FUTURE SPECIAL TWENTY
PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS
FAST
COMPANY EDITOR
ROBERT SAFIAN CELEBRATES THE MAGAZINE'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY BY LOOKING FORWARD.
Fast
Company turns
20 this month too, and the world has changed dramatically since the cover
of issue No. 1 declared "Work Is Personal. Computing
Is Social. Knowledge Is Power. Break the Rules." Yet that manifesto is
more relevant than ever. How we interpret those words has evolved—we did not
predict an App Store or an Oculus Rift—but their spirit has become central to
our culture
I
talked recently about this with CEO Hans Vestberg of the Swedish communications
company Ericsson. Because Ericsson builds products for the major telecom
providers and cell-phone makers, as well as hundreds of governments around the
globe, Vestberg has inside knowledge of everybody’s plans—information he cannot
specifically reveal but that informs his thinking about where our world is
trending.
"Today,
there are 7.2 billion mobile subscriptions," he says, "and only 2.9
billion people have broadband," by which he means high-speed Internet
access. "But as technology advances, prices will fall. By 2020, 90% of the
world’s population will be covered by mobile broadband networks. Another five
to 10 years further, broadband will have universal reach."
This,
Vestberg argues, will have a transformative impact. He points to a historical
precedent that is now hundreds of years old: the steam engine. When first
invented, its function was to remove water from mines. Only later was the
technology applied to other arenas, spawning steamships and railroads and
turbocharging industry. The advent of connected mobile technology is just as
powerful and equally underestimated, Vestberg says. We are still in the early
stages, with implications for health care, education, banking, energy,
manu-facturing, and more. "Our imagination is our limitation," he
says.
Vestberg’s
predictions of transformation are echoed by those on the frontier in other
disciplines: genetics, alternative energy, artificial intelligence, and so on.
If you travel down the likeliest development paths in each of these areas and
then wrap all the advances into one future, you see that we are at a dramatic
inflection point.
I
have used the phrase Generation Flux to describe this era of transition.
Because the changes are coming so fast, there is a rising premium on our
ability to adjust, to be adaptable in new ways. This can be scary for some, but
it is also undeniably exciting, and for those prepared to embrace this emerging
reality, the possibilities are tantalizing.
What
follows are 20 observations that we believe will hold fast in the years ahead.
They are predictions and, as such, are fraught with limitation and supposition.
None of them, on their own, is shocking. That is by design. In combination,
though, they outline a world of tomorrow where work is still personal,
computing is still social, and knowledge is still power. And where the rules
for success will be ever-changing.
The
best soccer teams in the world emphasize pace of play over perfection. They
recognize that keeping the ball moving quickly is better than waiting and
trying to make the ideal pass. As deputy editor David Lidsky explains in the
first of our "Moments
That Matter," speed
emerged as a business imperative in 1995 with the meteoric rise of Netscape,
and it has become even more central in the years since. Constant iteration and
redefinition are central features at businesses from Amazon to Google to
Netflix, and every industry is now required to embrace that pace. (The
unanswered question: Which governments will learn to operate with this speed
imperative?) Facebook may be the ultimate expression of iterative change,
expecting new initiatives to be imperfect—and relentlessly improving them over
time.
When
we called Zuckerberg "The Kid Who Turned Down $1 Billion" on the
cover of our May 2007 issue, he was a baby-faced 22-year-old with just 19
million users. Today he’s still got that baby face, but as technology editor
Harry McCracken reports in " ‘These
Things Can’t Fail’ ", he has grown into an unparalleled leader. Now 31 years
old, with nearly 1.5 billion customers across the globe, Zuckerberg is wildly
successful yet still underestimated. He has relentlessly improved himself as a
businessperson and continues to be focused on learning. This psychological
feature, along with the fact that he has a net worth north of $30 billion and a
controlling stake in a world-spanning enterprise, virtually guarantees that he
will be a bedrock figure in our economic and cultural evolution for decades to
come.
