We have seen how our society evolved from version 1.0 to today’s 4.0. We have seen a flavor of the next-generation society through Falcon’s tale, followed by the highlights. Now, it’s time we dived into our future and analyzed how various aspects of our life are going to look like in the years to come.
Before we discuss industries, let’s go through some common principles that will drive our future. Sure, various technologies, all part of the BIG—Bio, Intelligent, and Green—are shaping our future, but how are they changing our industries? What is the end result we want to achieve through these technologies? Specific challenges vary from industry to industry, hence specific goals are different, too. Goals are different for each organization within a particular industry and also are personal to each individual. But there are some common principles I believe apply to every aspect of our life. And remember, our industries are organized around our needs and support various aspects of life.
The three alphabets I believe driving our future are reduction of work, reduction of worry, and reduction of waste (what I call the 3Ws). Let’s look at them in detail.
Work reduction is all about bringing in efficiencies through either automation, improved business processes, or both. The idea here is to optimize the work output, so more can be achieved with less effort, thus yielding more in less time. The term “work reduction” raises anxiety as it’s often wrongly equated to the reduction of people. Work reduction principle doesn’t, however, entail reducing work force but instead the opposite: to produce more output from the same set of resources to meet the ever-growing demand.
Worry reduction is all about ensuring the safety and well-being, both physical and mental, of everyone involved in the process. This workplace/home safety is not limited to the workers, but everyone, that includes the consumers of the products or services offered. This is also beyond the mere sense of safety, that is, avoiding other potential troubles such as legal and social.
Waste reduction is, well, all about reducing different kinds of waste. Reducing the raw material and other wastes eventually going into the landfills, however, is only one type of waste. There’s another type—the wastage of effort. Often old and manual processes consume a lot of people’s times, wasting a lot of effort. Lost effort is equivalent to lost productivity. If you build two plants far from each other, there is a lot of back-and-forth travel that needs to take place, resulting in energy and time wastage. Waste reduction is about saving resources where it’s reasonable.
We will see how the three broad categories of technologies (BIG.) will beautifully work together to achieve these common goals, in addition to some industry and other specific goals. Again, while the specific ways differ from industry to industry, organization to organization, and individual to individual, a common approach can be defined through these three tenets: connectivity, control, and circular (the 3Cs).
Connectivity is all about uniting all the various fragmented processes, groups, and systems in an organization or our lives. The majority of the challenges any organization faces, regardless of the industry, is that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and vice versa. We face this in our daily lives as well, through various functions of our life working absolutely independently. You can take the example of different apps on your phone. They all have a brain of their own. While that may not be such a big deal for us, imagine if they all work together in a smart home through smart assistants such as Amazon Alexa, where an integrated experience is provided. However, this integration is much more than an experience for businesses and individuals; this will drive efficiencies, leading to the reduction of all 3Ws we discussed earlier.
Circularity is all about closing the loop. Part of it defines the circular economy, converting a make-use-dispose model into a make-use-reuse model, helping to reduce waste tremendously. However, there’s more to it than that. An extension of one of the Cs, that is, connectivity we discussed above, makes sure the loop between various processes or the units are closed, in addition to ensuring that a connectivity is established, thus improving end-to-end communication across the organization. That will lead to better control as well. It’s about having people together to accomplish more in less time instead of distributing them across various locations. “Together” can be both physical and digital.
Control is all about knowing what is happening at any given point in time at a specific business section. Through centralized control, all the connected systems can work closely together, transmitting real-time data to create a digital twin of the entire business someone can monitor on a screen. Centralized functional mapping has various applications one of which is live diagnosis of the problem in the system. For instance, if an equipment is about to go bad, the sensor detects that and the same is marked in red on the digital twin. But it gets even better. There is no need to closely monitor the process. An alert will be sent to the person in charge; a service order is automatically created for the repair; and any replaceable parts are automatically ordered. By that, we not only ensured the continuity of business, but also avoided work hazards. However, control doesn’t only entail regularity on a technical level. It is also about your dominance in finances, assets, health, safety, and marketing, among others, through increased predictability and reduced surprises. The same applies to our life as well.
With this brief introduction, let’s dive right into our BIG future, peeling one layer at a time. To be able to give a more predictable view of the future, I will hop back to past occasionally and try to put concepts into perspective. That’s because the future is never complete without the understanding of the past.
Future of Food (Agriculture)
Agriculture is the oldest industry known to humankind and still is the chief source of food production. It was a means to both sustenance and currency. It will be crucial to review some of the trends in this critical industry and, most importantly, how agriculture is going to look in the future.
Agriculture is a general term used for raw food production and can broadly be divided into three groups on the basis of the products they yield. First is “vegan” culture products, meaning agriculture of plant-based food such as grains, fruits, and vegetables. The second is animal culture products, agriculture of animal-based food such as meat and milk. And the third is aquaculture and relates to water-based food such as fish and shrimp. To make things simpler, I will use the words farming and agriculture interchangeably.
The Society 1.0 ancestors depended more on on-demand or impromptu farming. The mode of food production was daily gathering: hunting animals or picking fruits and vegetables for a certain time during the day, often just enough to feed the family for a day. The rest of the day was spent in leisure, doing whatever they liked, whether it’s sleeping, “socializing,” or simply relaxing. This “work–life balance” model was acceptable, given that global population, especially its density, was not huge. For example, the upper estimate of world population as of 10000 BC was 10 million, according to census.gov (2021). That means we had one person for every 20 square miles back in the day, leaving plenty of food resources for everyone. If we take the lower population estimation of one million total global population, it gives approximately 200 square miles of land for every live person. As the population grew, food became scarce and hunting and gathering had to become more common, for longer hours during the day, adding up to a choking point of high demand. Without wonder, the necessity was met by the exploding agricultural revolution.
Then, the concept of farming developed in Society 2.0 to improve the predictability of available food. Lands were prepared for farming; societies grew around those lands. With this evolution, our ancestors could “mass-produce” food in an organized manner and distribute and store it for near-future adversities. However, they still depended highly on direct natural food sources, which were hinged on nature’s unpredictability or even hostility. At times of harsh weather or high competition, no food was available. Often, the entire batch of foods was infested by insects; the people went hungry for sustained periods of time due to this. This food scarcity was rather more prominent and depressive when the infestation was more widespread due to undiscovered bacteria and viruses. Not just plants, animals were also infected. Birds, insects, and animals acted as nature’s intruders and the best solution we had back in the day to protect farms from these intruders was a scarecrow, outside of manual guarding, of course. Long days of manual labor and being at the mercy of nature were the two extremes the farming people had to endure.
Everything began to transform and evolve with the industrial revolution in Society 3.0, and agriculture was not any different. Tractors and other farming equipment reduced manual labor and improved efficiencies. Fertilizers improved production. Pesticides helped beat insects and other intruders. Advances in the medical field helped cure animal infections. Gene editing made plants, animals, and birds stronger and better, including the production of “pseudo-natural,” brand-new, food types borne out of advancing technologies.
Fast forward to the information society, Society 4.0; the transformative technologies continue to improve, making farming easier and better. The access to the data from the entire food supply chain spectrum has enabled information technology to bring about revolution in crop planning, production, and distribution, by streamlining processes. Demand is forecasted more accurately, and so is production, so the supply can better match the demand. Thanks to all the computing power that was developed in the last few decades, distribution networks are streamlined and the crops are tracked from their departure from the farm until they end up on the market shelves. Satellites help us better understand weather patterns and reduce the nature’s menace to farms and farmers—good news that the latter can get advanced notice for natural calamities. Manual and animal labor are replaced by machines, streamlining planning to plowing, and picking to packing. Advances in biotech continue to bring more food options as well. This is how humans eat today.
However, we are at an inflection point. The agricultural industry is facing numerous challenges. First, the agriculture sector has ended up being one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas (GHG) responsible for climate change. Together with forestry and other land use, agriculture is responsible for just under 25 percent of all human-created GHG emissions, according to the climate reality project. The agricultural industry is challenged to go “green” yet produce all the nutritious food we all demand.
With global population on the rise, the one thing everyone will need is food to survive. The production capacity, hence, must continue to increase to meet the demand. In order to meet the other basic necessity of this growing population such as shelter, agricultural lands are being converted to residential places, leaving less land to produce more food. Climate changing rapidly has been directly impacting this grand old industry. Consumers of food are becoming smarter through increased exposure to information, putting pressure on farmers to meet consumers’ tastes and expectations. The young generation is moving away from agriculture toward other “cooler” industries. Despite advances in information technology, food continues to get wasted, with an estimated 133 billion pounds worth $161.6 billion being dumped every year in the United States alone, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report (Buzby, Wells, and Hyman 2014).
These are just some of the key challenges the agriculture industry is facing today. So, what is the solution? What is the future of agriculture and how will it overcome the above challenges? Here is my top list.
Regenerative Farming
Dubbed as the “future of farming,” regenerative farming is a broad term focusing on using and enriching natural resources instead of destroying and depleting them. While the specifics vary from place to place, to customize methods to locally available resources, fundamentally, regenerative farming revolves around a few principles.
The first principle is do not mess with the land. As idealistic as it sounds, merely tilling the land is the largest contributor to GHG emissions. It also kills the important microbes in the soil required for nourishment. The second principle is use the natural ecosystem to feed each other: grow a variety of crops that help each other’s productivity, including a combination of plants and animals. Growing winter-friendly crops in between harvests to protect the soil to increase its nutrients is an example. Converting unused produce and animal wastes into compost and adding it back to the soil is another example. Similarly, the third is crop rotation, which is an extension of the second principle. Crop rotation alternates the plantation of one crop with the other often to improve the productivity of the soil. Likewise, the fourth principle is go natural. Going natural rests on the principle of minimal intervention. Protect crops and minimize the use of chemicals or any other unnecessary intervention, gradually tapering toward null.
Essentially, regenerative farming uses natural techniques but uses them intelligently to maximize production. How can a farmer decide which crops to grow together and how to rotate crops? That’s where AI comes in. I see regenerative farming as a beautiful merger of preindustrial natural farming techniques and 21st-century information technology.
If you are into farming, make sure you embrace regenerative farming techniques. It’s not just a cool method to practice, it’s the right method and, most importantly, this method gives you the best financial returns. I wouldn’t invest in an agricultural business that doesn’t currently employ this method or has plans to do so in the future.
Computer Vision Replacing Scarecrows and Technology Safeguarding the Farms
I grew up around a lot of farms. My favorite was a nearby mango farm, which we as kids would visit occasionally, to pluck a mango or two when we wanted to be mischievous (which was always). An old man—I still remember his face, it was scary—managed and guarded the farm. He made frequent visits to the farm, keeping stray animals and kids away and was functionally against our mission—which was to ensure we don’t get caught. Although the old man did a great job at making these rounds, we would be successful in nearly two-thirds of all our attempts.
Today, the surveillance cameras replace the old guard, whether fixed in several locations or constantly tracking on a mobile robot. Computer vision processes these images and acts whenever it detects anything unusual. In the case of mischievous kids, perhaps an announcement that it is watching us would have been sufficient. At best, computer vision can summon a drone to chase away the birds or even call the cops in case it detects something more serious. It can also single out inactive animals in the case of an animal farm to detect diseases and take preventive actions before they spread.
Aerial Drones
Imagine the same scenario as above, but the eyes in the air this time, instead of fixed cameras, or on a mobile robot. The drone video is processed by advanced AI-based computer vision to detect not only external intruders but also pests, insects, and intruders that humans can hardly detect. Drones can also be used to plant seeds where digging is not required, spraying pesticides, dropping fertilizers, and even to water any plants in tough-to-reach places.
Smart Fabric and Accessories Protecting Animal Farms
Smart watches aren’t just for humans. Smart collars, bands, and other accessories will detect livestock activities and vital signs and get processed almost on a real-time basis, complementing the data received and processed by computer vision. In case any particular animal on the farm is less active than usual, or any animal develops a temperature, it can be isolated and treated before the disease spreads, saving a lot of lives.
Robotic Friends Dominating Agriculture
Autonomous tractors, autonomous seed planting robotic helpers, pesticide and fertilizer spraying bots, watering bots, fruit and vegetable picking bots, animal showering bots, animal feeding bots, meat slaughtering bots, meat sorting bots, packing bots—these are just a handful of smart bots that will dominate our farms. However, it doesn’t mean robots will be able to outgrow humans or rather outgrow crop production.
Revamping Local Farming
Farming was localized for a long time. Thanks to the continued industrial revolution and globalization, food production is being limited to a few designated lands and is being distributed across the globe with chains of intricate supply-and-demand architectures. I still remember the exciting story someone from Sweden told me when they had a first-in-their-lifetime experience of tasting a banana arriving from South America.
So much for the merits of the global agro-industry. The global transport of goods, as much as it feeds the world, also contributes to global warming. Moreover, it’s not the same as freshly picked produce. Well-informed consumers demand food that is both fresh and healthy for the environment. And the only way to craft this combination is through forced local farming. The good news is that advances in technology can now mimic climatic conditions required for crops anywhere in the world. This is the future of farming. And this concept might democratize and decentralize farming, growing the number of farmers nurturing food in their backyards and providing to the community. You do not require big enough backyard for this form of farming because you can rent a container and convert it into an indoor farm. Why not turn your farming passion and your free time into an income-generating business? You can start small without deploying any fancy technology or tools and work your way up. However, make sure you employ regenerative farming techniques.
Catering to Both GMO and Non-GMO Consumers
Thanks to all the progress in genetic engineering, genetically modified (GM) foods have been hitting our shelves almost since the last three decades. An example of this is a nutrition-rich rice. Genetic engineering will continue to produce more nutritious food and increase food production. Of many GM-tech’s pick points, one of them is that foods can be modified to suit the environment or make it friendly. However, there’s also another side to this story. Many people are skeptical of GM foods because they think they don’t know enough of this domain, of the environmental, health, and nutritional repercussions. Irrespective of the science behind it, the debate will continue, hence the need for continued production of genetically unmodified food is inevitable.
3D Farming—Farming More in Less
We think of farms as large pieces of open lands filled with plants, trees, or animals or large sources of water. These farms are 2D. With reduced land space in general and the push to grow crops locally, indoor farming is growing in popularity these days. How do you make the most out of the limited indoor space? Also known as vertical farming, this method turns farming area into a three-dimensional structure. It simply means, in addition to using length and breadth of the land, the height should also be employed in farming, which is similar to vertical urbanization, out of similar concerns. Stack the crop on top of each other in layers in an indoor, controlled environment and that way we can decrease the space needed for farming. More to it, indoor 3D farming allows the climate to be strictly controlled and without the dangers of nature’s wrath.
3D Printing—Print Everything on Demand
Day-to-day tools, indoor farming structures, pots, neck collars, feeding tools, and even helper robots—you can print everything on the farm, on demand. There is no need to spend days, if not weeks or months, shopping around, purchasing, and then transporting to the farm. Because of the possibility of extreme customization in the case of 3D custom printing the tools, effort put into designing the tools won’t go waste because the exact specifications are always met.
Organic Farming
In the old days, agriculture used to be purely organic. This was as soon as and even after many years since farming started. Gradually, the need for upping the production was felt owing to increased population and thus came fertilizers, chemicals, insecticides, pesticides, rodenticides, and all the imaginable -cides we can think of: terminators of the unwanted that “harm” our crops.
This went on only till we realized chemical-borne foods harmed humans and environment and we were in a constant juggle of balancing the increase in productivity with health hazards. Because of decades of apprehension, the demand for chemical-free food is growing by the day and well-informed consumers have been opting for “genuine” organic products. We will soon go back to being 100 percent organic if we can tackle the demand–supply gap and meet the production capacity.
But growing organic food is challenging. For example, to be considered 100 percent organic, the poultry must be raised steroids- and chemicals-free, and every component of the food they eat must be organic. The bigger challenge will be to prove that it’s 100 percent organic. This is where blockchain tracking can come in, which can certify and verify the full life cycle of the produce, from farm to the kitchen table. That provides complete peace of mind to the consumers who want to go fully organic. Nevertheless, this technology may not have a big-bang adoption, especially in the beginning. But with time, if one company joins such certification, the rest may follow suit. If not, they risk disruption. If you had a choice between one organic product certified by blockchain, slightly costlier, and another one uncertified but inexpensive, which one would you choose?
IoT Bringing It All Together
Technologies can seamlessly work together to form an integrated and coordinated farm. This may include moisture sensors triggering the sprinkler system, heat sensors spraying mist or pulling the screen down to provide shade, computer vision summoning the drone or calling the cops, temperature sensor alerting the farmer of a sick animal, plowing and seed-planting robot working together, plucking robot updating the stock levels in the backend enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and a whole lot of other applications. The Internet of things (IoT) will form a digital ecosystem of all the various tools and components involved in the end-to-end farming ecosystem to provide an integrated experience to the farmer.
Advanced AI for Real-Time Farming Insights
As we’ve already discussed, data are the next big thing in all the domains. Right information at the right time is what helps farmers make better decisions. Granted that it is not an easy task. The information from these different sources must be processed with huge computing power, analyzed, and the concerned people in the loop must be alerted, eliminating false alarms, for this to work. For example, the temperature coming from the wearable sensor on the animal alone cannot be used to alert the farmer that the animal is sick. Compare that with the data coming from other animals, factor in outside temperature, look into the animal’s history and contact with the outside life—all before the alarm bells are pressed. There is a need to analyze past patterns and other criteria and precisely tell the farmer when to plant the seeds to maximize the outcome. Process the data being received from all the sensors and factor in historical data and data available on the Internet to predict risks before they become issues, such as a pest attack. However, the Internet is full of information, and only certain sources can be trusted. Spotting these sources is, too, not an easy task. The need for a supersmart digital bot to achieve all this is dire. Only advanced AI can devour information of this magnitude, learn from it over time, and work independently of humans. Only then the farmers and their workers can focus on what they do best—farming.
In summary, the future of farming is going to look a lot different. We will see a beautiful merger of the sciences of farming, which in themselves are evolving rapidly, including more natural, advanced, and organic techniques, making farming one of the coolest skills to possess in the future.
Future of Shelter (and Construction)
Shelter undoubtedly falls right after food on the priority when it comes to listing our necessities. Let’s review the past trends, current challenges, and the future of this most crucial need. First, however, let’s expand our conversation to the construction industry in general, covering infrastructure in addition to shelter.
Our great ancestors looked to natural houses such as trees and caves for shelter in the early part of Society 1.0, thus the name “cavemen” (or cavewomen). These people figured ways to shelter their families using stones and tree branches toward the end of Society 1.0, thus giving rise to first primitive concept of homes.
Fast forward to Society 2.0, the agriculture society; this is where the emphasis on shelter skyrocketed with the formation of societies around the farmlands. While construction techniques evolved over time, it was predominantly through natural resources such as clay, stones, and wood that homes were built with. The construction methods varied with civilizations owing to developing techniques, needs, and resource availability. For example, in ancient China, people would use a lot of wood for construction due to its abundance and faster time to value. Ancient Greeks used a combination of stone, clay, and mud bricks to build beautiful structures. And ancient Romans used concrete, made by mixing lime and volcanic rock.
The raised standards of Society 3.0 gave rise to new construction methods with the invention of Portland cement that industrialized building with the help of bricks, nails, and other tools. Steel went into mass production and formed an integral part of high-rise buildings. Black asphalt topped the roads and reduced the work done during transportation. Dynamite helped dig tunnels and, with various advancements together, structured bridges. Automation slowly took over manual and time-consuming tasks through powerful machines that can work faster than humans. However, the build boom was only limited to industrialized societies with a majority of the world still using the construction techniques of the previous society, mostly due to the unavailability of resources, both money and raw materials.
While the construction methods continued to improve, the information society, Society 4.0, brought along several other transformations to the construction industry through digitization of its various aspects. Take, for instance, better visibility in the movement of raw materials. This not only expanded raw material transportation around the globe, but also provided better control on the supply chain. Construction design got digitized through computer-based 3D models. The entire construction process can now be better managed using project management tools. Work is scheduled and tracked digitally, together with worker’s productivity. Control on finances has improved through more efficient IT systems supporting the financial backbone. Buildings that can withstand deadlier natural calamities such as earthquakes were built with more sophistication and design.
However, the question is whether all these advances in the information technology are doing everything needed to bolster the construction sector. Lately, construction industry is facing a number of challenges. First and foremost is building stronger and higher-lifespan structures that not only withstand the nature’s wrath, but are also eco-efficient. This is where design innovations come in as the success of any construction lies in the quality of its design. Design errors still cause construction owners, whether individuals or companies, to lose a lot of investments and lives. Construction is an investment-rich business with lurking market risks only waiting a step ahead. A market crash at the end is going to throw all the investment down the drain. Potential issues to supply chain must be considered, minimizing any material shortages. Furthermore, fluctuation of raw material costs and missed deadlines further aggravate the risks of uncertainties. So, forecasting cost balances considering market trends is crucial in reducing market risks. There are several other factors such as weather and regulations that impact construction projects. On top of that, safety of construction workers is also key. Unsafe construction practices cause millions of dollars damage to construction companies and may put brand and reputation at stake—maintaining which is very essential in this business. Not the least, intrabusiness disruptions and employee dissatisfaction also form one of the major hurdles. It is safe to say that information technology isn’t doing as much as it should in alleviating the wounds of the construction business.
