Brave New Shared World

I am a rational sanguine futurist and I like learning from other futurists like Masayoshi Son who share my passion. I try to read a book a week and watch videos from other futurists. I have spoken at the Trillion Sensor Summit and to industry groups, government officials/CIO/CTO (city/state level), community groups and students from 4th grade to college on the topics of Digital Health, Smart City, IoT, the Information Age, and the future of transportation and telecommunication. 

Last month, I spend a day presenting to 6 classes on technology to Olathe, KS NW High School Seniors who are reading Brave New World. (side note, I have a new appreciation for teachers who teach the same material for 6 classes in a row.)

The students have an assignment to write a paper on the future of technology.   The titled of my talk was: Brave New Shared World   (“In a world that is full of fault lines and rifts, we need to build a shared future” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi).   Instead of a dystopia world of factions, drugs and suicide (the themes of Brave New World), I showed a vision of how we can have a shared world of opportunity and success if we use technology properly.

I encouraged the students to just say no to Soma and Siri. (the average teenager uses a smartphone/tablet 5 hours a day) I encouraged them to use technology and collaboration to Augment their Intelligence and not to use technology as a crutch.   I commented that Elbert Hubbard said “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man” -which I added - or woman that knows how to Collaborated with the right tool!

See the blog: Are You Smarter than your Grandparents? Intelligence X - Intelligence Augmentation IA- Collaborated https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/you-smarter-than-your-grandparents-intelligence-x-ia-doug-hohulin/

My 16-year-old nephew asked if we should be afraid that the robots (technology) will take over (Terminator World).  I told him we should be more afraid of the Wall-E World - Technology making us Apathetic, Ignorant, Lonely, Helpless and Lazy!  I want to work for “A Baymax World” of Collaboration with Technology and People - Flying Around with Your Robot Friend - Taking Out the Bad Guys and saving those in harm's way!

3 years ago wrote a blog: IoT Cambrian Explosion https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/let-light-5g-internet-things-tree-life-doug-hohulin/

In the next few years, there will be ~10M cellular towers, ~1B Wi-Fi hotspots, ~5B TV, ~10B cell phones and tablets, and 10s of billions of IoT devices and sensors connected to each other wirelessly. As the chart below shows, there could be 10s of trillions of sensors with radios in the 2020s

Edwin Powell Hubble said "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.“ Think of what we can do with hundreds of different senses being used by trillions of connected things?

We are just at the beginning of this adventure of the exploration of the universe. As a RF engineer, I am excited what the future holds with 5G and IoT and what we will learn and discover. Humans are truly creatures of light who like to create light. So let there be light - or lots of photons.

"NATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:

God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light." - Alexander Pope

Epilogue

I wrote this blog: Ad astra per aspera - vel technologias; a vision of the future by a Rational Sanguine Futurist who is working to be a Wizard

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/ad-astra-per-aspera-vel-technologias-vision-future-rational-doug/

In 1860 there was a major drought in Kansas just before Kansas became a State in Jan 29, 1861. “At the time nearly 100,000 people in Kansas, and to fully 60,000 of them the drought finally meant that they must receive help or starve.” A History of Kansas written in 1919 page 106 [My Great Aunt Sarah’s history book] – 30,000 left Kansas and another 30,000 needed aid (from the east) or would have starved. Now Kansas is the 7th agricultural producing State.

The Kansas State Motto is: Ad astra per aspera - which I add - vel technologias

To the stars through difficulties - or technology

Because Technology makes going to the stars so much easier!

If you did not wake up hungry today, thank a farmer.

One quote I like is: “The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. People don't really want change, any change at all. … But we progress, as we must - if we are to go out to the stars.” - Robert Heinlein Double Star

I just finished a really good book: The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann

Here is an article he wrote that covers some themes of the book

Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People? - Humanity has 30 years to find out

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/charles-mann-can-planet-earth-feed-10-billion-people/550928/

Here is a talk he gave on the book The Wizard and the Prophet

https://longnow.org/seminars/02018/jan/22/wizard-and-prophet/

"Civilization’s health hangs on how we manage food, water, energy, and climate. Two conflicting visions dominate how we think about them. Each vision had an original creator and exemplar—the “prophet” William Vogt, author of Road to Survival, and the “wizard” Norman Borlaug, mastermind of The Green Revolution in agriculture. The prophet says to repent and cut back on everything; the wizard says that clever enough innovation can always find a way forward.

Examine both visionaries and their visions closely, and a way to proceed emerges that combines alert caution with bold invention.

Here is a blog on My Reading List - by a Rational Sanguine Futurist who is trying to be a Wizard

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-reading-list-rational-futurist-optimistic-doug-hohulin/?published=t

My reading list gives insight into how humanity can have a better future with the help of hard working wizards.  Both Wizards and Prophets are needed. Wizards to create new technologies but Prophets to warn us of the unintended consequences of the technology and to encourage Wizards to work harder. May we of this generation use the technology available to us to work on the goal to make a better world for humanity because that will “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

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