Category: Predictions

In five years time we (individuals and citizens) will be ‘paid’ for the data that we contribute into the digital economy via the devices and sensors we carry and interact with as we go about our daily business. Data about our location, our content consumption, our transactions, our preferences, our interactions, our health. As producers of this new economic asset we will start to get remunerated.

This is starting to happen already, with insurance pricing adjusted in real time to match our actual driving behaviour and telcos offering us discounts if we let them access more of our valuable personal data.

Today we get ‘free’ services from internet companies who make money by selling on our data to advertisers. In the future, we are more in control, the system is more transparent and we benefit from a greater and fairer value exchange. We will get paid not only with discounts and credits but also with hard cash. Even the government offers to reduce our taxes if we contribute more of our personal data into the smart digital systems that increasingly run our cities, our health and our lives.

If a single Facebook like is worth up to $1.86 today in some markets, what is the value of real-time personal data in reducing healthcare costs, anticipating security threats, helping traffic flow freely, synchronising supply chains, or curtailing the spread of epidemics?

Simon Torrance, CEO, Metaflight; Member, Data For Development programme, World Economic Forum

By 2020 there will be over 40 billion connected devices in the world and 77% of the value they generate will be VAS rather than in connectivity and hardware.

by Stuart Carlaw

Predictions ?

As the great physicist and Nobel Prize Niels Bohr once said: “It’s hard to predict – especially the future”. Predictions are mostly incorrect, and more importantly they do not anticipate the significant developments properly. George Orwell? Well, what we have today, is far beyond what he could have possibily imagined. So, it is a true challenge to come up with predictions.

Having said that, current developments suggest, that in the future, we will engage in symbiotic relationships with robots, relations that will be characterized by intense emotions, bonding, and high interdependency. The fact that people bond with technology is in itself nothing new: we strongly bond with our mobile phones, pads and laptop computers. Now, one of the fundamental differences between these current technologies and robots is that the latter are physical entities moving autonomously in the real world, which gives them an entirely novel quality and will lead to unprecedented experiences as we interact with them – this is much more about emotions than it is about technology.

Pulling the plug ?

A frequently asked question is whether we could still “pull the plug” on the robots (or the computers) if we don’t like the way it’s going. There is already a fundamental flaw in the question: It’s not “pulling the plug”, but it would be “pulling billions of plugs”. Even if we wanted to, this is no longer possible. The stock exchange, the entire economic system, all the supply chains, the complete logistics and traffic, would completely break down and there would be global famine – a true doomsday vision. We must keep the computers and the robots going. In this sense, we are already the slaves of the machines that we created – they use us, the humans, to keep themselves going – no need to wait for “Terminator”. It is the computers and robots that force us to maintain and to continuously upgrade them. Whether we want to attribute evil intentions to them is a purely philosophical question, not a scientific one.

Self-reproducing machines ?

And they reproduce: This is another horror-scenario – self-reproducing super-intelligent, mean robots. Again, we do not have to wait for “Terminator”-style robots. Today’s robots and computers (and other machines) reproduce, it’s just that the reproductive mechanisms are different from those of biological systems: they exploit humans to do the job, they force us to build factories for them so they can reproduce quickly; and the good ones proliferate whereas the ones that don’t make it in the market will become extinct. This is the Darwinian nature of our economic system.

The ROBOLOUNGE

Now are we just the victims of these developments? Will they just happen? Or can we do something to shape the future, to guide it into a desirable direction?

One of the big questions will be whether people will want these robots and will accept them and welcome them into their lives. What will the implications be? How will they impact our personal and professional lives? 50 years ago, nobody had even a clue of how mobile technology and the internet would fundamentally change virtually every aspect of our society – we were pretty much overrun by the technology and had no time to familiarize ourselves with it before it was already present. The whole transition might have been much smoother, had we had the opportunity to experiment with the technologies beforehand. And this is precisely where the Robolounge projects come in:

Providing first-hand experience with the future technology of highly interactive robots – rather than only making predictions, talking about it, writing articles, showing movies, and videos – is the goal of the Robolounge project.

So, one of the predictions is that in the future we will have a symbiotic relationship with robots, and interactive machines in general, as illustrated by the Robolounge, a development that has started quite some time ago. But the Robolounge is more than a prediction. It is a venue, a hub, of where people will be able to actually experience the future in a real-life environment, a lounge with drinks and food. Rather than simply reading about the future, with this lounge platform, people can get a feel of what it will be like when we closely live with interactive robots (and other machines). One of the topics of this ITU summit is that we want to create the future, not just passively drift into it. This is another goal of the Robolounge: people are encouraged to actively participate in shaping the future of technology by engaging in various types of events and forums.

The Robolounge should be operational some time in 2016.

Please click here to see the Robolounge flyer.

Osaka, Japan, 23 November 2014, Rolf Pfeifer

Sitting on the couch, holding my 8 day old granddaughter, my first, found me musing about the future. She had just started to use her eyes for the first time, taking in her surroundings. Our average life expectancy has increased, due to many technological advances, by around 10 years over the last 50 years. It is quite likely she will see the 22^nd century and live well into her 2^nd century. But with an ageing population, technological and medical advances need to cost-effectively tackle the problems of dementia and the provision of health care to all, independent of location and status.

Wearable devices and human-implanted microchips for monitoring our bodily functions and providing advice from medical applications or from remote medical clinicians are starting to tackle the health challenge. Medical research is finding new ways to assist our bodies to heal and slow down the ageing process.

Advances in technology and techniques have generally come about through specialists working tirelessly to overcome challenges, pooling their knowledge and working in multi-disciplined teams. Humans best communicate and work together when they can see, touch and smell each other. Humans best learn from first-hand experience. Humans best perform when they have tools to enhance their mental and physical faculties.

The superfast optical fibre highways and radio technologies are connecting humans to a point of presence ever closer to each one of us and our superfast processing computers and smart devices. Increasingly ubiquitous networks connect everyone to the Internet, intelligent applications, data bases, libraries of information and the cloud. These technologies have increased the efficiency of connecting humans to humans (H2H) and human to intelligent devices and information (H2I). They have increased our ability to share knowledge and work in international teams at the blink of an eye, independent of distance and location. Creative technologies and software have further enabled scientists and engineers to test theories and structures through modelling and use of virtual reality. Such tools have accelerated the pace of new developments. People the world over are better informed about what is happening to others through drawing on diverse, independent multimedia news sources and information databases.

The widespread availability of communication technologies and services has been facilitated by international standards and by governments opening up markets to competition – driving innovation in practices and technologies. We now have a greater freedom of choice, across a multitude of services, in commercially competitive global markets.

With the widespread availability of superfast, broadband communications has come convergence of services and applications. Convergence of media services and convergence of various scientific fields, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology and robotics.

Convergence of scientific fields and communications coupled with a growth in human-implanted devices will assist in our communication and wellbeing and tackle the growing cost of health care. In future connecting human-implanted microchips will provide people with opportunities for new business and social interactions. They will also introduce challenging legal, security, medical, ethical, and religious questions.

In my musings, I imagine that my granddaughter will be given a choice of having a human intelligent communicator, a “Humicator[i]”, implanted in her body. Our humicator, wirelessly connected to the nearest point of presence of the superhighway, will enable us to communicate with others with the quality of face to face, or access and store information at the blink of an eye, or access images as if we are looking at them physically in front of us. We will have the option to monitor our bodily functions, controlled by thought or physical stimulus – providing information to our retina and sound to our ears – and simply be better informed.

If people are informed and educated, then they are more likely to change behaviour. Government can provide advice, guidelines and an environment in which to learn from others, enabling doctors to support patients anywhere in the world without recrimination.

We require payment platforms and complaint processes to enable service providers to be fairly assessed and rated by their customers. We need to only receive information about a service or product when seeking such information. Controls must be in place to ensure all personal data is in the control of the individual, shared with others and used in a transparent manner on the terms of that individual.

The super-fast networks will be funded by the consumer, based upon the services used. However, in so called uneconomic communities, seed funding will still be required to assist in providing connection points, ITC education and humication devices. The resulting growth in economic prosperity will result in people progressively paying for services. Joined-up government, devolution of authority and more power back in the hands of the people will reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of government.