What lies ahead for the construction sector vis-à-vis the use of technology that further addresses the unaddressed problems? Here is the beginning of key trends toward novel construction frontiers.
Advanced AI Will Plan and Design Better Construction Projects
We currently have multiple software solutions that design construction projects—be it housing, roads, dams, or tunnels. The only intervention needed to take that first step toward construction intelligence is making the design solutions intelligent. These AI-based design tools will only use publicly available data to design smart buildings. The AI’s learning algorithm will read the available regulations, energy-efficient techniques, and methods to fireproof and earthquake-proof, among others, to design a safe building. Various levels of customization will be available, for instance, using green technologies. The AI will learn the methodologies to turning processes and structures green giving you a green house (not to be confused with greenhouse). Of course, you will be able to feed the AI with the sources you want it to use. It will read market trends and give you a timeframe for your project, depending on market forecasts. The software might also consider market trends and can offer you less risky material options. Workers will be more looked after and will be safer in their workspaces. All you need to do is ensure you follow the plan. This AI will learn over time from errors it makes and get smarter, for example, using past precedents such as minor mistakes in designing structures and preventing future errors in the next designs. That’s why in the initial learning period of the machine, it’s common for a human expert to check flaws in the designs. The good thing is the more the machine gets to design, the better it will get.
However, beyond the current set of challenges, we are undoubtedly entering a brand-new era in construction for both housing and general infrastructure. Here are the other major areas of transformation in the construction industry.
Smart Homes
“Alexa, set downstairs thermostat to 72.” “Siri, turn off the fountain.” “Alexa, play my favorite playlist on Piano.” Today’s homes are filled with smart assistants that respond to and act on commands like this. Several homes are already filled with smart appliances, smart gadgets, and even smart furniture. More “things” will become smart as technology matures. Is this what I am referring to when I say smart home? Not exactly. Look at this as a basic level of home automation. We have discussed under Chapter 3 how our world will soon be dominated by AI with AI predicted to be here, there, and everywhere. Every aspect of your home will be smart and connected, including your toilet. However, most importantly, every smart “thing” in the future has to get smarter over time through learning from the data it collects (and other devices it connects). We have covered these topics under highlights in the previous chapter. Only thing I can assure you though is our homes will continue to get smarter and if you are in the smart home business, you are in it to win it.
Brick Batteries
We know that future is all about moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. And one of the perpetual sources of renewable energy, at least for five billion more years, is solar energy. Your home is probably powered by solar panels at the moment. But why have a roof and place panels on top? Why not merge the two? Solar power-generating roofing tiles don’t just act as protecting tiles but also as a medium for tapping enormous energy. You can have your entire roof filled with solar tiles or a portion.
But tiles only convert light into electricity. It’s the battery packs where the energy is stored. One of the disadvantages of this battery pack energy storage system is you need a considerable space to keep the inverters and batteries at home. The more your home demands energy, the larger your battery. There’s probably a solution. With smart homes comes smart walls. If you remember Falcon’s story, the entire energy Falcon’s home generates was stored in the walls. What if you get to store the power generated by your roof in none other than your wall, too? The age-old bricks made of clay are the perfect-strength porous devices that scientists are interested in to store electricity. Pumping certain gases through the bricks to facilitate chemical reactions with its components can turn regular bricks into capacitors—devices like batteries but that supply energy instantly. These bricks are already into development: “Regular bricks can be transformed into energy storage devices,” as reported by CNN digital (Kann 2020). While there’s much to be done to materialize this concept, initial research looks promising. It may not be long before the roof generates the renewable energy during the day and the bricks store them for use at night.
Go Green
A “green” house (different from greenhouse which traps solar rays and maintains a higher temperature inside than outside) helps address the effects of climate change, a significant crisis planet Earth is facing. Of course, moving to renewable energy such as solar is part of the plan. However, it’s more than that. Expanding our smart home discussion further, imagine fitting your home with smart windows. These windows can block the sun’s rays when it’s hot and allow them to enter when it’s cold, to limit electricity usage. That would amount to a whole lot of energy conservation. Imagine if all the waste and rainwater collected from households gets stored and recycled for nonpotable uses? And use of wind energy, natural light, and energy-efficient appliances was promoted? All of these start with energy-efficient design, using advanced AI-based design tools. The goal for all future homes is net-zero emission, which simply means your net contribution to GHGs must be zero, and you do that by taking measures to remove the same amount of gases you are adding to the environment.
The march toward electric vehicles is eminent. Who hasn’t heard of the tremendous transformation in the auto industry brought in by Tesla, leading to its exponential growth? All trends indicate that most gas stations will go out of business in the future, if not all of them, replaced by charging stations, especially ones alongside freeways, catering to long-distance travelers. Note that many local gas stations will eventually run out of business because people charge their cars at home and stores. Moreover, battery technology is developing at such a fast pace that the frequency of charges will come down as well. The change will not be sudden and total. Electric vehicles will start to replace gasoline- and diesel-based cars slowly but steadily within the next few decades, starting with new cars coming into the market. Will gasoline car industries completely disappear? Probably not. Many will simply hang on to their combustion engine cars for longer than they should, leaving a fragmented ecosystem around such cars. There will always be demand for some vintage cars, too, but they will be a minority on our roadways in a few decades.
With limited use of gas stations, what will be the future of those convenience stores next to them? Will that disappear, too? I believe they will evolve into entertainment centers to amuse families who stop by to reload their cars.
Charging Roads
With the growth of electric and autonomous car, future roads must be friendly to these robots. First, roadways around the globe will slowly be upgraded to meet the needs of autonomous cars. For example, the lane dividers will be clear and will contain symbols autonomous cars can understand, potentially with the ability to directly connect with future cars as well. Traffic lights, stop signs, curvy roads—all of them will be robot-friendly. But the most exciting feature of the future roads will be the ability to charge your car while driving. No, they’ll not be wired like electric trains, if you’re imagining an electric cable constantly connected to your car from underneath. It will be inductive charging, what’s commonly known as wireless charging. Your car drives itself, while the road charges it. All you need to do is sit and relax. While Falcon drove back to his home, the road charged his car.
Spaceports
The first port we built was a seaport to cater to all the marine traffic. Then came along “bus ports” (stations), “train ports,” and eventually airports. We have seen how airports have been transforming in the last century, growing into “experience centers” and “shopping hubs” from simple transportation points. The next port humans are striving to build is not so ubiquitous yet but aiming to be in future. It’s the spaceport that lets you travel from one part of our world to another in minutes zipping through space in a spacecraft instead of flying inside the atmosphere in an airplane.
E-Mailed Homes
Homes are generally meant to be fixed structures, built with a lot of energy over long periods of time. But there are also manufactured homes that are built in a factory and shipped. But how about homes that can be e-mailed, designed by a designer up to the last detail using an advanced AI? You simply “print” it at your home or rather a construction site using a giant 3D printer. Large-structure 3D printing is already nearly ubiquitous. It’s getting inexpensive, too. That is available in 2022 and the technology will only become cheaper and more efficient in the future. A Forbes news from April 2021 states: “3D-Printed California Community Shows the Technology’s Huge Potential for Home Construction” (Castenson 2021) or from The Guardian, the same month: “Dutch Couple Become Europe’s First Inhabitants of a 3D-Printed House” (Boffey 2021). Homes and other structures printed by these giant robots are the future of construction, especially as we are beginning to conquer other planets where it’s much easier to send a giant robotic 3D printer instead of masons-turned-astronauts.
But will 3D printing dominate the construction industry here on earth? The answer is a resounding yes. Even if the entire house is not 3D printed, major portions of the house will be. Custom homes and other structures will always have a place, although parts of them will be 3D printed. 3D printing technology is here to stay and construction industry is no exception.
Great Suburban Expansion
Our civilization predominantly centered in one location in the past, called city centers or downtown areas. Back then, we only had urban and rural areas. Urban areas began expanding into suburban areas, also known as suburbs, creating a brand-new layer in between urban and rural. The emergence of this liminal space has proliferated toward the beginning of the information society: more people moved away from city centers into these suburbs and settled there for good. As of 2020 to 2022, this trend has accelerated as several companies allowed their employees to work from home following the COVID-19 protocols. The question is, will this trend continue?
While this may slow down, I believe suburb expansion started way before COVID and it is here to stay. This will partly be supported by companies themselves continuing to move out of city centers not just to reduce costs, but also to hunt talent that is itself moving into suburbs. Moreover, concentrated civilization is simply not a sustainable model considering the population drive in the major cities.
Undoubtedly, we will see increased construction activity in the future, mostly driven by the growing demand of an increasing population. The United States will also see significant improvements in its infrastructure, thanks to the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress signed into law in November 2021 (Pramuk 2021). This “turn inward” gesture may cause a ripple effect and push other countries to upgrade their infrastructures as well. Growing demand will lead to more innovation and automation. Construction industry will grow smarter by the day and green technologies such as renewables, EV, and net neutrality will be the major driving forces. Whether you own a piece of construction to settle in, have a real estate as an active investment, are an entrepreneur in this field, or are simply a passive investor, following these trends will give you the best value to your buck.
Future of Clothing and Accessories
Another human necessity alongside food and shelter is clothing. From covering themselves with leaves and other natural materials to the invention of fabric, clothing has not only been tied to human evolution, but also carries a rich history. It’s unknown why exactly our ancestors started using clothes but there are two major theories and both could be true at the same time. First, clothing and accessories have been used to attract the opposite sex. Ancient humans used body marks, tattoos, and other forms of body art in addition to attractive natural clothing. Second, humans are warm-blooded animals and it’s difficult to maintain that warmth without a thick coat of fur on the outside as our skin is not as tough as other animals to withstand extreme weathers. With climatic changes, the need to add artificial layers and hence stop the body from losing heat grew. Migration from Africa to settle in other parts of the world cemented the need to cover bodies further because of exposure to harsher weather conditions. But there must be other reasons behind.
Society 1.0 started with clothes made of leaves, animal skin, and other naturally available material. Humans realized that raw natural clothing dried and decomposed and didn’t last longer. Moreover, they were less comfortable, did not preserve much heat, and attracted herbivorous animals than warding them off. This gave an impetus to the discovery of fabric. The primitive fabric-making machinery produced variations of linen, wool, and silk. Slowly, as civilizations advanced into Society 2.0, fashion became symbolic to each civilization. Each civilization represented a rich history of clothing styles and use of certain accessories and jewelry. Such traditional clothing can still be seen in various parts of the world, tied to various civilizations.
The invention of a spinning and weaving machine revolutionized clothing, automating the long and laborious task of manual weaving. This marked the beginning of the great industrial revolution, leading to Society 3.0 that evolved over time to the present-day great society you and I live in. Clothing played such a vital role in peoples’ lives that people used it for displaying ostentatious status symbols to making political statements. More automation came along in the textile world and led to larger-scale production of clothes in shorter timeframes, making clothing more affordable and reachable to everyone. But the true revolution in clothing and accessories can only be owed to the creation of artificial or synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon, and rayon. This enabled clothing to be dyed in a plethora of colors, made them more durable, cheaper, and also more accessible in the latter parts of Society 3.0.
The information society, Society 4.0, brought in better visibility and efficiency to the end-to-end supply chain, giving clothing manufacturers the ability to better forecast demand to meet the supply. Efficiencies in supply chain made “fast fashion” possible; what it meant to the consumers was fashion was no longer tied to durability. This trend was pioneered by companies such as Zara, H&M, and Forever 21, which, instead of mass producing the same clothes over and over, started a new business model wherein they changed their fashion trends every season, sometimes even multiple times a season. Manufacturing optimization, globalization, and invention of synthetic fabrics helped them deliver clothes to the consumers at a lower cost, appealing them to buy more each time, or as often as they change their designs. When I compare this to the mere one set of new clothes I got per year as a kid to the present-day kids who rarely appear in the same clothes twice in family functions, I cannot help but pity myself.
Clothing industry is at an inflection point today, similar to most other industries that are going through an enormous transformation. We will come to changing trends shortly, but at first it should be acknowledged that the industry is facing numerous challenges. Fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world, standing right next to the oil industry. Resources and chemicals required to grow and store raw materials (e.g., cotton) and synthetics, such as polyester, have deemed the entire industry almost nonbiodegradable. And we haven’t even started talking about all the animals we kill for leather and all the GHGs that emit during the transportation of garments across the globe, among other things. Fashion industry is a nightmare to environmentalism.
Although the entire supply chain process has improved drastically during the information era, waste is still a major factor in this industry. Waste equals lost money, burden on our planet Earth, or both. Fake products are another issue primarily impacting high-end brands. You and I are well informed today compared to our forefathers and foremothers. We demand better fashion, responsible fashion to be precise, and less wastage. Ways of shopping have now changed, moving from in-store visits to at-home clicks. On top of everything, technology is simply overtaking the clothing industry. How do we address these challenges and keep up with drastic changes our technologies and societies are going through? These are the key trends in clothing which I believe deserve attention:
Computing Fabric
While reviewing how AI is going to dominate our lives, we briefly touched on the concept of smart fabric. All outfits we wear: t-shirts, shirts, pants, hats, shoes, jewelry, blankets, towels, and even underwear will go smart in the future, offering some level of computation through inserted technology. T-shirts monitoring vital signs sending your wellness data to your doctor, location-tracking jackets helping to rescue missing people, dirt-sensing carpets auto summoning the vacuum cleaner, temperature-sensing pants auto adjusting the heat, heat-sensing window curtains auto regulating themselves and even adjusting the thermostat, and sleep-monitoring bed sheets sending wellness tips to your inbox: these are some of the potential use cases for smart fabric. Smart textile industry will be worth $5.4 billion by 2025 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.4 percent from 2019 to 2025, according to Grand View Research (2019). If you remember the attendant back in Falcon’s story, you’d realize that not just the t-shirt, but the doctor your t-shirt is interacting with is also a tech. With a growing number of companies working on intelligent clothing, who knows what clothes you wear have to offer in near future.
Smart Fashion Designers
Paying millions of dollars to fashion designers will become a thing of the past. AI will design clothes much better than humans. Fashion designing is a complex business. A new design must follow the trends and appeal to specific age groups. Who is better at following trends and understanding people’s pulse than Mr. I—the Internet? AI will scan through social media, follow market trends, innovate and experiment within the designs, and come up with styles appealing to a specific audience, improving the chances of faster sales. But that’s not all. AI will forecast demands based on these data and match the item’s production, reducing overall waste.
At-Home Trial Rooms
Tired of going to a store and standing in the line to try out clothes? How about bringing that trial room to your home instead? Select the garment you like and augmented reality (AR) will not only tell you the exact size you need, but also will show you how exactly you look with that on you. Immersion technologies will create an alternate virtual world centered on you. Do you want to see yourself with that dress on at a wedding? Your virtual trial room can create that experience for you. These at-home trial rooms will be much better than the physical trial rooms. That’s because you can try as many sets of clothes for as many situations.
Closet Tailor
How often do you get up in the morning not knowing what to wear and simply cycle through all those clothes? Your smart mirror in your smart closet will learn your schedule, read the weather information from the Internet, get your “mood data” from your smart watch or blanket, read your past clothing patterns, and will tell you what you should wear. However, there could be more. If you don’t have what your closet recommends for you, you can simply 3D print the outfit it designed. All you need to do is to put the outfit on and smile. This technology is not very distant.
Goodbye Synthetic
As we discussed earlier, clothing industry is the second-most polluter partly due to the nonbiodegradable nature of synthetic fabric. A piece of polyester in the ocean either ends up being in the ocean for hundreds of years or inside an aquatic animal. The same animal then might make its way to your dinner plate. On that note, clothing manufacturers already are feeling an obligation to move toward green clothing. Add potential regulations on top, and most importantly the reluctance of informed customers like you and I, chemical-based fabric’s future in clothing doesn’t seem so bright. That said, consumers need to be wary of more and more companies taking their aggressive “green” agendas to the media in an attempt to look environmentally conscious—which turns out to be nothing but politically correct marketing gimmicks splashing a tint of greenwash. However, there are always those who want to make a change. And being in that change now will definitely pay later on.
Leather in a Lab
The history of animal cruelty is as old as human civilization. Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) quotes FAO data in which it states that each year, we slaughter more than a billion animals (“Leather” 2022). In another article by PETA, it states how shocking animal killing has been: “Roughly 3,000 silkworms are killed to make a single pound of silk. That means that billions, if not trillions, of them are killed every year” (Toliver 2018).
Humans love leather and silk. Though they’re achieved by immoral means, there’s no way humans have been able to dump them altogether. How can we stop animal cruelty and continue to wear things we like? The solution, however, has been there since the mid-1880s. Synthetic look-alikes, such as Rayon, invented in 1884 did the job, but then in the wake of environmental disasters, we felt synthetic had to go sooner or later no matter what. Scientists are working on creating leather- and silk-like materials through advanced biotechnology, a concept called biomimicry, mimicking natural characteristics of these animals and worms. Call it “leather in a lab” or “silk in a test tube.” These will not only look like leather and silk, but feel and behave like them, with biodegradability, because they are produced using advanced biotechnology.
Authenticity Tracking
Imagine buying a gently used Louis Vuitton purse you always liked through someone you met on Facebook. A month later, you realize it was fake. There are thousands of people who’re tricked into buying counterfeit goods of reputed names and none who’re doing enough to curb the situation. Today, counterfeit goods have become one of the biggest challenges high-end consumer brands face. Counterfeit industry is estimated at over $1.2 trillion, $450 billion of which is valued to be tied to the fashion industry alone. Manufacturers have been attempting to prove authenticity using various methods such as assignment of serial numbers, but every year they’re outsmarted by cunning comebacks from these fake products.
But this may change. Blockchain technology can become one of the most suitable methods to track products from their birth to consumption and degradation. You will be able to trace the product’s entire life to know whether it’s authentic or not. But this is not a tracking device and it will not invade anyone’s privacy. How it works is pretty simple. Imagine registering and maintaining every high-end product through a smart tag such as a QR code in a “distributed ledger,” managed by multiple agents around the globe, that not only tracks the origin of every product, but its entire supply chain process. An authorized user can know the product’s full history simply by accessing this blockchain. Any manipulation, in an attempt to tamper, must be done in multiple places through the blockchain, thus not only making it difficult but practically impossible to manipulate the products’ authenticity.
Recycling
Recycling is another trend that is picking up in the clothing and fashion industry. More retailers, especially fast fashion companies, are promising this, given sustainability goals. However, this is easier said than done. True recycling means reusing the fabric to make new sets of clothes and is only possible when clothes are not made of synthetic raw material. Else, recycling is difficult to the point it becomes almost impossible. That’s why I believe jury is still out on that promise, unless the original fabric is made of recyclable material. However, a definite trend to watch out for is resale of used clothes. More retailers are jumping onto this bandwagon of preowned clothes that is projected as cool. This trend has already picked up steam for luxury clothes and accessories. Big names such as Lululemon have also begun their journeys down this road. CNBC reported: “Lululemon is testing a resale program where shoppers can sell and buy used items” (Thomas 2021). This makes sense because this is a win-win-win-win model, meaning it’s good for the planet, it helps you make money off your gently used clothes, new owners can buy them cheap, and companies can resell them for a profit. Watch this space.
These were some of the key futuristic trends in the clothing industry. It’s certain that I didn’t cover all of them, but these will give you an idea of where the future of clothing is headed. The summary is not only that technology will be more heavily employed in the clothing industry, but it is also that clothing will become technology: either through smart fabrics built on high technology or fabrics made in a lab using biotechnology.
With all of this going on, what will happen to the fashion industry’s designing jobs in the future? Provided that the ones with “taste” will still look for personalized assistance—like the book lovers who oppose digital readers—fashion designers and personal clothing advisors will not be entirely gone. They will just be less in number but will surely turn to AI for help.
Future of Money (Financial Services)
Money is simply an entity that determines how you live in this world: what you eat, where you live, what you wear, what you drive, where your kids go to school, and so on. Though it does not define your state of mind or intellectuality, it defines rich and poor and determines the quality of everyone’s life. Let’s spend some time understanding its history and pondering its future.
It’s a given that though you attracting money depends on hard work and situational favorability, there’s a good chance you and money will get along if you mold every principle of earning money into a skill. To do that, it becomes necessary to understand what and how money is. Below is the history of the financial services industry or, loosely, the history of money.
Early Trading: The Barter System
As with all other industries, the journey starts in Society 1.0. Money as a concept never existed in the hunter-gatherer society. How did they buy things then? The answer is they didn’t. Instead, they bartered things in exchange for goods and services.
