A Short Glimpse into the Near Future
"The
future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed."
-
William Gibson
We’re definitely living in interesting times as things are
changing rapidly. Nothing stays as it is; mostly in global contexts, there is a
massive collateral damage (global financial crisis, global warming) and there
are plenty of cracks and new, as of yet, largely unregulated areas where
innovative technologies thrive. In the near future, which could be estimated as
five to ten years, we will, no doubt, witness a lot of new and exciting
developments in economic models, administrative bodies, production industries,
data management, social networks, the climate and most importantly, medical
practices. The undisputable indicators of these changes will be the shrinking
of the economies, the development of a new mindset of what sustainability is,
the discovery that governance and administrative systems are failing and the
increased frequency of extreme weather events. And the main consequences of
these changes will be the tendency to concentrate on values, attitudes and
resources that make a difference in the quality of one’s life.
Through implementation of these changes, there will surely
be conflicts and the plausible collisions between social classes will intensify
within and across national sovereignty borders. With the collapse of democracy
and neoliberalism, human rights and obligations will be reengineered
collaboratively. As it is the trend as we witness today, the world is dealing
with the financial euro crisis with putting the squeeze on the taxpayers that
are already overtaxed and leaving the few wealthy living in overabundance and
tax free, instead of restructuring their administrations, reducing costs,
getting a grip on corruption and concentrating on improving the social cohesion
and infrastructure.
Considering the changes we will be facing in the near
future, all our information generating capabilities will only reveal the limits
of knowledge and the confines of our cognitive abilities. But how should we
perceive these exceptional changes? Are our demands, hopes, and desires about
the future frivolous? Consulting Science Advisor at the World Trade Institute
(WTI), Dr. Dannie Jost says, “Which parameters should change is not the
question I would ask. It implies a deterministic approach to a deterministic
world. I would invite exploration and I would include discipline in the
exploration. The exploration will aid in finding the emerging temporary
parameters that can be used to shape the world and create the society that we
want. Techno-determinism is not the way to go. Determinism is just not the way
that the Universe is built. The Universe is evolving and we are interacting
with it albeit on a small scale in the grand scale of things, and in a big way
in the small scope of our planet.”
As most these changes influence and reinforce each other,
there will be plenty of overlap between relevant fields. Let’s have a quick
look into which of these fields we’ll witness the firmest developments and how
will these developments manifest. As stated in this survey, concrete drivers built around technologies
and global external factors will be:
· Connections: Ubiquitous networked
sensors and computers, the Internet of Things. Everything becomes more
networked, with vast implications.
· The Data Layer: Across the world, there
is a layer of data that is growing thicker and denser by the day. It is fed by
our online behavior, by sensor networks, by the Internet of Things (IoT).
· Alternative means of production: The
rise of rapid prototyping, 3D printing & open-source hardware.
· External, global factors: Economic and
environmental woes & aging populations in industrialized countries increase
the pressure to change, adapt and innovate. Stagnation and preserving the
status quo isn’t a viable option.
And some of the key ways these drivers will manifest will
be as follows:
· Small pieces loosely joined: The
network as the dominant paradigm in most fields (economy, work, organization,
technology). This brings with it a trend towards smaller organizational units –
freelancers, single households, startups, local food production, bottom-up
innovation.
· New interfaces, ranging from more
human (gestures, etc.) to machine-readable (robots, sensors, Internet of
Things).
· The time is changing: Massive
disruption across the board. Nothing stays as it was or is, ranging from
economy to organization to education. “Digital” is one of the main drivers, but
not the only one.
What will happen to the economies and industries?
As the global economy remains shaky at best, it is expected
to go smaller, more granular. Doubtless, the globalization will still survive,
even grow prevalent, as the world connects with the third world countries
pulling the derailed train of economy, however the more sophisticated markets
will shrink in size and concept. This will lead to the further rise of
freelancers and talent networks. Innovation will blossom increasingly from the
startup and other independent actors rather than huge Research &
Development departments. Unable to adapt quickly to the new realities, global
governance systems will fail to some degree. As trust in state institutions
will be shrinking, we’ll witness a lot more self-reliant communities. One of
the manifestations of these community projects is the local food movement which
promotes urban gardening while shunning the mass-produced shelf food.
