What Will The Future Look Like

Futurists say that there are many possible futures. And the way the story and the future of humankind, the Earth and all species living in the planet will unfold in the years to come is yet to be seen. We are trying very hard to imagine what’s going to happen in the next 5, 10 or 20 years. Many experts meet, review and study trends, discuss and do their best to predict how the future will look like. But the unprecedented and unstoppable pace of change and technological innovation makes it certainly impossible to predict the future with any kind of precision. 

However, there are a few dichotomies that I want to bring to everybody’s attention. I believe some of these dichotomies will have an impact in the way we think about the future, and take advantage of the opportunities that will come to us: 

The simplification versus complexification of life 

Yes, we might have self-driving cars, Alexa and its equivalents to control everything in our houses, a robot that helps us organize our administrative chores in home and at work, and who knows what else. Each of these innovations and perks are making and will continue to make life easier. Simplification of every single task in life has become a major outcome driving creativity, imagination and innovation. There can’t be innovation and value added into a product or service if it doesn’t make our lives easier. 

But as we simplify life we also complexify the design and thinking process behind everything we create. In the future, organizations, employees, startups and entrepreneurs will have to work harder and harder to create and add the type of value that people are looking for. There will be countless, even infinite opportunities  for everyone to thrive, yet it will be more difficult to realize those opportunities. End users will continue to value simplicity more than anything else (and that's why, in many instances, entrepreneurs are creating products and services that go back to the basics!). But the design process behind every single innovation will be loaded with increasingly heavy thinking and more complex skills.

Access to information and data of everything versus attention to nothing 

In the past two years more data was created than in the entire history of the world. Before 2020, 1.7 megabytes of information will be created for every person on the planet. Also, by 2020 there will be more than 6 billion smartphones users and more than 50 billion smart connected devices. This is certainly a hyperconnected world. Access to information and data abounds, and we will able to know everything about anything just by performing a quick google search. 

However, the exponential and continuous growth in access to information and data comes with a problem: we are paying less attention and our capacity to focus is also suffering very much. Researchers found that since the year 2000, the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds. And we might see this number continue to decrease. This creates a very complex problem, particularly for those designing solutions, services and products for end users (back to the idea of complexification of life). More importantly, for every single individual paying less attention and being less focus also mean less curiosity. And less curiosity is less capacity to observe the world and ask questions, and therefore the possibility to unveil opportunities to add value. 

Inclusion versus exclusion 

It seems impossible to me that somebody might lack the possibility to take advantage of the opportunities created by access to information and technology today. Accessing data, information, technology, resources and networks is easier than it’s ever been in any other time in history. That is why 3.5 billion people will come out of poverty in the next few years and expand world middle class to more than 5 billion people. 

However, when I think about most revolutions in the past, it seems that they were made in the name of "progress" and to "benefit" everyone. Those were the main premises behind those revolutions. But that hasn’t really been the case. We need to make sure that the technological, information and innovation revolution we are living in right now is truly inclusive and that no one (region, country or individual) is left behind. We already know that artificial intelligence and machine learning will leave many people without jobs. And we have to make sure that the future is inclusive, and that even though there will be opportunities for everyone to thrive, we look back very often to ensure that everybody is progressing and not just a few.

Follow me on Twitter: @erubio_p
Visit my blog: www.innovationdev.org

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About the Author: Enrique Rubio is an Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Enrique is passionate about leadership, business and social entrepreneurship, curiosity, creativity and innovation. He is a blogger and podcaster, and also a competitive ultrarunner. Visit the blog: Innovation for Development and Podcast. Click here to follow Enrique on Twitter. 

Disclaimer: opinions are my own and not the views of my past of current employer