Let’s say John hunted two deer and his friend Rob collected 30 apples. John shares one deer with Rob in exchange for 15 apples. The value of those goods was directly negotiated by the parties involved. This point-to-point “shopping” was the predominant method in Society 1.0. It worked fine because there were fewer people and fewer things people needed; a person aspired to buy only inevitable things. Similarly, the price of possessions was more or less stable and the number of traders was small. Things were easy because what I possessed was always needed by the person next door and vice versa.
The Beginning of Money
As the society progressed to 2.0, the number of parties involved in this transaction grew. For example, John has an extra deer and Rob has extra set of apples. Rob is in a mood to eat some meat, so he goes to John to exchange his apples with the meat. But John already has apples from the day before, so he refuses to accept them. However, he tells Rob that he could use some veggies. Desperate to eat meat, Rob goes to the other side of the town to Carter, the vegetable farmer, hoping he can exchange his apples with fresh eggplants Carter grows and exchange that with the meat John has. Rob gets excited to see the fresh eggplants with Carter, but to his disappointment, Carter doesn’t need any apples either. However, he learns that Carter needs a haircut. Now, craving the meat, Rob runs to the barber Bob across the street to see if he could use apples, so Bob can serve Carter, who can give his vegetables in exchange, which Rob could use to get the meat he desperately wants. Fortunately, barber Bob is interested in apples and this tale gets a happy ending, although it took almost a day for Rob to get his bite.
This complexity gave rise to the concept of money, a commonly accepted “commodity value” that made the above process easier. The idea was simple. Everyone exchanged their goods and services with something everyone would want to have. The idea was they could take that commonly accepted “thing” and exchange it for something else they needed because the other person also agreed to exchange her items or services with that common “thing.” But defining that common “thing” was difficult because I exchange my goods for something that I don’t have to take to someone else for exchanging, otherwise I’ll be left with a useless piece of thing without value. Hence, the key is the “value.”
Money took several shapes throughout history. At one point, they used cattle as money. Everyone commonly agreed that cattle was useful. I will give you my bag of rice for a cow, which I can take to the farmer and exchange for three bags of vegetables, because the farmer knows he can take the same cow and exchange for something else he wants. The concept of “valuation” also came along as we have seen in this example. One bag of rice was valued at a cow, but the same cow gave three bags of vegetables. So, the cow used to be the olden-day dollar. Or should we say the dollar is the modern-day cow?
But cattle age and they eventually die. If you are one of those unlucky traders who sold all your crops for cattle and then they died before you could exchange them for what you needed, you are sure to go bankrupt in a flash. Society 2.0 experimented with several other forms of money, such as salt, barley, tobacco, shells, buckskin, giant donut-shaped rocks with holes, and even mirrors. All of these “money” had issues and so didn’t last long. Imagine the sad stories of folks that possessed the last pieces of money before they changed into something else. What would you do with all that leftover salt? Would it be comparable to what people did in India with old bills when the government trashed its cash and introduced a new set of bills in 2017? Not exactly. Unlike today’s paper money, the money back in the day had real value. If you are left with a pile of salt, sell it because salt is a real thing of real value, although it may not be accepted as “money” anymore.
With the discovery of precious metals, everyone agreed that metals had value in their life, which gave rise to coins as money. For example, silver coins were once used as currency. I sell my goods or services for a certain number of coins and I will take them to buy something else I want. If I make more coins than I use, I have some savings built for a rainy day. While silver, bronze, copper, and gold were all used for coin-based currency, gold became the standard toward the last quarter of Society 2.0. Gold became so standardized it entered into the English language as “gold standard”—something superior to take reference from, a well-deserved linguistic tribute. Gold is still considered a metal of substantial value. Even when we do not use gold as currency, everyone accepts it as money because it will always have a buyer and a price in the foreseeable future, though its price fluctuates over time but well within expectations.
The Olden-Day Bankers: Goldsmiths
A rich farmer sells his crop for a bunch of gold coins and saves those coins in his bedroom. This would pose a risk of robbery today and this posed a risk of robbery then. It’s one of the things that never changed.
So, what did people do with excess gold coins? They saved them with goldsmiths. Banks are nothing but olden-day goldsmiths who would issue a receipt for the gold coins they received in the form of a “paper note.” That butcher who saved those extra gold coins can take his note to the goldsmith whenever he wished and could get his gold coins back. Goldsmiths charged a nominal fee for safely storing everyone’s gold coins.
Over time, goldsmiths realized that not many people were going back to get all their gold coins, leaving them with a stock pile of gold. Smart goldsmiths realized there was nothing stopping them to lend some coins to people in need, of course for a fee. That way, they could make money from both hands, and they did exactly that. They had enough coins in their possession that they could safely issue them as loans. They kept a certain portion of it in case any “depositor” came back with their note to claim their coins. This led to the concept of modern-day banks where you save your gold, that is, money, and the bank lends that to people in need for a fee called interest. The receipt notes goldsmiths issued evolved into the modern-day cash. However, there is one big difference between these two. Can you figure what that is? I will hop back to this shortly.
Fractional Reserve Banking
Gradually, the notes goldsmiths issued were accepted by everyone because they knew they can go back to the goldsmith anytime and change them for gold coins. So, they started issuing notes instead of coins for those taking loans as well. However, the fee they were getting from the loans was very attractive. That, together with the fact that only a few people were coming back to collect their gold coins, allowed them to give away more “loans” than the value of the gold coins they had at any given time. This whole phenomenon gave rise to the modern-day economy, especially the fact that there is more “debt” in circulation today than actual money reserve—a phenomenon called fractional reserve banking—and it started to fill with more debt compared to the available gold coins. In this scenario, goldsmiths would get in trouble if everyone with the notes issued by them came back to collect their gold coins, because they simply didn’t have enough coins to back all the notes they issued.
By the same token, today’s problem is not the lack of debt, but that our economy will be in trouble if everyone decides to pay back all the debt, because there is simply not enough cash to meet all the debt.
All this happened in the later part of Society 2.0 where the economies were built by and revolved around gold. History taught us that a lot of wars have been fought for this precious metal. Kingdoms were valued by the amount of gold they possessed.
Transition to Modern-Day Banking
The trajectory from the goldsmith bankers to the modern-day financial system is complicated, with most of it taking place in the industrial society, Society 3.0. The simplest way to look at it is these goldsmiths emerged into banks and notes turned into currency. With so many goldsmiths in existence, a note issued by one goldsmith may or may not be accepted by others. Goldsmiths started to form a group, accepting each other’s notes, starting a banking system. But what about a goldsmith in another city altogether? Well, people were not moving long distances so this wasn’t a major problem until trade started to expand, forcing people to mobilize more. You are short of cash in a new town? Sorry, you should have planned better.
There was another major problem with this system. It worked as long as people trusted the goldsmith. The moment word goes out that there were more “notes” in circulation than the actual gold coins, everyone rushed to the goldsmith to get their coins back. These problems, together with some governments’ monstrous debt after wars, created the need to control money centrally thus giving rise to the concept of central goldsmiths a.k.a. central banks. Hence, the central bank became the bank for other banks. Banking started by goldsmiths simply providing safety to people’s coins emerged into a full-on financial system.
The Gold Standard
With every country having their own currency, controlled by respective governments, how do you calculate the exchange rate? If I travel to Argentina carrying U.S. dollars, how many Argentinian pesos do I get? One? 10? 100? What determines that number? As you can see, there was a need for a common standard. Using the same logic as our olden-day banks: goldsmiths, every country mapped their currency to gold, determining the value of their currency. Their paper currency is mapped to their gold reserves, which in turn drive the value of the currency. For example, if you have one kilogram of gold and you print 1,000 pesos, each peso is worth one gram. If the United States has one kilogram of gold and they print 100 dollars, each dollar is worth 10 grams. Using this logic, 1 U.S. dollar gets me 10 pesos. If you need more money, no problem. Print it. But the amount of gold you carry is not changing, causing the paper currency to value less. This phenomenon is called the “gold standard.”
This worked fine for a while, but world wars changed everything. Several countries spent endless amount of money on wars forcing them to print more money to fund them. They soon realized that the gold standard limited their ability to print money, and for the same reason countries started to move away from it. United States, on the other hand, did relatively well, especially during World War I. Its global trade brought most of the world’s gold reserves to the country, leaving the United States with plenty of gold supplies. That allowed the United States to continue to back their dollars with their gold reserves, which were pretty strong. As gold reserves shifted to the United States, most other global economies couldn’t sustain any longer mapping their currencies to their depleting gold reserves. They were looking for a solution. In 1944, a conference held among countries reached an agreement to map their currency to U.S. dollar instead of gold and was called the Bretton Woods Agreement (CFI Team 2022). The U.S. dollar was in turn mapped to gold due to its strong gold reserves, making it the new global standard. However, U.S. dollar–gold mapping, too, didn’t last longer. Several wars, primarily the World War II (Ghizoni 2013), weakened the U.S. dollar as well. Finally, in 1971, the then U.S. President Richard Nixon decided to take the U.S. dollar off the gold ending the 27 years of association (ibid CFI Team). What does that mean? Most global currencies are pegged to the U.S. dollar and the U.S. dollar in turn is pegged to nothing.
Think about what this entails. The millions of dollars you have under your mattress is not “guaranteed” to get you anything, unless that paper is recognized to possess any value, because it is no longer mapped to anything of value. We all agree that the paper in our pockets has value because it’s backed by an entity we all rely on: the government.
So, today’s financial system runs on trust. One event that shakes peoples’ trust shakes the entire financial market as people are worried the “value” of money will go down because everyone would start panicking. One tweet by a prominent person has the potential to tumble the stock market and even tank the economy. This wouldn’t have happened back in the day because the value of money was always guaranteed by something material. This transformation in money is relatively new. It occurred only in 1971, a few decades ago, almost before we began to enter the information society.
Let me remind you that financial services industry is extremely broad and complex with subsectors—each being a beast by itself. Banks that started small grew into large-scale financial institutions in the industrial society, many offering a wide range of financial services such as retail banking, investment services and wealth management, insurance, corporate banking, investment banking, and tax and audit. Financial services is a massive industry with each subsector a beast on its own. For simplicity, we shall focus on the side of the industry you and I deal with daily. However, they all had one thing in common: the human touch.
If you want to deposit cash, you head to a bank and hand over your cash to the teller; the teller counts the money by hand and gives you a passbook that tells you how much deposit you have. You securely keep that passbook, go back to the same bank, hand over the passbook, fill a form with withdrawal details, and submit that form to the teller. You get the money and the passbook gets updated. You want to buy insurance? Contact an insurance agent. Want to invest? Visit a broker. Need a loan? Go to a loan agent.
An important invention in the 1950s revolutionized the lives of tellers and financial industry’s speed and accuracy of doing work: cash counting machines. Then came another major revolution that threatened the livelihoods of a lot of cashiers across the globe: the automated teller machines (ATMs), the same “money robots” or “robot-banks” we use today to deposit as well as withdraw cash. ATMs surely disrupted retail banking. In fact, ATMs are the retail banks when it comes to checking and savings. How often do we go inside a bank these days for these primitive transactions?
This was just the beginning of the financial services industry disruption. The major disruption came along in the form of what’s known as the fintech revolution, which uses technology to the fullest to bring innovation to customers. Arguably, this took the money to the next level, taking money further away from anything of substance to simply 0s and 1s. People these days transfer these digits to each other rather than actual money. And this trend has gone fully digital with events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When I’m with my corporate partners, I often joke around saying money has been E=mc-ed, that is, converted from matter to invisible entity. Once used to be in the form of goods and services, money took several other forms such as salt, shells, and silver to finally settle for gold, then evolved into paper only to become invisible.
The beginnings of fintech were marked by traditional banks when they began providing online access to accounts, bringing technology to interact with users, in addition to supporting back-end functions. The big step forward was arguably marked by PayPal through its ability to transfer money online across multiple banking institutions, breaking the biggest barrier of financial services industry. Call it an abstract layer on top of all banks.
The concept was such a major hit. It not only gave rise to so many firms specialized in online money transfer, but also evolved to merge money and social activities. If you ask around, many people across the globe may not know Citibank or any other financial institutions, but most people know tech giants such as Google and Apple. Google Pay and Apple Pay replaced cash-based retail transactions and brought more people into this global financial ecosystem. E-commerce giants like Alibaba also entered the fintech world through their specialized services such as Alipay.
Taking online bank account access to the next level, online-only banks such as Marcus emerged. Traditional banks improved their online banking capabilities. To compete with the abstract layer built for money transfer, such as PayPal, on top of them, they partnered with services like Zelle. There may not be physical banks in remote parts of the world due to infrastructure limitations, but most people today have access to the Internet. Online banks made banking accessible to more people.
But fintech revolution didn’t stop at online banking and transfers. Companies like Acorn transformed the wealth management sector. There are numerous investment options in emerging fintech startups, catering to all kinds of investors out there, all of them fighting to get customers, encouraging more people to get into the investment business. On the side, online mortgage lenders such as AimLoan transformed the mortgage industry. Insurance industry has mostly gone online these days. When was the last time you visited a physical store to file your taxes? When was the last time you went door to door to raise funds for that charitable cause?
So, is fintech all about brining financial services online? Definitely not. That’s just the beginning of fintech revolution. It’s all about utilizing technology to bringing value through innovation. For instance, wealth management companies use AI-based robo-investors to study market trends and invest smartly. These companies invite investors to grab such markets and often send notifications. Well before the pandemic hit, I too had received a notification to invest in Zoom. Smart invest-bots round up your spending, take that small change from each spend, and invest it for you to grow your change into something substantial.
Robo-brokers analyze your financial situation much better than any human can and provide you with a wealth management roadmap no humans can provide. Auto insurance robots track driving patterns, understand personalities, assess risk, and can devise a customized quote better than any human can. If you are driving safe and driving less, you get a check for being a good driver. Mortgage-bots can process thousands of documents, analyze your financial situation, and assess the level of risk much more accurately, much better than your credit score can reveal. The list can go on. If these are all happening today, where do you think financial services industry is heading from here? Here are a few trends.
Advanced Risk Tackling Machines (RTM)
If you haven’t figured out by now, financial services industry runs on tackling risks. In a way, it’s a euphemistic pseudonym for risk management industry.
All businesses look out for risk sources. First, for lenders, the biggest risk is repayment of the debt by the borrower. A careful and detailed analysis must be done before lending. It’s not just the borrower’s financial situation that counts; his or her behavioral patterns and market trends among other things are also equally important consideration parameters. Wealth management is all about predicting market trends. Among many types which excel at predicting, insurance companies are the smartest—the biggest of risk management firms.
The value of money itself depends on everyone’s agreement that it has value, as we have seen earlier. This keeps public confidence intact. Advanced risk management is key to the well-being of this industry. Advanced bots help detect risks and mitigate them before they turn into issues, for both the financial institutions and the consumers. The Zoom stock prediction I pointed out earlier will be primitive compared to future advanced risk management.
Banks as Experience Centers
With all the online banking revolutions, everyone has a big question. What is the future of banks and what is the future of bank employees? Teller transactions will grow smaller in number. Banks will turn into places to socialize, experience financial products, and receive financial services such as investment advice among others. The power of physical contact cannot be underestimated and hence there will always be a place for face-to-face contact, although it’s neither going to be the same as the past nor will occur at the same scale. This means retail banks will turn into experience and entertainment centers while most of the day-to-day transactions take place in the digital world.
Smart Advisors
If anyone (or anything) can offer you the best financial advice by analyzing your financial health, it’ll be personal digital robo-assistants. Money, being such an integral part of our life, will be integrated into other parts of day-to-day automation as well. These smart money advisors will be integrated into all walks of life even through smart assistants such as Amazon Alexa.
Digital Currency
A new flower arrived in the Netherlands in the 17th century, the tulip. It was so beautiful and special; everyone fell in love with it. The newcomer encouraged a public interest in this brand-new flower. Everyone wanted to have one of these. Tulips turned into a great business. Then, a lucky tulip farmer was able to produce dotted tulips by accident. They sold for more. That accident was later found to be caused by an infection. But it didn’t matter because rare things tend to up their value. The fear of missing out (FOMO) forced everyone to jump on this tulip bandwagon: tulips at one point were sold for the price of a mansion (Hayes 2022). People exchanged their houses for a tulip, which they later realized was nothing but a house of cards that simply crashed. I would like to rest my case on crypto here but let me elaborate a bit for those millions of crypto enthusiasts.
The context: crypto enthusiasts argue and believe that it will be the new form of currency. Let’s remind ourselves that currency used to be representative of something physical until the U.S. dollar had been taken off the gold standard, making currencies fiat, backed by respective governments and their economies. However, crypto is a fiat currency as well and it has value because people believe it has value, thus defeating one of the fundamental reasons for moving off currencies like the U.S. dollar.
A reckless government could tank the value of their currency as it happened in a few countries already and some argue that it makes a case for crypto. Citizens of countries with such challenges do look for an alternative currency, but is that force sufficient to make a global change? Countries with stable currencies drive the global “economy” after all. Is it possible for a large number of countries to tank their economies? Chances are thin as the global economy is relative. Even if crypto is to become the new standard, it won’t be without heavy regulations that will defeat the whole “democratization” of currency. Besides, management of global economy by a set of people sounds like a good concept, but it will be impractical as fluctuations may be frequent, significantly impacting the lives of billions.
Another argument for crypto is that it is digital and there is a good place for digital currency. However, I would argue that money has already gone digital. As we discussed earlier, how often do we handle paper cash? Rarely. Will we manage digital currency using blockchain technology, the same technology used for bitcoin? Probably. Venezuela released their new digital currency called Petro Coin on the blockchain platform, for example. Interestingly, this coin is backed by their oil reserves to grow confidence in the country’s currency that has lost nearly all its value. The key here is this currency is government managed and backed by the country’s reserves. The only thing it has in common with bitcoin is the platform it runs on.
There will be other localized “digital coins” that can be earned through certain activities and redeemed for certain products or services. Health coins to reward participation in certain health care-related activities that can be redeemed for health care-related services as seen in Falcon’s story are an example. However, these coins can be seen as an extension to various rewards programs we are already used to.
Please note that crypto currency may have a role to play in the future, especially given its underlying platform and the adaptation rate. For example, the health coin program we just referenced could be run as a smart contract on blockchain that pays in crypto. These coins could be redeemed for other services or “cash out” where it’s allowed.
All that said, will currency completely become digital in the future? Will the United States release a dollar coin? It’s possible. Watching this space can make as big a difference as a decision made early, although it won’t be like cryptocurrency. Money, as we know, has been changing and will continue to change. It may endure to the point it becomes completely invisible.
Merger With Other Industries
This is a big one. Financial services industry will no longer be this secluded especially with big players with the likes of Goldman Sachs. We have already seen how young fintech companies took a share of this market. The market has been so ripe that big tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Alibaba have jumped into the game through their respective Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Alipay services. These companies have an already built empire of their dedicated, loyal customers. Why not use that access to provide services around something everyone needs every day—money. Adoption by these big players ensured that people with Internet but without bank access were also going to fruit from this cashless economy. It is going to evolve further with various other industries expanding their businesses to overlap with this sector. The reverse merger will also occur through banks turning into entertainment and retail centers.
What if your car will turn into a bank in the future, for example? Or your coffee maker, washing machine, or even the refrigerator? Let me cite an example. If you’re a part of the Starbucks reward program, you can load your Starbucks account with some money, meaning you are saving with Starbucks “bank.” You cannot withdraw cash in most circumstances but you can use that in exchange for their products—helpful if you’re an avid coffee lover. That’s interest-free loan for Starbucks which it can redirect for further business growth. Apply similar logic to a car that can start a bank where you can load money to pay your bills as you drive around town. It’s not just for expenses. The future self-driving car that will turn into a taxi when not in use will load its bank with that money as well. Your smart refrigerator bank will use that money to fund the groceries it will self-order. You want to round off each spend to the nearest dollar and invest in the stock market? Your refrigerator can do it for you. Watch out for this interesting trend. I strongly believe this is in the future of our money and will happen in our lifetime.
Again, what’s in it for you? There will soon be a day when your industry will cross paths with financial services sector if it hasn’t already. Being prepared is the only and the most secure harness you can carry in this climb of uncertainty. Understand this sector; read as many books; listen to market pundits—if you’re planning to join the fintech revolution as it is here to grow. I personally think technology has barely scratched the surface of financial services industry. If you’re planning to join the finance revolution, you must understand technology, at least how it works. Understanding technology in finances is so inevitable, it won’t do to shrug this inevitability with “that’s not my expertise.” Whether you work in the financial services industry or own a business in this field, add tech to your industry today. If not, I can guarantee that in near future you will be doing something else other than this.
Future of Shopping (and Trade)
Shopping is the most favorite pass time for a lot of people. It’s so essential indicator of the country’s economy that it defines its GDP. The more you spend, the more money gets circulated in the economy and healthier the GDP would be. It’s not a surprise that shopping has been around since the early human days, that is, Society 1.0, though the shape and form was entirely different. If you want to buy something today, you visit a store physically or virtually and pay through a medium, either paper or digital. Money and goods’ stores, however, were not a thing back in the day.