One of the most debated subjects of the last decade was the
global shift in the content industries. In the near future, we will most
certainly see a period where the product design and development industry
will suffer just like the content industry did. Collaborative design
processes, open source hardware and 3D printing in all its shapes and forms
will uproot this whole industry in ways hard to grasp yet. Particularly
the open, flat infrastructures we see evolving in 3D printing today
will have profound impacts driven by hobbyists and free market demand alike.
A whole new industry focused on pre-production
processes will arise, as opposed to those focused on final products.
Instead of IKEA we might go to a cutting and printing place for furniture, toys
or spare parts. Physical goods will face piracy in very similar terms as
digital goods today when consumers can just print knock-off toys and spare
parts. Intellectual property will be redefined yet again.
In the automotive industry, things look a little different
as car manufacturers explore new technologies but won’t just let any hobbyist
play with their software. They get support from the big tech companies like
Facebook and Google. We shouldn’t be surprised as driverless cars start roaming
in the near future. Again, gestural interfaces will also help control both your
car and your home in more human, intuitive ways. And while we’re putting chips
in our environment, let’s not forget pets and humans, either: RFID chips
might make a good implant if there’s a valid, convincing use case that is
so good that it tops the inherent creepiness we associate with chip implants
today.
Even though these new emerging technologies herald an
exciting age, I am still a little skeptic about their applicability; not just
because of their reliability but the pressure groups of the syndicate corporations
holding governance over traditional power supplies. We’ve witnessed to our
utter disgust how new technologies using alternative power sources (the
electric car, power stations running on wind and solar panels) got the hatchet
in the last two decades. And the ongoing struggles to reach more oil reserves to
deplete will definitely continue to invade the socio-political structures of
the new future.
How will the media and networking influence the future?
The fight for control over and profit from the internet is
on and mass media are entering the endgame of this second phase of the web. The
established players (broadcasters, telecommunications and infrastructure
providers like Time Warner, Verizon, etc.) and the new establishments (Google,
Facebook, Apple, etc.) will fight it out. And we can certainly expect
nasty lawsuits, mergers and acquisitions and plenty of chaos. In the short
term, this is likely to be at the expense of consumers. Media and content
industries will have to re-invent themselves bottom-up to cope with change and
harness new technologies.
Media outlets don’t have the basic understanding to see
what’s going on, so how could they even begin to harness the change? It’s
important to note that this is what happens at the organizational level –
individuals inside the media outlets might be very well versed, yet there are
internal and external factors that prevent appropriate action. In some
cases the organization chart gets in the way, in others the profit margin just
doesn’t easily allow major changes to the otherwise “functioning” business.
Working around these organizational restrictions is a major road block. Again,
size matters as smaller units are more agile.
Social media services are run by companies and thus
legitimately need to earn money. The rules of their users’ consent and privacy
will be put to the test. The privacy wars will be one of the big
conflicts in the years to come. And there’s this snippet we should always
remember when social media is concerned: if you’re not paying for the product,
you are the product. If you’re not paying, you’re being sold.
Networking concepts, and especially social networks, are
the absolute paradigm, now more than ever. Decentralization means a
redistribution of power. It also means that if you pull one string, something
might unravel in unexpected places. If there’s one thing that seems certain,
it’s that we’re headed for more complexity, not less. Networks help us overcome
growth barriers. This holds true for the small (self-reliant or mutually
supportive communities) as well as for larger societal challenges. Just to name
a few: finding better solutions for outdated copyright laws and industry
protection. More flexible work visa regulations for a globally mobile workforce
(including tax models and pension plans) that should move with the person.
While easily explained historically, the paperwork associated with moving and
working internationally creates barriers that stand in the way of global talent
distribution and equal chances.
On the other hand, not all things look bright. We are
becoming ever more digitally connected. Yet this does not mean that we will
always feel more connected on a personal level. There will be the occasional
feeling of intense loneliness, as well as a demand and need for smaller,
more protected social networks. Think about Google+ circles and Instagram. The
group/list/circle concept is as yet only rudimentarily developed. We think that
will change as social software and non-human actors grow more sophisticated.
