CHANGING TIMES

When faced with fresh challenges and the opportunities and threats posed by technological innovation, the human race has always evolved to live, work, and explore in new ways. Listed below are some of those rising social, industrial and organizational phenomenon that look set to trigger many changes in our lives and belief systems over the coming decades, and which have the potential to harbour significant benefits, if with them new avenues of conflict and division.

Please note that trends specifically linked to particular technologies and their development are included here in the future technologies section.

The New Industrial Convergence

The first industrial convergence was identified by Nicholas Negroponte, Director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) around 1980. At that time, a slight overlap existed between the industries of computing, telecommunications, and the content sectors of broadcasting and publishing. However, Negroponte predicted that by around the year 2000 these industries would all have converged due to their reliance on the same digital systems. This now very famous prediction also proved to be correct.

The idea of the New Industrial Convergence is that, as we approach 2010, traditional manufacturing, medicine, and the converged media industries of computing, telecommunications and content, are also starting to share some common ground. Further, I am suggesting that by around 2030 these currently quite distinct areas of human activity are likely to have significant overlaps.

Several developments already signal the beginning of the New Industrial Convergence. These include advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering and as biocomputers. All of these developments involve engineers, doctors and computer scientists solving the same types of problem at the same physical scale. Indeed, as researchers across all of these areas all learn to create, program and replicate materials at the level of the cell, molecule and even atom, so the cutting-edge art, science and practice of manufacturing, medicine and media are already becoming very similar indeed. For more information, please see the New Industrial Convergence page.

Working from Home

The current daily ritual of travelling a significant distance to a "workplace" at the start of the day and then back home when organizational labours are completed is a relatively new historical phenomenon that is unlikely to remain the dominant norm. Indeed due to our pending oil shortage and other resource depletion, regulatory measures being taken to try and combat climate change, and a potential global flu or other viral pandemic, over the coming decades more and more people are likely to spend at least part of their working week teleworking from home. This is also increasingly becoming possible due to a range of Internet developments including cloud computing, as well as the growth of a knowledge economy in which brain power is the greater human resource than muscle power. It is perhaps therefore hardly surprising that recent research by Affiniti for the Telework Association suggests that in the United Kingdom up to two thirds of the workforce wants to be working from home at least part of the time by 2010.

For organizations, the benefits to be reaped when employees work from home can include reduced real estate and utility costs (as less office space is required), together with improve productivity (as workers potentially get less involved in workplace politics and distractions), and an increased resilience to natural disasters and terrorism as a smaller proportion of their workforce is ever co-located. Service levels may also improve if some employees can be "always on line" to meet 24/7 customer demands.

For individuals, working from home may also lead to improvements in their work/life balance, a reduction in time spent travelling, and the opportunity to work from where they want largely when and how they want. More broadly as already noted above, we may all benefit from decreased pollution and traffic congestion, and from reduced resource usage, as and if we re-enter an age like that before the Industrial Revolution in which for many the "workplace" and "homeplace" were largely one and the same.

Life Extension

Across history, improvements in healthcare, diet and the infrastructure of civilization have fairly consistently resulted in an increased average human life span. Today, the majority of people in the most developed nations can subsequently expect to live into thier late 70s or early 80s. However, with technologies on the near horizon the potential may well arise for the lifespan of participating individuals to be extended further still.

Potential measures for future life extension include the "re-programning" of our natural of biology to slow or prevent the ageing process, the augmentation of our natural self-repair and immune systems, transgenic and/or synthetic organ replacement, and cybernetic upgrading. In the very distant future the possibility may even exist for individuals to transcend natural biology entirely and to achieve potential immortality in cyberspace. For more information, please see the Life Extension Page.

Women in Authority

For years futurists have proclaiming that "the future is female". With cross-disciplinary developments such as the New Industrial Convergence requiring the attention of minds most accustomed to multi-tasking, and key future challenges such as climate change and resource depletion also requiring far more holistic and socially-cohesive management perspectives, it is also hopefully easy to see why the human race would and will be better placed with a more even balance of men and women engaged in all forms of decision making at both the corporate and governmental level.

Significant research now suggests that the credit crunch was fuelled by testosterone. Placing more women in authority would subsequently reduce our focus on the over-competitive, short-term decision making that has crippled our economies and cursed the next generation with debt. Granted, the competition at which males so excel may be vital for our survival. However, so too is the focus on nurture and social cohesion characteristic of the female behaviour of most species. Ask people right now what is most threatened by the swine flu pandemic, and whilst most men say "the economy", most women first mention their children. That more women should be making key decisions really ought to be a no-brainer. For more information please see the Women in Authority page.

The Death of Economics

Economics was one of the greatest blessings and yet the greatest blights of the 20th century. As capitalism won the battle against communism, both governments and business grew narrow-minded due to their obsession with always making the best economic decisions. The very positive side of all this was that prosperity ensued, whilst the very negative was that economic decisions, borders and regulation trod all-too-heavily over so many of those human values that allowed us to survive long before coin, note and e-banking website.

In making the above proclamation, I am not advocating that in future economics will no longer matter at all -- as on a basic financial level it most certainly will. However, what I am suggesting is that due to the "green trade-off", the ethical "consequences behind the price", and "challenges beyond economic solutions", the days in which economics will remain the dominant decision making tool in all circumstances may well and perhaps should be coming to an end. Not least this is because economics promotes short-term decision making on a planet than cannot continue to be blinded to fundemental long-term issues such as climate change and resource depletion. For more information, please see the Death of Economics page, and/or my Death of Economics Video.

The Transhuman Agenda

Some people firmly now believe that a proactive stance ought to be taken in furthering human evolution. Specifically, those who advocate such a "transhuman agenda" advocate eugenics and hence the use of technologies such as genetic engineering and future nanotechnology to "artificially" evolve the human condition so that we may as individuals quite literally become stronger, smarter, more attractive, less prone to disease, and able to live longer with a high quality of life. Taking a different viewpoint, many other people of course strongly advocate on ethical, moral, religious or other grounds that the human condition and human evolution are naturally "fixed" and should not be tampered with. Most people of course lie somewhere along the spectrum between these two extremes, and/or have never thought too deeply about the ethical dilemmas that technology developments now place before us.

Debates concerning the development, implications and public adoption of a genetic engineering in particular are now moving from being of largely academic interest to being key inputs to fundamental government policy and multinational business strategy. An understanding of the transhuman agenda and its implications for the ethics and practice of human existence is hence becoming a prerequisite for all of us thinking about and planning for tomorrow. For more information, you may want to visit the website of the World Transhumanist Association.