norm in much olden times. Private tutors were the order of the day who would train individual students in their subjects of interest. Industrialisation, urbanization, and mass production gave rise to a group education policy of common schools, colleges, and universities. The future will see the return of individual education of the past!
Law will undergo a sea-change, hopefully with decreased legal fees, with big data and smart search algorithms. The picking of jurors, finding precedents, searching exhaustive documents, determining flight risk in bail applicants will become more effective as storing and transmitting of information will increase at an exponential rate. Big data is sure to play a determining role in creating a just society.
There is a deep fear of losing jobs in these areas, but there may be jobs created in some other areas which may not be completely predictable. Protection of data may span a new career potential. The creation and shifting to new professions has happened with all technologies of the past and the future may be the same. A foreseeable problem with the application of big data and machine learning would be that there would be more information on the ‘what’ of things, but the ‘why’ may become increasingly irrelevant. There will be an excess of information in the age of AI, but a potential trade-off of causality for efficiency. Machine learning will pick up cancerous cells better, but the reasons will perhaps be unknown. Police software will identify high crime areas for better patrolling but will not tell the reasons.
The world would need to take care of regulations regarding privacy and definitions of ‘right to information’ very clearly. Defining regulations regarding the use of technology is a huge challenge for any society, as has been stressed by many authors in this book. Regulation is a two-way sword; it can protect and it can also stifle. Software technology took off hugely in India during the last two decades because the governments did not have time to react to the new technologies. Regulation, laws, labour policies sometimes can stifle growth of industries and technology.
The data bank will emerge as a new sector in economy for the informational assets of individuals and companies. The data will have high value for companies and governments. Personal privacy may become a huge issue and there might be payments needed to protect it. It may become a luxury item like flying business class, says the author.
Data finally will bring three changes: one, what we do will become more efficient; two, we will better understand the functioning of the world as it truly is; and three, we will track things constantly like a motion picture in flow rather than snapshot photographs of events. Big data is going to hit strongly.
MEGATECH VERSUS MEGA-INEQUALITY-ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
In this insightful essay, the author suggests how the intelligence of technologists and the wisdom of politicians should come together to address the inequalities arising out of technology. Today, 1% of the population holds almost all the productivity gains of the last three decades. Capitalist and communist models have both failed perhaps in achieving equality. The rich and the poor are antagonistic to each other as growing inequality is undermining the basic pillars of the capitalist order: opportunity, upward mobility, economic growth, and shared prosperity. Liberal education policies have failed and on the other hand, immigration control policies of the conservatives reduce growth, dynamism, and talent inflow.
Clever knowledge workers have exploited technology to improve their output while reducing their inputs and support staff. The cleverest knowledge workers exploit technology to bring huge riches. However, the bargaining power of anyone doing repeated jobs, replaceable by intelligent machines working on algorithms, is reducing. Jobs and wages are on a downward spiral because of the selective use of technology leading to a greater divide between the rich and the poor.
How do we deal with this? The author says that humans should intelligently turn technology into servants rather than making them masters. We should harness technology to address the growing inequality. The primary area to focus here would be labour-intensive areas like education. Elite institutions like Harvard where the average annual income of the parents of its students surpasses 450,000 dollars today have become luxuries for the average. The free universities of Europe are almost academic slums.
Technology can bring access of quality education to the most deprived at an extremely low cost. Khan Academy of US is a prime example. What started as a small initiative to help family members is now a world-wide phenomenon with big time funding by governments and private players. Today, it gives free lessons to 4 million children worldwide. Online courses by reputed universities, personalised education, and adaptive learning are some of the methods which has enhanced equality of education.
Providence Talks was a device implemented by a mayor of Rhode Island in 2014 which the parents wore. This device records the number of words they say daily to their children and gives regular advice on how better to talk to their children. Listening to more words impacts later education and understanding in a positive manner.
‘Vocational guidance’ and ‘occupational guidance’ are the two greatest weaknesses of modern education. Technology can address that effectively. Many companies like Cisco are implementing online programs and remote learning which enhances skills and employability of people who are uneducated and haven’t had access to a good education.
Data revolution and wearable devices will bring health equality. Mass production and Big data revolutions will address public and individual health issues more effectively and in a cheaper way. Similarly, technology will enforce social inequality too as crime and corruption monitoring would be stricter. Innovations finally trickle down to the masses helping them. Not all of them are successes in bringing positive changes, some just fizzle out like on-laptop-per-child policies implemented in some areas. However, with forward thinking technologists and wise politicians, technology may address inequalities in society effectively. The true catchword is the wisdom of politicians. Is it ever likely? The history of the world answers a highly probable ‘no’.
WORK AND THE RISE OF MACHINES-LYNDA GRATTON
Machines and technology threatens workers across all strata. A routine line worker to the highest executive seem replaceable. There is no doubt about this happening but the success of any organization would depend on how well they adapt to emerging technologies. Many technologies of the past have unlocked the valuable gift of time for humans to focus on ‘creativity, curiosity, and innovation,’ says the author. Think of a washing machine as an example. Present technologies are doing nothing of that kind with regards to time.
Studies have shown that on average, we check our mobile phones 150 times a day; instant messages, tweets, and notifications interrupt us once every 10.5 minutes. The constant e-mails are a source of worry for most executives. The background ‘noise’ in the environment is failing to provide time and space for valuable human qualities like creativity, judgement, and decision making.
Though machine learning, Big Data, and AI are going to make faster and better analysis of things present and possible futures using increasingly smart algorithms, it seems unlikely that they can replace the emotional component of human decisions. Consciousness perhaps will never come out of machines; however, the hard-core materialists are working to disprove this. The author says, ‘The emergence of inexpensive machines that facilitate communications, social networking and crowdsourcing has created opportunities to rapidly build networks of globally distributed people.’ This threatens to convert vertical hierarchies into horizontal networks.
