Consider This, and This, and also This…
By: D J B
Tags: Medicine, Predictions, Politics, Technology, Hope

Photo by Rikki Chan on Unsplash

Beginning in 2005, and for almost every year since then, four couples gathered together hours before the new year would begin. We would sit around, have a few drinks, listen to some old and new music, and review the year. At some time during the evening we would bring out the pad and pencil and everyone would make predictions about the coming year. Every year we would put the crowdsourced wisdom into the same pitcher so we could check for accuracy the next year.

What has become noticeable over the years is how the nature of the predictions have changed. In the early days, we seemed to care about a lot of personal events and some trivial stuff, such as whose kid might get pregnant, which one of them would get a new job, which one of us would stop working, who would win the World Series and Super Bowl, and the level of the Dow. There were also more serious concerns, such as where and when the next terrorist attack would occur, or what kind of event would disrupt the world.

On the last day of 2007, two of the eight people predicted that the stock market was over-priced and would be headed down. They did not know it would be caused by a real estate derivative trading debacle. Also that year, so many of the predictions began to get political. We tried to predict who would get nominated in each party and who would win the election. On each question, one or two of the eight would have made the correct prediction. But no one person was consistently more clairvoyant than the others.

What we didn’t realize at the time, was that two years after we began making guesses the world changed drastically. None of us sensed the powerful effects of 2007. That was the year the iPhone was introduced. It was also the first year of Twitter, and Facebook was only three months old. By 2010 Netflix put Blockbuster out of business. Google was already ruling the net and Apple continued to turn out new phones, iPads, and other beautifully made products that nobody thought they needed until they were here.

This year we will put the sixteenth sheet of paper into the pitcher. A lot has changed during those years, especially in the group. All of us are in our mid-70s. Almost all of us now have some kind of heavy diagnosis, although we are all still functioning well. We don’t want to predict who, or when someone won’t be able to attend the next gathering. Perhaps, because of that, we all seem to be more interested in what the future holds for us, our kids, and the considerable number of grandchildren who have arrived during those years.

However, making predictions has become a much more difficult task. Even deciding on what to predict is confusing. In addition to that, since I retired about four years ago, I have been teaching Life-Long-Learning (old-age ) courses about the future. I have become very aware of how quickly the expectations of what is coming changes.

We are in a time of turmoil and flux. I expect that by 2030 some of that will have subsided and our paths forward will become clearer. In ten years we will have a better understanding of how to adjust to the many changes that are constantly occurring in how we live, work, and play. But the transition from now to then will not be smooth. There is a great deal that needs to be sorted out, decided upon, and possibly regulated. One question is who will do the regulating?

The obvious place to start is with politics and economics. Here in the US, we are going through a major transition. Many of us feel that the election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump can give us a chance to recover our ideals and values. We hope we can begin to chart a more stable future. Of course, not everyone feels that way. Trump himself is still muttering that he was robbed, and many of his fans believe at least some of that.

Are we at a tipping point? Can President-elect Biden make everyone feel safe again? Will there be a new era of prosperity, equality, and creativity, or will Mitch McConnell and 52 Republican Senators succeed in stopping most of what Biden wants to do, and little will change?

But before I, or anyone else makes any predictions, other major factors need to be considered. Many of those factors can be seen right here on this “Prediction” site. New ideas and new technologies are being developed every day, several a day, actually. And the technology that is being produced is being used to produce more technology that is faster and smarter. Just look at the posts that have been put up recently. They describe possible advances in superconductors, the use of disinfectant tunnels, synthetic biology, and diluting blood to reduce the effects of aging. These kinds of discoveries, inventions, and interventions, and so many others like them, are going to have as big an effect on everyone’s lives as all the political maneuverings and shenanigans. Most of the politicians don’t seem to understand what is going on, and how swiftly things are changing.

People all over the world, whether they realize it or not, are already becoming very dependent upon technology, especially the biggest technology marketing and selling companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, and Apple, along with several Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu. I am sure there are others out in the rest of the world that I am missing due to American ignorance.

These companies already have the capacity to do things that a government is supposed to do, and they are more skilled at using technology to do it. I am referring to things like controlling traffic, building an international wi-fi system from satellites, planning trips to other planets, building and regulating self-driving vehicles, or running a healthcare system. They already know more about each of us than we do ourselves. They have sophisticated Artificial Intelligence programs that predict what we want, when we need it, and how much we are willing to pay for it. That can include our medicines, as well as our favorite craft beers. What will be the influence of these companies over the next decade?

Right now, the influence of these companies, and of many other advances in technology are almost completely unregulated. Will Facebook change the algorithms of its feed to support efforts to reduce the destruction of our climate? Will TikTok dance moves become more popular than American football, and inflict a different kind of brain injury? Will a twelve-year-old “influencer” still have marketing power when she turns eighteen? Will CRISP-R developers only work to prevent genetic diseases or will they try to breed a cross between Michael Jordan and Stephen Hawking? Will AI pick out the brightest students before they are five-years-old and send them to special schools? Will it be the government or Google that uses location tracking and facial recognition to follow where we go and who we talk to?

As one of our former Secretary of Defense has stated, “there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns.” That is certainly the case now. Any attempts to prepare ourselves for what is coming have to consider all of these things. We must also realize that there are many more that we don’t even know about. That makes all of this difficult to do.

If that is not enough, there is an additional problem. Right now, there seems to be about 25–30% of Americans who don’t believe that any of these new developments matter. Many don’t believe they are real, and there are many people in important positions telling them that all the scientific advances, and all of these new technologies are part of a secret plot to control their lives. They are being told this by people who are heavily invested in keeping things the way they are. These are people who are resisting changes in order to maintain their power and money.

Sadly, that includes a lot of people. Recently, I read that 63% of the jobs that existed in 1950 are gone. Most have been replaced by other kinds of jobs. But further replacement seems to be in doubt. This is making a lot of people anxious. It makes them fear change.

The next decade will define how everyone in the world will live for the next fifty to a hundred years. I have observed from working with people for the last fifty years is that our lives are much more intertwined and interconnected than they were fifty years ago. We need to change the mindset that each individual has to take care of him/herself and family. We need to learn the skills of better communication, cooperation, coordination, and negotiation. So far, judging from how we have dealt with the virus, we are failing in our attempts. Will we learn from our failure?

So, here is my prediction: by 2030 the future course of human events will be much clearer. At that time things will be much better for almost all of us, or only a few of us. Which way will it go? I’m not ready to take a stand yet. If we go by history, things look grim. As Rana Dasgupta describes our past, sooner or later, the very rich get to regain control of the levers of power. He traces that trend from the Magna Carta of 1215, and the execution of Charles I, in 1649, to the present.

But maybe we can really create a new kind of society. We are better equipped to do that now than any time in history. We can use all of our new technologies to help us model and analyze what decisions will be beneficial, and which could be problematic. However, we first have to reach some agreement about what is beneficial and what is problematic. That won’t be easy.

That is why I am posting this here. Maybe, together we can all help clarify things. Maybe we can find a way, as is the mission of this publication, to make what we want to happen, happen. Crowdsourcing has proved to be very successful. Maybe we can do more than just predicting, we can find solutions and methods to get things accomplished. If the editor allows, I will continue to post my thinking about what is coming and why.

I am hoping that some of you will respond. What kind of future would you like to design? How possible is that? What do you think some of the major determinants will be? And also, get to work on that blood revitalization treatment. I turn seventy-six in March. The cancer is all gone, but my knees hurt.