Our World in the Future

In the 1980s, one of the seminal books in popular culture was ‘Future Shock,’ by Alvin Toffler.  Thirty years or more later, the book holds up well and was rather prescient.  Surya Kolluri, the author of this chapter, who is an expert on Public Policy, makes a similar attempt to observe the current cultural, technological and economic trends and describe what they might mean for our future.

Surya Kolluri (1986, Mechanical)

Introduction

As kids, most of us were familiar with the 'Dippy Bird.'   Between the capillary action at the beak and the weight of the fluid between the neck and the bottom of the dippy bird, the mechanism would cause the bird to oscillate and dip its beak in the water once in a while.  This example helps make the point that when enough variables come together, it can make a system move dramatically.  As I scan the world and note the amazing progress in various fields,  it occurs to me that we might be approaching our own dippy bird moment in human affairs.  In this concluding chapter, I will try to trace these trends and describe what they might mean for us.

Manufacturing and Supply Chain

The Economist magazine had a cover story on 3-D printing in a recent issue.  They have been beating the drum on 3-D printing for nearly a decade now.  I finally got curious and decided to do a little exploration, being an old manufacturing hand myself.  I came upon a YouTube video demonstration of 3-D printing that was quite extraordinary.  A real tool, a wrench, was actually replicated.  It is about four minutes long and really worth watching.

The apogee of modern manufacturing is the perfected, gigantic global supply-chains epitomized by Walmart + China.  The US based retail chain, Walmart is a gigantic outlet selling the products at the cheapest possible price by squeezing suppliers and making the supply chain efficient.  China, as we have all come to know, has been dominating the manufacturing side of things.  But it is now popularly known that the value, for example, in the case of the Apple iPad is in the majority, in the design and the applications.  The manufacturing cost of the iPad itself is in the approximately 10% range of the product.

Imagine a world, where each of us has some version of this 3-D printer in our garage.  We own a car worth tens of thousands of dollars.  So it is possible to imagine a replicator at that cost.  We would be paying for design of a product and replicating it ourselves (a sweater, as an example).  In the least, one can imagine, local 'printing villages' where everything is produced.

In this world, the current global supply chains would be radically altered.  Rather than shipping entirely assembled products, perhaps more raw materials would be shipped.   Today's manufacturing and global supply chains have perfected what Henry Ford started.  Tomorrow, we might finally realize a series of interconnected villages, in a way fulfilling Gandhi's vision - but in a 21st century way.

Education

To this day, we are all striving for and aspire for our children the best education at the best institutions.  A degree from a prominent school, such as the Ivy League in the US is much sought after.  That is seen as a stepping-stone.   But right under our noses, information, education and know-how is exploding through multi-media - be it podcasts, YouTube lectures or TED Talks.  In writing about Salman Khan, the creator of the Khan Academy, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has written one of the most prescient articles about education.  Another example is Harvard Professor Michael Sandel's lecture on Justice.  This video that is available on YouTube, has been viewed more than four million times!  It is one of the most powerful lectures on ethics and moral reasoning one will ever hear.

In such a world, what is the value of college education - particularly when the cost of education has been outstripping inflation multiple times every year for nearly two and a half decades?   At some point, the notion of an expensive college education will be challenged by society, since a lot of content is all around us anyway.

An important consideration here of course is the quality of the content.  A highly ranked academic institution, is so ranked for a good reason – similarly a degree or certificate.  The ubiquitously available content will only gather value and validity upon being properly vetted, validated and recognized.

Environment

Not a day passes, when my son does not remind me of some aspect of my behavior that is not environmentally friendly.  Between mining, dumping and garbage creation, we have been flooding the planet with waste - including nuclear waste.  At the same time around the world we have been denuding forests at an alarming rate.  Glaciers are disappearing in front of our very eyes.

But environmental consciousness has been rising so that if not in our generation, in the next, we could well see the return to more preservation and less exploitation.  With accelerating economies in China, India and Brazil there won't be enough oil and coal left to fuel rapid growth.  There is no question that out of sheer necessity we will need to shift to solar, wind and other renewable resources.

Most corporations are already getting serious about 'green' and the carbon footprint.  Imagine a time, when one is in a meeting, and no one brings any paper.  Think of a scenario where the U.S. President or the Indian Prime Minister issues an edict just to his executive branch: no paper in any meeting.  Imagine the U.S. Government or the Indian Government stopping the use of paper.  This is not inconceivable that this could happen.

Of course, a moral dictum (such as ‘print less paper’) pales in comparison to the impact technological change can have.  The digital revolution and its impact through ERP systems and digital signatures provide a significant opportunity, for example, to cut down paper use.

Loving work and working on what we love

Work as we know it today was epitomized by Gregory Peck in the movie 'The Man in the Gray Flannelled Suit.'  In the past a company man was the order of the day:  loyal to his organization, making a work-life balance choice.  With the world economy in the condition it is, there is increasing necessity to find work that best suits one’s skills.  The imperative is building a career that best fits your needs.  For example, our son's ski instructor, during the summer season, is a racecar driver and during fall, an automotive consultant.  That is NOT a man in a gray flannelled suit!

For two decades now we have been talking about the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.  We are now headed from a service to a knowledge economy.  With service being delegated to robots that can do everything from keeping your house and refrigerator in the right condition to vacuuming your house.  This is not far-fetched at all.  Just think about the number of tasks you can do now just with our iPhone or Android that required service workers: banking, shopping, reading and listening.  Well Siri the automated voice on the Apple Phone is not there yet.  But any doubts that Siri X.0 is round the corner with a lot more capabilities?

