The 2019 Update on The Future of Everything - Part I

This is a follow-up on The 2018 Update on The Future of Everything first published on December 4, 2018.

Quick Recap

In the 2018 update, hyperlinked to the title in italics above, I covered the following:

• AR/VR/MR/Haptics/Holographics and XR
• The Future of Fintech
• The Future of Production
• The Future of Work
• The Future of Education
• The Future of Travel

It is suggestible that you read the 2018 update, by clicking the hyperlinked title above, before continuing to read this update. However, it is on suggestible, not a prerequisite.

In this follow-up, I am covering the following:

• The Future of Computing
• The Future of Fashion & Apparel
• The Global Brain
• The Future of Artificial Intelligence
• The Future of Robotics

The Future of Computing

Coding & Programming

All coding, will eventually be Quantum. Believe it, or deny it, both governments and the largest tech companies know, that Quantum Computers are coming into reality. However, real world, day to day Quantum Computing, is unlikely, to be seen, before a good number of decades for now, yet. At best, we are at least two decades away from achieving full transition. That will be long after the Internet of Things (IoT) will have achieved its intended purpose and potential, the advent of the X Reality era and the realization of the Global Brain.

The primary purpose of Quantum Computing, and therefore the need for Quantum Coding and Programming, will be, to support the Data Processing demands, for supporting the ubiquity of all things powered, in intelligent autonomous coordination universally, serving humanity, in the X Reality environment. However, coders and programmers will have to continue to "make do" with "traditional coding", "traditional programming" and "traditional computing" for a couple of generations yet, because though we know for certain now that Quantum Computing is possible, the methodical threshold has yet to be reached, to efficiently utilise it, for the intended purpose.

While Quantum tech, is a credible future reality that is a fair way away in time ahead, and for serving larger, more complex purposes, for most people perhaps to have to need to be concerned about, there are other credible futures for Computing, that are closer to us, in time.

Interface

By the 2030s, your mouse, your touchpad, keyboard, your LCD Screen Monitor, your laptop, your smartphone and your earplugs, will all belong, in the museum. There will not be a practical purpose for them.

To instruct your system, you will not have to touch any device or hardware. Nor will you need to utilize voice command. Your thoughts will be picked up the systems. You will therefore control, all technology, by interfacing with computers, using your thoughts, direct from the brain. Its called, the Brain Computer Interface. And no, you will not be needing any implants into your body!

Visual Displays, will be through Smart Lenses, among other things, of a Mixed Reality nature, and Holographic. The display or visual interface, just will no longer be, through a dedicated, fixed, or set, screen as we now use on our personal devices.

You will no longer have to "learn" how to use a software, a system, a program, a device or gadget. You will tell technology with your thoughts what you want it to do, and with precision to your expectations, technology will do it for you.

The Future of Fashion & Apparel

What we wear in the future will not simply just preserve our modesty and protect us from the elements. Everything we wear in the future, will have multiple other functional purposes.

Health Tracking

Clothing of tomorrow will track our vitals and alert us if we need to alter our activities or seek medical help.

X Reality Experience with Haptics

We will experience artificially engineered realities not just by seeing virtual visuals, but by feeling with skin sensations with haptics technology built into apparel.

Besides making gaming experience very realistic, haptics in clothing will allow you to remotely hug loved ones at will, from half way around the world. You'll also be able to alter your experience of temperatures, by channeling temperature of choice to your body, with what you are wearing - simulating sensations. You will also be able to feel virtual 3D objects or models, that are not actually physically there.

Personal Safety

While not all of us may be moving around wearing Iron Man suits, though, some may, including Law Enforcers and Defense Personnel, apparel we wear tomorrow will come with various protective and safety features, that will relatively significantly better protect us from physical harm in event of accidents, natural disaster, crime or terrorist attacks, than do whatever it is that we, well mostly, wear today.

Some features to expect from common apparel of tomorrow would be alerts to nearby threats, built in floating support in event of flooding or someone falling into a body water and a high-degree of fire proofing. You can also expect smart features that will allow you to be easily found in event you are lost or in distress or need rescue.

Personal Enhancement

Besides protection, future apparel will come with features to enhance your basic human performance. For example, it will help people with joint or age related or other physical issues walk normally with comfort, apart from performing other regular day-to-day physical activity. Beyond that, what you wear, may likely enhance your ability to run faster than you otherwise would or reinforce your strength. For example, if your body naturally allows you to lift 50 Kilograms, your clothes will enhance your ability lift, allowing you to lift a load of 150 Kilograms.

Eye-Wear

Spectacles and sunglasses will no longer exist in particular, because their functions will be fulfilled by Smart Head-Mounted Display (HMD) sets or devices.

While you can expect giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google to dominate the market for HMDs, that will be utilised by people with perfect vision as well as poor vision alike, you will eventually have plenty of options in terms of brand and specification, as you do with spectacles and sunglasses today.

HMDs being commonplace is inevitable, as they will provide primary means for each individual to be plugged into or be part, of X Reality that will basically encompass everything dynamically, connecting everyone universally.

Besides seeing better, or having eyes protected, our Eye-Wear of tomorrow, which would essentially be HMDs serving as Eye-Wear, will also guide us, help us learn, help us view remotely through machines and look into virtual worlds.

The Global Brain

Definition

The Global Brain is the state in which all human beings and all technological items or artifacts on the planet, are simultaneously interconnected, for seamless exchange, evolution, dissemination, collection, storage and execution, of dynamic collective thought (and intelligence). X Reality, fundamentally and ultimately facilitates the existence of this state.

Personally, I would also go as far as to state that the Global Brain will not just be an interconnection between human and tech artifacts, but also, an interconnection with fauna and flora on the planet.

Progress

We are as far away from achieving the state of being part of the Global Brain, as we are from achieving the advent of X Reality. As of 2019, we are about or less than a decade away from living in X Reality given the progress in the 2010s alone, in the areas of the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Brain Computer Interface, Haptics, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

Implications

With the whole world simultaneously corroborating, calibrating and verifying every unit of data all the time, everywhere, effectively, we achieve extinction of fake news and misinformation. We also achieve extinction of partial, biased or slanted news and information. Simultaneously we will also achieve optimum learning available to every individual connected to the web. The learning will not just result in connected individuals being more informed, but more exposed to tested or logical wisdom. Empiricism and transparency will be at an unbridled optimum, as information will no longer be limited, impeded or controllable.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

The Obvious

Artificial Intelligence or AI is here to stay, and it will be experienced by us, everywhere; at work, at school, at home, in social spaces, in vehicles, at the malls and anywhere else including the sporting field. It is going to rapidly improve and grow in how it serves us over the next decade. Intertwined with IoT, AI will fundamentally drive ubiquity of technology and technological functions, into perpetuity. With AI, humanity will go on to achieve great things, and humans in general will be able to live great lives.

The Impossible

What happened in the Terminator Film Franchise, will never happen in real life. A machine or program or software, will never come to life. Nor, will AI emerge to dominate, control or enslave the human race. You will never, and nor will anyone else, ever have a robot boss or supervisor. You cannot program sentience.

Logical Feasibility

The trouble with Artificial Intelligence, a term first coined by academics from Carnegie Mellon University all the way back in the 1950s including Prof. Allen Newell and Prof. Herbert A. Simon (not to take credit away from other academics of distinguished stature from other American universities who are considered Founding Fathers of the concept as well), is that it has for more than half a century been misinterpreted as created or manufactured Actual Intelligence. And because this conception for a myriad of reasons compounded over time has been amplified and spread as realistically possible in popular fiction, we have a problem with how many people actually view or understand Artificial Intelligence till today.

While Artificial Intelligence is created, Actual Intelligence is developed and nurtured over time by individuals, and it cannot be created or manufactured. The difference between Actual Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence, is just as much, as the real fruit you buy to eat from your neighborhood's supermarket and the artificial fruit you buy for your kids to play with from the toy store. You cannot eat the artificial fruit, it will never nourish you as you need and it will probably kill you if you do try to eat it. Artificial Intelligence does not equate to a conscious thinking entity or system. A conscious thinking entity or system is only possible, in a biological body that is living.

