A peep into the future life and living

while the technology is not deterministic in itself but how we use it determines our future. when yesterday's fictions become new reality then acquiring fictional strengths become imperative to deal with new reality

So, our mobile is our new office, our new bank, our new mall, our new market, our new school, collage, university, our new restaurant, our new entertainment, theatre, practically our passport to living as it has turned our existence into a digital code. We have physical bodies but our life is digitalized so is our living. Mind you! Mobile has just been in existence for only 25 years. Now juxtapose these 25 years of revolution against our history of (homo sapiens) 60,000 years, before that history is available only in bits & a very few pieces belonging to Neanderthals, our cousins who had bigger brains, bodies and often considered having higher IQ than us. Yet, we survived the last ICE age ended around 12000 BC. Our survival is often credited more to our amazing ability to cooperate in large numbers, (mostly through myths, fictional stories) than to our IO. The end of ICE age facilitated us to engage in agriculture and left being hunter gatherer. This transition led to the birth of community living forming hamlets, villages, cities and ultimately big civilizations which cradled many awe-inspiring kingdoms. Hammers & chisels become ink & pen to write history of the greatness of these kingdoms. We can watch that colossal greatness strewn around the world in forms of marvelous temples, magnificent forts, rock carved temples, awe-inspiring pyramids etc.  Yet, the world life remained more or less similar to the people born unto 1600 AD. They saw the world more or less same between their birth and death. Hardly things changed. Then Gutenberg’s invented printing press made it possible to disseminate knowledge and heralded “Enlightenment Age” across the Europe. The Age led to plethora of innovations and changed life forever. The first industrial revolution led to rise of factories (separated work and home) and then 2nd industrial revolution led to the standardization. In last 100 years the pace of innovation fired up and humanity witnessed travel from land & water to ever fantasied air & ultimately the space. The world got sobriquetted as one global village. We reaped the benefits and achieved what could not have been even imagined in last 12000 years of our community existence. 3rd Industrial revolution of communication further transformed our lives and work. What Mr. Bill Gates wished to see computer in every house came true in just next 20 years, Internet soon became the chief anchor of the economy & social life. By the year 2000 google started encircling our lives, and before the time could even complete a decade, life can’t be imagined without google. Facebook, Twitter, Amazons, Instagram and other tech platforms weaved an inescapable web around our lives. Their claws spread out around all aspects of our life be it social or work. The pandemic finished the remaining differences. The decade gone by witnessed unprecedented transmogrification of human life predominating anchored by technology. A decade where technology produced technology instead of humans. Machine algorithms have become far powerful than biological algorithms. Google’s Deep-Mind invented AlphaGo defeated Korean grandmaster Lee Sedole 3-0 in the game of GO; A game far more complex than chess. Oxford’s lip-reading software can read lips with 93% accuracy against 60% of human. Microsoft new language translator can transcribe 40 languages in real time, finishing the need to learn another language. Another gigantic leap in knitting world together. IBM’s Watson discovery is a story with no parallel. It could detect ALS (a degenerative disease that ends in paralysis and death) by parsing every human genome in just a month. Its detective abilities in cancer is up to 97%. It’s still undisputed & undefeated champion in Jeopardy; a game of knowledge. Any smart phone you carry in your hands is 1000times more powerful than the Apollo guidance computer which sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon. Imagine the exponential growth in computing power which at current trends will surpass the competing power of all the humans on earth by the year 2035 only. It's spreading so enormously that CISCO systems conclude all physical objects will ultimately be connected to a network. Which effectively means your refrigerators can monitor what you eat how frequently you eat & can replenish online. Oven, washing machine, TV, coffee brewer etc. will follow your voice command. Alexa is already here to prattle & dance onto your whims & fancies. Smart homes which have already codified your body’s thermodynamics, and make you live with what temperature and light you require. Physical locks have been replaced retina or voice codes. What used to be a fairy tale a few years ago is now a living reality. Our mobiles have