If you went back to those times to buy things, people would expect you to bring something they desperately need in exchange with theirs. We covered this barter system in detail under the section “money.” Imagine bartering in a shopping mall today. Think about what you do for living and draw a line from that to what you want to buy on a day-to-day basis. Tell me how long you think it would take to find the products you need. You can imagine how complicated shopping would be. It was only after money was invented that buying and selling became simplistic. With rise in global trade, the concept of stores evolved in the later part of the agricultural society with mom and pop shops that later evolved into stores where owners didn’t have to produce anything on their own, but rather could become intermediaries. They no longer had to be a butcher to sell meat, farmer to sell vegetables, or an artist to sell an art collection.
Industrial revolution then ultimately transformed shopping. Mass production of goods changed the way stores worked. Goods were produced in factories and distributed to multiple stores that sold those products to their customers for a profit. But stores were still those places in the early part of industrial society where different products were stocked. People visited them with a list to fetch goods; the shopkeeper packed the goods and gave it to you. They’re still prevalent in various parts of the world even today.
Then came along buffet shopping where you could pick the products you wanted and pay at the end of your shopping. These self-service stores further evolved into departmental stores that sold a large number of products and mega supermarkets, with even larger stock of products. The buffet shopping ushered into a new era of industry called packaging because the products had to be enticing enough to grab people’s attention. The look and feel of the product, the branding, became as important as the product itself. And this transformation happened only well within the past century.
Many people admit that the next revolution that transformed buying as an experience happened in the shopping malls, which converted the mind-numbing task of buying into endorphin- and dopamine-releasing experience. The giant structures in these malls offered entertainment alongside shopping. The investors looked into what people did alongside when they go outside their homes for shopping. Unlike the old days when people had to spend a lot of time visiting dozens of places for buying dozens of stuffs, people could buy those items within a couple of hundred to thousands of square yards, saving a lot of time for other forms of entertainment—food, games, movies, shows, fitness centers, and the like. These malls converted shopping into family activity centers. Departmental stores and supermarkets made their way into these shopping malls. They catered to both people who go to shopping and opt for entertainment on the side and those who go for entertainment and shop on the side. There was one common thing: shopping.
Soon, to the delight of many and dismay of some, information technology quickly found its way into shopping, eliminating the need to visit the physical stores time and again. This single event disrupted every brick-and-mortar store across the world. You no longer need to drive up to a store to buy that favorite jacket. You can simply order it online from the comfort of your bed and boom, it’s at your doorstep. Physical stores don’t survive independently any longer without online presence. Every brick-and-mortar store now has an online counterpart. The ones that didn’t transform themselves enough went bankrupt. How many blockbuster stores do you see in 2021? Zero. That’s the key revolution Society 4.0 brought along and that’s where all developed societies are today.
The days are gone when you were compelled to search for a particular physical store to buy a product you saw the advertisement of in the television. Social media revolution further changed the way we shop. You will be able to buy a product as soon as you see it on Facebook, before it fades away from your memory or interest. Neither companies will force you to visit their website nor their store to purchase it. Products are just a click away.
The question is where do we go from here? Will online business replace brick-and-mortar stores, or will they merely shatter their dominance? What is the future of shopping malls? How will automation change shopping? How soon will goods be delivered once ordered online? There are several questions to be answered. Here are the top shopping trends that might interest you.
Omni-Channel
As we saw before, shopping moved from in-stores to online in the information society. More online channels have emerged outside of retail online stores. This model will evolve to make shopping an omni-channel experience. You may come across a product on your Instagram feed. You may want to see and feel it before you buy, so you go to a near-by store and check it out. You come back home, do some web research on it to understand its features, and check the reviews. You then want to get some more first-hand thoughts about it so you create a post on Facebook asking for recommendations. You’re content with what your community suggested so you ask your virtual assistant to order it. From researching for this product that began a week ago to jumping onto multiple platforms before it converted into a sale, companies must maintain their value-presence almost everywhere, even in customer’s satisfaction and feedback platforms. While this may not mean much to the customer, there is a lot of burden on the manufacturer and/or the retailer to convert that interest you showed a week ago on the Instagram post to a sale closure on Amazon Alexa a week later. This is essential because these end-to-end insights help organizations make several decisions. The sale rate cannot be determined by sales through Instagram. The ad-spend on social media resulted in a sale elsewhere a week later. You might have clicked on that link, went to a store, checked the product out, and forgotten about it. But for the manufacturer, you are a potential customer, and they can gently remind you of their product, perhaps through sending an e-mail. Even better, they may decide to give you a 10 percent off to motivate you to buy. What this means is your activity across all these channels must be tracked to accurately get insights about you. That’s exactly how it is going to work in the future and some of this end-to-end tracking has already begun, thanks to IoB (Internet of Behaviors).
This phenomenon has a name. It’s called e-commerce, not electronic, the one you’re familiar with but everywhere. It’s everywhere-commerce. Granted that it has its own downsides to it: this is a direct threat to user’s privacy, but that is a discussion on a whole new level that crosses domains across business ethics, principle of pleasure (whatever that is), and user statistics.
Smart Shopping
What if your virtual assistant replies “I recommend you wait until next month to buy Oculus Quest 2. You had some unforeseen expenses this month.” Or even better, “Are you sure you want to buy? Based on past trends, there is a good chance Oculus Quest 2 will go on sale next month.” What’s happening here is you’re letting your virtual assistant do all the analysis-heavy lifting, so you don’t have to. This functionality requires the integration of multiple channels that can be ultimately fed to the assistant.
Zero Thinking
How often do you go beyond the list of videos recommended by YouTube? At least, it rarely happens with me. The list of videos presented to a viewer based on her interests, past viewing habits, subscriptions, and so on feels like we’ve been searching for them; at least most of them do. A list keeps playing and I rarely change what gets played to me.
We’re suddenly talking about entertainment because it is also a type of shopping. You are “shopping” for entertainment and it’s getting presented to you without much “thinking” from your part. But, apply the same model of “zero-thinking” to any shopping and that’s the future. Once shopping used to be a chore people like me hated. Thanks to online commerce, shopping turned into a zero-effort activity. Now, take that one step further. The future of shopping is zero-thinking, meaning you don’t need to put substantial efforts to think about what to buy. AI does it for you. Look at it like an extension of “products you may also like” from your online retailer. Your shopping trends are tracked to predetermine your future shopping needs. All you need to do is confirm. For example, did Amazon ever remind you to reorder that hair-gel because it’s already been 45 days or so, based on your past trends? You will see more and more of it in the future.
This is all about taking the stress of decision making away from the customers and applying to any industry serving them. A bakery getting your bread ready every day without having to explicitly order, changing flavors based on your preferences to surprise you, throwing in that coffee you like, or even surprising you with new flavors if you’re willing are all examples of zero-thinking shopping. Since the process makes a customer’s life easier—especially the ones who’re always on the fence while deciding—they appreciate it. In some cases, they become the customers for life. But it doesn’t mean the process should be entirely without human intervention. A confirmation message could be sent to ensure you need the bread today to avoid waste, in case you are out of town.
Moving to a subscription-based model instead of the “pay-per-use” paradigm to blow your mind with a surprise product every day sounds like the next-generation customer relation building method. Even if you are not “surprised,” you don’t have to think about where to go for your needs. One less thing for you to worry about. Take Panera bread, for example. They have a monthly subscription that gives you unlimited coffee. Such models ensure that you no longer be unable to decide where to grab your coffee but ask for it without hassles. Combining customer loyalty and personalized service to move to a zero-thinking model is the future of customer experience, including shopping.
So many stores have closed down owing to disruption by online stores in the last few years. On the other hand, e-commerce businesses have soared like rockets. Amazon grew from a $36 billion company in 2009 to $1.2 trillion in August 2022 (“Amazon Net Worth” 2022). COVID-19 pandemic has added more insult to this injury. With this online trend, there are several questions around the existence of physical stores. Will they completely disappear one day? The answer is absolutely not. For instance, Amazon has begun to move to brick-and-mortar from full online model through Amazon Go, Amazon 4-Star, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Books, and Amazon Pop Up. No wonder this online–offline model will rejigger themselves with customer demand. But online presence will undoubtedly continue to grow, and as mentioned earlier, physical stores will turn more and more into experience centers. They will turn into go-feel stores with products and experience, not necessarily the only places you buy things from. You will see more entertainment options in most stores. Baristas and bars inside of grocery stores are just an example. For independent store owners, say in electronics, it is essential to join the larger ecosystem to track user activities and get the fair share of the profit made at the end. That’s because their store may have played a key role in that TV you bought online as you checked it out in their store. This is currently an issue and haven’t been figured out yet. If we flip it, there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs.
Goodbye Cashiers
Business models like Amazon Go stores are already gaining a lot of traction, enough to follow suit by many others as a futurist model for a retail store. You walk in, pick what you want, and walk out. All products carry sensors to identify themselves, and robots (physical or virtual) will help you with questions You either shop using a smart shopping cart that calculates the total and charges your credit card on file or a smart self-checkout desk to read all the products, calculate the total, and enable you to pay with your palm. These stores will still have baristas and other entertainment options. You can hang out however long you wish. You pay when you finally decide to leave the store. This, however, doesn’t mean stores will be entirely cashier-free. There will be limited number of staff to supervise and to provide customer support. Meaning, cashiers will be present to handle exceptions, while machines will present themselves as day-to-day cashiers and helpers.
Next-Generation At-Home Shopping
AR, without a doubt, can be declared as the dominant technology that will enable us to try products from the comfort of our couch. Are you considering buying a new sofa? AR will simulate that sofa and take you to your virtual living room with it. It will feel so real, you will find this option better than shopping in the store. After all, you need to rely on your imagination on how that sofa will look if you visit a store. By the way, if you’ve never tried any of the immersion technologies, it’s high time you do. And who knows, that might be the right moment you decide to incorporate the idea into your business.
E-Mailed Products, No Shipping Required
A beautiful 3D art on the Internet or a store can reach your home without even carrying it. Instead of asking for your physical address, you simply provide your e-mail. The art company e-mails you the product which you print on your 3D printer at home. E-mailing physical products is just a step away from the technology that’s close to maturity. Clothes, jewelry, artwork, toys, and musical instruments—you name it. You will be able to e-mail a lot of products in the future.
Delivery in Minutes
Of course, products will be delivered in minutes if they are e-mailed. But not all products can be printed at home. We only wish we can print fresh vegetables, right? Products ordered online will be at your doorstep within minutes in the future. How? First, the warehouses they get stored will come closer to your home, reducing the distance they need to travel. Instead of large warehouses across thousands of acres in the outskirts, imagine multilayered warehouses closer to the population. There will also be floating warehouses in the sky. So, the product you order will now come out of a warehouse within a few miles as compared to thousands of miles. Second, packages will be air-dropped through a drone instead of a driver spending all that time on the road. These delivery drones—and if you’re worried they can’t fly for long—need not be nuclear powered because warehouses are closer to homes. Even if the drone needs to make a longer trip, it will stop by a charging station installed on the top of an electricity pole. If all drones are busy assisting other customers, a land robot will pick up the task, walk over on the sideway, and deliver the package to you. This is not just a concept. Amazon is already moving on a lot of these, claiming to deliver packages up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less using small drones.
More Personalized Service
When we go shopping, how many products do you explore before settling on that one pair of jeans you like or the beautiful sandal? Probably a lot. We buy what we buy for several reasons and we do not buy the rest for different other reasons. Today, stores keep track of what we buy through what has been scanned at the cashier but what about all the products we didn’t buy? What if we are persuaded to buy them in the future? I am sure you would appreciate an e-mail that the lovely jacket you tried on is 50 percent off which you’d respectfully kept back on seeing the price tag. We will see this next level of shopping in the future. How do they track our activity as we try things on? Various techniques can be deployed, such as a combination of sensors and computer vision. AI algorithms will be able to make an educated guess on the reasons behind not buying certain products—an easy one if you keep the product back immediately after viewing the price tag and fix your eyes on it for an instant or maybe look back. We’d not mind getting personalized shopping notifications based on our behavior in the store. Instead, the challenge here is the enormous amount of data that generate and the back-and-forth which strains the network. However, edge computing, that brings computing closer to where the data are produced, can be a solution.
No discussion about shopping will be complete without talking about shopping for one of the most basic necessities—food: specifically cooked food, serviced by food services industry. Of course, we buy cooked food from restaurants, which range from a neighbor selling homemade food to fancy restaurants serving decorative delicacies. This foodservice industry is projected to produce an annual revenue of around $898 billion alone in the United States, according to restaurant.org (2022). Even food retailers, such as grocery stores, have decided to get a bite of this pie through selling cooked food. However, this is one of the industries that was disrupted heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic. We witnessed several restaurants being shut down and food delivery services picking up a lot of steam. Will indoor dining come back to full speed? Will food delivery services continue or slow down post pandemic?
First, I strongly believe that there’s no way food services industry, specifically indoor dining, will die out. Nothing can beat the experience of eating in a restaurant and getting “serviced.” However, the key here is the word “service.” Restaurants that focus on providing good service to customers will do just fine. Meanwhile, food delivery business is here to stay as well. Those looking for delicious meals but either do not care about service or are lazy to dine out will resort to delivery services. With the growth in this industry, how will restaurants maximize their share of this pie by expanding their presence? Will they open franchises everywhere?
The solution lies in a trending concept called the cloud kitchen. The idea is multiple restaurants share a kitchen to cater to the local delivery demand. If I am a famous pizza maker from New York and I want to expand my business to California, I would rent a part of a kitchen in San Francisco to bake my pizza which I may be sharing with several other restaurants. These restaurants will not only share the amenities, but they could be sharing a chef too. The chef must be trained to cook recipes from multiple restaurants. This is a win for restaurant owners as they can expand their presence and a win for customers as well as they will now have access to delicacies they previously didn’t have. This trend is beginning and it has a huge potential in the future. If you’re an investor, this might be the right horse to ride.
The shopping industry is changing rapidly. It’s not just the retail industry, the front end for shopping, the dynamics of wholesale and trade in general are changing. There is more emphasis on manufacturing locally. That not only helps the economy but allows less transportation time, thus resulting in greener supply chains. Retail may be transforming completely as we have seen but what does it mean to you? The 21st-century shopper needs to understand the shopping trends and become an intelligent buyer, making use of all the tools available. And if you are in the shopping industry, you better get on this “connected shopping” bandwagon, else you’ll risk losing your business. For entrepreneurs, however, opportunities are endless in this space.
Future of Travel: Transportation and Hospitality
People love to travel, whether for work or to stroll. Their need to travel defines their need to change. While it may seem trivial to talk much about travel because it has truly become an everyday activity, none other than people living before 2020 can tell how important it is for them to be able to move, owing to the pandemic. People were stuck at home, not even traveling distances their legs could afford.
The history of travel is as interesting as places to travel. In the past, people ate whatever food they found in walking distance, whether tree-grown or hunted. As society learnt systematic food growing, the concept of markets matured and buying capacity heightened. Customers nearby could no longer buy all the items produced, so the need to travel farther grew. If there’s one thing that better defines the history of human civilization, it’s their tendency to move from one place to another. We figured out ways to use animals as transport vehicles for people as well as goods. Then, one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity shattered the limits of our meager physical bodies and deemed us global in true sense. It was the invention of the wheel and transport vehicles. Wheels complimented the animals so they lugged goods with less effort and formed more complex vehicles such as carts.
Our quest to improve forced us to push our boundaries further. Transportation within each society became more efficient; we became more curious about other societies and so visited them, often with wrath and rampage and especially with a goal to steal the resources they possessed, if not to wipe them altogether, each time. When carts traversed the lands, we wondered how it was to drive them in water. Then came boats and ships and reached societies separated by water, giving rise to global trade. All of these were powered by beautiful natural energies such as wind and organic food eaten by animals. These were the best transportation options in Society 2.0.
One of the reasons why people needed robust vehicles was wheels rotated so faster their carriages could not keep up with the speed. Thanks to the metallurgical innovation of the industrial revolution, manufacturing of various metallic parts was then possible. That helped build the early-day automobiles and trains. The first engines ran with steam and the subsequent ones burnt fuels inside and were called combustion engines. As powerful as multiple horses, these combustion engines made private to semiprivate long-distance travel easier. And with the advent of bigger cars (buses) for long-distance journeys, trains for even longer, and motor-powered ships for faster travel on water, people could finally stride across the globe. Then came along two brothers who gave wings to the car. Gravity watched in awe as people flew higher and farther crossing fields, villages, cities, and oceans. The Wright-brothers-given set of tools inspired air-cars (helicopters) and air-buses (airplanes) that further shrunk this world, allowing us to travel across the globe in hours, as compared to months and even years, at some point.
This fast development in transportation options opened up gates wider for worldwide exchange of goods. Goods transported across the globe faster, and most importantly cheaper. Manufacturing didn’t have to be done locally anymore. People could produce goods in one part of the world and transport them effectively to another, complimenting each other’s incapacity. Countries traded more, thus diversifying options. It was possible for a global citizen that her favorite mango from the farms of Peru, plucked yesterday, could land in the United States today. With the expanding transportation industry in Society 3.0, it also opened up doors for people to travel for fun. These together with the economic growth caused by the industrial revolution and changes in employment policies such as mandatory vacation time among others gave rise to the hospitality industry, such as hotels and resorts.
The availability of cheap and fast shipping options meant that not only the goods produced in a country could be transported to other countries, outsource manufacturing of goods could also occur, meaning that businesses could build a plant and hire a team from a different country. The phones we use in the United States do not have to be manufactured here if it costs more. Manufacturing could be outsourced to places with low cost of production, bigger workforce, and cheaper raw materials, along with government incentives, for example, China. Likewise, the cotton that make clothes in the United States can be grown in India, shipped to Bangladesh, stitched in there to make clothes, and then shipped back to the United States. This outsourcing changed the economic balance of the world. Outsourcing has its own up and downsides. Let’s not get into that debate now, but it’s an objective observation to say that the world has transformed.
Growth in the aerospace technology created safer and bigger aircrafts, improving global travel. Hotels chained themselves worldwide, catering to both domestic and international travelers. Some areas evolved as tourist centers, with their economies highly dependent on tourism revenue. This also strengthened outsourcing as people could travel throughout the world in the matter of hours to understand the requirements of the product. There are no longer rigid language barriers which prevent partnerships. After bridging the gap in their understanding of what needs to be built, entrepreneurs can go back to their home country to work instantly on it.
A trend that was moving in this direction got a major boost in the information society, Society 4.0. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like SAP brought in efficiencies to complex global goods and people transport processes. Growth in the digital world, with 24×7 dedicated Internet, made customer reach, transportation, and accommodation booking easy. It skyrocketed the global travel and hospitality industries. You book a vacation package online with a few clicks and complete a trip to Bali. You can schedule a package shipment online; your package will be collected from your home and sent to its destination, giving you real-time status along the way.
The further revolutions disrupted the industry so drastically that it led to both gain and loss of thousands of jobs. Travel tech companies like Uber disrupted a sector within the travel industry by democratizing the taxi business. Companies like Turo disrupted another sector of the travel industry by democratizing the rental car industry. Hospitality tech companies like Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry: anyone with a spare room can play a hotel owner by renting it out for short durations, and anyone with time on their hands can become a tour guide. The transformation the information society brought along, just in the past decade, is phenomenal. That’s where we are now. Where does travel, transportation, and hospitality go from here? Here are the key trends:
Autonomous Cars
Autonomous cars are not any future inventions; they are here already. I have been driving a Tesla for a few years now. I should rather say a Tesla has been driving me. Haven’t we done enough of this “autonomous” talk in the previous chapter? Let me just say this: it’s not just going to be about cars. Buses, vans, and trucks are all in the verge of going autonomous with many companies such as Volvo, Tesla, and Daimler already on the lane. There are many more joining. Takeaway: this trend is here to stay.
Autonomous Hotels and Restaurants
Imagine you walk into a hotel and are greeted by a robot that recognizes you by your face, welcomes you by your name, checks you in automatically, and takes you to your room. You suddenly realize you forgot to bring your toiletry kit. You call through your smartphone hotel app, asking for room service, and a robot comes to your aid. Your robot chef will prepare the food for you and your server robot will bring it to your table. Moley, a company that’s headed to sell ceiling-mounted setups called Moley Robotics Kitchen, has fully automatized kitchen work making the preparation of thousands of recipes by a single chef possible. It sounds like science fiction until you land on such place and click an order to see the elegant robotic arm working its way through its recipe or brining your things that you ordered. If you are a frequent traveler, it’s likely you stumbled on one of these at some point. The question of what’ll happen to human chefs isn’t as distressing as of now, as much as the question of anything old is in risk of substitution by something new.
Autonomous Ports and Stations
You will be greeted by robots in airports. They will not only exchange pleasantries with you, but will provide the assistance you need, such as direction to a particular spot. They will keep an eye on the surroundings to keep airports, train stations, and bus stations safe. The data they gather get processed in real time and security will be notified as soon as any suspected activity is detected. Could that “security” be another bot? One of other areas robots can excel is immigration and customs. Robots got that covered, too. Check-in personnel, gatekeeper, duty-free shopkeeper, conductor, captain, maintenance crew—these are the jobs suited to machines better than humans. Why? Because their productivity never drops with monotonous tasks. And humans can focus on higher productivity tasks.