Longevity

Human longevity has increased by leaps and bounds and it is no longer surprising when we regularly cross 100 years in age.   That is 35 years past traditional retirement.  In fact traditional retirement is near being retired.  The notion that we might live after the age of 65 worked until that point gives rise to reasons to re-think everything from financial planning, to activities and responsibilities.

With regard to financial planning, it seems to me to be pretty clear that it is not enough to have a 'number,' i.e., assets in the portfolio when one reaches a pre-determined age.  What is important is infusing it with meaning from the past and the future.  Experts suggest three key questions to ask:

Question 1:  What was it like with money growing up for you?
Question 2:  If you had a calamitous emergency today that wiped out your savings, what would you do?
Question 3:  If you had all the money you need today, what would you do?

With the population in the oldest segments growing fastest around the world, policy makers are going to be pressed to come up with ways of addressing new issues - such as delivering elder related health care services on a large scale.

Genetics  

We are unraveling the 'toolkits' within the gene (and not just human genes) that are responsible for various things including growing organs.  Imagine organ farms that grow organs that we need.  Sean Carroll is a Professor of Molecular Biology  ('EvoDevo') at the University of Wisconsin.  He has an excellent podcast on the topic of synthetic life.

We are creating micro-organisms from scratch that can follow instructions and do various tasks for us.  Craig Venter, the pioneering US geneticist, heralds the dawn of a new era in which new life is made to benefit humanity.  This would be a range of life forms starting from bacteria that churn out biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to those that even manufacture vaccines.  He created a new organism that is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.  The single-celled organism has four "watermarks" written into its DNA to identify it as synthetic and helps trace its descendants back to their creator should they go astray. 

As reported in the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, Julian Savulescu, professor of practical ethics at Oxford University, said: "Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially ... or modifying it radically by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally."

Craig Venter feels that this is an important step both scientifically and philosophically and that this progress has certainly changed my definitions of life and how it works.

A vision for the future

It is of course tough to predict what date and time these will converge and what shape the converged outcome might take.  But one can sketch out a vision, a strawman.  Imagine in the future we will choose to live in smaller communities.  We won't go to college, and we won't work 9-to-5.  There won't be large factories spitting out products.  There won't be defined careers either.  There won't be any mega stores to go to.  Neither will there be paper nor plastic much around.  There won't be paper currency either.

Here, we would be living in a highly inter-connected world, plugging into knowledge and education uniquely tailored to each individual and paced accordingly.  Value will be based on unique and new ideas contributed to human understanding and endeavor.

A designer would come up with an idea and it can show up at everyone's home electronically (perhaps even through holograms).  We would pay for the idea and have it locally produced - maybe in your garage or in the village central - and most of the value would be for the design and not the material or the production.  The information about the earth, its waters, its bio-diversity, the map of the universe with its galaxies would all be digitized and be at your fingertips (literally).  You could communicate with anyone anywhere about what is happening (five years ago, my brother was able to send me a mobile message from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro).

In this world, we would be free in the truest sense of the word, to pursue what we each individually like and derive value from the overall network of knowledge contributors (not workers) around the globe while enjoying a silent, virtual exchange of digital currency.  Lest this be confused for a 60s commune, this is not 'give up everything' idealism.  Rather it is a convergence of amazing knowledge, scientific progress and technology that will allow us to jump headlong into human affairs, but not be caught as a cog in a giant wheel.

In the future, 'Gone Fishing,' might not necessarily mean absconding from our responsibilities. It might mean we are doing the most natural thing in the world.  While out there, by the brook, fishing rod out, with a gentle breeze swishing by and one’s dog, Rover lolling in the sun, one might have an Emily Dickinson-ian insight (The poem I'm nobody! Who are you?, comes to mind).  And oh, by the way, one could post it on the future generations' version of Facebook for friends, family and the general public to react.  They might even credit one’s bank account should they feel it has value!

Summary

Nanotechnology.  Computing power.  Digitization of information.  Private space flights.  Mining Asteroids.  There are even more such trends developing around the world.  Just like the dippy bird analogy that I used at the beginning of this chapter, these trends, both individual and societal are converging.  However, let us acknowledge an ever-present caution.  One does hope that the Yang, that will accompany this Ying, with bad guys having access to the same technology and knowledge can be kept at bay!

But looking, reading and absorbing these trends, it is pretty clear that we are nearing an apogee in human affairs.  An apogee in the sense that we have pushed twentieth century organization, scale manufacturing, global supply chains to their limit and that perhaps now events will start reversing in an evolved sense and headed back to a perigee where things are more localized and customized.

In this Brave New World, traditional stages in life such as going to school, getting a job, staying at the job(s) until retirement, and then fading away into retirement may no longer be the norm.  Individuals will need to take control of their education, re-skilling, networking, financial planning, health management and much more into their own hands.  Each individual will need to navigate this ever more rapidly changing world with the new tools of the 21^st Century.  This is going to be fascinating to watch unfold.

About the author:

Surya Kolluri is a Managing Director at a Global Bank focused on Public Policy and Planning.  He lives in Boston with his family. He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the PSG College of Technology, where he lived for fifteen years.  He has a masters in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University and an MBA from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania.