Future shock

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Future shock

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• A new world being born: People are talking of going crypto, involving mining, and using block-chain technology. People also talk of China's e-yuan settling bad debts. Times are changing!
• Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock': This classic from the 1970s spoke of people's inability to focus on too much change coming too fast. He warned of the premature arrival of future.
• Upgrade software: We often dislike or get puzzled by emails asking us to upgrade certain softwares we use. Now, we will soon have self-driven cars, that will do the same! Wars will be fought by cyber hackers, taking down the economic infrastructure of enemy nations.
• Energy: Fossil fuels are dying, and renewables are replacing them. Just as IC engines displaced horse-drawn carriages, EVs will replace IC engines. Aviation may soon see bio-fuels and hydrogen-as-fuel. New age businesses will create enormous wealth.  Aggregators are going to be the winners, producers may be the losers.
• What about productivity: Innovations of the 19th c. like electricity, elevators, running water and germ theory boosted productivity. But latest innovations won't push productivity much (economist Robert Gordon). Perhaps disruptive change shouldn't be measured by productivity change at all.
• Climate change: It has arrived in full force, as wildfires in California indicate. Silicon Valley is heading for Texas! So growth cannot happen unless damage is contained.
• Concentration: Toffler spoke of how knowledge, wealth and power are getting concentrated in a few hands only. Winner-take-all platforms businesses have arried, and the gig economy that accompanies it, are all a loaded dice game. Proof? Just talk to the drivers of Ola and Uber who want workers' rights. Centralised power is always remotely located, as we saw in India, where 3 crore people were non-persons for purpose of a ration card, as they couldn't link their Aadhar! How long before they become non-citizens, or bankrupt, even?
• Media scene: The dis-intermediated media has teamed up with Big Tech and is bent on reinventing politics via post-truth and hate mail. And then governments just switch the internet off! Courts want internet access as a fundamental right.
• Role of technology: It is empowering, as well as disempowering, in parallel. New rules need to be written to manage all of this. 
• Anthropocene: If zero net emissions actually happen, even if by 2050, it would be an achievement. The new world will have arrived, with new rules and dynamics.

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