I had the great privilege to provide internet connectivity to a remote community in a distant island in the South Pacific. We worked with the community chiefs, the school and health workers. The teachers and children, who statistically have the same brain power as any other person or children in the world, experienced an information explosion. Within one year, they went from having virtually no books to becoming runners-up in a South Pacific-wide competition on the environment. On leaving, I was presented with a painting a part of which showed the exploding brain connected to the internet (see picture). This I see as an insightful look at the future.

I see in the future my new granddaughter, and every other human, no matter how remote, will have the choice to be connected to the internet, but be connected using a humication device, and connected to and from other intelligent devices, information libraries and open data sources. People will continuously use humication in education, work and play. They will be given medical advice when it is needed through remote applications or, when required, a doctor will automatically connect to them. When my granddaughter is into her second century, I expect she will be able to extend her independence through being consciously informed with the name of the person she is talking to via facial recognition, and be guided home when lost.

My granddaughter will live in a world of more independent, but connected people, able to draw on the power of working as a team in the time it takes her to open her eyes. Multi-disciplined teams, of likeminded people, drawing upon information libraries and furthering science, overcoming disabilities, connecting those in need with those who care[ii] and lowering the levels of vulnerability – simply, efficiently and intelligently connected.

Alan Horne, CEO of Broadband Pioneer and special advisor on Telecoms to the Global eHealth Foundation

[i] Humication – a newly coined word by the author meaning humans being connected through implanted intelligent devices to other humans, other intelligent devices and information libraries.

[ii] Slogan of the Global eHealth Foundation www.gehf.org

In the End, Open Internet Wins

It was 50 years ago this week that Net Neutrality was finally adopted as a irrefutable policy in the United States. This was after several court battles and great concern by the telcos who had to live within the new framework. Many predicted stagnation of innovation and the economy. But it didn’t turn out that way.

Regulation of ISPs Led to Breakthrough Research and Invigorated Company Stocks

Deregulation of telecommunications in the last century had many positive outcomes, however, by the 2010’s telcos struggled to compete on equal footing with high flying Internet companies. Cost cutting was the preferred method to keep profits high. After the net neutrality rulings, the resulting massive consolidation in the industry was painful and disruptive. Once the dust settled, the telcos’ steady financial performance and high dividends worked to their benefit. With what became a new flavor of “cost plus” regulation, their ability to fund R&D without impacting profit margins led to breakthroughs in compact fusion and batteries that rivaled the earlier Bell Lab.

Global Accord Reached by 2025 Benefited Developing Countries

Widespread adoption of Net Neutrality effectively barred telcos in developing countries from charging a fee for traffic entering their borders. Barack Obama, the American President who led the fight for Net Neutrality, knew that developing countries had to have alternative ways to fund communications infrastructure. Upon leaving office in 2016, he worked tirelessly to bring together global tech companies, governments and telcos to address this issue. He is widely credited with the Naypyidaw Accords that were adopted by most countries by 2025. The accords funded telecommunications infrastructure with a global micro tax on each share of stock traded equal to ¥0.000000001 (CNY).

Prediction made by Eileen Healy, Serial Entrepreneur, USA

The existing modes of information transport and processing cannot cope efficiently anymore with the fast growing volume of telecommunication services as well as their users all around the world we are facing today. In addition the capacities of all existing information transmission media are naturally limited. Therefore a completely new mode of information transport and processing is needed to guaranty the most efficient use of the existing information transport media as well as the quality of telecommunication services for all users involved and interested. The creative integration of photonic and nanoelectronic technologies is definitely the right way to develop these new modes necessary for the sustainable evolution of information and communication services in the future.

By Dr Marko Jagodic, Advisor to the Director General, Iskratel, Slovenia

Wearables, Connected Car, Smart Home, Internet of Things: they are all parts of the same phenomenon, a sensor revolution. Computers are coming to meet us in our world, on our terms. Machine learning will make sense of this data. Soon we will all have our own “Personal Wikipedia” of our lives, and “Personal Watson” that helps us to make decisions from that data. By the mid 2020s, we will each have a “guardian avatar” that virtualises ourselves: a digital doppelganger that acts as our ambassador in the virtual worlds we create and inhabit.

by Martin Geddes, Founder of Martin Geddes Consulting, United Kingdom