Vol. 2, No. 3 | January 13, 2016 | AAI Foresight
News for the Foresight Community
> Hot Topic: Predictionzzz
> Unnecessary Roughness: Luddite Shaming
> Publication: Technolife 2035
> Special Issue: Journal of Futures Studies and Science Fiction
> On the Move: Brian David Johnson
> Foresight Report: Digital Citizenship
> ICYMI: End of Year Report
> Feedback: On “How Technology Professionals Will Work”
Hot Topic: Predictionzzz
The beginning of a New Year was greeted with the usual popular media
attention to “the future,” which means collections of ongoing and imminent
trends disguised as click-attracting predictions. For futurists and other
foresight professionals, it is an opportunity to capture the imaginations of
those otherwise preoccupied by the present, even as we remind ourselves of our true
purpose.
The usual futuristic subjects—artificial intelligence, virtual reality,
and robotics—appeared in some lists, but a few twists on these topics caught
our eye: In Ireland, a Future of Law and Legal Tech Conference, warned that
lawyers could go extinct if they don’t reduce their fees and streamline their
practices. “Eight out of ten U.S. law firms believe that robots will take over
most low level and data- driven procedures within 10 years,” reports the Independent.
Writing on LinkedIn Pulse,
Singapore futurist Harish Shah had a
slightly different take on the annual predictions exercise: He offered a list
of technologies that will be obsolete by 2030, including physical monitors,
which will be replaced with holographic displays, and nearly all forms of
computer we now rely on—PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones—which will be
replaced by wearables.
Comment: I find the latter forecast a bit disconcerting, as I attempt to execute
this newsletter on a five-year-old (no longer manufacturer-supported) laptop
with a dead battery. Though I’ve achieved the paperless future, I’m not yet ready
for the holographic one. —CGW
References: “Lawyers Told to Cut Fees or Face Future Led by Robots” by Dearbhail McDonald, Independent (December 17, 2015).
“Obsolete By 2030: A List of Tech Items We
Cannot Imagine Life Without Today” by Harish Shah, LinkedIn
Pulse (January 6, 2016).
Unnecessary Roughness: Luddite Shaming
The Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation’s second annual Luddite of the Year Award is still
taking nominations. The “honor,” ITIF says, “recognizes the year’s most egregious
example of a government, organization, or individual stymieing the progress of
technological innovation.”
Topping the not-in-any-particular-order list of nominees for 2015 are the
duo “alarmists” Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, nominated for their
endorsement of last year’s open letter to their scientific peers warning of the
danger of creating an artificial intelligence. (See the story in the April 2015 Foresight
Signals.)
Comment: While we certainly admire ITIF’s work to encourage innovation, shaming
respected scientific leaders for encouraging others to consider the potential
negative consequences of their work strikes us as counter to the mission of
foresight generally and technology assessment specifically. The real Luddite
awards should be reserved for those who attempt to ban the research they fear,*
which Musk and Hawking did not do; they asked for broader research, not no research. —CGW
*For example, see the North Carolina legislature’s 2012 ban of
research on climate change.
Source: ITIF Announces 2015 Luddite Award
Nominees (press release).
Signals: artificial intelligence, innovation,
Luddites, technology
Publication: Technolife 2035
The English-language version of Elina
and Kari Hiltunen’s Technolife 2035: How Will Technology Change Our
Future? has now been published by Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of technology
forecasting methodologies, the authors offer an insightful vision of where
technologies may lead us into the future. The text concludes with three
extended scenarios based on a reimagining of the Romeo and Juliet story, first
presented in The Futurist magazine
(July-August 2014).
In their preface, the authors invite readers to put the book away and
leave it in a drawer for another 20 years, the open it again for a “burst of
laughter” at how “silly were they back then.” For we no doubt will all predict
a few silly things and miss quite obvious ones, the authors admit. But
prediction, they point out, is not the point, but rather raising “discussion
about what technology can bring with it—both the good and bad.”
Source: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Signals: foresight, scenarios, society, technology
Special Issue: Journal of Futures Studies and Science Fiction
The December 2015 issue of the Journal of Futures Studies, co-edited
by Thomas Lombardo and Jose Ramos, focused on the relationship
between science fiction and foresight. In the lead article “Science Fiction:
The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future,” Lombardo writes that those science fiction works that deal
with the future may be viewed as narratives of tomorrow's possibilities.