What about the technology leading us?
We've established the dominance of the digital already.
Its younger, but no less powerful sisters, are ubiquitous 3D printing and
rapid prototyping as well as the Internet of Things. Overall, we
expect networked technology to become even more ubiquitous and more invisible.
This is right at the intersection of two notions I mentioned before: everything
becomes smaller and more granular, and there’s a new data layer spanning
all aspects of our lives.
We used to like our technology visible as a sign of high
tech quality – we proudly displayed our TVs, stereos, and computers. That was
the trend back then and it stood out. But as technology became ubiquitous, we
entered a phase of humanized and intuitive technology, popularized by the likes
of Minority Report and iPhones. Now we are seeing the rise of invisible
technology – technology simply baked into daily life, utilized but non-intrusive.
From a design perspective, this changes a few things.
A networked environment can and should be able to react more contextually and
more appropriately to our needs. Interfaces should become more subtle; gestural
interfaces should proliferate and turn technology even more into a true
extension of ourselves. Ambient technology ranging from playful applications to
more work-related tools like interactive whiteboards become more powerful, and
if not more useful, then at least smarter. As the Strategy Director of
Undercut, Mike Arauz says that, “The
proliferation of gestural interfaces (iPhones and Android touch-screen mobile
phones, iPads and other touch-screen tablets, and XBox Kinect-type
motion-driven interfaces) will have a quiet, yet seismic effect on
disintegrating the boundary between the technological and the human. In the
more distant future when we take the integration of digital/computer with our
physical and mental selves for granted, we’ll look back on these few years as
one of the major milestones along that road, due in large part to how gestural
interfaces contributed to making technology a true extension of ourselves.”
Consumer electronics will be better designed and much
better networked then today, thanks to the open web. Once it becomes industry
best practice to put APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) on our gadgets
and services and we can more easily make our things talk to each other, our
experience will be a league better.
(At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help
the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at
his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop.")
The rise of indie tech movements isn’t going to
slow anytime soon. Add the more techy flavor of the DIY/craft (Do It Yourself) scene,
physical computing and group funding and you get a pretty potent mix. This
means a massive change in how we perceive physical goods. If that doesn’t
replace the current system of massive, mainstream-oriented production, then at
least it will complement it through small production runs and mass
customization. This will definitely be the the real thing, not swapping colored
pieces of plastic. Remixing will increasingly be applicable to physical goods,
like toys. Today we see only the tip of the iceberg, the equivalent of the home
computing movement in the 70s. Industrial production as we know it today will
experience a profound disruption.
While multi-purpose devices like the iPad will grow in
popularity, they will not at all kill single-purpose devices like the
Kindle. This follows a rough pattern. New products will end up as features in
multi-purpose devices for less demanding consumers, while power users will
always favor dedicated devices. The core of adaption stays in the software and
the surrounding ecosystem. As iOS and Android have shown us, functionally
largely equivalent devices and services can be used to create very different
types of ecosystems.
What about healthcare?
A field that will see massive change is the health
and fitness sector. Over the last couple of years we’ve gotten a first glimpse
at where things are going through the Quantified Self movement. There’s a
lot more to come, though. What we know today as the Quantified Self (QS),
the measurement of body and behavioral data for further analysis, will become
more embedded in our daily lives as sensors get cheaper and network usage gets
both easier and more ubiquitous. QS will get a simpler, more snappy name; seem
less strange as applications are mainstreamed and become easier to use;
be more hidden and embedded. The challenge will be to find more meaning
and relevance in the measurements and, as boundaries between humans and
technology grow ever more blurry, to make sure that the necessary privacy
safeguards are in place. Non-human actors, namely bots in both the
software and the hardware sense, will find lots of use in medical contexts.
3D printing has been around for a while but now it’s
being applied to medicine in ways such as being able to scan the remaining leg
of a patient that’s missing one from an accident. It can then build a
prosthetic leg with skin and size that matches. 3D printing is integrating with
the fast-moving world of stem cells and regenerative medicine with 3D ink being
replaced by stem cells. In the future we’ll probably use 3D printing and
stem cells to make libraries of replacement parts. It will start with simple
tissues and eventually maybe we’ll be printing organs.
