David Tolfree, VP MANCEF
Can a Techno-Utopian world of abundance for all ever be achieved? This question provokes further questions and many answers.
When I read articles in this magazine and listen to talks at international conferences about how some of the new technologies are advancing exponentially hence creating unparalleled opportunities to solve many of the world’s problems, I become stimulated. But after, a realisation hits me. I am fortunate enough to have at least some understanding and appreciation of what these technologies can do for millions, maybe billions, of people around the world. But therein lies the problem. I am part of a small minority.
My concern is the widening gap between those who know and those who don’t know, and the haves and the have-nots. The lack of awareness and understanding of what new technologies can achieve in creating a more prosperous world is becoming a barrier and impeding their exploitation. One of the consequences of this lack of understanding of the benefits of technology is the growing resentment to the pace of change, to globalisation and to the adoption of new manufacturing methodologies that are perceived by many to threaten jobs.
Fear of jobs being taken over by machines is not new. It happened during the first industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. The difference now is the advances in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), sensor technologies and wireless communication that are enabling more sophisticated robotic systems to be employed in both industrial and services sectors. Intelligent autonomous robots linked to each other are already being used in vehicle production.
Only a small step is required to extend the use of robotic systems in the service sector. Offices will then only be staffed with top-level decision-makers not operatives. As robots become smarter even these will be replaced. In the short-term re-training people for these higher level roles will not be easy. For example, when, in a few years, driverless cars become the norm, can the twelve thousand plus New York taxi drivers be re-trained to be computer programmers? Re-training an ageing population will also be a challenge, a task for which our education and training systems are currently ill-equipped.
The Internet has revolutionised society and given millions more people access to information and knowledge. But education systems worldwide are generally failing to alert young people to its implications. The lack of emphasis in the teaching of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in schools, colleges and even higher educational establishments, is one of the reasons for a dire shortage of engineers and technically trained people in the US and Europe. The US will be short of 3 million technically skilled people by 2018. This problem is less serious in Asia where these core subjects are given top priorities. It’s why the GDP of the countries in this region is rising faster than in Europe and the US.
Taking a more positive observation, if we consider what has been achieved in the last century by only a small fraction of the world’s population with little knowledge, no Internet and limited global communications, it is easy to predict what could be achieved if the creativity of the whole of humanity could be harnessed. The mathematical exponential term would not be sufficient to describe the rate of progress. The human brain with about 86 billion active neuron cells has been responsible for all the achievements of the human race. If the ten billion humans predicted to be in the world by 2050 are all educated to the same level with equal access to all knowledge, then the achievements will be immeasurable. But without an appropriate governance in place to guide and manage them, disaster could await humanity and usher in a dystopian society.
Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, whose best-selling book ‘Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think’, are clearly techno-optimists who take the view that all human needs will be satisfied by the 2030s. But are they, like other visionaries, ignoring the reality of the world in which we live? It is possible to make predictions of possible developments in twenty-five years. But the exponential advances of technology make such predictions of the future by extrapolating from the present no longer reliable.
The writers state ‘technological innovation will produce a future where ten billion people have access to clean water, food, energy, healthcare, education, and everything else that is necessary for a first world standard of living.’
With the technologies associated with computing, communication, energy, food production, healthcare, medicine and IOT advancing at an exponential rate, they will continue to be delivered. Wireless communication and the Internet are immune to geographical and political boundaries and are already enabling people in the undeveloped world to communicate and engage with whom they wish. Between 2000 and 2015 mobile phone penetration increased from 2% to 97%, the latter figure represents 7 billion mobile subscriptions. The cheapest smartphones are already costing only $10 in Africa and Asia. It is predicted that by 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. Between 2000 and 2015, the global Internet penetration grew from 6.3% to 43.5%. Therefore, there is already an abundance in communication. People living in tribal villages in Africa have almost the same communication opportunities as those living in New York or London. But in the other areas listed in the book progress will be much slower.
The vision of abundance assumes that what will become available will be accessible to all. In fact, most of these are already available to the richer minority of the world’s population. Therefore, it is not resource or knowledge barriers that deprives everyone in the world from these benefits but socio-political and cultural ones, particularly for those who live in divided or autocratically governed societies more prevalent in the less developed countries. Abundance for all is a desirable goal for humanity but I believe it will only be achievable when these barriers are overcome. This makes the concept of abundance still a distant reality.
An anecdote. I recently visited the NASA space centre in Houston and saw the control room used to guide astronauts to the Moon landings. The controllers didn’t have computers in 1969. They used slide rules for their calculations. The storage capacity of their systems didn’t exceed 2MB. It’s less than the size of the individual photos I took of the control room with my mobile phone camera. Such has been the technological progress of the four decades.
It was the leadership and drive given by President Kennedy in his famous speech that committed the US to putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade which made possible that feat with what today we would consider primitive technology. How was it achieved?
People need to be inspired, led and supported to achieve success. Unfortunately, in the twentieth century, profound achievements such as the realisation of nuclear power from the splitting of the atom and the Moon landings were driven by competition and fear. That basic human instinct still exists but new advances in medicine and healthcare and the emergence of new technologies in materials, computing and robotics, indicate that humanity has climbed the development ladder for more altruistic reasons. Many problems have to be overcome but there exists now an atmosphere of rationality and benevolence within enlightened societies. There is, and always will be, those who don’t want change and wish to revert to the past and perpetuate old myths, beliefs and tribal customs but as history shows, reason and rationality prevails.
The paradox is that humanity emerged from the age of enlightenment in the seventeenth-century to an industrial-based world and now in the twenty-first century we have entered a new age of possibilities unimagined by our ancestors. But we are at a cross roads and unsure of the direction to take.
The irony is the decision-makers who mainly inhabit politics and big business generally lack foresight and think short-term. Their shortcomings will delay progress. Therefore, it’s likely the road to the world of abundance, outlined by Diamandis and Kotler, will be a bumpy one and the final destination may not be a Techno-Utopia. I am confident, however, that humanity will make progress towards achieving this ultimate goal. The technologies referred to will power the vehicle but will not provide navigation for the driver. It’s the latter where attention much be directed for a writer in the twenty-second century to be able to look back and record the history of this century with pride.
References
Abundance: The future is Better than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Free Press, New York, ISBN 978-1-4516-1421-3
David Tolfree is currently the MANCEF Vice President. He is a professional physicist with forty years’ research and managerial experience working for the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority and Research Councils. He was the co-founder and director of Technopreneur Ltd, a technical consultancy company for the commercial exploitation of micro/nanotechnologies and a consultant to UK Government departments on micro/nanotechnologies. He is one of the founding members of MANCEF and the UK Institute of Nanotechnology and is now a member of the UK KTN. David has written 162 publications, including roadmaps, newspaper, conference, magazine and journal articles and books. He has given interviews on television and radio on micro/nanotechnologies, and has been an editor and reviewer for a number of related scientific journals. He currently serves on the editorial Advisory Board of the International Commercial Micro Manufacturing Magazine.