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Животът.. всичко е за оцеляването и никой от нас не знае колко му остава на тази планета.
Нашата задача, като вид е да предвиждаме и
елиминираме заплахите за нашето оцеляване.
Коя ли е най-голямата заплаха? Замърсяването? Болестите? Природните бедствия?
Вглеждайки се сме открили и идентифицирали доста потенциални заплахи,
и затова имаме "война срещу тероризма", "война срещу престъпленията", наркотиците, ракът...
но замисляме ли се над основните ни животоподържащи нужди?
По принцип не е нужно, защото за щастие имаме система, система при която
цената на тези нужди може да се плати. Можеш да работиш за пари, които
да ти осигурят храна, вода и дом, и е добре, че имаме такава
система, защото без пари си загубен. А, ако останеш без работа
пак няма нужда да се притесняваш, защото имаме и друга система. Ако не си на работа,
независимо защо, просто кандидатстваш за социална помощ.
Понеже всички работещи плащат данъци, а правителството разбира, че определен
процент безработица е нормално да се очаква, те просто отделят част от парите
от данъци и ги прехвърлят към безработните хора, чрез магическия процес на преразпределението.
Но това те кара да се замислиш. Ако това е голямото ни решение, то къде е границата?
Какво ниво на безработица можем да подържаме? И какво би се случило, ако изведнъж работните места
изчезнат?
Светът е изправен пред огромно предизвикателство и е нужно да се открият, чуйте това,
шестотин милиона работни позиции, за да има икономически растеж и социална сплотеност.
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Maveric Media представя:
Defence giant BAE SYSTEMS has confirmed its cutting almost three thousand jobs at sites
across the country. Tata Steel which employs nineteen thousand
people in its UK steel business has announced it is cutting nine hundred jobs around the
UK Another blow to the region's economy today
as the energy giant EON has announced that six hundred jobs are to go at a call centre
in Essox The Phyzer facility in Kent, the world's
biggest drugs company runs the UKs largest foreign owned research and developments facility.
It will close entirely with the loss of most of two thousand four hundred jobs.
Ford has announced to trade union representatives that it will cease manufacturing cars in the
UK after more than one hundred years. Japans Honda is to cut around eight hundred
jobs at its plant near Swindon in south-west England.
And we start tonight with news at the BBC has announced cuts and job losses across the
region as part of a plan to make twenty percent savings
Hundreds of police jobs have already been slashed with thousands more under threat
Kodak the firm that invented the handheld camera and remains one of Americas best known
brands has filed for bankruptcy protection. Rangers football club one of the most famous
in Britain has announced its gone into administration. More than three hundred of the eight hundred
stores that Woolworths use to occupy are still standing empty more than a year and a half
after it collapsed at the end of 2008. More retailers are expected to go bust over
the next few months. All one hundred and eighty seven outlets are
to be shut with the loss of almost fourteen hundred jobs, the administrator said that
it is apparent we cannot continue to trade. It was once Britain's biggest sports retailer
but today JJB SPORTS announced plans to go into administration.
Six and a half thousand jobs are at risk after electrical retailer Comet announced it's
going into administration. More than four thousand jobs at risk after
HMV announced that it was going into administration, it follows other chains.
Its Blockbuster, its become the latest casualty on the high-street this week, a quarter of
its stores are going to close, more than seven hundred people are going to be made redundant.
There's serious doubts now about the future of around six thousand jobs around the UK
after the company asked for its shares to be suspended last Wednesday.
Former LaSenza employees have come to the decision to occupy the store as a direct consequence
of the actions of management. A buyer hasn't been found with the group
currently employs a total of nearly four thousand staff.
Taiwan's IT giant FOXCONN announced its plans to replace up to half a million human
workers with robots in the next three years. It's called "scan as you shop" customers
love it. It's a very simple system. Each load is almost three hundred tons, but
look closely. There's no one behind the wheel.
The facility boasts the first robotics system in the UK to deliver supplies such as linen
and food and an automated robotic pharmacy.
A Sam Vallely FILM
Will work for food
Will work for free
This isn't the first time unemployment has been a threat to this system.
20 years ago, UK unemployment accounted for 10% of the population. It marked one of the
worst recessions in our history with significant waves of rioting. However in ninety three,
unemployment took a turn, somehow the jobs came back and things got better.
This growth in employment is just what we needed, however it only lasted till two thousand
one. Then the rates stagnated, the increased. By two thousand nine we were back to around
eight percent. But it's reassuring to see the recent trends of unemployment have slowed
since then. Or at least it would be reassuring, if it weren't for this. This chart shows
the trends of part time versus full time employment. Notice how the increase in part time employment
runs almost parallel to the decrease of full time employment. So, where one person may
have been working say, a 40 hours week contract... now, two people would each be contracted 20
hour, and funnily enough, this cross over section occurred in two thousand nine. So
because technically more people are employed, the rates falsely imply a slight slowing down
of job loss, but in reality, the amount of avalible work is shrinking and the economy
is only getting worse. Sso what happened last time we were in this
mess going? let's go back to 93, what changed? Was it an orderly street protest which brought
back the jobs? Perhaps it was some well thought out policy
from parliament that changed things. Maybe everyone just stopped being lazy and
simultaneously arrived at the decision to go out there and get a job. But maybe it has
something to do with technology. In 93 Microsoft realised their Windows NT
operating system, Intel developed the first Pentium processor and the National Centre
for Supercomputing Applications released version 1 of "Mosaic" which was to be world's
first internet web browser. It is estimated the Internet grew throughout the 90's at
a rate of 100% per year. Subsequently improving global communication and creating many jobs
within developed countries. Now to remove any speculation as to whether or not this
was the reason for the growth in jobs, it should be noted that throughout the nineties,
our employment trends were almost identical to the U.S. trends and in a 2007 paper, a
team of Harvard economists found "the economic expansion of the nineties was in fact driven
by the increased efficiency in the production of IT, including computing, software and telecommunication.
The birth of the internet had propelled us in to a new age and saved us from further
degradation. However, while emerging technology is responsible for having created many new
jobs, technology has been known to replace jobs throughout history.
When employment stagnated in two thousand one, this wasn't because technology had
stopped expanding or that there weren't any new ideas, the stagnation is simply because
technology is ever improving, and the numbers of new jobs were being matched by the number
of job losses.
Economists will always deny that technology replaces jobs. It's called the Lump of labour
fallacy. Essentially it's the notion that technology merely redistributes human workers,
the jobs which become obsolete or automated simply allow humans to explore new sectors,
perhaps even invent new industries which have yet to be conceived of. Well, while this idea
may have been partially true in the past, the argument simply doesn't hold up anymore.
Computers these days are much smaller, faster and durable, with ever increasing mobility,
dexterity and artificial intelligence. They also become cheaper as time goes on. Moore's
law demonstrates how computer processing power doubles approximately every eighteen months.
So even if we were to create new jobs... why are we pretending we would give these jobs
to humans?
So what does the government have to say about all this? Well In June of 2011 not knowing
what to do with the increasing unemployment, they invested ВЈ5B in the welfare to work
scheme, also known as the work program. This five year program promises to help 2.4 million
people, find and secure long term employment by paying private companies to do the work
of actually looking for jobs on behalf of their unemployed clients.
One year later the department for work and pensions released the figures. Turns out the
work program was a complete failure... only 3.4% of all those who signed up to the program
actually found work. 3.4%! Let's just put that into context. What percentage of people
looking for work, gained employment without the help of the program? 1%? 2%? Well the
figures from the same period showed 5.5%... That's right; if you are assigned to a program
you are statistically less likely to find a job. Now, the failure of the work program
can be largely attributed to the lack of available jobs, but perhaps there's another factor,
in joining the program, if you find a job, you forfeit your right to minimum wage employment
and in place you are subsidised with an amount equivalent to job seekers allowance. Making
the work program essentially a paid slavery scheme, excused under the guise of gaining
experience. In late 2012, university graduate Cait Reilly disputed the legality of the program
after being assigned to stacking shelves in Poundland. Initially the appeal was rejected;
however after further appeal by 2013 three judges had ruled "the regulations, under
which most of the back-to-work schemes were created, are unlawful"
Whatever the government's response to this ruling will be, they will not stop in their
efforts to resolve the threat of unemployment, but let's face it. Unemployment is not a
threat to this system for the reasons we are usually given by mainstream outlets. Forget
all the noise about the recession, benefit cheats, immigration or this idea that people
are simply too lazy to look for a job.
Atomisation, thus technological unemployment is a mathematical inevitability of a system
based on perpetual growth. And this pending eventuality is vastly misunderstood by the
majority. And not just the majority of voters, there isn't a single politician who acknowledges
let alone understands the implications of technological unemployment. And what's worse,
when human beings don't understand something, that's where fear comes from. We fear what
we don't understand, and we fight what we don't understand.
Ok I have a very concrete question for you because you're getting wrapped up in this
money and regulators and who is at fault. Technological automation is replacing jobs
at the moment and it has been forever, it's doubling every year, that's the rate regardless
of what financial system you have and what regulators you put in their place. So, without
jobs as a basis for the economy, it's not really a question more of a statement, your
system is going to be obsolete and in fact your very lucky that you've been working
this long because you get to get out at the last floor, its going away.
Yeah but on the other side of the coin I fear for my children. Absolutely, absolutely so
why are you a fan of the banks then?
Retail High-street
In recent times high street shops have been disappearing at staggering rates, taking thousands
of jobs with them. 1998 - 2009 First Quench Retailing
1909 - 2009 Woolworths 1973 - 2011 Hawkin's Bazaar
1999 - 2011 D2 Jeans 1990 - 2011 Officers Club
1987 - 2011 Focus DIY 1931 - 2012 Blacks
1990 - 2012 La Senza 2008 - 2012 Best Buy Europe
1968 - 2012 Clinton Cards 1903 - 2012 Barratts
1993 - 2012 Gamestation 1933 - 2012 Comet
1991 - 2012 Optical Express 1971 - 2012 JJB Sports
1963 - 2012 Oddbins 1992 - 2012 Game Group
1921 - 2012 HMV 1935 - 2013 Jessops
1934 - 2013 Ethel Austin 1985 - 2013 Blockbuster and more.
Now, it's obvious some of these stores have not disappeared entirely. Many have moved
into warehouse distribution and their stores still exist in the form of websites; you may
also be wondering why I have included companies like Game in this list, since there are in
fact GAME stores on the high street today. Well I do so to make a point, see in 2012
when GAME went bust, the Swedish "Nordic Games" acquiesced the GAME Group, they acquired the
brand as well as the companies stores and employee contracts. But this is actually a
different company altogether. GAME wasn't resurrected through strategical advertising,
market booms or stern administrative decisions. The company we all knew as "GAME" went
bust... It lost. But GAME still had brand status. If it didn't, these shops fronts
would read "Nordic Games".
So why is there so much failure in retail? Are we merely witnessing the natural boom
and bust cycles of free market economics? Or are we actually witnessing a retail transition?
Looking back, our high streets were consisted of small family owned businesses, but the
more companies grows, mergers and acquisitions become inevitable and the smaller stores get
phased out as they struggle to compete for market share, eventually being replaced by
conglomerates. In much the same way, a natural evolution
of retail is occurring again. Only this time the shops are being phased out and the replacement
is coming in the form of websites. And software applications, which are conveniently accessible
with smart phones, are subsequently reduce our dependency on outlets such as high-street
banks, betting shops and travel agencies. You've probably already witnessed technological
unemployment on some level. For camera and film orientated shops like Jessops, it's
not so hard to understand. Barely anyone with a modern phone is going to buy a disposable
camera and pay money to have film developed; and there probably aren't too many people
with 8-megapixle camera phones who also require digital cameras. Due to advancing technology
these stores had suddenly become "specialist stores" their customers now having to mainly
consist of serious photographers.
Entertainment For music, video and games stores, there are
five main threats here. One -- Supermarkets, supermarkets are selling
a lot of the same products and most of the time cheaper.
Two - On-line Stores like Amazon, they also offer good deals with the added comfort twenty
four hour browsing and of course, item delivery. Three - Pawn shops like cash converters, they
get away with selling entertainment at a second hand rate making them even cheaper than the
supermarkets. Four -- On-line digital downloads and streaming,
with apps like iTunes and Netflix conveniently accessible through smart TV's, gaming consoles,
PC, and most phone and tablet devices. But let's not forget about five. Good old fashion
piracy. With the advancements of fibre optic broadband, you can now download entire movies
in a matter of minutes. Not that I'm suggesting you do that of course. That would be illegal.
I'm just saying it's easier and faster than going to the shops, waiting on the post
man or signing in the Netflix account on the PS3. As an aside, if any part of you is enraged
at the thought of all these immoral people illegally sharing media. Why not aim some
of that authentic aggression at the idea of a society which distributes digital entertainment
in physical form. The wastefulness of this would be equivalent to having a unique physical
address in order to access each and every website in existence. But perhaps you li the
plastic cases... and what's wrong with the plastic cases? Well, the case itself is made
from polypropylene, while the clear film sleeve is made from polyester. By bonding these different
plastic materials together, it makes them almost impossible to properly recycle on large
scale, so when the plastic rips, breaks or even just gets old and wasted.. They have
to be either buried in landfills or incinerated which of course produces toxic chemicals.
and this is the system we support by the way we choose to purchase entertainment, despite
having had the possibility of digital alternatives for over a decade.
Asking people to shop in these stores is asking us to live in an unnatural counter progressive
way. So perhaps the failure of these stores is
a good thing. But good or bad, a digital acquisition is upon us and the failures of these stores
are simply a matter of time. And yes, even if they sell their brand status, they are
failing. Nordic GAME won't be too far behind either.
But what about book stores like Waterstones? Well the increase of tablets and e-book readers
certainly poses a threat. However I can imagine the feel of a book, which people are oh so
nostalgic about, will be used as a "justification" argument for the continued stifling of a successful
digital transition. But, even without a digital alternative, Waterstone's in particular
is facing the same threat of on-line distribution as well as competition from supermarkets.
As are almost all product based stores - products to do with body care, cosmetics, clothing,
mobile phones, electronic appliances and even musical equipment. However there is an argument
to be made that physical stores are different, perhaps better than a website or a supermarket,
in that they provide "knowledgeable staff". Perhaps you're not sure what product is
best for you. In these shops, you can interact with friendly sales people who are qualified
to offer advice and help you make the right decision. Well, while it is true that retail
employees are trained to help customers and they are required to have a certain level
of knowledge about the product. They also have something which no one really questions.
Sales targets, either the staff or the store itself will have target requirements. If i
wandered into a phone shop unsure of what to buy and make the mistake of telling the
sales person that I'm not too familiar with the differences I leave myself open to a product
sale bias, in this scenario the store has no problems selling the "best" products.
So instead I might be presented with an inferior product which the store is struggling to offload,
the sales person's job here becomes distorted, and I the customer will most likely be subjected
to an eager sales pitch as opposed to honest insight.
You are going to get whats ever in this box for ВЈ24.99 Oh No! NO! He's put three bottles
of "sex in the City" for twenty six pounds ninety nine! At thirty six quid each! You
need to buy... Boys please! Please!
No! NO! No! NO! You need to buy now.
In our current system, money is the driving force and as such the advice and intent to
help a consumer make the right decision, is only a conditionality when required. But the
main priority is always profit. I know this is designed for kids, we've...
I've had some fun with this thing. This is amazing, whats so great about this
is kids love tablets, they love playing with tablets, they love the games, the love the
educational games but mom and dad want them to be safe, they want them they want to do,
ya know everything on, but ya know... its...mmmm You ok? Ok...
What it does is it gives us an opportunity for us to be able to offer a piece of electronic
equipment that is simple for children to operate but also, mom and dad can operate it as well.
At ВЈ149.94 the secret of it is that it has all the technology that mom and dad's tablet
has, it's got the android operating system 4.0, it's got all.
Now, had we instead used the internet as a guide, either through social media or public
forums, we would obtain better and more accurate advice. The usefulness of these "sales people"
which we have all grown accustomed to, pale in comparison to the advice found on-line...
The rating systems found on public forums are in fact designed to weed out any bad or
incorrect information and without it we are all vulnerable to the biases, lies and manipulation
of self-righteous profit seekers.
But perhaps there's another element to the physical shopping experience that I'm missing?
What about the clothing shops? I have to admit even I thought they wouldn't be as affected
by on-line alternatives for the simple fact that most people like to try before they buy.
Who buys clothes without trying them on first? Well, I mean... I do but maybe that's because
I'm a guy... When i buy a t-shirt i look for the ones with the big "L" and they
never let me down... Maybe being male i don't have to account for boob size when evaluating
comfort. But surly women don't prefer buying on-line without getting to try the clothes
on first? Well, surprisingly when women's clothing store "Internacionale" launched their
on-line store in 2012. They took in more profit in that one day from the website than all
their retail outlets combined. That surprised me. Clothing doesn't seem to have any intrinsic
immunity to the threat of on-line alternatives.
Taking a look at retail outside of on-line threats, perhaps there is also something to
be said about specialist shops in times of recession, shops which specialise in ties
for instance or underwear, shoes, jeans, suits, exercise clothing and outdoor clothing. If
we had a store dedicated to just socks. would that work? Maybe in these hard times it's
not surprising why all-in-one stores like Primark seem to be staying afloat. You want
a shirt? Primark. You want a dress? Primark. shoes, costume jewellery, candles, cushions,
towels....even a mankini!? And the comfort of finding everything under one roof also
stretches out to supermarkets. And speaking of supermarkets, what happened when they began
to implement self-service tills? In this Tesco's the nine items or less section has been completely
replaced with self-scanning. So now, only one job is required to assist those unfamiliar
with the process or those trying to purchase items which require age verification. When
this technology extends to the larger conveyor belt sections as it has been in pockets. or
more importantly, when high street stores like Primark adopt self-serving systems, Retail
will undergo yet another transitionary phase resulting in thousands of redundancies and
these job losses will not be temporary, for once this process is in place there is no
reasonable argument to go back to having lines of paid humans who are in fact now more expensive
in the long run... and this new self-service revolution doesn't end there...