After
you’ve won a Nobel Peace Prize as a teenager, what’s next? Malala Yousafzai is
answering that question by leveraging her global public image not simply to
raise awareness of the educational needs of girls in the developing world, but
also to orchestrate on-the-ground programs that will have tangible impact. What
her nascent Malala Fund represents, she explains to contributing writer Karen
Valby in" ‘It’s No Longer Just My Voice. It’s the Voice of the
People’ ",
is an ongoing effort to change societal expectations. Malala herself represents
the leading edge of a cohort that is only just being unleashed: young talent
growing up in obscure corners of the globe. This generation will increasingly
have the tools and opportunity to redefine our world. Malala is just the
beginning.
Whether
Musk is the real-life incarnation of Tony Stark is not the point. Nor is the
ultimate success of his enterprises: Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity (though we
wouldn’t advise betting against them). What matters is that Musk’s ideas, and
his example, are a catalyzing force for progress on one of the most devilishly
complicated issues of our time: climate change. As the world’s population grows
and the standard of living improves, we will produce more greenhouse gases,
more pollution. Concerted, high-impact government action will not materialize
unless there is a crisis. What remains, then, is a market-based solution, which
is precisely what Musk is dedicated to instigating. In outlining his most
audacious plans yet, Musk tells contributing writer Max Chafkin, " ‘The Issue With Existing Batteries Is That They
Suck’ ".
By exploiting that seemingly modest deficiency, Musk not only wants to build a
bigger business, but also inspire us to address our biggest challenges.
Science
fiction often depicts a dystopian tomorrow. But if you consider the long lens
of history, technological advances have consistently improved people’s lives.
We cannot forget the often cruel and rapacious things that have been
perpetrated in the name of progress. Nor do we expect an end to the tragedies
of natural disaster or disease outbreak, of war or terrorism. Whether by
accident or overt design, nuclear, chemical, and biological threats remain
constant. But it is also worthwhile to remind ourselves that fears of tomorrow
have often been overblown. Perhaps the most telling statistic: Global life
expectancy has climbed consistently over the centuries and in the past decade
has improved for all regions of the world. That advance will continue unabated.
Inequality
remains rampant across the United States and around the world. The digital
divide has often served to heighten the gap between the haves and have-nots.
But rising mobile penetration offers the potential to shift that dynamic. When
broadband smartphones achieve global ubiquity (as Ericsson’s Vestberg
predicts), digital learning tools offered by Khan Academy, Duolingo, and
others will transform opportunity in the developing world. The teachers and
students of tomorrow will not be confined to classrooms, nor to the countries
and cities that can afford them.
Naysayers
have given many explanations for why voting in the United States does not take
place via the Internet: identity authentication, security, reliability. These
concerns have all been overcome by businesses such as banks and retailers, and
before long government will solve them as well. As a new generation of voters
comes to the polls—a group raised on one-click purchases and instant access via
apps—the traditional voting process will become untenable. New candidates will
establish their credibility by extolling their technological sophistication,and
e-voting will be everywhere.
Those
controlling the halls of power in business and government in the United States
remain predominantly male and white. This will not persist as our population
becomes more heterogeneous. An increasingly diverse leadership will be more
successful too: As the pace of change accelerates, we will face knottily complex
problems, and the greater the variety of approaches and experiences available
to tackle them, the better the likelihood of success.
Economists
have long stressed the power of financial incentives. What’s measured is what
matters; competition breeds excellence; you get what you pay for. It is all
logical, yet in many circumstances it is coming up short. Recent real-world
studies have shown that having a purpose associated with work produces better
performance than pure financial reward. The next generation of workers will
expect to be engaged in their jobs through more than just financial means.
The
decoding of the human genome has launched a wave of new treatments and
approaches, as highlighted in "Our Body of Knowledge Expands". Inspiring as these
examples are, though, the impact of genetic data is in its infancy.
Modern
doctoring begins with a boot-camp experience: endless days of unending shifts,
as young interns are forced to ingest—and deliver—diagnoses with reflexlike
expertise. As our library of medical knowledge expands beyond any doctor’s
ability to retain all that information, the doctors of the future will have to
become data interpreters, tapping into Watson-like technical tools to both
diagnose conditions and optimize treatments. This transition promises to make
health care more effective and, ideally, will allow doctors to focus even more
on the important task of patient service.
It’s
not just doctors who can improve their bedside manner. We can all stand to
listen and respond with more sensitivity. In fact, as machine learning and
artificial intelligence insinuate themselves more deeply into manufacturing and
the workplace, the one arena that will never be usurped by technology is
human-to-human communication.
