Throughout the course of these sessions, the topic of the Future is always present, somewhere backstage and often making short cameos but its presence was always felt. This time, however, the Future is in the spotlight and everyone's watching - hence, the session's quirky name taken from the cartoon. As usual, we started off with a quote, not from a dead scientific or technological genius but from an English statesman - Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill advised that “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. ” What he meant by it, in the context of T.W.C, was probably that the future is all created by our minds. However, as a history student, I realized that what Churchill could have also meant was in the political sphere because he used the words 'empire'. From what I interpret from him saying this is that the future empires or spheres of governance are going to be largely ideological. Why do I believe this may be so even though I may not know the full context in which this quote was taken is because we are already moving into a tribal communities (which will be discussed later) and ideologies will be one of the dividing and unifying forces of such communities. Either way, it's a brilliant quote and a good way to work the mind at the start of the session.
The first interesting video presented in the session was on Future, Technology and the Next 50 years Megatrends. It was a quick summary of the unending potential of technology in the future and it was amazing to see how quickly such developments have been continuing and what they could bring to the table in terms of improving life in the future. Although it was all fabulous, great and merry. A major concern that was brought up during discussion was - where do we focus on? Due to the vast nature of wanting to improve every single aspect of our lives, it becomes utterly impossible to hit every single base due to limited resources and funding. Thus, I felt that it was an important avenue for discussion in terms of where the initial focus points should be in the next 10, 20, 30 years and so on - taking it one decade at a time. As much as I would love to see teleportation technology in my lifetime, what needs to be done is risk assessment, innovation forecasting, cost-benefit analysis and whether this technology will continue to be secure in the future. In addition, another major constraint to creating focal points for technology is that everyone's needs are going to be different. In first-world countries, people could be wanting augmented reality technologies for everything they can get their hands (or eyes) on within the next 10 years. However, there are many parts of the world that would be thankful if they are able to survive 10 more years down the road of famine, poverty and disease. Once again, as I often love to do, let's throw it to the governing bodies to handle such goal setting. World organizations and the United Nations should definitely think of and focus on technologies that aid in the betterment of third-world countries and narrowing the poverty disparity. From there, individual countries can also focus on the needs of their people as it would not be fair to for the world to wait for everyone to get on the same level before advancing in terms of technology, although this may sound rather selfish.
The next video and interesting point was the acronym that made up the word Future.
F = Fast, meaning the future is going to be ever-changing at a rapid pace which has much truth to it especially when we look back at the trends that have sparked and how they've developed. Everything is now happening at such a rapid rate that we have to almost struggle to keep up with technology and the future.
U = Urban, as we are now modernizing and building infrastructures to house the growing world populations, it is only thinkable that we move to more urbanized environments where a greater number of people can enjoy the benefits of a civilized, well-governed (in developed cities) society.
T = Tribal, aforementioned, the future will be a place of tribes. Tribes from all different forms and backings. Right now, the tribes that exist are entities like Facebook, Twitter and many other social media avenues that people enter and congregate in. I believe that the future will hold much potential for these tribes to influence the masses as well as in terms of connecting the world in ideologies, news, communication and networking.
U = Universal, as we know it, it means to be all-encompassing and the depth of it is global. However, we can extrapolate this idea beyond just our planet and encompass the entire universe as we know it. Man going beyond the frontier of what we know as space and exploring other planets for resources, places to live or simply, to further science. Either way, we are not limited by this planet and change will inevitably reach to other parts of our universe. That's right, cue the Star Wars Imperial March music.
R = Radical, because we know that with the accelerated rate of change we are experiencing now, technology and the future will continue to exponentially revolutionize what we know. 10 years ago, things like the iPhone were thought to be mythical. But now, every one and their baby cousin has an iPhone and this is just going to get crazier and more radical. Especially with the speed of how this is all changing around us.
E = Ethical, with all these crazy changes scheduled for the future, we need to keep in mind what it is to be a responsible human being. We need to be ethical whether it in the field of business, education, law, innovation and every thing else that Man loves to dabble in. If we let our ethics and morals slip, then we will continue to slide lower and lower into losing our humanity and a future ruled by 'animals' is not one we'd like to see any time soon. No, I don't foresee the Rise of the Planet of the Apes occurring anytime soon.
Moving into a deep discussion, the topic of envisioning the future arose. Prof brought up the topic by telling us that when we think of the future, we should not be looking behind and thinking of the past but rather, looking forward and planning ahead. Much like Alan Kay's quote - "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." We need to consider the past - yes, most definitely, but do not restrict what you have for the future based on what has happened in the past because the future is ever-changing and it is going to be different from the past. In addition, Prof explained about the mentality to have when envisioning the future - not to be straight-jacketed into being limited by the constraints in your mind and to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones by reverse-analyzing the drawbacks and avoiding such negative aspects in order to reach the goal in mind. He proposed to have people think imaginatively and creatively without boundaries before settling on a vision they can agree on, from there they tweak the vision to suit the current state of things. What most of us are doing now is the opposite, at least for me, we like to think of what is doable and what is down to earth instead of letting our mind run wild first and then slowly calming it down. By subconsciously limiting our mind, we are actually limiting ourselves and not thinking out of the box that we have created for ourselves. Therefore, I believe that this is definitely a key take-away point from this course and something we can use in our everyday lives in almost any situation.
Personal rating for this session: 9.8282/10
Off to further musings,
James G14
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