Traveling With the Sound
I lived in San Francisco but worked in Los Angeles for almost a decade. I traveled every week and spent days away from home because although the air time was only around an hour, the total travel time each way would be close to three hours from door to door. Add flight cancellations and delays on top. It really was an arduous feat to pull long-distance commuting with the existing infrastructure.
Thousands of people can resonate with me when it comes to daily, distant commuting. One of the ways we can solve this problem is using near-vacuum low-pressure “tubes” and pushing a vehicle through it. As rightly as you have guessed, the concept called Hyperloop, an open-source concept developed by Elon Musk, now being undertaken by the Virgin group under the name Virgin Hyperloop, might be a solution to a lot of problems including distant commuting. A few companies are developing and improvising the technology which some call “airplane in a tube.” Hyperloop pods can reach the speed of the sound, are deemed safer than airplanes, and look promising though they have their own criticisms. The cost of construction, implications of seismic activities, high-speed traveling experience, pod failures, and security are some of the issues critics are concerned of. However, I believe this technology has an impressive future and sufficient investment is being made into this. Watch this space.
Underground Flying
Do you remember how Falcon reached his doctor’s office in San Francisco from his home hundreds of miles away in minutes? He didn’t take an airplane, but rather flew underground in his own car in an underground 3D tunnel. Again, we covered this topic earlier and discussed how the Boring Company is making progress with this impressive futuristic roadway. Vehicles converted into temporary autonomous vehicles using car-carrying bins transporting people and goods under the ground are the future for beating traffic jams.
Smart Tourism
There was a time when we paid separately for booking our flight, hotel stay, and transportation. Travel companies now offer vacation packages, incorporating all of them. You may or may not get a good deal but that option is available today. And it exists for a reason. What if we take this connected travel to the next level? Imagine you buy your air, hotel, and rental car from whoever you like, together or separate. These reservations get stored in your calendar. Your personal digital assistant reminds you of your upcoming trip the day before and gives you weather details and travel tips based on the destination data. Probably there is a storm on the horizon you didn’t keep track of, a health crisis, or an ongoing coup. The assistant will alert you.
We are just getting started here. You own one of those (upcoming) helper robots? The bot will be smart enough to pack your suitcase depending on your meeting and travel schedule. It (or, he or she) will make sure you have the rain jacket or an umbrella in case the predictions are for a wet day. Taking your spouse along? If you’re in a fix where to take your spouse for a romantic dinner, your assistant will suggest a local restaurant that sells the fish you and your partner like—probably the one with 500 5-star ratings. It might book a ride for you ready to pick you on time. Are you one of those who prefer to reach airport only 30 minutes before departure instead of waiting hours? Your assistant will never miss a delayed flight, and if something like that happens, the ride she booked will be notified as well. Your hotel will get the notice, too, so they can redirect the cleaning crew to the ground floor for someone who is arriving earlier than planned. Hotel room is equipped with soft pillows the way you like, thermostat set to 79 degrees, and alarm preset for 7.30 a.m. to give you enough time to get ready for your 10 a.m. meeting.
One of the concerns of this form of arrangement is privacy. Your data will be shared only if you let them with all the parties involved here and will be used only to give you an integrated experience. But in the age of sophisticated data breaches and identity thefts, the systems need to be built with extra layer of data securities in mind.
Space Tourism
“Do you have any plans for next summer?” We often get that question. Instead of “I am going to Peru to see Machu Pichu” or “Rome to see the Coliseum,” what if you could say “I am going to see the Earth from the top”? That dream has finally come true. While it’s certain that passengers, or rather tourists, have to pay millions of dollars to take their initial journeys to space, with time the cost is expected to come down. You will indisputably be able to say you’d be leaving earth one fine summer (and nobody will assume you’re dying) and be back for dinner on earth an hour later.
Space Travel
Space travel is traveling in space to a certain destination as opposed to just visiting the space, taking selfies with the beautiful planet Earth, and being back. With all the advancements in space travel and more and more companies and organizations carrying the baton, namely the government agencies such as NASA and private giants such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and so on, the next few decades’ race will undoubtedly be a space race. Exploring the Moon and the Mars are just a few goals. NASA is planning a mission to send humans back to the Moon by 2024, but this time to stay. There are multiple other missions waiting to begin but thought of since decades: the Mars mission, the Near-Earth Asteroids mission, the Europa mission, and so on. We will only see more activity in the years to come. To set the right expectations though, while this activity will grow, it will not be anything more than mere news to watch when there is any major update for common men and women.
Space Transportation
Space transportation is different from space travel. Travel is for people and transportation is for goods. What kind of goods do we send to space? The SpaceX has already declared the cargo plans for its ferrying-to-space missions. It costs $1.1 million for 200 kilograms to travel to the polar orbit with an additional $5.5 thousand per kilogram. In addition, the rates for transportation to mid-inclination low earth orbits, geosynchronous transfer orbit, and trans-lunar injection are also available (“SmallsatRide-share Program” 2020). Goods ridesharing to the space is already existent. In case you want your own robotic probe to space, you can book a flight. Whether you want to send your own camera system to capture videos of space or want to send a special package to your astronaut uncle working on the Moon in the future, carrying out these tasks will be an everyday activity. Be sure to ask for a tracking number though.
Drone and Bot Transportation
As we witnessed in the “future of shopping,” companies around the world are striving for goods delivery in 30 minutes or less. The transportation of goods will soon take autonomous aerial routes, through drones, and autonomous ground routes, through walking robots. In case you are thinking this belongs to some far future, think again. The trend has already begun, and it is here to stay and grow. Companies such as Alphabet (Wing), Amazon (Amazon Air), and DHL (DHL Parelcopter) have been already trying out robotic delivery.
Green Ships
With our roadways going green with electric cars, railways with low-pressure tube-pods, and airways with electric drones, our waterways are under equal pressure to go green, too. The journey in the water was always green at least in the past. People used muscle and wind power before the industrial revolution started ferrying people and goods from one to another location. There are multiple concepts being developed to use a combination of solar and wind power to move ships in the sea. It’s not just the source of energy that’s pertinent, however. Reduction of waste to aim for circular economy, which includes reduction of food waste, recycling of water, and using electric shore power, among others, are also a part of it. Carnival, one of the largest cruise companies, announced they will endeavor to achieve net carbon neutral operations by 2050. This is something less people have paid attention to but something that has more potential to transform the waterways.
How does it affect the decisions you make?
We will all be beneficiaries of the fast and revolutionary travel and transportation methods that are brewing. So, at a minimum, be in the know of these changes so you don’t have to panic when you get impacted. Likewise, it’s safe and smart to buy an electric car if you’re looking to buy one. One that drives itself will be better even if you don’t intend to let it drive. Because when the technology matures fully, you’ll be one of the few who understands the business of it. If you are in the travel and hospitality industry, embracing the smart such as smart tourism and autonomous methods sooner or later pays off, keeps you afloat in the callous world of competition. Remember, if you don’t learn to sail these tech waves, they will crush you. Finally, are you an entrepreneur or an investor? This field gives you enormous investment potential. Look for the trends and ensure your investments are in line with the upcoming trends. A simple thumb rule—do not put your time and money on any company that doesn’t keep up with the latest trends in this industry that are predominantly driven by the latest technology.
Future of Health Care
Let’s start this section in an exotic place, the Caribbean. As I utter this name, do turquoise waters and the white sand beaches come to your mind? You have every right to, but we will be going deep underwater, almost to the ocean floor, to meet Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jelly fish. Let’s call her Terri. Terri loves to swim free and devour on microscopic animals attached to the submerged water plants.
She’s old, weak, and fragile and cannot continue like that anymore. Rejuvenating her entire cells, Terri transforms into a younger self. In fact, she’s not just transformed herself into a new self but hundreds of other Terris like her, forming a colony.
Regardless of the process, the key takeaway from this story is that Terri can transform into a younger form. She can die of other reasons, but she doesn’t die of aging.
How often do you wish you could transform into a kid? Wouldn’t that be amazing if humans could mimic Terri? That would be a dream come true for all of us.
The Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus, on the other hand, is not immortal, but is still a kid at 150 years (let’s call him Somni). Somni can live five times the age of the longest living person on earth.
If some living being can exhibit such behaviors, why not humans, given we are the most superior species on the planet Earth (by our standard). Is there any work happening to improve life expectancy? If so, what are they? Does medical science aim at increasing life span or improving life quality or both? What can advancements in this field get us in the future, other than, of course, curing illnesses or preventing them?
While technology has been transforming every industry imaginable, it’s not an understatement to say that health care is the most impacted area, in a positive way. That’s because health is the most valuable property of all we possess. Given its significance, most of the complex technologies take shape in the health care industry or are at least first implemented here before making their way into other areas. For example, take the brain–computer interface and its use in the health care industry.
This is the reason this book has been soaked with discussions around the most important aspect of our lives, starting right from the tale of Falcon. Talking t-shirts, smart medicines, magic cells—we’ve discussed a few. I will use this section to bring all the discussions we have had on this topic into a perspective, along with anything that was left out.
A Brief History of Health Care
Health care has been in existence since the birth of humans, in some form or the other. While primitive in nature and diversified in practice, the mode of delivering this service varied depending on the culture and available resources. Health care predominantly depended on nature for managing ailments, although predominantly in the hands of God, for the longest of the times. The hunter-gatherers and agricultural societies practiced this form of treatment for centuries.
Let’s take a short trip through the most documented historical lane. The 14th and 15th centuries were rocked by Black Death, also known as plague. Plague, a respiratory disease like COVID-19, also spreads through airborne droplets and is said to have killed 35 to 40 percent of the population in the United Kingdom. People thought it was coming out of thin air and attributed it to God’s wrath. The worst part of it was no one knew how to prevent or cure it. Parallel to it, people died of various other diseases such as smallpox, whooping cough, measles, tuberculosis, influenza, and stomach infections in different times of history.
The average life span of the 17th-century American was around 35 years. In fact, the Americas and Europe did better than the rest of the world, with the average in Africa in the mid to high 20s. Think about it. If I belonged to the 16th or 17th century, I would be writing this book from my grave! A little further in history, the life expectancy in the late 14th century Europe was just under 20 years, although this particular dip was attributed to the spread of the plague. Compare that to today’s average life span in the United States: 79 years. Average life expectancy has increased fourfold. This improvement is a direct result of advancements in science and technology.
It was only after a major breakthrough in the form of vaccines—in the late 18th century to combat some of the deadliest diseases—that wiping out diseases, such as smallpox, became possible. Vaccines gave humans additional years of cherished life on earth. Today, we rely heavily on vaccines to prevent diseases that were once thought to be insurmountable. That was only a few centuries ago. Compare that to the total life span of Homo sapiens on planet Earth. A major fraction of our life was spent at the mercy of God until we invented this preventive miracle.
When surgeries came around, they were tortures as much as cures. They used to be performed without any anesthesia back then, forcing a lot of people to choose death over surgery. In the mid-19th century, the surgery revolution came in the form of ether as general anesthesia although this field went through some bumpy roads where anesthesia was considered riskier than some of the surgeries themselves. However, the technology for the use of anesthesia ripened gradually. Today, we worry very little about losing lives to anesthesia. Again, this major breakthrough is only a few centuries young.
Thanks to developments in microbiology, we discovered, in the 19th century, that diseases didn’t come out of thin air; they were caused by microscopic organisms. That helped us develop antibiotics and anti-viral drugs to cure ailments once thought incurable, revolutionizing medical science. Thanks to medical imaging techniques, such as X-ray, in the late 19th century and later-evolved 20th century technology magnetic resonance image (MRI)—it was finally possible to see through our bodies without peeling the flesh off and sawing the bones. Then came along organ transplants. Patients with defective organs could finally change them, saving lives of millions. If I haven’t stressed enough, vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and surgeries are all developed only within the last few centuries.
Innovation led to more innovation, and these medical inventions continued to grow throughout the industrial revolution, accelerated by the growth of large-scale organizations. However, health care industry grew to an entirely new level during the information society, with digital access to all the health care data, including that of the patient’s. This access to valuable data types, for example, medical history that allowed health care providers to provide a better care, forums for providers to share their knowledge and collectively provide superior care, organized data and AI-related tools for research to come up better inventions, data-driven preventive care, and integrated information for health insurance and care providers to help patients get preventive care in order to avoid high patient care efforts, revolutionized the game. Information revolution together with technologies, such as IoT, gave rise to fitness trackers. These devices generated enormous amount of information that were processed collectively to identify risks in a larger population. Thanks to general availability of the Internet, the concept of tele-doctors and video visits have been on the rise. That’s where we are now. With this in mind, what do you think our health care will look like in the future?
Role of Intelligent Technologies
Back in the Falcon’s tale, we learned how AI will be used in patient care to provide an integrated health care experience to all of us. If you forgot, the summary of it was: patient data generated from various smart things around us (not just trackers) along with data from office visits and laboratories will be stored and analyzed to provide the care we require, most importantly preventive care. AI will be widely used across all the health care industry subsectors to increase efficiencies. The concept of tele-doctors and AI doctors will grow. For example, AI with access to all your data will perform initial diagnosis, often better than a physical doctor. That diagnosis may be sent to the doctor for final verification. Robots will play a major role in facilities across the health care industry, replacing humans in some cases. Robotic surgery is a great example. They perform certain operations with more precision than humans. Health care-related transport will become automated and autonomous. We will see the merge of health care and technology across all sectors of health care like never before.
Focus on Regenerative Health Care
What do we do if we have fever? We take fever suppressant. What do we do if we have pain in a body part? We take pain killers, right? A vast portion of our health care so far focused on managing the symptoms, not necessarily curing the problem. Where we do cure the issue, we do it through chemical-based medicine. The new trend in the health care industry is to use our body’s ability to fight against diseases, or even cure itself, because our body does possess enormous potential to fight pathogens and survive in this complex world. That’s where biotechnology comes in. The key contributors to this are stem cell therapies and genome editing.
Sure—you’ve read about robots, virtual bots, and nanobots. But what is this xenobot?
First, let me ask you a question. Can you single out a thing organic matter can offer that silicon matter cannot? The possibility of sheltering living beings inside, isn’t it? Further, organic matter is biodegradable and thus is green. What if we can create nanobots that can travel to specific parts of our body, programmed to execute specific tasks, such as delivering medication, fighting cancer cells, or cleaning the plaque from the arteries? It sounds like an end-all, be-all solution to these problems, but these bots made of metal or plastic pose risks to the body. Our body is naturally resistant to foreign matter, not ready to host plastic or metal with open hands. What is the solution? We need to make these nanobots using organic material, a.k.a. the cells.
Scientists at the University of Vermont did exactly this in 2020. They took the cells from the embryos of a frog species and created new organisms through their stem cells. They used a cluster of two types of cells—one that moved and the other that didn’t. Moving cells, you may ask. Yes, the heart cell. It contracts and expands to pump blood, right? Those cells were used to create motion, similar to what a motor would create, but obviously a slower one. A bunch of these heart cells and skin cells were arranged in an optimal fashion to form a new living organism that could swim using the heart muscle cells and carry small loads, such as medicine, through a hole in their structure.
This is not reprogramming the DNA of any existing species. This is not the creation of a metallic robot. And this is not the regeneration of cells in our body. If you look at it, this is the creation of a new species altogether. A living organism. Isn’t that amazing? This organism is said to have enough protein inside to survive for a week. However, in a protein-rich environment, it’s said to last longer, similar to any other living being. More good news, the organic bot can heal itself if damaged. And once it’s dead, it is a bunch of dead cells ready to be excreted out, like so many dead cells living beings flush every day.
As simple as it sounds, the creation of this organic bot is tedious in reality. The “optimal” arrangement of cells is where the key lies. The cells can be arranged in many different combinations, as you can imagine. This is where advanced artificial intelligence came in handy. Using a supercomputer called Deep Green, scientists tweaked these arrangements in a simulated environment using advanced machine learning algorithms, before they created the actual bot.
Focus on Health Span
How do we measure the quality of our health care system? In the past, we wrongly measured it through life span, meaning how long we live (rightfully so because the average life span was short in the past). We made a reasonable progress in improving our life span, although we have more work to do. But how successful are we in living the life as a free being?
A diabetic patient cannot eat his likes without having to worry about shooting up his blood sugar levels. A heart patient controls his emotion and suffers every day. Cancer patients go through those painful chemotherapies. Improved cognition capabilities should help do things without assistance in those impacted. The point is quality of life should drastically improve or remain constant no matter what disease you have. This will be the key focus in the future.
How do we do it? It’s going to be a combination of techniques. One key technique is stem cell therapy we referenced earlier. The use of AI to provide better health insights will help us mitigate any health risks before they turn into untreatable statistics. The advanced gene sequencing techniques that helped us develop tools, such as mRNA vaccines, are another set of tools in our toolbox. Smart toilets we discussed that would help us diagnose health problems early on are another tool. Smart tablets we have seen in the previous chapter to diagnose health issues are another. Potential use of nanobots and xenobots that can traverse inside our bodies and target specific areas to repair cells could be another tool. While we will use various approaches to deal with this, here is the gist of our focus areas: (1) use technology to help us lead healthy lives to avoid chances of getting sick; (2) identify any health risks as early as possible to mitigate them before we fall sick; (3) take preventive measures proactively, such as manufacturing and using vaccines by advanced biotechnologies; and (4) in case we fall sick, use our bodies’ natural ability to cure through regenerative medicine instead of simply treating or suppressing symptoms.
Increasing Life Span
Let’s revisit one of the questions we raised at the beginning of this chapter: is it possible to expand our life span? If so, how? Everything we discussed thus far is predominantly geared toward improving the quality of our life, although the indirect impact is expansion of our life span. For example, stem cell therapy’s goal is to cure diseases to improve living conditions or cure deadly diseases, expanding the life span.
Generic engineering acts as a rescue mission to cure such deadly diseases. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic alone has declined the average life expectancy in the United States by a full year just in the first half of 2020. The vaccine will surely improve the average life expectancy in the future—another example of biotech improving our life span. Gene modification is showing promising results in curing genetic diseases, not just to improve the quality of life but also to help those impacted live longer. The potential use of these bio-bots we saw earlier includes the treatment of deadly diseases, resulting in a life span increase.
However, these are the technologies helping the ones impacted by diseases. Is there anything available for the healthy as well? Genetic engineering may be used one day to change our source code to slow the growth so that we can live longer, similar to those Greenland sharks. Even better, what if we figure out a way to keep converting our cells back to its younger form on par with the immortal jellyfish cells?
Instead of talking about something we haven’t figured out yet, let us discuss what is possible with today’s technology and what may be coming in the near future. Here’s a story. When I was a kid, my dad bought a motorcycle. He used it so often it lasted for decades up until I was much older. One of my uncles bought the same model around the same time, but that only lasted a few years. Of the two motorcycles coming from the same factory around the same time as the other, ours almost lasted twice longer. Why? Because my dad took very good care of his. He maintained it periodically, replaced the parts that needed attention before they broke down, and gave it the attention it demanded.
What if we apply the same method to our bodies? Sure, we need to take care of our bodies through a healthy lifestyle, which surely does have an impact on our life span. Preventive care in terms of periodic checkups to identify risks before they become issues and mitigating them is certainly a game-changer. But what is new here? Back to the motorcycle example: my dad didn’t just drive it safe, keep it clean, and feed it with good quality gasoline, but he regularly got it serviced. He replaced the old and worn-out parts.
What if we do something similar to our bodies to reverse aging? Periodically rejuvenate deteriorating or dead cells. Can proactive stem cell therapy come in handy? Perhaps. Maintain the rusting parts of the body through the removal of plaque. Can bio-bots and xenobots be employed in such a task? Such techniques, together with a healthy lifestyle, preventive care, and the advances in biotech and medicine, certainly can give us the hope of a much longer life and quality living.
Is Immortality Possible?
Man is a mortal being. Will this statement be forever true? Can we prove it wrong apart from the fact that it already is—in terms of its patriarchal tone. Anyway, who doesn’t want to be immortal, right? We keep coming across several tales about immortal human beings. Various wealthy folks have taken drastic measures to improve their life spans or gain some kind of immortality; however, all of them have failed so far.
Before we get to immortality, let’s quickly discuss rebirth. Rebirth is when a dead being is born again in another or similar somatic form. The Bible tells us that Jesus was reborn after three days. But can humans? No, I am not referring to the rebirth of a patient who died of cardiac arrest and was revived through CPR. And it’s not about the repair of a failed organ within a certain time after death. Rather, I am referring to preserving the body for what lies in the future through a process called cryogenic freezing. This is the process of freezing the human body upon death for possible future resurrection, especially in a future where medical technology would have advanced to either cure the underlying cause of death or reverse aging.
