The next big idea

[Eoin McLove]

I was thinking about how those around my age are the last generation to have straddled the pre- internet/ post- internet world,  and how much it has revolutionised everybody's lives in a way we had been told (warned?) would happen but that most of us probably didn't take too seriously.  I remember as a kid in the 80s being told by my tech- minded uncle that we'd all be using computers in the future and laughing at him,  thinking he was crazy. It was another world back then, and even right up to the end of the 90s. We all probably had friends who were on the internet but it was still niche and seemed to me to be a lonely hearts club for Dungeons and Dragons geeks or a repository for extreme and outlandish porn, none of which exactly presaged how dominant a force it would truly become with the advent, and merging, of social media and mobile phone culture.

Our kids will no doubt be curious and baffled as to how we lived without internet.  Our lives will seem as primitive,  or possibly even more so, than our parents' childhoods seemed to us growing up.  I suppose that is always going to be the case.

What,  I wonder,  will be the next huge shift that our kids' kids will be born into that will make them look back at our kids' generation with a sense of wonder and pity.  What will be the new idea that will make our current lifestyle seem primitive and otherworldly?

[Juggz]

The concept of material ownership, be it hardware, accommodation, entertainment, transport - it's all on the way out. I think transitory lifestyles will become far more the norm, not settling in one country for life and not signing up for a thirty-year stretch in economic prison with a mortgage. Job security is on the way out. With AI, cloud and transport autonomy the way we view jobs will change drastically for the service sector which will have massive repercussions for everything else. No shops, no drivers, no pilots, no personal car ownership, much less person-to-person interaction for every transaction. Order online with drone delivery is already here, why would anyone go out to pay more in a shop which requires them getting off their arse? You order on a screen in fast-food places already, you don't even need to make a phone call to have food delivered to your door. Soon the delivery driver will be gone too. Where I work is fixated on getting as much of our IT into cloud as quickly as possible. It's easy to see why. Once your infrastructure is cloud-based, you just move your operation to wherever the cheapest labour is on the planet, including all your support and production staff. You could relocate over a weekend. A lot of us white folks are going to be having a lot of time on our hands soon unless we're prepared to radically change the way of life we know. Following work to wherever it's available will be a big thing, so there's no point in burdening yourself with possessions. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have got a firm grip on our futures, Amazon in particular as they are already massive in cloud, have a chokehold on retail and have their hardware platform development in place. The future isn't what it used to be, as the saying goes.

A mate sent me this video a few days ago. It's quite on the money. It's just a shame the show didn't survive to take a peek at 2050.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStTIX86mhE

[ochoill]

Exactly what Juggz said there re. material ownership.  This and Automation will change gears on a lot of how life is lived.

[Eoin McLove]

Yeah,  defo looks like that's the trend alright.  No argument at all,  even if I'm likely to remain a relative dinosaur regarding my hard copy purchases of music and literature.  For me those things can never be satisfactorily replaced.  I think that shops will still have their place to some degree. Look at Dublin city centre for example.  Everything you can buy in a shop is available online but there is something special in a materialistic way (nothing wrong with a bit of that says me) about rambling around the city on a weekend,  eating some nice food,  visiting a gallery or museum,  buying a CD and a book.  A nice city centre is irreplaceable.  It has a certain ambience,  not taking into account the obvious problems that exist regarding drugs and homelessness.  Towns are probably fucked in the grand scheme of things and have been for years with large shopping centres springing up everywhere,  but people still like to shop. I suppose we are heading toward some kind of tipping point there though,  where shopping districts will still exist and serve that same function,  but will contain mostly bars,  cafes and restaurants, along with a few small niche shops.

[The Butcher]

The concept of material ownership, be it hardware, accommodation, entertainment, transport - it's all on the way out. I think transitory lifestyles will become far more the norm, not settling in one country for life and not signing up for a thirty-year stretch in economic prison with a mortgage. Job security is on the way out.

The idea that many of us will accept a new norm, like this "transitory lifestyle" is something that doesn't sit well with me. Many accept the way life flows now - settle, set down roots, establish yourself in some type of career etc. What happens to the vast majority currently in their 30s/40s/50s still with a long way to go until they finish the thirty-year stretch in so called economic prison (ie home)? Tough, AI/automation has taken your job & now you can't repay, banks will take or own your home, just go ahead, uproot and take the kids out of school to another country. I don't think people will take that lying down.

The no personal car ownership model to me is madness. No way would I like to solely rely on a model of renting a car or having to car share with strangers. I see things like uber and airbnb left to their own devices with zero regulation as completely detrimental to society, a certain easier way to convince others to an acceptable race to the bottom.

I agree on the job security aspect...it's on the way out if automation goes the way many think it will & I reckon we will see huge resistance to this if not properly managed somehow. Attacks on delivery drones, attacks on self driving taxi cars/trucks/buses as people are shifted out of being truck drivers, taxis, delivery people etc will be more common to hear in the news. It's a vast amount of employment, along with people in retail/manufacturing/wholesale and the like. Unions will become more important then ever and will need to fight in these trenches if they want to continue to survive.

Not everyone has the required IQ to upskill in an increasingly complex employment skills situation so what happens to this % of the population that will struggle to find any type of work? And the rate of change could become so rapid that it could well overwhelm our capacity to adapt. The idea of the 3-4 year degree type courses could look rather outdated by 2040.