graduated from simple communication device to be part of human anatomy. For we can’t keep them more than 2 feet away. They are our new Aladdin’s Genie, can turn fancy into a reality. Indeed, our life is impossible without them. They can talk away your boredom, can read out books & tell stories like our grandparents. They will now even detect alcohol levels in our blood, measure SPO2, BP, blood glucose levels. They will soon have more than 2000 sensors to detect different aromas. Imagine poor humans with only 400 sensors in the nose. Think about the cascading impact. While we are commanding these screens (mobile, tablet, computers, kindle and TV) to do our biding, at the same time these machines are also reading us. When you read kindle it also reads you. It studies your eye movements very precisely. Which words you consult dictionary, your reading speed, which words make your eyes pop, and give you awe or happiness. It reads what you read, forms pattern and slots you in categories. When you watch TV, it will watch you back sooner, and stores all your likes, dislikes and watching history. When more than 2 billion people got onto Facebook, none had even a clue of its massive powers. Roughly 95million pics get uploaded every day on Instagram, and 350million on Facebook itself. These pics are studied by massive algorithms not only to make themselves more powerful but for shaping choices, understanding preferences and studying moods. These algorithms find most visited places in seasons, what’s eaten, what people wear, which jewelry is adorned, who you go with, what drink is mostly drunk, which hotels are stayed most, what color is preferred most. Every detail is studiously parsed and all these data are fed to the various industries right from tourism, travel, clothing, jewelry, food, color, fashion, tech to the Govt ultimately. This is how the industries then decide what will be the color of the season, place of the year to visit, jewelry of the season to wear, attire of season to preen, fashion to follow. Mind you this is just one Facebook example. What about Google and its kids like YouTube. Every sec 60,000 searches (3.5 billion/day) are ordered to google by the half of humanity (4.5 billion people). Which ultimately are stored in its silos with all the identity of the inquirers. The entire world went topsy-turvy somedays back when google malfunctioned for just 5 minutes. It was a mayhem everywhere. We are so hostage to tech that nothing can happen without tech. Hospitals can’t run, surgeries don’t happen, stock market only runs on algorithms, flights can’t take off, companies can’t work without emails, or google services. Economy just crashes without tech. Edu-tech, Medi-tech, Fin-tech, info-tech all are realities now. It has brought malls in bedrooms. The population of robots is now more than 10 million. Manufacturing is largely by robots in many industries. Amazon robots (15000) looking like footstools do most carriage work instead of humans. The city Porto of Portugal is developing “Urban Operating System” by putting sensor-based AI that analyses pollutants, microbes in the sewage lines, transport patterns, soil nutrition, city garbage, measure every house of city. Practically knowing which house is emitting what and accordingly fixing everything. It's a massive power. I have still not talked about Ralph Lauren “Polo Tech” a shirt which monitors your steps, heart rate, breathing intensity, gives you personalized feedback, Tech Tattoos or a cuddly interactive baby dog “Paro” which plays with patients of dementia, and also monitor their vitals sending them to their loved ones simultaneously. Singapore monitored social distancing of its people through robotic dogs who megaphone public messages, monitor people, record violations of norms and relayed fines. It’s scary leapfrog in human tech development. Do we even realize that when we send around 270billion emails, upload 450million pics of Facebook, fire off 600 million tweets and billions of searches on google every day? We actually help building a future that we don’t comprehend fully forget about controlling and its consequences on our privacy and over life. This is how data has replaced oil as the most precious commodity of the century. Now data is the new oil and data companies are new Fiefs. Digital capitalism is new capitalism. We all are integral part of it, and the more pervasive, connective, immersive and integrated technology becomes the more difficult it’s going to be to acquire skills to deal with and use it to navigate the various aspect of our real life. While the technology itself is not deterministic but how we use it determines our future. The new decade is on the cusp with 2021its first year. The difference between office and home is very blurred now, and tech is our main anchor to live by.  We must embrace it snuggly to our prosperity.

Remember. “when fictions become new reality than you must acquire fictional strengths to deal with the new reality’