“A good story about a possible future, with its drama,
action, and sensory detail, is psychologically more compelling and realistic
than an abstract theory, static image, depersonalized futurist scenario, or
statistical prediction,” Lombardo writes. “Science fiction personally draws us
into a rich vicarious experience of the future through its vivid and memorable
characters. We live the story through the characters. All told, through science
fiction narrative, we live and feel the future at a deep and intimate
level.”
Reference: “Science Fiction: The Evolutionary
Mythology of the Future” (PDF) by Tom
Lombardo, Journal of Futures Studies (December
2015).
Signals: futurism, science fiction
On the Move: Brian David Johnson
Longtime Intel futurist Brian David Johnson has joined the faculty
of Arizona State University as a “professor of
practice” in the School for the Future of Innovation
in Society and futurist in residence for the spring 2016
term. At ASU Johnson will lead two major projects: The Future of the American Dream
and the 21st Century Robot.
“I’m so excited about the future and what
we’ll be able to accomplish,” Johnson said. “ASU is one of the world’s most
innovative and forward-looking institutions. It’s the perfect place to
collaborate with a broad, diverse set of people and to explore the future in
exciting, intellectually rigorous and surprising ways.”
Source: Arizona State University.
Signals: education, futurists, robotics
Foresight Report: Digital Citizenship
In AAI Foresight's latest Foresight Report, “Digital Citizenship,” futurist consultant Karl
Albrecht describes many advantages of a national digital ID system,
including what might be the “killer app”——immigration reform. The digital
citizenship program he describes would tackle at least one fundamental issue:
determining who is a citizen and who is a “guest.” What to do with guests
determined to be where they shouldn't be has yet to be resolved.
Albrecht observes that the technical obstacles to creating a connected
but secure and anonymous database system to establish national identity are not
as daunting as are the political and social obstacles. Fears of government
overreach match fears of hacking and terrorism, and as long as the supporters
match the opponents of a national ID system, a satisfactory system is unlikely
to come about soon.
Reference: “Digital Citizenship: The Case for a National ID Card” by Karl Albrecht (Foresight Report, Winter 2016).
Contact Albrecht at www.karlalbrecht.com. “Digital
Citizens” is AAI Foresight’s sixth Foresight Report and is available as a free PDF
download. Access the series at www.aaiforesight.com/foresight-reports.
Signals: citizenship, digital society, information technology,
privacy, security
ICYMI: Mack Report
In case you missed it: In his end-of-year report, Tim Mack reviews
the activities and accomplishments of the first full year of operations for AAI
Foresight Inc. In addition to a number of internal and external publishing
projects, Mack participated in a new science-focused series, SciTech Voyager TV
series for Turkish Radio Television. See AAI Foresight Year-End Report, Foresight Signals (December 2015).
Feedback: Technology Work and Technological Displacement
In response to Timothy Mack’s Foresight Report “How Technology
Professionals Will Work” (Foresight Report, Fall 2015), Dennis Bushnell, chief
scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, writes:
What is new this time with machines replacing humans is
that … we are now producing a second intelligent species. The unanticipated
huge and evolving success of the combination of deep learning, big data, and
fast machines is producing greatly improved machine intelligence via soft
computing long before brain emulation is slated to do so. Therefore, the
machines taking the jobs, including the creative jobs, is now being
accelerated.
Much of [Mack’s] piece is nearer term, as humans try to
fight desperately to hang onto traditional thinking and functions. It is all
going to have to be wholly reinvented, [as I discussed in] “Creating Problems and Enabling
Solutions”
(Foresight Report, Summer 2015). “We
reinvented humans … twice before: the agricultural age and the industrial age.
In each there was a major change in what humans did and [in] their social
fabric. This new “Machine Revolution” [will] have essentially all of the human
capabilities for economic activities, including creativity, only far greater
and far more than humans. If anything this is even more of a sea change to the
human existence theorem than the Agricultural and Industrial [revolutions].
Humans have simply been too successful and have invented
themselves out of their jobs. Humans 3.0 is now “our” horizon. Much of what you
cover in this present piece is rapidly being transcended.
Contact: Dennis
M. Bushnell, dennis.m.bushnell@nasa.gov.
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Send us your signals! News about your work and other
tips are welcome, as is feedback on Foresight Signals. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting editor. mailto:CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com
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__________
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