The British Think Tank “forum for the future” developed five future climate scenarios. The Think Tank involved around 70 experts reaching from economists, journalists and politicians to environmentalists and social scientists. All scenarios demonstrate different ways how humanity reacts to the climate change. They are called.
- Efficiency First
- Service Transformation
- Redefining Progress
- Environmental War Economy
- Protectionist World
The first three are giving hope and are quite positive. Scarce resources are protected, technology drives efficiency, services are offered by business rather than products and progress and personal success are being redefined. The last two draw a darker picture of a costly fight against the damaged nature and about scare resources.
One basic problem in the technical evolution and networking ever since has been the vulnerability of networks. The military, enterprises and banks are often being hacked. But now physicians presented the safe network to public. It works with quantum cryptography based on the uncertainty principle stating that no object can be watched without changing it. This means, that by hacking a quantum encrypted network, one would change the cryptography and thereby destroy it as well as uncover the bugging.
That is a big step in a society with a megatrend of NETWORKING.
In the last and ultimate lecture, my compatriot Sven Tollmien, introduced us to many amazing digital trends and possibilities for our future. I have to admit that I am a technique freak. I love everything what is new and I want to try it.What impressed me the most was the “5th Screen”, our future display for everyday’s life. When I told my father, who is visiting at the moment, about implanting chips into the human eye he could not believe nor would he appreciate it. But the very same day I read an article about the 50th anniversary of pacemakers. 50 years ago Else Marie Larson convinced the doctors at Karolinska hospital, here in Stockholm, to implant the half-baked technology to her suffering husbands heart. Before becoming the first Cyborg,Arne Larsson had to be revitalized about 30 times a day, whereas now the pacemaker preserved 3 years in his body. The 24pacemakers he got implanted over the time enlarged his life for valuable 38 years.But since that only little progress has taken place in cyborg technology. Maybe people are scared of mixing up humans and machines. But why not implanting the 5th screen? Brothers’ retinal scanning display is a first step in that direction. I would be really pleased to have all these little helps and hints provided by the Secai camera projected into my retina in my everyday’s life.
Sven’s presentation made me even more curious about the future. Can’t wait to try out all the things he presented.
I think humanity will be way more productive and effective in future as technologies will safe time.
I remember when I read and saw George Orwell’s 1984 in school. It was written in 1948. The movie and I think the book starts off with the following statement.
Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Technologically everything Orwell anticipated nowadays is possible. Anyone can check out which car belongs to which persons. Cameras supervise traffic and number plates. Chips in passports tell almost everything. And Iceland’s population volunteered to create a huge gen-database.
The movie Matrix of the year 1999 first gave a vision of human and technological immersion. Artificial intelligence is dominating the human race and people live within a matrix, a simulated reality.
The most recent Pixar movie wall-E gives a slightly different future vision. The human population has to leave the planet due to extreme population, while robots are cleaning up earth. These machines as well developed intelligence and feelings. But the people chose voluntarily not to move their bodies anymore and live in a virtual reality not realizing their surrounding and people next to them. In the end it turns out that not all machines are good. In fact the main navigation robot rebels against the captain of the starship the human race had escaped in.
The movie points out current fears and threats to the human population, like the pollution of earth. But as well it gives a real vision of what might happen or is happening now with the evolution of technology. In the future time and place will not matter anymore. Research is done to create virtualized haptics.
Moreover technology immerses with the human body. Blind people get back their eyesight by implanting chips into the body.
Technologies get smaller, networks are available, and graphics get more and more realistic. The data processing is exceeding the abilities of human brains and data transfer is getting faster and faster.
I cannot see any reason, why a virtual reality will not become true. People already do live in a Second Life and make their dreams come true there.
But I really do not fear artificial intelligence. I have not heard of developing process units, bad computers or anything. Machines follow algorithms, we have feelings.
I think in the end it will be up to us if we want to spend the major part of our life in the matrix or in reality. And I am pretty sure there will always be a way to distinguish in which world ones in.