With the implementation of networking and crowdsourcing technologies
into social health networks, we will be able to communicate online with
doctors, share our individual experiences about diseases, treatments and
healthcare facilities and use mobile applications utilizing artificial intelligence.
Education and Culture
More educational material than ever before is
available online for free. Yet questions of how to curate and how to validate
& certify knowledge acquired this way remain. Will a Harvard degree stay
the most desirable standard of education? Which institutions could provide
validation services?
School design, after hardly changing for the better part of
the last century, is taking a sharp turn towards corporate settings. This is
just one of many symptoms of the corporate influence on education. It’s a
double-edged sword: on one hand, big companies step in where governments don’t
provide the best education, and help get students ready for their careers. On
the other hand, this kind of education is aimed primarily at streamlining
corporate careers. Do we want a Google University? How would it be
biased? Is it a bad influence or good for choice? As a researcher at the
Faculty of Art, Brighton University, Dr. Georgina Voss says that, “Increased awareness that the ‘democratization’
of technology is still a limited process, and that people who can engage in it
are still those in regions with fast broadband, access to a free/open internet,
access to tablets/PCs/smartphones etc. Aiming to create inclusive processes of
social/political/cultural participation, rather than privileging those who
already have substantial social and technological capital. In practical terms
this means keeping libraries open – maybe opening more of them – as they may be
the only space where many citizens can access the internet; not shifting
educational tools entirely to ‘e-books’ and online learning; recognizing that
digital techs complement, not replace, paper.”
In the face of even stronger globalization, the need
for cultural identity grows stronger again. What will be the primary point
of cultural reference? Nation, city, block, tribe, operating system?
Cities have always been a focal point for innovation and
early tech adoption. We expect urban spaces to open up to all kinds of
connected things, ranging from smart screen solutions to responsive
buildings and vehicles.
Cultural identity, as I mentioned above, might be provided
or at least fostered on the local level. Think about urban “villages” within
cities, strong tribe-like connections. These “tribes” might be defined
regionally, within the city, or by shared interests, spread out across several
cities.
Either way, we can expect that cities will become more
responsive, both on an architectural and a transportation level. Truly
interesting things won’t happen in the planned corporate cities of East Asia,
but in the messy underbellies of big, organically grown cities like New
York, Hong Kong, Berlin, Rio and Shanghai.
Now where does all that leave us?
The cultural and socio-economic implications of all these
things are huge and there is a massive difference between our expectations and our
hopes. In a nutshell, we expect culture to thrive while parts of the
content industries fail. Yet, the overall global economic structures will lead
to specific uncertainties that foster small, bottom-up business and innovation.
We hope that the Third Industrial Revolution (more
about it on references) will provide apt solutions for the
more-than-just-interesting design challenges the world faces.
We hope that designers will put their skills to use
to design for a better world, and focus on values, attitudes and resources
that increase quality of life.
We hope that governments invest massively in
research and development to foster innovation beyond the high-risk,
financially driven free market.
We hope that we will, on a global as well as local
scale, be able to close the growing technology gap between rich and poor.
Technology can empower and democratize, or it can be exclusive. We think that
inclusion is the key.
We hope to find a balance between access and
security, between convenience and control, between global and local needs.
All of these dichotomies represent legitimate needs and agendas that often
are highly complex. Yet this is where we, as a society, need all the smart
minds we can find.
We hope that our networks, including the Web and the
Internet of Things, will be free and open, as this is the basic foundation
for true innovation. To harness the smarts of the tech community, we need a
true read-write web.
We hope to see more mature and more valuable
social networking software. More nuance and sophistication, more focus on user
needs than marketers’ needs. In other words, not just iterations of Facebook or
Twitter, but a different paradigm.
We see some big drivers of change as outlined in the
beginning. Across the field and in all disciplines, things are getting
more connected. This holds true for the global – world, country, economy,
internet – as well as the super local – our homes, our gadgets, and our
bodies. As I've stated earlier, the network is the absolute paradigm and if there’s one
thing that seems certain, it’s that we’re headed for more complexity, not less.
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