There are a few companies that offer this kind of freezing. However, no frozen human has been revived so far, and this is as of today nothing more than an airy science fiction. To put this in different terms, this is based on hope or belief, and belief is often not a strategy.
If such a rebirth is just hope, is there an option backed by science?
Let me ask you a question. What makes you, you? Your skin? Your heart? Any other organ? Your brain? Of course, your brain is the one that gives you the personality you possess, defines your thought process, dictates your actions, and makes you the person you are. That’s why some people with head injuries lose their memories and start their life over. Meaning, they are not the same person any longer. What if we are able to export the contents of the brain and import them into a younger body? Would that reverse aging? In a way, yes. We will look different, but our thoughts and personality will live until the new body expires. We can then import them onto a new body, as long as we find a “donee.” First of all, is this mind export and import even possible? I wouldn’t say it’s possible yet, but thanks to the brain-chip technology (we reviewed in the previous chapter), it is plausible.
We are still in the territory of extending our life span through this complicated process with many practical challenges. I thought I said I would show you a path to immortality. Just imagine uploading your brain onto a robot, let’s call it Canopus. What is the result? You made your immortal robotic twin. This is what we discussed in the last chapter. What if we create the body of a humanoid robot made from this biological wetware instead of metal? The year 2020 produced these organic nanobots that could clean up radioactive waste, collect micro-plastics in the oceans, carry medicine inside human bodies, and even travel into our arteries to scrape out plaque. What lies in 2030? And what will 2040, 2050, and 2060 produce? Scientists already prove that they can grow organs in a dish. What if we can put everything together and create a new regular-sized species instead of these nano-beings? Would that change everything?
We can keep the biological matter used on the lower end by only using it for skin, for example. The shell of the robot will look like a human, but it’s a machine inside. We can also go right into the wetware spectrum and use body parts made of biological matter. We can model some organs as well, which are essential to keep the skin alive. But what if we could pick and choose the parts we wish to keep organic and nonorganic? The brain, the most advanced part, cannot be any lesser than an advanced AI-based computer, either complex systems of neuronal networks or biological matter. If we carefully put everything together, can we technically create a hybrid that looks like a human with the powers of a supercomputer? It sure sounds scary. Is it possible with today’s technology? No. Is it plausible? Yes.
Future of Connectivity
As social beings, we are constantly in a need to connect with others. The entire human history can be summarized as an attempt to connect themselves, to transform river-dwelling primitive beings into office-going sophisticated commuters. In recent years, we have also been sharing our world with machines. For bad or for good, we have shared an umbilical cord connection with the inanimate objects as well who might know more about us than we’ve realized.
Connectivity outside of normal human interaction during the hunter-gatherer times was almost nonexistent. Interaction, too, was limited because of separateness. Society 2.0 brought people closer together, hence improved connectivity through social gatherings. But that was pretty much it. Apart from food production, ritual and other social gatherings, and being in a family, there wasn’t much to do together. Connecting with other human beings remained a priority, however. Although nascent in nature, human connectivity started in Society 2.0 and continued into 3.0.
One of the prominent inventions of the industrial era was a telegraph, which evolved into a telephone. People could transmit their voice to faroff distance in real time through long cables and converse with other people. The invention of the Internet, being married to the telephone, initially depended on these lines to send data back and forth. The dial-up Internet, as it was called, was a technology the younger generations aren’t familiar with. With a fraction-of-a-second patience and a passion for fast-life, there was no way they would have tolerated those high-pitched, rumbling dial tones.
Then, in the 1990s, came its big brother, the DSL, Internet connectivity that used the same phone lines but with a different frequency, thus avoiding interference with the voice. This discrete functionality allowed people to talk and browse Internet at the same time. It felt fascinating to not be interrupted while browsing. Further, an upgrade to dial-up system was cable-based Internet, which carried signals through copper wires. Sadly, this wasn’t an efficient way to transfer the zeroes and ones as the data loss was high. Only with the advent of the permeating optical fiber cables that used light signals to transfer packets of data was lossless data transfer possible. This was a new infrastructure, providing us with speeds up to 2,000 Mbps (2 Gbps). Compare that to around 100 Mbps for DSL and around 50 Kbps (not Mbps) for dial-up; 2 Gbps is 2,000,000 times faster than 50 Kbps, fast enough for most of the world’s commercial and domestic usage.
However, there was too much dependency on a cable. First, this cable infrastructure is not easy to install. You need to run these cables under the ground and sea to connect around every corner. Second, you need to be home to be able to get connected. Internet was easily accessible at home but anywhere outside was equally difficult. Despite many public places offering Wi-Fi, it was still difficult to check e-mails when you were on the go. Second, what if you are not in a public place offering the Internet?
Ever since the invention of telephone, we had a desire to cut the cord. Who wants to sit at home in one spot, glue that landline to our ear, and talk for hours, right? The invention of cordless phones didn’t take us too far, both literally and metaphorically, from our home. The cellular networks available in the 1980s that allowed us to take our phone wherever we went did make us free but not for long. The battery was weak and the phone itself was bulky. Worst of all, the call quality was mediocre. But it was exciting to have a roaming phone, for the first time. That cellular network was 1G—the first generation. It only supported voice.
The second generation called 2G connectivity came in the 1990s. It was a major upgrade from 1G and supported text transfer through SMS messages (the same ones we still use to date) and even picture messages in the form of MMS.
The first decade in the 21st century gave rise to 3G, which was a phenomenal upgrade from previous 2G, providing Internet at speeds of around 3 Mbps. 3G was the reason why we could start using social media and other applications, to the point of getting addicted to them. No modern applications such as high-speed streaming and gaming would have developed, had Internet not been that faster.
The second decade of the 21st century gave us 4G connectivity, which was again a significant jump compared to 3G, offering speeds of up to 300 Mbps, paving way for HD streaming. 4G not only increased speed compared to 3G as many as 14 times, but it also reduced latency, increasing reliability on the Internet. How often do you turn off your phone’s Wi-Fi to connect to 4G because of spotty Wi-Fi signals? I do that more often than I want to. That’s what these G’s are all about: a reliable Internet connection, often better than Wi-Fi.
3G has significantly increased outreach in underdeveloped countries, most of which depended on 2G or went without connectivity. Let’s say the entire world will slowly get onto 4G. That may bring social media and digital media to everyone’s phones, but will that meet our connectivity needs? To answer that question, it’s essential to understand what our current and, most importantly, our upcoming connectivity needs are.
The most critical need for Internet is coming from machines, not people. And this need will grow exponentially with the number of these connected machines multiplying. Let’s take the example of autonomous cars. The car must always be connected to the Internet to work effectively, not just to process tons of data it receives per second, but to know the whereabouts of all the other cars and things on the road. The future self-driving cars will speak to other vehicles on the road directly to coordinate better. They will know exactly where the traffic lights are and whether they are red, yellow, or green not by “looking at” them but because traffic lights told the cars directly through their connectivity. This level of complex coordination requires clear and uninterrupted communication between all the vehicles on our roadways and this requires a super-reliable connection.
Self-driving cars are just an example. We have already discussed that interconnected smart things will be the backbone of any smart home or a smart factory. The question is how will they talk to each other? Connectivity through cable-based Internet is difficult and even impossible for some smart things, for example, a moving car. Meeting the connectivity thirst of all the machines makes the case for a superfast, always-available wireless connection. However, more important than speed are reliability and latency. Imagine a sensor detecting potential breakdown of a gas pipe but unable to communicate to the server instantly? Such a system is practically worthless.
What is the solution? Is there a magic bullet that will get us there? These are some of the technologies I believe will dominate the scaffolding of future connectivity:
5G Availability Will Grow
If you follow the news, chances are you’ve heard about 5G connectivity. I hope this did not happen in the context of conspiracy theories floating around on the social media—that 5G can cause cancer or that it helped spread the COVID-19 pandemic.
5G has begun rolling out already. New devices that come to the market will be made to support this new type of connectivity. With the introduction of 5G, a big question rises in most people’s minds: what will happen to 4G? Will that be replaced? Will I be forced to upgrade my cell phone to the one that supports 5G? Not so soon. With the cost and complicated setup of 5G architecture, it is likely that 4G and 5G will coexist for a long time.
If we look at the past, we had a new G almost every decade. What if I tell you that 6G is already being designed? A few 6G summits have already occurred to join forces to develop the next-next generation connectivity. Will there be 7G after that, followed by 8G?
Cell Towers Everywhere
The biggest challenge for 5G connectivity has to do with cell towers located at short distances and obstacles blocking the waves. If 5G is already facing such challenges, the future Gs either will have to completely rethink their mechanical and software infrastructure or give in to another better technology such as satellite communication, out of irrelevance and competition. Likewise, relying on cell towers installed and managed by the cell phone providers will not give us the connectivity we need in the future. If so, what is the solution? We will have to start turning a lot of day-to-day things into cell towers. For beginners, how about our cell phones both receiving and transmitting data from and to fellow users providing connectivity to other connectivity-hungry substructures around them? How about our future furniture coming with embedded transmitters? Public infrastructure with embedded cell towers? How about partnering with the utility company to attach cell towers to electric poles? Only need will pave the path to solution. If terrestrial G-technologies survive and cellphones capable of receiving and transmitting satellite signals do not become ubiquitous, at least for 6G connectivity, it may apply all or some of the above. This space is worth examining because it is something that implicates directly to the end users, both you and me.
Connecting to the Space
I jumped the gun a little bit on this subject and introduced this in the previous chapter. As we discussed, SpaceX and Amazon are working tirelessly to provide reliable Internet connectivity through thousands of orbiting satellites to every corner of the world. This is a different form of connectivity that relies on thousands of satellites orbiting our planet instead of connectivity through terrestrial cellular towers: any G-generation, cable-based, optical, or wireless Internet connectivity.
Connected Sidewalk Through Sidewalk
Let the creator explain. According to Amazon,
Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices like Amazon Echo devices, Ring Security Cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and tile trackers work better at home and beyond the front door…When enabled, Sidewalk can unlock unique benefits for your device, support other Sidewalk devices in your community, and even locate pets or lost items. (2022)
Amazon Sidewalk creates a low-bandwidth network with the help of Sidewalk Bridge devices including select Echo and Ring devices. These bridge devices share a small portion of your Internet bandwidth, pooled together to provide these services to you and your neighbors. And when more neighbors participate, the network becomes even stronger. The idea is to offer one more medium to enable reliable and instant connectivity demanded by all the “things” that rely on connectivity, especially not so hungry consumers, such as trackers. When the Internet connection is on, they’ll use it. And technologies like Sidewalk can act as a fallback option. This has already been rolled out. If you own an Echo or a Ring, chances are you are a part of this program already or at least you have the option to participate. You can always opt out of Sidewalk if you think it follows you.
Direct Connectivity
Not too long ago, Internet was a thing only connected to computers and lately to cellphones. With the advent of LAN-enabled appliances, devices such as printers, desktops, and TVs could grow their reach and possibilities. I remember having to place my TV next to the router to avoid running a long LAN cable to connect my TV to the Internet. When I relocated the Wi-Fi router, I had to take my TV along with it as it connected only through a LAN cable. Years later, the wireless adapter came to my rescue and cut the umbilical cord between my TV and router. Everything has gone wireless today: wireless TVs, wireless ACs, wireless laptops, wireless alarm clocks, wireless headphones, and even wireless electricity. How will this connectivity work in the future? With all the advances in XG and satellite Internet connectivity, future “things” will no longer depend on a Wi-Fi connection. Instead, they will be able to connect directly to the Internet. Perhaps they will also act as transmitters as we discussed earlier to support future-generation XG connectivity.
Will all this technological gimmicks, an important question is whether cable-based Internet will fade away. Not in the near future, as far as I can tell, because of their dedicated, fast transfer of data without connectivity problems. XG, cable-based Internet, satellite Internet, and other advances such as Amazon Sidewalk will work together to meet connectivity needs of our futuristic world. But whether a technology will vanish also comes down to the service Internet companies provide us, given this tough competition between multiple sources of connectivity. You, as an end user, however, should look for two things: reliable, fast connection and affordable cost. And when there is tough competition between corporates, there is always one winner: you, the end user.
Future of Metals and Resources
What comes to your mind when you think of mining? Hard hats, dirty clothes, and dangerous working conditions? These days, you don’t have to wear a hard hat, cover yourself in a protective suit, and work in dangerous, hard-to-reach underground tunnels and scariest labyrinthine ducts. You simply sit behind a computer and mine millions of dollars’ worth of products that are in hot demand all over the world. Even better, you don’t even have to sit behind a computer. You simply teach the computer to mine; you go and play your favorite game while the computer mines for you autonomously.
Does it sound like crypto mining? That is not the mining we talk about in this section. We are going to discuss the least attractive industry that gives the most valuable returns for humanity—mining minerals.
Two essential substances, metals and nonmetals form the major portion of both our living and nonliving worlds. Among them, the sturdy, malleable, ductile, and sonorous pieces of moldable metals are so pervasive you’ll find them almost everywhere—from airplanes to electrical appliances.
Around 95 of the 118 elements in the periodic table—a table where all discovered elements are arranged systematically—are metals. Along with coal, metals and other nonmetals form the interior of the earth called minerals. Our ancestors carved the earth’s minerals and resources such as stones, bones, and teeth into weapons and tools and used them to build homes and ward off wild animals.
Most metals aren’t found in pure state. They compound with other substances. Mining enriches the concentration of metals from these substances. Mining of minerals to hoard metals started in the agricultural society with evidence of metals such as iron, bronze, gold, and silver extracted with great industrial fervor. In fact, these resources are so important in our life that our predocumented history is categorized by these metals (or lack thereof). Hunter-gatherer society was called the Stone Age; the early part of the agricultural society was known as the Iron Age, then followed by the Bronze Age, named after the most common sources used for daily tools and structures. Metals were used as the means of exchanging value (money) up until a few decades ago.
While mining existed for thousands of years, it definitely took a turn in the industrial society. The exponential growth in manufacturing equally grew the demand for metals that needed to be mined. The first industrial revolution brought in demand for new types of materials to be mined from the earth’s core—such as coal. The second industrial revolution, the electricity revolution, fueled the need to exploit the ductile property of metals and thereby produce long wires to distribute energy to far off places. In turn, the demand for metals such as copper went up. Development of new manufacturing and construction techniques further fueled the demand for all types of metals. And the third industrial revolution, the information revolution, only grew the demand for mining, as none of the present-day electronics could be imagined without mining minerals.
With this historic growth in the mining industry, we are entering the digital industry revolution, a.k.a. Society 5.0, where the demand will only continue to grow. More economies around the globe swayed by the increasing population are graduating to better societies, using modern construction methods and manufacturing techniques. Equally, the electronics revolution has entered from affluent bungalows to impoverished huts, thanks to bettered economic conditions, with far and away declining prices. Modern-day electronics and appliances are on an all-time high manufacturing demand producing an e-waste of about 54 million tons alone in 2019; all of them rely heavily on minerals mined from the earth such as copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, zinc, aluminum, and even rare earth metals. Add to that the advances in the field of intelligent technologies we have been discussing, the hunger for mineral-made items: computers, sensors, robots, cameras, drones, weapons, tools, and everything else will only grow in the next generation’s connected society.
The exponential growth in demand for specific metals such as copper and nickel driven by the “G” of the BIG future, that is, Green Technologies, will add to the total growth. An average of five times more copper is used in renewable energy sources, compared to traditional fossil fuels. An electric vehicle uses over 80 kilograms of copper and a single wind turbine uses an estimated 1900 pounds. Global wind turbine fleet is estimated to consume over 5.5 metric tons of copper by 2028 according to a 2020 report by mining.com (2019). The news extracts next should give you an indication of how the demand for mining products will grow.
“Copper is ‘the new oil’ and low inventories could push it to $20,000 per ton, analysts say”—by CNBC (Smith 2021).
“Green copper demand to average 13 percent annual growth over next 10 years—report,” mining.com reported (2021).
Another praise for another metal: “Nickel Soars and Could Keep Flying as Demand Rises and Supply Falls,” Tim Treadgold writes in the Forbes (2019). The article further states that the strong demand for stainless steel and supply shortages caused “the great nickel rush of 2007” hitting a record price of $50,000/t. “This time around, nickel has a new price driver, EVs, a mode of transport which was not even a blip on commodity investors radar screens in 2007,” Tim further writes.
Another mining.com report says: “Cobalt demand from battery industry expected to grow in the next five years” (2020). The article cites battery technology as the primary driver for growth in cobalt mining.
“Gold Is Hot but Nickel Is Hotter as Demand Grows for Batteries in Electric Vehicles,” Forbes reports (Treadgold 2019).
Mining industry is the biggest contributor to the green revolution, unlike what most people think.
While these paint a very rosy future for mining, the growth in demand doesn’t apply to everything we mine. After all, mining is a very broad industry contributing to around 7 percent of the global GDP. With the global push to going green, the demand for coal will diminish even though not uniformly around the world. Some countries such as India and China may show reverse trends at least for some time but it’s certain that no country can cling to fossil fuels for long.
The future-proof optimism for the mining sectors comes along a number of challenges. The first challenge will be to keep up with the demand despite its deprecating environmental repercussions. It’s not that we have unlimited amounts of minerals hidden under the earth. There have been several predictions around when we will run out of various natural resources. While the jury is still out on any specific estimates, we will definitely run out of anything that is not infinite. Even if we have more minerals available somewhere in the world, we need to find new sites where these minerals can be extracted out of. Starting up a new mine is an expensive affair. Accurate mapping technologies must be developed to precisely discover these potential mines.
On the other hand, mining has its own perils with concern over the safety of miners, given it’s often done underground with limited ventilation at times. Thirty-three miners were trapped 2,300 feet under the ground in Chile in 2010 for 69 days—stories as such intensify the dread. While the present-day mining safety procedures may have been enhanced, in the past there was no guarantee that people going underground would come back. It’s not just the immediate safety but the working conditions that pose long-term health risks to the miners. For example, coal miners run the risk of black lung disease from the coal dust they inhale.
While the future might bring along so much opportunity in the manual mining industry, it is going to be equally threatened by other sources. Rapid advances in technology are inventing new production methods that use different types of minerals. Billionaire Elon Musk expressed concerns over nickel being the “biggest concern for scaling” the production of Li-ion batteries, through a tweet (Musk 2021): “That’s why we are shifting standard range cars to an iron cathode. Plenty of iron (and lithium)!”
Advanced AI and robotics technologies might be a part of the solution: they may find new minerals inside of the earth’s core, or in space, as well. What does this mean? Mining industry must not only keep up with the demand but give opportunities to look for newer methods, too. This explains how both mining and consumption markets have to keep track of each other’s inherent capabilities. In addition, mining companies must also keep their research and development going to drive the change in market demands, instead of being driven, and even worse, getting disrupted.
Attracting talent has been a major challenge for the mining industry. Mining is a dangerous job and obviously one of the dirtiest. Cyber security continues to be a threat to all the mines. A single attack can bring all mining activities to a grinding halt.
With tremendous opportunities, yet more than a handful of challenges, how will mining shape up in the future? Let’s look at the key trends. Again, these are generic and as with any industry we discussed thus far, specifics will vary for particular sectors within mining industry. In addition, every company is different with unique set of challenges and opportunities.
Robots All Over
Unlike humans, robots are indefatigable. They are not scared of depths and dangerous work environments, can be repaired if damaged, or simply replaced. They are emotionless, demand no rights, and are not affected by any long-term health risks. And most importantly, robots are often more effective than humans, in performing laborious as well as intelligent tasks. That way, robots would be more suited to mining work than humans. And that’s exactly what is going to happen. From ore prospecting to actual mining, mineral extraction, smelting, processing, and transportation, autonomous robots can play a vital role. Part of these functions are already automated in several mines across the globe.
Note that robot is a pretty broad term and consists of various types ranging from drones, drilling bots, and other mining machinery all the way to autonomous vehicles. These robots, powered by advanced AI, will perform almost at the capacity of this fictitious super humans from sci-fi movies, that too, 24/7.
A news reports that exclaims “Robots are replacing humans in the world’s mines” further writes in the byline: “One day the world’s mines may be operated almost entirely by machines” (Baggaley 2017). The news piece further points out it’s possible that future mining might take place inside ocean floor—thanks to automation. “Making use of robots may be our only chance to ever extract minerals in such areas.” Humans can opt out from doing dangerous jobs into more secure fields.
Mining is generally tied to the excavation, extraction, and enrichment of natural resources pertaining to the interior of the earth. But what about the vast stretches of waste, “good-for-nothing” reserves we have on land? Circular mining addresses this very concern, making mining from recycled products possible. With the exponential growth in demand, the best way to increase supply is remine from the products that were once mined. This is a part of the circular economy.
Pretty much every mining company is deploying recycling plants and working on recycling metals. But there’s more to it. Mining companies alone cannot effectively remine metals. Instead of leaving it up to everyone to initiate the recycling process by handing over their used resources, there must be a business model to enforce recycling. A subscription model to products where we pay for using the items rather than owning them so the manufacturer gets their products back at the end of their life can be one of the models to enforce recycling. This model is surely picking up steam. The manufacturing process must be accorded to make it easy to remine these metals from used products. Moving toward modular designs is one such technique.
Biomining
Extracting metals from wastes and ores is indeed a grueling task. As of late, both giant and intelligent machines are assisting in the task, but by no means have they made it as easy as the game of chess. The game of chess? Is it too much to ask for? Or can mining, or say remining, be made a laidback industry as I’m talking here.
Turns out, there’s a way. Mining can be done at ease with the assistance of the armies of the nature—the tiny organisms that eat away stuff on earth. When you employ tiny organisms to mine metals from their ores and wastes, it’s called biomining. The Conversation explains biomining as: “. . . technique promised by science fiction: a vast tank filled with microorganisms that leach metal from ore, old mobile phones and hard drives” (Voutsinos 2022). Microorganisms can feed on scrap metal parts and containers such as electronic wastes and extract precious metals such as gold, copper, nickel, zinc, and rare earth metals. It can be one of the most ecological methods to reduce both the carbon footprint and the extra burden on earth’s natural reserves. Biomining is currently used to produce about 5 percent of the world’s gold and 20 percent of the copper, Voutsinos says. It is a technology expected to lead to supply growth through its ability to extract metals from low-grade ores.
There are also various attempts to mine precious metals by using living cell efficiencies, such as that of a bacterium’s. Labiotech, a leading digital media that covers European biotech industry, published an article “Biomining: Turning Waste Into Gold With Microbes,” reporting the German technology by a company called BRAIN (Biotechnology Research and Information Network) that converts “trash to treasure” (Mitha 2022). The company reportedly employed more than 50,000 “to identify the most talented metal-extracting microbes and put them to work.” These are some of the great examples of the use of biotechnology in mining.
Smart Mining
Imagine a mine packed with robots working autonomously across the entire mining supply chain. These robots generate huge amounts of data uploaded to the control center in real time. But they aren’t the only machines that generate the data; a plethora of sensors embedded in the mine, inside those robots, in the smelter, and everywhere else in the supply chain continuously feed data back to the center. These sensors leverage the data from parameters such as the temperatures inside the smelters and mines to positioning of the transport vehicles and let the central station decide, and automatically, whether the temperature is beyond or under preferred values or what the status of raw materials are. Interestingly, the entire process—from ore enrichment all the way to the finished material and from mining to the delivery of the finished product—is displayed on the big screen by configuring through a digital twin. Or even better, if the engineer wants to get a more realistic, less 2D feel of things, the incorporation of virtual reality lens makes it possible for her to site-visit wherever she wants and in real time.
Where is this control center located? Outside the mine? Outside the smelter? Near the distribution center? Near the recycling plant? The choice is yours. Do you want to put this on a Caribbean beach or in an ancient quiet town of Alaska? How about a mobile control center you can simply operate from your handheld device? Nothing will stop you from doing it, if company policies allow.
The great news is you don’t have to wear a hard hat, cover yourself in a protective suit, and work in dangerous underground tunnels hard to reach and breathe in. Sit behind a computer and mine those millions of dollars’ worth of products that are in hot demand all over the world. Even better, you don’t even have to sit behind a computer. Teach the computer to mine; you go and play your favorite game while the computer mines for you autonomously. Does this sound familiar? If not, please go back to the beginning of this section. If mining can be made so cool, would you be interested in being a part of it?
Space Mining
Natural resources are finite and there’s no way of getting around them because we’re isolated on a planet, millions of kilometers away from another mine-able planet. We will come up with more efficient solutions but will that be enough to meet the demand decades from now? What is our fallback option? The good news is while resources are finite on our planet Earth, there are plenty of earth-like objects in the space and the resources are almost infinite, provided we figure out a way to reach there, mine their resources, and bring them back to earth, or better, don’t.
Whether we mine on other heavenly bodies and bring those resources to earth or use them to colonize space in the future, the rate at which we’re exploiting the resources here on earth, it’ll certainly be the only option for further getting our hands on resources. The rocket technology being developed by a number of private firms together with efforts from NASA and other space agencies around the globe is making this hypothetical situation more and more possible every day.
This snippet from NBC News from July 2019, “Mission to rare metal asteroid could spark space mining boom: Scientists think it is mostly made of nickel and iron, but could also be abundant in more valuable metals such as platinum and gold,” explains a lot about our future ambitions (Chow 2019). On the side, it also indicates that we’re finally acknowledging that earth’s resources are limited, and the way we’re eating off its resources, we’ll desperately need energies from another heavenly body.
Check this out from NASA that demonstrates efforts and some progress in space mining:
Microbes to Demonstrate Biomining of Asteroid Material Aboard Space Station…As humanity moves closer to the possibility of living and working millions of miles from Earth on planets like Mars, scientists are looking beyond our planet at how to acquire the materials needed to establish a self-sustaining presence in space. (Johnson 2020)
While space mining might sound like a laidback sophistication on surface, it is too tough to chew when it comes to cost and technology. Lifting heavy-weight equipment to space is extremely difficult, leaving us with more creative options such as biomining. I also see this as inevitable, not necessarily in years, but decades. If you have any creative ideas to help enable this, you might be the first Astrominer. Or call yourself Minonaut? The choice is yours.
Future of Electricity
We discussed many industry trends in this chapter thus far from Society 1.0 to the modern day. Electricity never existed until the industrial revolution, making this industry one of the youngest. My father studied under a candlelight and streetlight in the 1950s and 1960s in the village of Kalingapatnam, in southern India. While this remote village was one of the last ones to get electricity at a large scale, the world, including developed nations like the United States, was in a similar situation a decade or so before that. Today, electricity has reached almost all remote parts of the world, although many parts of the world still experience power shortages.
From the “war of electricity” in the late 1800s between AC and DC types to the present-day tussle between fossil fuel and renewable energy, the way electricity is produced, transmitted, distributed, and retailed—we can say that a lot of changes were brought in a short time.
Electricity production techniques have evolved and diversified through sources such as hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, and fossil fuels. Pendulum-based manual meters evolved into electric meters with remote monitoring features, then to the present-day smart meters with net metering capabilities. Grids evolved from being isolated to being interconnected. Transmission equipment in general has become smarter and safer.
However, with the ever-growing technology use, energy needs are also growing tremendously. Electricity industry in general faces several key challenges. For example, regulations change frequently. Power generation has to meet the demand in real time to eliminate waste, because the energy storage cost continues to skyrocket. Despite that, storage (battery) technologies are emerging at a faster pace, driving the need for extensive research and development as well as quick partnerships to get an edge in this area. New moving-electricity consumers are emerging along with the demand of electric vehicles making electric retail even more challenging. Similarly, transmission and distribution technologies are updating frequently as well with innovation, posing challenges to keep the assets up to date for these asset-rich organizations. Wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural calamities as always pose risk to electricity distribution equipment, causing major disruptions. Power lines in many instances have caused wildfires. Cyber-attacks on the grid continues to be a looming threat to electric companies. Ransomware attack, one of the most feared, is another challenge that causes double devastation. Likewise, majority of electricity production today is fossil fuel based, a harbinger of energy crisis not very far. With several governments putting timelines to go net zero on carbon emissions, the need for moving to renewable electricity sources, nevertheless, is growing. Likewise, customers’ adoption of solar that can make them independent of the utility company (where it is legally allowed) is changing the utility companies from a utility selling company to utility servicing company, making the customers the new partners. This number is proliferating. Frequent market changes also pose significant challenges to an asset-rich electricity business. This list can go on but the key trends in electricity industry that will address these challenges can be attributed to the following.
Ten thousand times more energy than the total global use strikes earth continuously and most of it gets wasted. Solar power is expected to be a dominant source of electricity by 2030, especially in those countries that receive an abundant amount. Renewables, led by solar power, will become the major source of the world’s electricity by that time, according to an analysis by International Energy Agency, ewg.org. This explains the future of electricity. If your home is not solar-powered yet, you might be missing on all the free energy that’s been bestowed on the earth by the nearby star and which is guaranteed to continue at least for the next five billion or so years. You don’t need to pay the sun for its light nor would you have to risk its vanquishing by other technologies. Sunlight is plenty and it can be used to power almost every aspect of our life. Your investments will not only be paid back, but will help the earth recover from the perils of nonrenewable sources.
According to a report by U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewable energy sources accounted for about only 21.5 percent of the total U.S. electricity generation in 2021 (2022). These numbers are even worse around the globe. That means a majority of electricity is “unclean.” Our job is to replace nonrenewable sources with renewables, rapidly but systematically.
Microgrids
A microgrid simply is a grid at a very small scale that can run independently of the main grid. These grids generate enough power to cater to the needs of the population they serve. They can still be connected to the main grid when they need more power than they produce. These grids can power one small community, one business, or simply a single home. If we take your home as an example, imagine generating, distributing, and consuming your own electricity, essentially running your own “electricity company” that lets you disconnect from the utility company (the central grid.) That’s the concept of a microgrid.
Many mistake solar panels with a microgrid that can make you independent from the utility company. Solar panels in most circumstances are connected to the main grid run by the utility company and can act as extended power generators. However, through this concept of net metering, you use the power generated and the remaining goes back into the grid moving the electric meter backwards. When the main grid goes down, you would lose power in your house, too, because the utility company doesn’t want the power produced by your solar panels through the grid. Moreover, you need the central grid to power your home when you are not producing enough. You can convert your solar system into a microgrid though, thus gaining independence from the main grid. One way to do this is through home battery installation. The light charges the battery and the battery powers your house in the dark. It will also act as a wall between your home and the main grid, blocking power transfer to the grid when it’s down.
However, electricity grids are prone to failures due to natural calamities, human errors, or cyber-attacks. The Pacific Southwestern blackout of 2011 for almost 12 hours forced restaurants to throw away food worth $18 million, with a total of $118 million economic losses (Showley 2011). A powerful storm in 2012 caused blackout in 11 states with some places taking 7 to 10 days to restore power. Hurricane Sandy forced some people into blackout almost for two weeks. Post hurricane Maria power outages lasted almost 11 months in Puerto Rico. The solution to these problems is a microgrid, essentially making you independent from the central power production and distribution.
Smart AI Grid Managers
These microgrids must be smart enough to efficiently channel electricity to different grids. Let’s say the community you are living in runs on a microgrid. It should use its own power when the cost of electricity supplied by the utility company is high. When the rate goes down, it’s best for your grid to use the electricity from the main grid and store the power it generates in that battery pack so it can be used when the main grid’s rate goes up. Your grid should also read usage patterns and other planned events, forecast demand, and manage supply accordingly. For example, if the majority of homes in your community wash clothes between 9 and 11 a.m. for a few weeks, it’s likely that the same pattern will repeat, and a smart grid will be prepared by storing enough power in the battery ahead of time. Your home grid can gain access to your calendar and sell the power instead of storing if you’re away, maximizing the money you can make. Being back on track is not a problem; it will know when you will come back and resume usual operations because it has access to your itinerary. This won’t stop here. Your home grid will monitor the power usage patterns of your appliances and tell you how to optimize the use, saving you a lot. For example, it may be best if you use high-power consuming appliances when your panels are producing optimum energy or when the main grid’s power is inexpensive. Instead of taking an educated guess, your smart grid manager will give you all these insights.
Wireless Electricity
Nicola Tesla, who contributed heavily to the design of electricity supply system, originally envisioned electricity transmitted wirelessly. Electricity is transmitted through wires; we know the truth now and haven’t been able to march an inch forward from that fact, with the exception of some low-energy applications. Our homes still run these wires and none of our equipment work without plugging in.
The battery came in with a big promise to “cut the cord,” but still needs to be charged and most of all doesn’t run AC equipment without an inverter. The one ubiquitous wireless electricity transfer method that we have been able to master is wireless battery charging. We can already buy wireless phone chargers. In a few years’ time, gone will be the days when you need to sit next to a power outlet to charge your laptop or run a long extension cable to power that vacuum cleaner or install your TV next to a power outlet, although the biggest use case for wireless electricity is wireless electric vehicle charging. Charging roads through inductive charging can make that possible. It’s just a matter of time that this technology will come to our homes. While these advances fall in the end-user’s side of electricity, a startup called Emrod in collaboration with New Zealand government will be testing wireless power transmission over long distances through a partnership with the country’s second-largest power distributor Powerco (Delbert 2021). If successful, that will be a major breakthrough toward Tesla’s vision of powering cities wirelessly. Wireless transmission, because of the same reasons, looks like a long shot at the moment; however, a lot of progress is being made in smaller scales. Wireless electricity transfer is one of the most groundbreaking patents waiting to happen, and most importantly, to materialize.
Energy Storage
The biggest challenge with electricity is that the supply has to match the demand in real time, else the rest will go waste. That’s because storing electricity, especially in huge amounts, is still very expensive. This is an area rapidly improving, the growth accelerated through electric cars and other transportation options dependent on stored electricity. Being able to store the surplus kilowatts of energy for future usage also reduces our dependency on fossil fuels.
CNBC reported in an article titled “The Battery Decade: How Energy Storage Could Revolutionize Industries in the Next 10 Years” that Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) “estimates that over the next ten years[,] the energy storage market in the United States could grow to as much as $426 billion” (Stevens 2019). Statista estimates that the global demand for batteries is expected to increase from 185 gigawatt-hours in 2020 to over 2000, by 2030 (Placek 2021). Whether we bring that much-awaited leap in energy storage technology depends on how the research on solid-state and other battery technologies unfold in the years to come. Innovators, are you listening? The opportunities are endless.
Robotic Helpers
When I was driving one fine evening, I was stopped by traffic on the street leading up to our home. An extremely tall crane carried a gentleman to the top of the electrical grid line. He tied himself to a rope and dropped down to conduct some repair on it. It looked so scary and painful, I couldn’t imagine it was happening in the United States. When I reached home, I Googled the fact and was shocked to learn from U.S. Department of Energy’s website (osti.gov) that working in electricity and associated fields is dangerous with an estimated 81,258 fatalities between 1969 and 2000 in the energy sector alone (Burgherr and Hirschberg 2005).
But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. The good news is: there are robotic helpers that can either complement humans in executing such complex tasks or replace them. It’s the easiest method to bring that statistic down to zero.
Digital Twin and Predictive Analytics
Imagine a grid equipped with sensors: one sensor on every pole to detect the equipment and electricity statuses, a sensor each on transformers and other intermediator equipment, on meters to detect equipment fluctuation and failure, and along the way to detect weather conditions. The real-time sensor data along with data from smart meters are consolidated back by an AI to formulate a digital version of the grid, called a digital twin. If a sensor on a transformer detects excessive heat, the digital twin will know exactly where the problem is and most likely what it is. It will create an automatic work command, order the exact part required, and will summon the repair crew. This is how future utility companies will gain control on the grid, predict issues, and manage them proactively.
Solar Space Farm
The earth’s atmosphere and surface absorbs and reflects almost 70 percent and 30 percent of solar radiation, respectively (Rhodes 2010). The idea behind a solar space farm is to harvest solar power in the space instead of on land to avoid the loss of solar energy on entry. In addition to increased radiation energy, this tapping process also results in longer collection time due to throughout-the-year sun time. Giant arrays of solar panels can be launched into space, which will orbit the earth tapping tremendous amount of solar energy. With more advances in the space technology, the cost of sending these panels can easily plummet. The only problem is sending the power back to earth. Running long electric cables from ground up would be impractical, not to mention the logistical difficulty.
How about wireless transfer? The panels can wirelessly transfer concentrated beams of high-power microwaves to earth at a particular angle that will be caught on a receiving plant and converted to electricity. At a minimum, this electricity can be used to fuel all the flying objects such as future air buses, air taxis, drones, and probably space buses. One such technology already exists today. The headline of a CNN news report reads: “A solar panel in space is collecting energy that could one day be beamed to anywhere on Earth” (Walsh 2021). “The panel—known as a Photovoltaic Radiofrequency Antenna Module (PRAM)—was first launched in May 2020, attached to the Pentagon’s X-37B unmanned drone, to harness light from the sun to convert to electricity.” Revolving around the earth in every 90 minutes, the drone presents itself as a working model. This technology is in its infancy, but this space is definitely worth watching.
The continuous demand for electricity presents with tremendous opportunities in terms of entrepreneurship and employment. Battery technologies, wireless distribution, smarter and safer equipment, data analysis, and distribution and consumption to build smarter AI—these are just a few spaces for entrepreneurs and futurists to watch. It goes without saying that we must go green not because doing so will deem us woke, but because we have no other choice.
Future of Entertainment
Entertainment has become so essential an aspect of our lives that it wouldn’t be an overstatement to put it in the same category as food and shelter. We don’t realize the importance of it to say the least. The best way to understand the importance of anything is to imagine a world without it. Imagine yourself in a room without a TV, without anyone to talk to, no book to read, and no smartphone to connect to the outside world. On the first read, this may sound great. Many of us want to take a break from our day-to-day demanding lives and hide somewhere, disconnected from the rest of the world. In that context, yes, this might be a relief for a while. But what if you could never go back to where you are now? Or you never had these tools to take a break from. Life without any means of entertainment would mean work, work, and only work without any means to de-stress and relax. Breakdowns would be more common. And people would burn out, leading to severe health issues.
Social gatherings, storytelling, music, games–these are the fundamentals of entertainment. Social gatherings are meant to promote culture, contact, and communication. Storytelling comes in mainly verbal and visual forms. Music harmonizes the soul. Games played both indoor and outdoor, single- or multiplayer, violent or nonviolent, and outcomes driven by skills, strengths, or chance, act as drills for nurturing health, association, and intellect. These fundamentals of entertainment have been the same since our early ancestors and, to nobody’s wonder, might continue to be. They manifest their presence differently based on various factors such as culture, availability of resources, climate, politics, and technology.
For example, our hunter-gatherer ancestors got together, often near a fire, telling stories to each other and playing music with raw-from-nature musical instruments carved out of bird bones and ivories of large animals, such as elephants and mammoths. Games were probably athletic and striving to sharpen their survival skills and hunting confidence, such as running, striking, parrying, grappling, and/or throwing objects. Similar trends continued into the agricultural society without any significant changes, although details were driven by cultural and political influence. Gladiator games, for instance, were popular in Roman times, led by political and cultural influences. Social gatherings celebrated local cultures. Ancient Roman bath houses are an example, embellished eloquently in a unique setting, driven by Romans’ desire of relaxing and socializing. The point is that entertainment options revolved around similar fundamental principles of social gatherings—storytelling, music, and games—and were modified to fit the culture, politics, and resources.
The advent of industrial society registered some notable progress in the entertainment world. Traditional skits and music were industrialized with the growth in organized plays and music shows, accelerated by the invention of microphones, speakers, and other electronics. Thanks to the advances in construction, more theaters erupted where shows were organized. Advances in transport gave access to more entertainment options located far from home. Better entertainment options were made available at night other than those done using torches and campfire, thanks to electricity and light bulbs. The art revealed itself in a myriad of ways with sophisticated musical instruments and further development in electronics industry. Without a doubt, entertainment industry started witnessing a rapid change in the industrial society. Telephones allowed social connects from the comfort of our home. Radios allowed remote broadcast of social messages, music, and stories allowing people to access them from the comfort of their homes. And finally, when transistors made radios portable and gave access to this entertainment on the go, people could take entertainment wherever they went.
However, without a doubt, one of the greatest inventions of the industrial society was not audio or musical instruments; it was the picture, specifically the motion picture. Traditional and manual skits were initially supplemented and slowly replaced by this brand-new entertainment option—in the form of “movies” people went crazy about. Theatre-going at least once in their lifetime became common. Further advances in electronics technology brought along TVs, where folk could access real, visual entertainment from home. TVs became more attractive with more channels offering a variety of entertainment options right from people’s living rooms. These motion pictures eventually made their way into people’s homes through their television sets. The entertainment industry has changed humanity so much with its over-the-century transformation that an alien visiting the earth before and after would certainly mistake it for another planet.
As we entered the information society, the entertainment industry continued to transform at a faster pace. Internet allowed the growth of streaming services such as Netflix. When was the last time you rented a physical DVD or even older VHS tape (if the young generation even knows what I am talking about)? Simply broadcasting on a TV or radio is not sufficient anymore. Every media company must stream their content these days. Some movies are streamed online without even a day release in theaters. COVID-19 pandemic certainly has accelerated this process with people reluctant to go to theaters.
The gaming industry went digital as well. No, I am not referring to digitally streaming physical games. Well, that’s happening too. But the concept of “digital games” have picked up pace. People play with each other on the digital space now. In 2020 alone, digital gaming generated $159.3 billion of revenue and is increasing; an expected 9.3 percent annual growth will yield a revenue of more than $200 billion in 2023 (Field Level Media 2020). And these digital games have huge audience with well-off players. Online betting is on the rise where it’s allowed.
