Human beings have a habit of extrapolating the future from the present, or even the past. The assumption is that whatever worked well for us up to now should, in some slightly improved shape or form, also serve us nicely in the future.
Yet the new reality is that, because of the increased impact of exponential and combinatorial technological changes, the future is actually very unlikely to be an extension of the present. Rather, it is certain to be utterly different—because the assumption framework and the underlying logic have changed.
Therefore, in my work as a futurist I try to intuit, imagine, and immerse myself in the near future (five to eight years out), present views from that world, and then work my way back to the present from there rather than towards it.
Starting with a report from that near future, this book goes on to explore the challenges and lay out a manifesto, a passionate call to stop and think before we all get swept up in the magic vortex of technology, and eventually become fundamentally less rather than more human. This is a good time to remember that the future does not just happen to us—it is created by us, every day, and we will be held responsible for the decisions we make at this very moment.
A historic inflection point
I feel that we are living in one of the most exciting times in the history of mankind, and I am generally very optimistic about the future. However, we definitely need to define and practice a more holistic approach to technology governance in order to safeguard the very essence of what being human means.
We are at the inflection point of an exponential curve in many fields of science and technology (S&T), a point where the doubling from each measurement period to the next is becoming vastly more significant.
At the heart of the story of exponential change lies Moore’s Law—a concept which originated in the 1970s, and which, simply put, suggests that the processing speed (i.e. the amount of computer processing power on a chip) that we can buy for US$1,000 doubles roughly every 18–24 months.
This exponential pace of development is now evident in fields as diverse as deep learning, genetics, material sciences, and manufacturing. The time required for each exponential performance step is also declining in many fields, and this is driving the potential for fundamental change across every activity on the planet. In practical terms, we are now past the stage in the life of the curve where it was difficult to gauge that something is happening at all, i.e. we are no longer moving in small steps from 0.01 to 0.02 or 0.04 to 0.08.
At the same time, fortunately, we are not yet at the point where those doublings are so great that the results will overwhelm our understanding and inhibit our capacity to act.
To put things in perspective, in my view we are at a relative performance level of around four in most fields, and the next exponential step will take us to eight, rather than a more linear rise to five!
This is the very moment when exponential increases are starting to really matter, and technology is now driving exponential changes in every sector of our society, from energy, transportation, communications, and media, to medicine, health, food, and energy.
Witness the recent changes in the car industry—during the past seven years we’ve gone from electric cars with a range of less than 50 miles to the latest Tesla and BMWi8 promising over 300 miles on a single charge.
We’ve also gone from a handful of charging locations to the astounding fact that New York City already has more electric vehicle (EV) charging stations than gas stations.4 Nearly every month there’s a new breakthrough in battery efficiency, a limitation which has for the past decades been one of the biggest barriers to mass adoption of EVs.
Soon we’ll charge our EVs just once a week, then once a month, and eventually maybe just once a year—and then it seems likely that very few people will still be interested in huge luxury cars with good old gas engines!
Technology vs. Humanity, The coming clash between man and machine by Gerd Leonhard