What does the future hold? With TZM and #LonFut

1
#LonFut – London Futurists
What does the future hold?
David Wood, Catalyst & Futurist, Delta Wisdom, @dw2
http://dw2blog.com/
London Futurists, www.meetup.com/London-Futurists
Slideshare.NET / DeltaWisdom : DW_LFandTZM_Future

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Four overlapping trajectories
2010
2020
Humanity+
Humanity 1.0
http://humanityplus.org/

3
First Nokia “mobile phone”
Nokia Mobira Senator (1982)
Weighed about 21 pounds
Designed for use in cars
1980s McKinsey forecast for AT&T
0.9 million mobile US subscribers by 2000
Actual figure: 109 million
Worldwide 1 billion by 2002, 2B by 2005, 7B by 2012...
Hard to predict the effects of sustained tech growth!
Devices increasingly numerous, lighter, and more useful
www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=25921
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202283_2.html
Trajectory 1: Technology

1993
http://i.imgur.com/nuUGHaY.jpg

1993
2013
http://i.imgur.com/nuUGHaY.jpg

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Improvement in energy efficiency of computers:
Computations per kWh, 1950-2010
Source:
Jonathan Koomey,
Consulting Professor, Stanford
Technology Review,
9 Apr 2012
10^3 to 10^15
40 doublings over 60 years
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427444/the-computing-trend-that-will-change-everything/
18 months average doubling
In line with “Moore’s Law”

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(Gordon) Moore’s Law: 1965
www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/moores_law_40th/

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The next five years (2013-2018)?
18 months 18 months 18 months +6
x 2
x 2
x 2
x 21/3
Computing technology x 10
Faster… Cheaper… Smaller…

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“Books will soon be obsolete in schools”
“It is possible to teach every branch of human
knowledge with the motion picture”
“Our school system will be completely changed
inside of ten years”
July 1913, The New York Dramatic Mirror
Thomas Alva Edison
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/15/books-obsolete/
http://edison.rutgers.edu/taephren.htm

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“Our school system will be completely changed
inside of ten years”
Book: The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined by Salman Khan
• First YouTube video uploaded: 2006
• Year founded: 2008
• Videos: ~4070
• Videos watched: 250M+
• Unique visitors in March 2013: 5.3M
• Exercises completed: 1B+ (>2M per day)
• Number of employees: 38
A not-for-profit with the goal of…
providing a free world-class education
for anyone anywhere
https://www.khanacademy.org/about

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Progress by combination
• Technologies enabling You Tube explosion
– Proliferation of Internet users
– Fast Internet access
– Ubiquitous cameras (including in smartphones)
– Cheap storage and fast processing
Michell Zappa: http://envisioningtech.com/
• Over 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video watched each month
• People watch one billion views a day on YouTube mobile
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views
– or around 140 views for every person on Earth
www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

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When technology creates impact
http://joyreactor.com/post/300138
Bill Gates introduces Tablet PC.
No one cares.
Steve Jobs introduces the iPad.
The world pisses itself like an
excited dog.
Steve Ballmer introduces Surface.
People accuse them of stealing
the idea from Apple.

13
Predicting iPad convergence(?)
27 January, 2010
“8 Things That Suck About the iPad”
http://gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-
that-suck-about-the-ipad
1. Big, Ugly Bezel
2. No Multitasking
3. No Cameras
4. Touch Keyboard
5. No HDMI Out
6. The Name “iPad”
7. No Flash
8. Adapters, Adapters, Adapters
(“…You need an adapter for USB for god’s sake”)
9. It’s Not Widescreen
10. Doesn’t Support T-Mobile 3G
(“it uses microSIMs that literally no one else uses”)
11. A Closed App Ecosystem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iPad
http://dw2blog.com/2010/01/28/the-ipad-more-for-less/