With threats from all sides to jobs, responsibilities, and power structures, the defining aspect of successful organisations would be adaptability. Work models need enhancement by organisations and leaders in certain key ways. The first is by mending the broken career ladders. The middle-skill workers are most affected by technology and hence, a more flexible approach for career development may work better. Similarly, companies would do well if it develops symbiotic long-lasting relationships with talented workers instead of looking at formal employment. This model would be beneficial to both individuals and companies.
A personalised learning path by emphasizing lifelong learning and competence-based training supported by the organisation will work stronger than the traditional model of standardized degrees and incremental skills development. And finally, instead of looking at machines as antagonistic to job opportunities, the thinking should evolve to design better cooperation between humans and machines to augment and improve the job possibilities. There may be new jobs created and there may be augmentation of human potentialities by machines-we simply cannot know of them precisely, but the philosophy should be of cooperation rather than antagonism.
The interface of humans and machines is going to be interesting. What would be the value of human work with the rise of machine intelligence? What is the purpose of technologies we are creating? How do we want to live with them? As slaves or as masters or as equals? Finally, it is we who do the choosing and that is the most important thing to remember. But the fear of creating a Frankenstein lingers on the collective human mind.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS: LESSONS FROM THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION-OLIVER MORTON
The final chapter brilliantly sum up the philosophy regarding the future of technology by looking at key events of the past. For most of human history, technology was constant from generation to generation and change was slow. Much of the world still experiences technology in a stable inter-generational manner. There is a difference between technology-as-innovation and technology-as-used. The fascination for the former hides the latter in its importance to daily human life, often as basic as a rickshaw or a condom, says the author.
The two fundamental technologies on which today’s trade and transport depend are long-established, the diesel engine of the 1890s and the gas turbines of the 1930s. They took their time to establish dominance, but the world moves on these two for now. Similarly, in the 1900s and the early 1910s, fixing inert nitrogen from the atmosphere to make it more reactive by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch has been the single most important technology of the 20th century. This gave rise to enormous explosive and warfare power. The same technology also gave rise to fertilisers feeding an ever-increasing population. There is ignorance of the slow and solid technological substrate which allows for deep continuities.
The Industrial Revolution however changed it. It kick-started a world which not only changed technologies but also the rate at which technologies developed. The rate at which businesses based on those technologies came and fell away also increased rapidly. In the metaphor of a steam engine, the technology seems to acquire a certain will of its own. It seems to be developing now according to its own rules and logic. ‘Technium’ is the term used by one author which is the sum of all things technological and expresses the universal drive towards greater connectedness and greater complexity. There is an underlying deep fear that if there is a divergence between what the semi-autonomous technology wanted and what was best for the people, it would be humans who need to realign their priorities.
Historians wrongly paint steam engines replacing water wheels as fundamental to Industrial Revolution, says the author. Steam was not necessary for exponential industrial growth, nor was it cheaper. It replaced the alternatives because it suited better the people making the investments. Steam freed people from the constraints of time and place allowing them to put the mills where they wished. They could alter the speed of operation with ease. This allowed industry to be highly concentrated, making effective use of deeper pools of labour. Owners and workers preferred steam to water not because of inherent power of technology but out of the social relations between the two groups. The author hence raises a very subtle point: technology did not cause the revolution; it was the revolution’s child.
The history of steam engine has important implications in today’s technologies too- the era of computers, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning. Steam engines highlights the central role of capitalism. The reinvestment of capital in future market-driven growth creates a demand for technology unlike that seen in any previous mode of social organisation, in the words of the author. The evidence for this ‘technology itself wanting to do the next step’ comes from the fact that many innovations of technology have come simultaneously. A certain technology acts as a springboard for further technologies, and hence many people come with the same kind of ideas.
Secondly, the way steam power became a causative factor for, not merely central to, the Industrial Revolution tells us something what people want from technology. People credited steam engines with a power and agenda of its own leading to future possibilities. Present technologies seem to have the same autonomous power. The author says that technology really does not want anything. However, people want technology to want things, at some level, and some of them are working hard to push it to the limits like in AI. The focus on autonomy is perhaps understandable, because the most innovative progress in the last few decades have come from information technologies. The fear of Frankesteinian monsters however lurks in the background in the quest for autonomy.
Steam also had an important problem of unintended consequences, the unknown unknowns. Ozone depletion because of CFCs is a prototype of this unintended consequence of technology. So, we need to be on a consequent lookout for any harmful consequences of the present technologies. Two things can happen as a possible response. One is that new technologies will come up which will supplement the existing technology or completely replace it. Geoengineering technologies to brighten Earth’s clouds, scattering sunlight using particles, or pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are some examples of technology used as solutions to problems created by technologies and industries.
The second thing about future unintended consequences is that the responses will themselves have unintended consequences. Hence, there will be a constant drive to further innovation and technological fixes. Brian Arthur, an economist, says, ‘Problems are the answers to solutions.’
Technology does not have an agenda of its own but linked closely to social factors and the thinking human mind. Technology serves as an agenda of others, and it creates new needs as effectively as it meets old ones and hence, responsible navigating is possible. Innovations in technology will persist if the human mind exists. The limits are simply an unknown.
This finishes the summary of the unusual book and is one of the most recommended books for anyone hoping to see the next few decades. The only people who would not benefit from the book would be an extremely illiterate person or an extremely wise person living in the forests, not caring for the world. For the rest of us, with some literacy and terribly caught in the world, the simple message is to read the book!
RANDOM MUSINGS 