Amazon, Microsoft, Apple & Google do have firm grips on the future which is worrying & the cloud is again a dangerous one, another race to the bottom as far as I'm concerned. A new era of corporatism is upon us.

Maybe this coronavirus will mutate further and eliminate enough people so we don't have to worry about automation...

[Eoin McLove]

I agree with your sentiment on all of those points. I know there is discussion about a universal basic income (Not sure if that's the exact name for it) where the government essentially pay people to sit at home twiddling their thumbs as jobs become increasingly more automated.

That's all interesting stuff indeed but it's all very pessimistic and,  who knows,  maybe the powers that be will decide it's an unrealistic way to proceed,  particularly as they won't be able to squeeze any tax out of an unemployed public. 

And maybe being paid not to work will have other unexpected positive effects,  though I find it hard to see at the moment, but maybe music,  art,  philosophy and other creative pursuits will become viable avenues of revenue again.  Just a brain fart, of course,  but who knows.

I wonder though,  will there be some other revolution that will make the internet seem quaint and passe in the near future or will it be in another hundred years time before it gets knocked off its perch.   

[The Butcher]

I definitely think the whole area of virtual/augmented reality will be expanded beyond what we can imagine now. I completely dislike the idea of implanting chips but I read a year about some employees getting chips implanted so they could pay for stuff in their canteen. So obviously there is enough people that would be accepting of this...people will no longer steal wallets but steal fingers :/

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658808705/thousands-of-swedes-are-inserting-microchips-under-their-skin?t=1580470761312

Battery tech must improve this decade to press ahead with the electric car otherwise other options like hydrogen might take center stage. Some dislike Elon Musk but his rocket launches could pave the way for making something like space mining actually feasible. His satellite idea means giving internet access to the world would mean there would be so much light pollution, we might be the last few generations that can look up to the skies and see stars. In 40 years time when we look up, all we will see is lines of satellites.

I reckon in the western worlds life expectancy will start to dip as health declines (obesity rates++), it's already declining in the USA for 3 years in a row (bad consumption habits along with many other things) but eventually I do believe we will be able to pinpoint aging genes, which we can either be able to turn off or repair/reduce/slow down damage to boost our longevity, not just lifespan but healthspan also. Living to 100+ on average won't be far from the realms of possibly.

This alone could eventually add another 2-4 billion to the world population depending on advances. Mass tourism coupled with more dense living & declining standards to our quality of life runs the risk of increased global epidemics..the real toll to human health and the environment is enormous. There are no effective mechanisms in place to manage the risks that have come from the 'mass everything' economic model, it will be tourism/trade over risk of contagion/peoples health. We are seeing that even now with the coronavirus, slow to react, afraid of what it might do to the global economy (even the IMF warned about this today). In 2011 Qantas airlines had no problem grounding the entire fleet to bust the unions demands for better pay -> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-29/qantas-locking-out-staff/3608250   

Next 10 years I definitely see the final nails in the coffin in the likes of high street retail, accelerated moves towards more touch screens in fast food and Google/Microsoft etc pushing out call centre AI software, reducing jobs. This will push market forces lobbying for more uber/airbnb type business models with unions required to step up to the mark & defend workers rights. In Ireland it's inevitable to push us towards a renting model than house ownership. All we need is a major multinational to pull out of Ireland to highlight our massive reliance on corporation tax revenue (akin to 2007 stamp duty).

The internet of things is something that is hard to grasp with aswell, any predictions I see with that is trillions of sensors collecting data from over 100 billion connected devices....and that's by 2025. 5G and beyond will push this area into new realities. Big IT will venture into & disrupt health care industries with self-care products (biometric sensing), CRISPR-based individualised medicines, organ manufacturing.

Deep fakes / social media influence...it's going to eventually lead to political chaos somewhere. Especially this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGs11gujRjE

Adobe VoCo freaks me out. On one side...it will lead to audio tech perfectly emulating the most iconic voices past and present. Could be audiobook/animation/gaming heaven. With all this tech I won't be surprised people will go back over TV shows and films and edit them as easily as now do with photos, changing scenes around and editing lines from the shows, creating their own endings/changes.

Garda drones in the skies monitoring illegal dumping and communities and speeding etc.

Residential power going off grid with battery storage + solar. Text by thinking. 3D printed clothes at home. Wireless electricity moving beyond phone charging pads. Virtual lawyers & medical bots....

...WinRAR will still not have expired.

Sorry, bit of a rant there lol but across all sections of the "big ideas" - Internet of Things & Augmented/Virtual reality are the two I think that can have mind blowing changes for the future.

[Eoin McLove]

Lots to ponder there.  I'll check the links later.  Nice one.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

...WinRAR will still not have expired.

This got a lol 

[livingabortion]

What,  I wonder,  will be the next huge shift that our kids' kids will be born into that will make them look back at our kids' generation with a sense of wonder and pity.  What will be the new idea that will make our current lifestyle seem primitive and otherworldly?
[/quote]



I don't give a fuck about future generations. You hear a lot of the youth whining, moaning carrying on about how "The Boomers" have ruined things for them and have left the planet in such a state that there is practically no turning back from the precipice that we are about to go over into the abyss.  The Icecaps are melting, the Rain Forest is being wiped out, pollution is such a problem that is almost impossible to solve. Yes! Enjoy your days out in the country in an oxygen mask.