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Cherishing iPad convergence
Apple Now Most Valuable Company in History 23 October, 2012
“Apple sold their 100 millionth
iPad two weeks ago”
“We sold more iPads in the June
quarter than any PC maker sold of
their entire line-up”
Market-cap > $620 billion
>4 years to sell 100M iPhones
<3 years to sell 100M iPads
www.engadget.com/2012/10/23/apple-ipad-mini-liveblog/
www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/08/21/apple-now-most-valuable-company-in-history/

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Laggards,
sceptics
Customers want
technology and
features
Customers want
complete solutions, reliability,
and convenience
Early
adopters,
visionariesInnovators,
technology
enthusiasts
THECHASM
Early
majority
Late
majority
Can accept poor
usability
Won’t accept poor
usability
Ready to walk a
solitary path
Require social
validation
Geoffrey Moore: Crossing the Chasm
Everett Rogers: The Diffusion of Innovations

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Unexpected leadership
Purchased by Facebook in April 2012
With 13 employees
And 100 million registered users
For approx $1 billion in cash and stock
Launched in October 2010
Sociable
Usable

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• Affordable – no barrier to purchase
• Usable – no barrier to understanding
• Reliable – no frustrations from crashes / failures
• Fashionable (within the right peer group)
• Utility – delivers true value
• Pain of adoption << Benefits of continued usage
• Don’t just think technology – think applications
• Don’t just think platform – think ecosystem
• It can take a long time for a supportive ecosystem to
emerge

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Kindle books vs. physical books
www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3298533/amazon-kindle-event-september-6th-video-watch
E-books leapfrog
physical books at Amazon
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

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Progress by combination
• Technologies enabling Kindle explosion
– Cheap storage
– Low energy screens
– High-speed “Whisper net” wireless distribution
– Huge catalog of books available to purchase
Michell Zappa: http://envisioningtech.com/
+ Innovative business model

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Information in our glasses
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/sergey-brin-google-glasses_n_1408488.html

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Smart belt improves your posture
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324235104578241801065110288.html
“We watch your back”
“The LUMOback sensor sends gentle vibrations
when you slouch backwards with your lower
back, reminding you to sit or stand up straight”
“Using the latest BT technology,
LUMOback tracks your movements
wirelessly and gives you feedback
through an iPhone, iPod, or iPad app”

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Smart fork vibrates if you eat too quickly
http://www.hapilabs.com/products-hapifork.asp

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“Basis” health-monitoring watch
• 3D Accelerometer – detects even the smallest movement
• Optical Blood Flow Sensor – detects heart rate
• Body Temperature Monitor – skin surface temperature
• Ambient Temp Monitor – boost accuracy of caloric calculations
• Galvanic Skin Response – the intensity of skin’s moisture output
www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/11/walking-down-street-where-blue-dot-on.html
www.mybasis.com

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Digital pills that tell doctors when they’re swallowed
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an ingestible sensor that can be
packaged inside a pill – potentially costing just 1 cent per pill (once mass volume is reached)
• When it reaches the stomach, it sends a signal to a patch that the patient wears on the skin
• That patch records the time when the medication and its sensor were ingested, and transmits that
information (along with some other health stats like heart rate) to a smartphone app
• The patient can then share his records with doctors, family members, or anyone else who's helping
him monitor his medication compliance
• “About half of all people don’t take medications like they’re supposed to… This device could be a
solution…, so that doctors can know when to rev up a patient’s medication adherence” - Eric Topol
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/digital-pills-make-their-way-to-market.html
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/devices/a-medical-sensor-you-can-swallow
“The ingestible sensor is composed of materials from your diet
and has no battery and no antenna. It’s powered by you”
http://proteusdigitalhealth.com/

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“The best solution is to get rid of doctors and
teachers and let your computers do the work,
24/7 and with consistent quality”
“Machines will replace 80 percent of doctors”
Vinod Khosla
Sun Microsystems co-founder
renowned Silicon Valley investor
“Do We Need Doctors Or Algorithms?”
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/04/doctors-replaced-with-machines
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/10/doctors-or-algorithms/