But when the game-changing invention in the information society, the social media, came about, lines were clearly drawn between entertainment and addictive industry. Big players such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok and other social media companies stole people’s attention and glued them to their devices. These social media platforms took the social gatherings, the core aspect of entertainment, and brought it to the digital world. You can not only talk to your friends from the comfort of your couch, but you can talk to them as if real and at any time. It’s amazing to feel the ability to connect to anyone in the world with a click. Talking to strangers has become easier, without the social anxiety kicking. Social media platforms are also powerful in that they give forums for everyone to share their stories, music, and videos with the rest of the world, democratizing the world of entertainment. That’s the biggest disruption social media brought to the world of entertainment. Again, this decentralization of entertainment industry has groomed millions of ordinary people and given them wealth, name, and fame, without having to go through the same struggle the earlier generations did.
Arguably the biggest advancement, however, was the invention of a smartphone, which enabled access to the media content on individuals’ hands. Roughly two generations back, during my grandfather’s time, radios were as big as today’s regular-size TVs and nonmobile; people gathered around this audio device. In my dad’s generation, radio could be carried in a pant pocket in the form of a transistor. TVs were massive boxes that families befriended to. Today, TVs can be carried in our pant pockets in the form of smartphones and are capable of online streaming, gaming, socializing, entertainment, and countless other acts. Radios became portable in the previous generation. TVs became portable in this generation. What is in the store for the next generation?
While that is tough to predict, here are some of the top trends in entertainment.
Parallel to the physical world resides the virtual world, complete in and on itself: called as metaverse or its ultimate superset, omniverse. These virtual worlds that either simulate the real world or new worlds on their own are already happening as of today.
Let’s say you are bored of the world around you. You put on your virtual reality headset, program an alternate universe, and live in that alternate world as long as you want, thanks to virtual reality. VR technology is here to stay and grow, hence this will only get better. This technology is so powerful that you won’t be able to tell the difference between a virtual and a real world, as long as you are in your VR headset (which may not be a head “set” any longer; it may be glasses or even lens). Switching between two completely different worlds will be as easy as wearing something on your head. But that’s the simplistic use case for this metaverse. Movies will use this technology to truly “immerse” you into an alternate world. Gaming will take you into the gaming universe. These will not be “video” games any longer. Call them “omni world” or “meta world” games. Your workplace meetings occur by a beautiful beach with tranquil waters and soothing sounds of ocean waves, all virtually created, bringing a great element of entertainment into the work place. Some of the school field trips happen in the classroom (or even at the comfort of home) through the creation of a virtual world. How interesting would it be to go on a field trip to Mars or even into other galaxies?
Augmented Role Play
All people want to be their favorite TV or virtual character. Playing a lead character in the next blockbuster movie, playing Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston, was a dream, until now.
Whoever your favorite character in a movie is, they will be replaced, not in the very far future. Who will replace them? You. Relax, you do not need to know any acting. You can act in movies as long as you know how to wear a VR headset.
How does this all work? Let me elaborate. When you are ready to watch your favorite movie, you will be given an option to pick the actors and actresses. You want to play the lead role? You simply make that choice. You will be able to pick other characters as well. The real characters in the movie will be replaced by the faces of your choice. If this sounds like a movie with faces replaced by some fake faces, think again. This experience is going to look so real that if you show this augmented role play to someone new, he would believe that you were the real actor or actress in that movie, including all the expressions. And did I mention that your voice will be used as well? Yes, the dialogue will be in your voice if you want. You may have to record your voice one time for a few seconds.
While it may not happen tomorrow, the day will come when you not only get immersed in the new virtual movie world, you can play one of the roles. I sure want to pick the role that doesn’t die at the end. What would be your choice?
The Media Is the Message
Recently, the democratization of the media industry through social media platforms has increasingly raised a big question—will the conventional, organized entertainment companies such as studios and channels disappear?
The answer is, again, no.
All big players must and will adopt to the new trends even if that means a complete U-turn to their business models. YouTube certainly has its own space but it is not going to replace traditional media and entertainment companies because these media are consumed for a different purpose. Their relationship will be complimentary rather than substitutive. One of the adoptions traditional media companies must make is to include digital media platforms as a part of their going-to-the-market strategy. Let’s take the example of the print media, which without a doubt got majorly impacted by the digital revolution. Did all newspapers disappear? No, they’re still here and around. They adopted newer means to reach their audience. And most importantly, social media will act as the breeding ground for talent that more traditional media companies can use. That way, social media gives equal opportunities to everyone regardless of position and place, but digital media in itself will not replace traditional media companies, at least not any time soon.
Online gaming will pick up more steam: gaming has always been a solid means of entertainment for ages and we already saw gaming move to the digital world through video games that eventually evolved into online and digital matches. The gap between playing games with virtual characters in a metaverse and with humans is getting slimmer day by day. But whoever the partner is, the medium has increasingly become online and digital. According to some estimates, there are currently one billion online gamers in the world and that number is expected to reach 1.3 billion in the next five years. In 2020, online gaming generated approximately U.S. $21 billion (Clement 2022). If we do a rough math to match the user projections, the revenue will pick up more steam with this industry expected to reach around U.S. $2.8 billion in the next five years. With very high level of confidence, I can tell you that this subsector within the entertainment industry will disrupt the forms of entertainment. You cannot go wrong in this: participating in this growth in whatever capacity you can, whether you want to work in this industry or invest, is a good bet.
Theatrical Sailors
It’s almost certain that “streaming only” platforms will never completely do away with theaters even though it might seem likely especially during difficult times like the COVID-19 pandemic. Although they started opening up, COVID has without a doubt caused a massive damage to theater business, movie theaters, amphitheaters, and auditoriums alike. Meanwhile, people got used to watching streamed content on their televisions and handheld devices. Many speculate that this may be the beginning of theaters journey toward extinction. The best way to answer this question is to look at past trends.
Although it’s not a direct comparison, let’s travel back to the days the motion picture began. There were fears that theatrical drama would go out of business. Did it? Now, if we compare watching a movie at home and watching it in a theater, the experience is entirely different. That’s a decision content producers will have to make and it depends on a lot of parameters. That said, theater business will be disrupted and theaters must become more creative. Perhaps theaters with newer concepts such as the ones that provide dining experiences. Theaters must become creative, turn into entertainment centers with more entertainment options than just a movie or a show besides expanding their footprint in people’s lives. Theatre Chain Company American Multi-Cinema (AMC) decided to sell their popcorn outside of their theaters, not just to generate new revenue streams, but also to live with their customers outside of the theater.
News Authenticity
We live in a world where we suffer from information overdose. Information keeps coming to us through numerous sources. Some of them are “authentic” sources, while most are shady, fake, and manipulated. Sometimes the facts are conflicting and the story is made up. Who to trust and what to believe aren’t taught in schools; this is not something that we’re trained in. Should we trust messages on the social media? Should we follow more traditional outlets? Introduction of technologies like Deep Fake makes it even more difficult to trust anything we see. Social media propagandas with malicious intent have been on the rise and unfortunately have succeeded to fool people. Deep fakes can be as malevolent as a weapon of mass destruction when the technology matures. Radical political groups have pushed their propaganda and conspiracy theories to a whole new level. For those who do not have enough time or skill to delve deeper, anything they hear from a group sounds like truth. Governments around the world are using more authoritarian approaches to control the media content, and in some instances acting as the aggressor themselves. That might seem to work for a while but is undemocratic. They tend to tip the media scales into their favor. However, I believe there is a major opportunity to solve this “media authenticity” challenge throughout the world though there’s not a one-shot kill cure.
There are multiple solution options here, and I think the ultimate solution, although partial, will be a combination. First, governments need to jump in and put in some controls in place. These controls will differ from country to country, but it’s time some action is taken, depending on what is allowed by law. For example, free speech can be protected, but at the same time people should be held accountable for knowingly perpetuating false information. Second, private and independent groups should take up this task to ensure authenticity of the content that gets circulated. It could be one organization or a platform where common people provide a certificate of authenticity. Think of the use of blockchain technology to help enable this “certification of authenticity” of digital content. And third, people in general should take the baton against this problem and lean toward authentic outlets to get their news. Unless we include systematic methods of fact-checking in the syllabuses of schools, learning this “trivial” task of information policing is going to be harder. Regardless of how it will be done, there will be enormous emphasis on “real news” in the years to come.
4D Technology
Have you ever watched a 4D movie (as they call) that adds a “fourth dimension” to movie scenes for instance by seat movements, water sprays, and other gimmicks? This is to create an immersive experience on top of the 3D experience. That is not an easy task as it is often created specific to a movie to match specific scenes. For example, when there is a tremor, your seats vibrate to mimic that experience. However, with AI, that experience can be modularized and applied to any movie that choses to incorporate that experience. Common standards must be developed to enable this experience so there’s a seamless and less cumbersome process going on in the postproduction. 4D movie-making process must embed protocols such as establishing communication between the movie and the physical infrastructure in theaters. For example, a certain command can be embedded when water is to be sprayed. The play back sends a signal to the spray system within the theaters when that command is to be executed. The same logic can apply to other scenes and situations, embedding their own unique commands. While this is complicated, this is a basic blueprint that could be developed further. I do see this as an opportunity for entrepreneurs in the media and entertainment space.
To summarize, watch out for metaverses, which are nothing but 3D extensions of the Internet on the rise. All the fundamental building blocks of entertainment, namely social interactions, gaming, and storytelling, will move to this metaverse with an emphasis on authentic content. However, traditional channels that provide real social interactions such as malls, theaters, and theme parks will, too, find their own audience. Thanks to the advances in immersive technologies, the physical world and the virtual world will beautifully work side by side to provide an ultimate entertainment depending on our interests and mood.
Future of Education
Let’s start this section by taking a small field trip. Imagine you and I are visiting a factory, witnessing the massive production line. Raw material is being fed into the machinery. A product is produced at the first line; more ingredients are added to it and sent into the second where a few more ingredients are added until the product reaches the final point in the assembly line. Quality controls are put in place at every step to ensure the end product is of the best quality. The products at each step are sent to the next if they pass the quality check; if not, they are either processed back again from the beginning of the previous step, sent as by-products to manufacture something else, or simply discarded. It is remarkable to watch raw materials develop into a product, isn’t it?
Now, let’s go visit this animal farm next door. We enter this large farm; there are cattle and pigs, horses and sheep, in their respective sheds. We get a private tour from the cattle farmer himself who explains how the production works. These cattle are produced in batches. The young cattle are carefully followed through their life; they are treated with certain things at certain times based on their age; and the end “products” are categorized into grades. The best-grade meat goes to grade-one stores and restaurants; next-grade meat goes to the next-level stores and restaurants and so forth.
I bet you are wondering where we’re getting to, when we were supposed to talk about education. Replace the factory with today’s school system, the big and beautiful machinery—the classroom and kids—with the products being produced. That’s today’s school system. In some ways, I find it unfortunate to compare the educational institutions with boring factories or the cruel process of animal production and many people might reject this analogy—which I respect—whether or not you agree with this.
These analogies have been drawn long ago and with magnificent clarity and this is not necessarily a wicked thing to do. Schools acted like production lines for a reason: to follow the principles of the industrial revolution and meet its demands.
Learning started as early as the evolution of life itself. Cells learned from their mistakes and perfected complex animals. Higher animals and birds learn to find prey, migrate, defend, and struggle for existence. This might sound strange because our mind has been trained to look at learning as something that requires sit-in in buildings and people vomiting knowledge onto the thirsty, the empty ones.
That’s because we use learning and education interchangeably, which is a very common mistake. Learning is simply the process of knowing something new, either through education or experience.
Education doesn’t have to be a formal process, either. It simply is a process where you are taught by a teacher, and a teacher can be anyone or anything. We get taught things from the day we are born, by our parents and others around us.
Our ultimate goal in life is to learn, because there are two things that never stop—learning and selling. Education is one means of learning and it is not the only means. And where does schooling fall into all this? It is but a means to dissipate education in a structured manner.
With this context setting behind us, let’s take a short trip through the history of education. As with other “industries,” let’s start with the hunting society. There was no formal education (schooling) in this society. People learnt their skill predominantly from their ancestors, but also others in the society. All forms of education were informal.
Similar trends continued into the first part of the agricultural society. Some forms of formal schools were started later on, especially with the proliferation of civilizations. These schools were either run by the king or the religious leadership for the most part and most of them were geared to teach patriotism or faith or both. The invention of the script accelerated this schooling process, but the system was not well organized as it is today. At some point, there was a single school system where there was one school for the entire town, usually located in the middle, so everyone could walk to it. And this one school was a one-size-fits-all school. Imagine a 5- and a 15-year-old going to the same school together and studying in the same classroom. There was no formal or standard curriculum and the school decided what was worthy of teaching and what was not. Also prominent in some parts of the world, commenced mainly in Southeast Asia, were residential schools known as the Gurukuls, where kids lived with the guru, the teacher, for extended periods of time and learned social behavior and life skills. These are similar to the modern-day boarding schools, but without a prescribed curriculum.
The beginning of the industrial society systematized schooling. Governments started running taxpayer-funded schools but neither was it nowhere at a scale accessible for everyone, nor was the system formalized like today. These were the enhanced versions of the schools run by kings in those times. For example, the first public school in the United States opened in the 17th century.
As the industrial revolution blew to full scale, it transformed the entire schooling system. Industries needed people with specific skills and there had to be someone to teach those skills. The development of science and technology added more things to be taught to the population. Access to information became widespread and people started to be educated about education, increasing the demand for a schooling system. This gave rise to the classroom schooling system we have even today.
Schools are no more limited to teach how to read and write, do some basic survival-level math, or instill faith or patriotism. Physics, chemistry, calculus, algebra, biology, medicine, art, science—the number of skills to be taught multiplied, all driven by the continued industrial revolution. There was no more one-size curriculum. But leaving this to local authorities didn’t turn out to be great. There was a need for the authority to step in and standardize the schooling system to teach the kids “the skills of the future.”
What did we do to transform the school system to meet the demands of the industrial revolution? We brought the principles from the industries and applied them to the educational system. We moved from a single-school system to a multischool system with various classrooms inside of separate schools. Students are classified into cohorts with tailored curricula meeting the set requirements for each level (or class). Instruction manuals have been developed to ensure quality standards (textbooks). Quality control mechanisms are put in place to make sure the products are maturing the way they are intended (exams). The best-grade products (students) are sent to first-grade consumers (companies) and the next-grade products are sent to the lower-grade consumers. This is the transformation industrial society, Society 3.0, brought along.
This system continued into Society 4.0 with some enhancements and is also the system we use today. However, the digital revolution Society 4.0 enabled easy access to information (knowledge) and catapulted learning into the cyberspace. This particularly proved to be fruitful when the COVID-19 pandemic hit as the classrooms and schools were closed but shifted to virtual spaces. Imagine the suffering all the kids in the world would have gone through if there was no access to online learning for all of them, as was probably the case back in 1918 to 1920 during the Spanish flu. This is the power information society brought along to the system of education.
We no longer need to sit in a classroom to learn. Internet can answer a question, tell us the world’s time, take us to the dream destination, entertain us, teach us complicated concepts, and let us do virtually anything. In fact, we don’t even have to visit the Internet. All you need to do is ask the virtual assistant on a laptop or a cellphone and she pretty much will come up with an answer, most of the times informative and sometimes funny. Ask Fire TV to show you a specific educational video and it will play it for you. In a nutshell, digital revolution transformed the learning process by improving access to knowledge significantly.
Wait a minute. Didn’t we say not too long ago that the schooling system hasn’t changed? Yes, that’s correct. Although the learning methods have improved significantly, the core values of formal education are at least over a century old, due for an overhaul. The question is, with the advent of Society 5.0, how should our education work and change? A complete overhaul over a night like stock prices is impossible to achieve especially with deeply entrenched values and habits of people associated. It involves every entity—from governments and schools to teachers, parents, and students. Hence, instead of predicting how educational system will be, I will focus on how it should be. If you are an entrepreneur, perhaps your next EdTech can spark that change.
How Should Education Behave in Future?
If there’s any question parents, schools, and curriculum experts alike have been asking, it’s what domain of study is good for children and what is not. In general, technology, math, chemistry, biology, physics, and medicine are some of the supposedly important departments that students are drawn to. Which subjects are “good” for today’s kids, which are bound to make our kids “successful,” and what our schools should teach—today’s stakeholders ask these questions more than ever. But with knowledge widespread on the Internet, the focus of formal schooling should be to help develop foundational skills that will help future diamonds to excel in any field. The focus shouldn’t be on what to teach students, but rather how to do it so as it becomes a lifelong lesson.
On that note, these well-known 4Cs, including six more to what I call the 10Cs of education, should define the future of education irrespective of the domain:
Communication
The world revolves around communication. All the great leaders ever lived and successful people in the world have one thing in common: they are good communicators. Teaching kids effective communication skills never goes off the syllabus. Remember, communication is not just about speaking, but also about listening. To communicate well, you need to learn to articulate your ideas as well as develop active listening skills.
Collaboration
Humans are social beings. They can’t work alone for long. Working together has been a human trait for thousands of years which in modern terms is called team work. Team work is a prerequisite to developing leadership skills. The schools of the 21st century should focus on teaching students to solve problems by both effective communication and collaboration.
Critical Thinking
A skill that comes handy in every walk of life, critical thinking is an essential backbone of problem solving. It’s all about analyzing the data, pondering the odds, and arriving at decisions. Critical thinking is indeed a skill one can learn. There are methods that help identify and use the right data to come up to a feasible solution to a problem. All of us are critical thinkers; it’s just that this skill requires more practice, and the brain gets wired to do this better over time.
Creativity
As a kid, I read a book by Shiv Khera that said “Winners don’t do different things. They do things differently.” Creativity could be the difference between winners and losers, which can also be developed through careful focus in schools. Art, writing, building, storytelling, and even gaming are a few examples of activities that help develop this important skill.
These 4Cs are the well-known foundational skills that apply to any field of study and specialization and are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and some other governments around the world. However, while they lay the strongest foundation to grow in any career students choose, they are far from complete when it comes to holistic education. There are few more Cs which when added will strengthen the 4Cs, if not complete them.
Confidence
The best gift we can give to any student is the gift of confidence. Our educational system must keep this at the center of the process. Regardless of what a student is interested in, help her do that confidently and without the fear of being judged. If there is one “right” skill to teach, I would argue it is to teach kids the fine line between arrogance and confidence.
Conventional education must give way to modern education facilitated by technology. Students must be given the chance to excel in what they are interested in, thus making the earlier question “what domain of study is good for children” irrelevant. Parents shouldn’t push kids to pursue anything in particular because a certain skill is in demand. Rather, they should let them pursue what makes their children happy. Anything that makes someone happy has a higher chance of succeeding at than something you dread doing throughout your lifetime, especially when the first 4Cs are mastered. This choice is important to build the previous “C”—confidence.
Control
Let the students control their career. Let’s not allow some system defined to fit everyone determine the future of our students. An extension to the previous “C” choice, control takes it one step further. It’s not just what students want to learn, but also when and how they want to learn it, at their own pace. For example, if a first-grade student wants to learn third-grade math, let him do so. However, control should not be confused with freedom.
Connectivity
In this connected world, students have access to a lot of information on the Internet and it’s essential to get them connected to this information. This connectivity will also allow them choose and control what they want to learn. Students do not have to learn in a classroom setting any longer. They can learn from wherever and whenever, as long as they have access to the Internet. However, it’s also essential to enable the right type of connectivity, only to the right type of content, away from the bad actors and the shady side of the Internet.
Coaching
Now, if I am asking students to learn off the Internet, what role will the teacher play? Here is how it might work. Students currently attend schools to listen to lectures and take some work home for practice, called homework, a word a lot of kids hate. Let’s flip that. With digital access to lectures, they can be followed any time from home, often from the best professor. And the “homework” can be done in school with the help of teachers. Or even better, coaches. However, most importantly, coaches should be working toward cultivating most of the Cs we talked about: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, confidence, and so on. All teachers should turn into coaches with the primary aim to discover the inherent talent in kids so they can cultivate their own talent rather than learning something that never interested them. Most importantly, coaches should help students navigate the complex society and ongoing information overload.
Classroom
Where will the earlier said “coaching” take place? In the classrooms. The last “C” in my list is the classroom, which will continue to have a very key role to play in the futuristic education. Future classrooms should be the breeding grounds for the various Cs we referred to earlier instead of “teaching machines,” guiding the 21st-century students toward a better and brighter future.
Besides, note that to facilitate a seamless learning environment, home, classroom, and the outside world must fuse with one another. This 360-degree learning is what I believe is the future of education.
If 10Cs are too many, let me try and further summarize the future of education in three alphabets: the 3Ws. That is, www. I’m not referring to the web here, although it is the key enabler to the next-generation learning. Instead, it refers to learn whatever, whenever, and wherever and with no people judging you in your performance. This is analogous to the future of work. Education and work after all go hand in hand.
While all this looks good in theory, it may come across as a radical change to some. The pragmatic part of implementation is like swallowing a dead dart frog. First, the change must be “gradual,” not an abrupt one. Second, not only do we need to change systems, we need to change ourselves, too, at least in the way we think. Of course, technology will enable this.