Blind Faith

However, it is also not logically feasible, to convert the blind followers of cults, like David Koresh's Branch Davidians or Shoko Asahara's Aum Shinrikyo, regardless of how you try to present logical reasoning against their dogmatic beliefs. Anyone remember the Zuckerberg-Musk debate that happened in 2018? Point made?

The misconception of what AI really is and about, or what to actual expect from it in its future state, has created such impact, that for generations to come, there will remain cultist believers that will expect AI to come alive, or do what AI enabled machines have done in sci-fi films of the 1980s and the 1990s, at some point within their lifetimes or after, even if no such thing ever happens.

The Actual Role of Artificial Intelligence

Our knowledge and ability to render programs, software, systems and hardware Artificially Intelligent, is what will enable us to benefit from technology as such, that we simply think of what we want done, and the technology will ubiquitously execute what we want, autonomously, with precision to our needs.

Artificial Intelligence will free humanity from tasks that are repetitive, routine, unhygienic, unhealthy, hazardous, tedious and quantitative. It will also minimize propensity for human error. It will automate detection of flaws and errors, to help us better resolve and preempt problematic issues.

Whether in calculation or information acquisition or processing, Artificial Intelligence will render the previously time-consuming elements of research instantaneous, speeding up our research across all fields, including medicine, pharmacology, environmental science and so on.

It is Artificial Intelligence that will render business, marketing, service and consumerism in general as tailored, customized, targeted to individual and personalized for every individual in all the masses.

The Future of Robotics

Domestic

We will eventually have more robots in our homes, within the natural millennial lifespan, than we have had "traditional" electrical appliances, including the television and the refrigerator, through the 2010s.

Domestic robots will come in all shapes, sizes and form, serving a wide multitude of purposes. They may be physical, virtual or even a blend of both. They will be autonomous, and besides constantly coordinating with each other, they will also be constantly coordinating with articles of technology in the home setting, that are non-robotic, such as the ceiling lights, air-conditioning and household appliances for optimal efficient service.

The disruptive outcome would mean no more maids, butlers, cooks, gardeners or other domestic employees. "The Family of Robots" will clean our homes, cook our meals, do the dishes, keep track of household sundries & inventories, guard our homes as well as belongings, monitor & entertain our children as well elderly, carry out minor repairs, locate misplaced items and so on.

Besides domestic chores, your domestic robots will receive deliveries of items or groceries shopped online, storing them neatly and safely in the right places in your home. In fact, your domestic robots will even run errands for you.

Commercial

If a task requires anything other than dynamic, creative or qualitative thinking, it will be entirely automated within the millennial's lifetime, at least in the Developed World, with as much credit going to robots in all sorts of forms, as to IoT, AI and other technologies. This will be so be it in the office space, shop floor, restaurant, warehouse or the production floor.

The advent of the Information Age between the 1990s and the 2000s had rendered the future inevitable, where all workers will be either Knowledge Workers or Wisdom Workers, by gradual and eventual empowerment through unbridled access to information. As we are fast transiting into that future, it only makes sense, to embrace the necessary solution, to both utilize that empowerment and fill the void it leaves. The solution, is in the form of robots.

Government

Autonomous Virtual Robots will be employed by governments to combat cyber-crime or fend off cyber-attacks around the clock, with minimal human intervention or supervision necessary.

Offline, law enforcement as well as military units will deploy physical robots to deal with physical threats or enforcement needs, to ensure safety of human personal, that will primarily maintain a command, control and decision-making role, but will step in otherwise, where situations surpass the capacity of the machines.

Our Robotized Future in Summary

Robots will ultimately be everywhere around us, wherever we go, whether on-board planes, in vehicles, in our pockets, present as software in our devices, our homes, on the streets and everywhere else you can possible think of going. We are heading into a reality, where a child born before the end of the next decade, may live out a life, where from birth to death, he or she would never have been more than a foot away from the presence of a working robot at any single point in time.

THANK YOU

Thank you for reading this update. Let me know what you think. If you believe I have missed out on something that should have been addressed or mentioned, leave a comment, and I will try visiting it, in a follow-up article.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Product Development, X Reality, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing.