Why do we care about the future if we can't truly predict it?

We tend to overestimate short term change and underestimate long term change

In previous decades, technological progress, whilst increasing in pace, has largely followed both Wright's law and Moore's law. Today, the models no longer hold and instead we are at a precipice in which technologies are not only developing at an exponential rate, but converging, and as such amplifying their power and influence. For example, Quantum computing's potential comes from providing the brute force required for AI to achieve super intelligence.

Robots (including UAVs and Autonomous Cars), Artificial intelligence, Synthetic Biology and the climate crisis will determine the pathway for how the next century will unfold and change the way we live.

The impact is several fold.

Government and Policy

Firstly, an expanding gulf of knowledge for governments who typically seek historical evidence to guide policy and governance. There is no playbook to turn to to capture handling of immense power, influence and unintended consequences of rapid technological change. Meanwhile tech companies can narrow this gulf via the predictive power of artificial intelligence.

As a consequence we are starting to rely on Big Tech to inform policy, (eg for driverless cars). However, we are already experiencing technological unemployment, digital inequality, platform urbanism, personal data abuses, biases and interference with elections; all of which have far reaching societal consequences. In managing tech we must start to explore not just the economic potential for market monopolies but tech's political power too.

Infrastructure

Digital infrastructure is increasingly outrunning physical infrastructure development. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest mobile financial services adoption globally whilst simultaneously having the lowest energy access rate in the world. This two track race not only fundamentally changes the way in which urban development takes place, but will create new industries, business models and reorder the top global economies. Decentralised and distributed systems are already gaining momentum in response so that physical infrastructure is less of a barrier to development, eg off-grid energy storage using batteries. It is likely that this will extend to broader systems such as trade and finance to generate highly locally optimised structures.

Changing nature of work

Technological unemployment as a consequence of robots and AI deployment, has long been speculated with most citing repetitive tasks as those most vulnerable to automation. Predicted frictions extend to technological up-skilling, professional identity mismatch (many blue collar workers claim they would rather be unemployed then take on the poorly named "pink collar work"), and location disconnect (People in lower skilled jobs are less geographically mobile than those in higher skilled professions). However, creative professions are also vulnerable, with artificial intelligence allowing all options within a design space to be explored almost instantaneously. Whilst robotics and automation will aid many jobs by improving time, accuracy and precision it will fundamentally redefine the nature of work and what is considered highly skilled work. The working week will change or disappear as the line between work and leisure blurs. Managing distribution will become governments’ biggest priority as the labour market will no longer be a fair way to distribute the economic pie. Rather we will likely see new models such as universal basic income or conditional basic income in which value is allocated via community recognition.

Manufacture

Advances in fabrication methods such as printing materials in situ using synthetic biology will impact supply chains, degree of personalisation, structures that can be achieved and raw material use. All have the potential to change resource management and shift towards mass localisation of goods and services. Coupled with advances in genomic sequencing and gene-editing, healthcare will transform to personalised predictive care models. Whilst unburdening hospitals from expensive treatments it could also raise the potential for biological inequality. Life expectancy and demographic dividend will continue to climb with management of age related dementia posing the biggest risks and opportunities in the next century.

Sustainability

Any change will be underpinned by efforts to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 - 2 degrees celsius. Environmental pressures are already defining businesses' strategic objectives in order to achieve resilience, and will continue to do so over the next few decades. By 2070, the population is expected to reach 9 billion people, 70% of whom will live in urban environments. Rising sea levels, extreme weather and climate change refugees will reshape supply chain security as well as demands for goods and services. Decreasing costs for clean energy such as PV cells and energy storage will help realise low cost decarbonised energy required to meet the world's quadrupled energy demand, in doing so welcoming new models of financing.

So What??

Converging exponential technologies compound existing pressures and create new ones. Through this lens it is easy to paint a stark picture of the future. Engineers, designers, futurists and strategists all have a responsibility to acknowledge the challenges and unearth unintended consequences of the decisions we make today. In doing so generating solutions which overcome them and create new experiences and opportunities. Thinking about the future, or at least possible versions of it, allows us to strive as far as possible for an empathetic human version, devoid of fodder for a black mirror episode. This way we can begin influencing the future policies, technologies, governance structures required to create it; so that the future doesn't become something that just happens to us but rather something we've actively created. Is it science fiction? Possibly. But the imagination powering science fiction is precisely what has enabled scientists to continually push and set new boundaries.