The
ubiquity of ABC’s Shark Tank underscores just how appealing
the entrepreneur has become in global culture. Everyone wants to start their
own business, to launch their own Zuckerbergian success. Government leaders
extol the virtue of the startup world, and more and more young people hope for
a future where they can be their own bosses. There’s only one problem:
Entrepreneurship is hard work that requires both high-intensity risk taking and
a steel-stomach capacity for absorbing disappointment. Some people are psychologically
suited for this roller coaster; many of us are not.
Is
there a tech bubble? Can all those billion-dollar "unicorn" startups
really be worth so much? Will investors who believe the hype ultimately end up
getting burned? The answer to all three of those questions is "yes."
Yes, there is a tech bubble in some places. Truth is, there is
always a bubble somewhere. Some of those unicorns are really worth billions—and
some are not. Some investors will get burned; others will get rich. Which is
which? We’ll know once it happens. Talk of bubble versus no bubble is a
distraction for most of us, a parlor game. When major bubbles burst, almost
everyone is taken by surprise and even those who aren’t are generally upended
nearly as much as the rest of us. What’s most important, once again, is
remaining adaptable: If the arena you’re involved in turns out to be a bubble,
it will be time to change arenas.
New
technologies often rise on the promise of making everything simpler, better,
and cheaper. Over time, we learn that they often do make things better—and even
cheaper—but rarely do things remain simple for long. Consider the advertising
marketplace, which once seemed pretty straightforward (network TV ads for
all!), but marketers had limited knowledge of who saw their ads and how those
prospects responded. Marketers can now target specific pools of customers and
track their activity. Yet nothing about the modern ad world is simple: There
are more avenues for reaching customers than ever, and managing a variety of
social, web, and mobile programs makes the old days of TV’s hegemony seem
quaintly appealing. Companies like Google contend that things will get easier,
thanks to new analytics and programmatic marketplaces. More likely: The
industry will become more effective at targeting the right message to the right
person in the right way, but it will also be more complex.
Every
company is a "tech company" today because we all use technology to
operate (in the same way that we are all "electric" companies because
we tap into that grid). The necessary corollary to this fact: We are all
vulnerable to cyberdisruption, whether from hackers or our own or others’
incompetence. That doesn’t mean we will all be disrupted, but it does mean that
every enterprise will need cyberprotection in ways that haven’t historically
been budgeted for. Costs will rise. Count on it.
Pundits
have long predicted that the "sleeping giants" China and India would
awake to challenge U.S. and European economic dominance. In the past 20 years,
the progression down this path has not been a straight line—but it has been undeniable.
The manifestations have been counterintuitive too: Apple is effectively a
China-centered manufacturing giant with an American design and marketing arm;
its Chinese rival, Xiaomi, is expanding into India following an analogous
strategy. The impact of these rising economies will continue to deepen.
No
high-fructose corn syrup. No trans fats. Less salt, sugar, and fat. The
supermarket aisles burst with assertions of healthier foods, and it is
undoubtedly true that we are more aware of what we are putting into our bodies
than ever. Chipotle’s and Whole Foods’ success illustrate that consumers are
willing to pay for higher-quality products and, even more, to demand them. What
once was luxury will, over time, become table stakes.
Carrying
a little emergency money around with you has always made sense, even if you
ended up tapping that resource for something less than essential. But that need
is rapidly dissipating. First there were ATMs (why carry cash around when you
can grab it when you need it?), but electronic payments via phones and chips
are the wave that will wash away the need for cash entirely. Penny for your
thoughts? What’s a penny?
Phones,
planes, and televisions have all served to make the world smaller, and the
ongoing wave of technological change will only draw us into closer proximity.
We will have less license to ignore the troubles (and challenges) in other
parts of the globe, and we’ll have a vested interest in maintaining familial
peace. Nobody knows how to criticize you quite like your kin—they know your
vulnerabilities well—but no one is better at coming to your aid, either. Of
these 20 items, this is the one with the largest measure of hope: that our
increasing knowledge of and intimacy with one another leads to greater
understanding and opportunity for all.
BY ROBERT SAFIAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3052872/twenty-predictions-for-the-next-20-years?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=1&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=11232015
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