The future is taking too long

I'm not the first one to complain, as this article can prove. Eventually, because our parent's generation grew up in a booming era of technology where everything was evolving at a very fast pace back then, but they didn't get to see the flying cars and the AI overtake got stuck in our collective dreams for a few decades.

This seems to be changing, finally, and we're starting to see a race to Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology em recent years, as shown in the diagram below.

Despite the fear over the dangerous of AI from some prominent figures like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who I much admire and respect, who stated that AI is our biggest existential threat, many consider AI very welcomed and Kevin Kelly, Co-founder of Wired Magazine and author of the book The Inevitable, even considers it part of the 12 inevitable forces that will shape our technological future.

Personally, and after reading this very interesting book, I got myself thinking about my dynamic life, constantly moving around, with not enough time to get to know my surroundings, with limited time to visit my family abroad where I try to make the best of every moment, and without the social connections that frequently help us build up social agendas around culture, sports, and exercise.

I wondered... what's taking so long for existing techlogies to improve my life? Why is the future taking so long?

My frustration has to do with simple things that could exist already, but they don't, or at least I can't find them. All developers (like myself) feel it one day, that urge to manually build that basic and cumbersome tool because there's simply nothing showing up on the Internet search results (aka Google) to a specific requirement.

So, let's break down and analyze some of Kevin's 12 inevitable technology forces.

Becoming - Moving from fixed products to always upgrading services and subscriptions.

It's still very hard to hire someone to fix or clean something at your house if you don't know the neighborhood. 1) You can't find a database where to look for. 2) If you find it, you don't trust whom you're hiring to invite inside. 3) You will not know if you're paying the average price. 4) You will have to have money to pay the service and you'll get a paper receipt.

If Airbnb has tools to check people's identity, Uber works with a rating system to sort providers by credibility rate, many Apps support lists of service providers, smartphones have GPS to help you find the closest service provider from your current position, Big Data will tell the average price for a price, NFR allows for touch payment with your debit card on a phone... Why is it still so hard to find someone to do you a service?

Cognifying: Making everything much smarter using cheap powerful AI that we get from the cloud

Since I discovered the pleasure of exercising, I embraced the mission to spread the word and try to convince as many of my friends and family to workout as much as possible. Current Apps don't seem to motivate because they tell you it's time to exercise according to an agenda you predefined, instead of relying on the importance of social circumstances in sports motivation, e.g. a club, a marathon, an organized Sunday run.

If my phone knows where I am, Facebook and others keep a list of social events with their location, Google can identify a runner in a picture, Natural Language can categorize the event, local entities know of registered community clubs and events, my sport apps know the type and amount of sports that I've been practicing, Gmail can read my email to know when I'm traveling... Why doesn't my phone let me know of a cool half-marathon that will take place next Sunday in Barcelona during my weekend trip?

Flowing: Depending on unstoppable streams in real-time for everything

I lived in three different countries in the past decade, leaving behind my own medical history with the doctors and institutions that assisted me somewhere along the line.

If each country holds my medical history, my phone constantly monitors my steps, my watch monitors my sleep, and my running bracelet monitors my heart beats... Why does my new doctor have to ask all of those questions again? And why doesn't my watch tell me I need to slow down my running average in order to avoid a heart attack?

Screening: Turning all surfaces into screens

I know that we're still a long way from having all surfaces turned into screens... but we all carry around a glass device with us all the time.

If I can exchange information with an object just by touching it with NFR or by reading a tag with RFID... Why can't I see on my phone what's inside the freezer just by touching the freezer with my phone? Or know how my miles I need to run if a eat the chocolate bar I hold in my hands?

If I can be authenticated through my social network in a private wi-fi when I'm walking into a bar... Why can't I use my phone to access the bar's menu and order a drink to be delivered to my table without ever leaving my chair?

Sharing: Collaboration at mass-scale, and Filtering: Harnessing intense personalization in order to anticipate our desires

For those, like me, who live in an expensive city but vibrant city, the hardest social task on a weekend is to find out where are the non-expensive culture gems. Although there is plenty going on, most of it free or amateur-priced, all of the paid advertising shadows or hides those free-entry events. Unfortunately, even when you find out when and where they will happen, it's hard to know if they're safe to take your other half on a date if you've never been there before.

If non-expensive cultural events are shared by so many on the internet nowadays, and if our first level of friends in a social network is people that in average have preferences similar to ours, and if Google and Facebook know where I've been before... Why can't my phone tell me about nice non-expensive new places to go based on my current and future locations, picking from the universe of events registered on the Internet, and sorting by my friend's history and feedback about those places?

We are morphing so fast that our hability to invent new things outpaces the rate we can civilize them. Kevin Kelly

Is 2017 the BEST time to startup?

We're facing an interesting paradox in 2017: 60% of the Apps have never been download, so we know we're creating what no one seems to want; but, at the same time, there are so many needs not yet address that could actually be accomplished with today's technology in the light of Kevin Kelly's 12 inevitable technological forces.

Maybe he's right. Maybe we should be starting up, instead of waiting for the future.

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Jorge Fonseca is an IT Solution Architect and Entrepreneur, specialized in Systems Integration projects for the Airline Industry and Health Care sector. Over 15 years of holistic and certified experience: Master in IT, MBA in Enterprise Management, CGEIT by ISACA, PMP by PMI, Scrum Master, MCP by Microsoft, OCA by Oracle, ITIL-F3. 

Write him at [email protected], or read more of his articles.