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Basis for radically improving healthcare
• Miniature sensors
• Imaging & scanning
• 3D manufacturing
• Personalised genomics
• Synthetic biology
• Electronic medical records
• Ubiquitous smartphones
• Communications facilities
• Next gen social networks
• Huge computing power
• Expert decision systems
• Online medical training
http://CreativeDestructionOfMedicine.com/
“Technology super-convergence”
http://atlanticmeetspacific.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/eric-topol-at-the-altantic-meets-the-pacific/
Eric Topol MD

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The Carlson curves (Rob Carlson)
Rob Carlson, June 2011: www.synthesis.cc
Cost per
Base of DNA
Sequencing
(Reading)
& Synthesis
(Writing)

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Breakthrough technologies of next 5-10 yrs
1. Wearable computers (Google Glass and more)
2. Ubiquitous sensors (health, environ): Internet of Things
3. Ultra-strong materials – carbon nanotubes, graphene...
4. Synthetic biology (programming carbon, not silicon)
5. Stem cell therapies – replacement organs, rejuvenation
6. Smart drugs – boost concentration, memory
7. 3D printing and 3D scanning – mass personalisation
8. Driverless cars – example of connected automation
9. Intelligent robots – manufacturing, home help…

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NBIC Technology mega-convergence
Atoms Genes
Neurons Bits
Bio-
Tech
Nano-
Tech
ICT
Cogno-
Tech
S^ ?
http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf
Breakthrough technologies of next 15-30 yrs

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The Singularity (S^)
• We can no longer predict what happens next
• Computers / robots more intelligent than humans
– More generally intelligent than humans
• They can create even better computers / robots
• => Rapid, recursive, self-improvement cycle…
• Super-intelligent systems could solve many existing
deep human problems (disease, death, economics…)
• But first we have to get there… (perhaps 15-30 years)
• Surviving the next 15-30 years will be ultra-critical
– Surviving the next 10 years will be hard enough
S^ ?

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2010
2020
Humanity+
Humanity 1.0

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Trajectory 2: Crisis
• Poverty?
– 1970, more than 1/3 of developing world lived on < $1/day
– Today, this is down to 5%: shrunk by factor of 7
– 1970, almost 1/2 the planet lived on < $1000 / year
– Today, only 1/5 live on < $ 1000 / year
• Malnutrition?
– 1970, c. 25% of world population were malnourished
– 2007, c. 13% of world population were malnourished
• These are still important issues…
– But the crises I have in mind have a different nature
Ramez Naam: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet
Ramez
Naam

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Trajectory 2: Crisis
“In Europe the epoch of conquest is over…
It is as certain as anything in politics that the
frontiers of our national states are finally drawn.
My own belief is that there will be no more war
among the six powers”
War between the great powers has become an
economic impossibility because of “the delicate
interdependence of international finance”
1910: The Great Illusion, Norman Angell, British journalist
Spring 1914: Henry Noel Brailsford, British member of the
international commission reporting on the Balkan Wars
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ascent-of-money-by-niall-ferguson-980013.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1933/angell-bio.html
http://www.marxists.org/history/archive/brailsford/index.htm

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The underlying causes of crises
• Connections that no-one fully understands
– Innovations that no-one fully understands
• Unfounded over-confidence
• Systems that are pumped up & take on a life of their own
– Via positive feedback cycles (“reflexivity”)
“It is hard for us, and without being flippant, to
even see a scenario within any kind of realm of
reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those
[credit default swaps] transactions”
Joe Cassano, AIG Chief Financial Officer,
Wall Street investor conference call, August 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7210007&page=1#.UW6RDrVwqSp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

37
“In the run-up to the 2008 crisis, our ability to make
good decisions was simply overwhelmed because
things were allowed to evolve in too complex
a manner through financial innovation…”
Ha Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development,
Cambridge Univ, “23 things they don’t teach you about capitalism”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/0141047976
http://www.devstudies.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/hajoon.html
“Even financial experts themselves did not fully
understand them… the top decision-makers of the
financial firms certainly did not grasp much of what
their businesses were doing. Nor could the regulatory
authorities fully figure out what was going on.”
“We are now seeing a flood of confessions…”

38
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests
of organisations, specifically banks and others, were
such that they were best capable of protecting their
own shareholders and their equity in the firms”
– Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/24/economics-creditcrunch-federal-reserve-greenspan
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of
lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity
(myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief”
– Henry Paulsen, US treasury secretary
http://www.fxtimes.com/glossary/alan-greenspan/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7631431.stm

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The background to a crisis
• Connections that no-one fully understands
– Innovations that no-one fully understands
• Unfounded over-confidence
• Systems that are pumped up & take on a life of their own
– Via positive feedback cycles (“reflexivity”)
Technological
progress
Greater
consumption
Greater
connectivity
Raised
expectations
Environmental
damage
Resource
shortages
Greater
uncertainty

40
Crises we should fear: #1
• 1914-1918: World War 1: 17 million people killed
– ~10 million military personnel and ~7 million civilians
• 1918-1920: “Spanish Flu”
– 50 million people killed (~100 million by some estimates)
– Deliberately under-reported at the time in the media
– “The greatest medical holocaust in history”
• “Killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years”
• “More in a year than the Black Death killed in a century”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
War between the great powers has become an
economic impossibility because of “the delicate
interdependence of international finance”
1910: The Great Illusion, Norman Angell, British journalist

41
• Causes of global pandemic
– Increased travel; Increased inter-connectivity
– Society had been weakened by ravages of world war
• Spread of swine flu (H1N1), 2009-2012
– Number of deaths: 18,000+ (some estimates are 300,000)
– First reported: 17 March 2009, Mexico
– 3 months later, there were reports in 74 different countries
– Less lethal (fatality rate c. 0.03%) than the 1918 variant (2.5%+)
• Risks of new diseases “going viral”
– Society’s over-use of antibiotics – new diseases evolve rapidly
– Irrational avoidance of vaccinations / weak information sharing
– New pathogens created – accidentally or intentionally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

42
• Risks of financial contagion “going viral”
– Financial innovation with unintended side-effects
• Savers not able to withdraw their savings from banks
– Crisis in confidence in banking system
• Debts increase but monetary holdings shrink
• Whole countries become bankrupt
– Cannot sustain “austerity measures”
– Relationships of trust break down
• Potential of rapidly changing “winners and losers”
– Highly volatile situation -> temptations to adventurism
• Compounded by decline in availability of key resources
– Peak Oil, clean water, rare minerals… -> risks of conflict
Ian Goldin: Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing, and what we can do about it
http://blog.fxcc.com/contagion-dont-talk-to-anyone-dont-touch-anything/

43
• Risks of climate changes “going viral”
– Unintended side-effects of human emission of excess CO2
– Positive virtual circles -> Reach unexpected “tipping point”?
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

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• Risks of climate changes “going viral”
– Unintended side-effects of human emission of excess CO2
– Positive virtual circles -> Reach unexpected “tipping point”?
• Less ice on the planet means less incoming sunlight is
reflected to space
– Larger areas of water absorb more of the sunlight, increasing
ocean temperature further -> release dissolved CO2 -> …
• Higher tundra temperatures -> melt permafrost
– Release vast amounts of trapped greenhouse gases (methane)
– As (some think) in Permian extinction event, when 96% of all
marine species became extinct about 250 million years ago
• Higher atmospheric temperatures can change major
ocean or atmospheric currents -> rapid local freezing!
Ian Goldin: Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing, and what we can do about it
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss

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• Risks of human extremism “going viral”
• “Moore’s Law of Mad Scientists”
– Eliezer Yudkowsky
– “The minimum IQ required to destroy the world drops by one
point every 18 months” (or, perhaps, by more than one point)
• Variants: The minimum IQ drops, that is required to:
– Devise and deploy a weapon that wipes out a major city
– Poison the water table for a region
– Paralyse the whole Internet (and with it, much of modern life)
– Unleash a devastating plague…
• Angry, irrational people can unleash terrible carnage
– Not necessarily fully intentionally
– Their actions can trigger worse reactions
http://selenite.livejournal.com/105973.html

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• Risks of unexpectedly powerful consequences of new
technology
• New software often has unexpected bugs
– Whole financial trading system could be thrown into jeopardy
• Nanotech pollutants – like asbestos?
• First atomic bomb might set whole atmosphere on fire
• First hydrogen bomb test, 1st March 1954, Bikini Atoll
– Explosive yield was expected to be from 4 to 6 Megatons
– Was 15 Megatons, two and a half times the expected maximum
– Physics error by the designers at Los Alamos National Lab
– Wrongly considered the lithium-7 isotope to be inert in bomb
– The crew in a nearby Japanese fishing boat became ill in the
wake of direct contact with the fallout. One of the crew died
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo

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Crises and responses
1. Global pandemics
2. Financial system collapse
3. Runaway climate change
4. Fundamentalist terrorism
5. Runaway technology
Surveillance
Regulation
Coordination
Clean energy Abundance Reversibility
Incentives Humility
Education Complexity, Connectivity,
Over-confidence
Research
Anders Sandberg: Assessing major risks: what should we worry about: Sat 27th April

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2010
2020
Humanity+
Humanity 1.0

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Trajectory 3: Collaboration
Better collaboration can emerge from better technology
• Online community
• Wikipedia
• Khan Academy
• Less Wrong
– Eliezer Yudkowsky
• The Asteroids Club
– Jonathan Haidt
• Deliberator.com…
So far, none of
these tools is ideal
Online tools, personal enhancers
We must keep looking

52
Collaboration via moral bio-enhancement
• “Artificial moral enhancement is now
essential if humanity is to avoid catastrophe”
– Prof Julian Savulescu, Oxford University
– Prof Ingmar Persson, University of Gothenburg
• We are facing two major threats:
– climate change and increasingly scarce natural resources
– war, using immensely powerful weapons
• Our Natural Moral Psychology – insufficient to meet these challenges
• We can directly affect the biological or physiological bases of human
motivation (complementing, not replacing, traditional moral education, e.g. NVC)
– by using external devices that affect the brain or the learning process
– or through smart drugs (“nootropics”) and/or electromagnetic stimulation
– or through genetic selection or re-engineering
http://philosophynow.org/issues/91/Moral_Enhancement

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2010
2020
Humanity+
Humanity 1.0

54
Humanity+ vs. Humanity-
Humanity enhanced
• Abundance mentality
• Sharing motive central
• Golden age in near future
• Embrace progress
• Use our power wisely
• Aim is “better than well”
• Expect personal vitality
• Inspirational approach
Humanity constrained
• Scarcity mentality
• Profit motive central
• Look back to “golden age”
• Fear progress
• Avoid “playing God”
• Aim to be “well”
• Expect personal decay
• Defeatist approach

55
The Humanity+ vision
• Humanity is on the brink of a momentous leap forwards
in evolution
– If we are wise and strong, we can make that leap
• This evolutionary transformation takes advantage of
rapidly improving technology
– Technology that arises from positive virtuous cycles and
unprecedented interdisciplinary convergence
– This technology will grant us awesome powers: the power to
capture ample energy from the Sun, the atom, and beyond; the
power to synthesise new materials to rejuvenate our
environment and fuel our societies; the power to realise an
unparalleled abundance of health, security, vigour, vitality,
creativity, knowledge, and experience
http://dw2blog.com/2013/02/04/responding-to-the-call-for-a-new-humanity-manifesto/

56
What does the future hold?
David Wood, Catalyst & Futurist, Delta Wisdom, @dw2
http://dw2blog.com/
London Futurists, www.meetup.com/London-Futurists
Slideshare.NET / DeltaWisdom : DW_LFandTZM_Future

57
Recommended further reading
http://www.singularityweblog.com/ http://hplusmagazine.com/
http://transhumanity.net/

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Mark Stevenson Joel Garreau James Hughes

59

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For more information
http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/108603742/

What does the future hold? With TZM and #LonFut

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