I've spent 25 years working in the mobile
computing industry.
That includes ten years creating software
for Psion organiser PDAs,
and ten years as a
cofounder and executive at Symbian,
the creators of the world's first successful
mobile smartphone operating system.
Nowadays I work as a consultant, a catalyst, and a writer.
I've been organizing public meetings in London since March 2008,
on futurist, transhumanist,
singularitarian, and technoprogressive topics.
My hope for 2025 is
that many of the present-day debates about
technological possibilities
will have been resolved decisively.
By that time it ought to be clear
to almost everybody that
technology does actually have the potential,
within the relatively near future,
say by the middle of this century,
to make some really important fundamental breakthroughs.
I'm thinking about breakthroughs such as
the following:
The ability to harvest solar power for all the energy needs of everybody on the planet;
the ability to use nanotechnology and synthetic biology
to give everybody ample food,
- indeed, material abundance;
the creation of artificial intelligence
that will be significantly smarter than humans;
the reversal of the aging process, allowing everybody
to live indefinitely long
in a state of really good health;
and last but not least,
the attainment of much higher levels
of consciousness and connectivity.
Ideally, by 2025, debates over the
possibilities
of these forthcoming technical solutions
will be a thing of the past.
Instead of lots of energy going into debates
about whether
these things are  going to be possible,
and whether they are in principle desirable, instead
people will be focused on the much more
practical steps
of figuring out how to make these
developments happen safely,
well, and equitably. In this positive vision of 2025, politicians and other global leaders
will be focusing on these momentous
forthcoming
technological transformations of the
human condition, rather than the
parochial, divisive, and short-term issues
that seem to preoccupy most of their attention at the present.
My fear for 2025
is that human society will have been
fractured in a horrible way
between then and now,
and that major divisions will have occured.
Instead of technology being used for the common good,
it will have been used
for the short term benefit
of a relatively small number of people,
companies, or governments. The resulting
inequalities and distress may well trigger
lots of backlashes and conflicts.
These conflicts could be triggered by
a terrible new crash
of the financial system,
or by, say, the realization that
extreme weather
is becoming much worse because of
global warming,
which is in turn due to our addiction to oil.
Or it might be triggered by terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction,
coupled with extreme reactions from
governments as a result.
Collectively, we're sitting on a powder keg.
To be clear, there are two kinds of bad outcomes to this fracturing,
conflict, and division of society.
The first bad outcome is it will take most of us backwards
compared to where we are today - potentially a lot backwards. So it will be bad for the
near-term future. But the second bad
consequence is that these
changes in society will destroy the very
basis for technological progress.
We won't have the positive virtuous circles
that make
technological progress possible. That's
the progress that's needed to achieve this
positive vision for the future that I
talked about earlier.
So this divisiveness in society would be
very bad
for the longer term future as well.
At Anticipating 2025, I'm going to be
talking about some historical examples
of technology having major impacts on
human experience.
Things often worked out in ways that few
people had predicted in advance.
Many predictions about technological impact
have turned out to be wrong, because they
fail to take into account
the full set of conditions
that govern the timing and the scale of
these impacts.
These conditions include things like
the political and legislative environment,
alliances of companies being
able to work together positively,
the solution of hard usability questions,
and changes in the expectation and thinking
- the philosophy, if you like - of ordinary people.
Technology marketers have a useful
phrase.
They talk about technology products
"crossing the chasm"
from early stage adoption to mainstream
adoption.
There's often a large chasm - a gaping void
- between these two types of market.
In my professional career,
I saw this chasm in the technology
sector I know best,
in the transition from ordinary phones,
to smartphones,
and then to superphones. In my talk at
Anticipating 2025,
I'll be applying the same principle to the
potential transition
from ordinary humans - humans 1.0,
so to speak - via smart humans or
trans humans,
towards superhumans or post humans,
that is humans 2.0.