Vending
General convenience stores are now entirely replaceable with vending machine kiosks.
A company called "Shop 24" has over 190 locations in Europe and they have already
begun UK implementation, and as the name suggests, these vending stores are open all hours, giving
them an even greater advantage over conventional human required methods. Vending machine stores
will also start to crop up in the form of sweet shops and "on-the-go" cuisine, offering
hot drinks, soft drinks, desserts, chips, noodles, hot dogs and even pizza. Complete
vending machine integration of cafГ©s and lunch bars are on the horizon, as well as
local pubs consisting of alcohol, cigarette and "pub food" vending. The only human
required job here would be a moderator/bouncer hybrid, ensuring no one under the legal drinking
age gains access. But even the need for human age verification is threatened by technology.
Today we have the "iSample", a vending machine developed by Intel & Krafts with built
in optical sensors it is capable of reading the face and determining gender and age, all
within a fraction of a second.
Pawn Shops Earlier I mentioned pawn shops such as Cash
Converters and it's interesting to know how these shops actually tend to profit in
times of economic recession, for the more we struggle to get by, the more likely we
are to entertain leasing our goods at interest, despite the risk of losing them if we fail
to buy them back within a certain time constraint. However there are items which we would pawn
with no intention of buying back and I guess for that area of sales more and more people
are now turning to eBay.
But how about charity shops? I believe they have longevity as they provide a unique service.
If you have old clothes or trinkets which you no longer need, but don't feel they
are valuable enough for the likes of eBay, charity shop donations are a morally viable
way of discarding items no longer needed. And this product "recycling" process is
far less wasteful than taking your old things to the skip. However, we are focusing on the
relevance of a job loss and its effects on the economy. Since most charity shops are
run by volunteers and their profits are in some part donated to charity, I fail to see
their economic relevance here.
Throughout the high street the only shops which seem to have immunity are the ones which
require actual human performed services, such as tattooing or hair dressing. But just for
fun, let's see if tattoo artists really are impervious to automation. In 2012, a guy
named Chris Eckert developed the Auto Ink tattoo machine. Now, for demonstration purposes
it uses a ball point pen instead of a needle, however the implication of this machines potential
is obvious. If it were ever to take off pre-programmed designs could eliminate the need for any human
involvement in the tattooing process.
Earlier I highlighted the fact that a lot of high street stores now occupy warehouses
and sell their products on-line. This may lead some of you to assume that the economy
will at least be helped in some part with all these new warehouse jobs. Well it seems
even these jobs are under attack, for example, Amazon is the world's largest online retailer
and currently has twelve fulfilment centres across the UK. But in May of 2012 Amazon purchased
the American "Kiva Systems" for seven hundred and seventy five million dollars.
What is Kiva? Kiva is an autonomous robot which uses optical sensors to navigate through
a warehouse. It reads inventory items as bits of digital information which is then organised
through complex algorithms in much the same way that Google organizes web pages. They
can pick, pack, and ship anything sold online faster and for a lot less money than a human.
These efficiencies allow Kiva to gather goods within minutes of an order, allowing the remaining
human workers to ship up to four times more packages in an hour. Similarly, the Spanish
"Bonnysa" Group have incorporated two automised facilities. The first stores products
directly as they are unloaded from delivery vehicles, guaranteeing complete control and
traceability of goods, and in the second, once products have been calibrated and classified,
they are placed on double depth shelving which allows for twice the storage capacity without
having to increase the amount of stacker cranes used. Since Bonnysa switched to using the
high-speed automised facilities they have eliminated the need for human operator intervention
and have increased their product control and warehouse security to the extent that output
is now five times the amount of a conventional warehouse.
Manufacturing According to the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development the manufacturing sector's share of both employment and GDP
has gradually declined since the sixty's, although manufacturing output in terms of
both production and value has steadily increased since 1945. The reason of course is technology,
and looking at the production of an automobile it's easy to see why we prefer using machines.
If these trends continue it is not far-fetched to think most if not all factory workers will
eventually be replaced by machines. Now, there's three main reasons as to why factory automation
has yet to be fully integrated across the board.
One: Vulnerability: An automated system usually has to be pre-programed for each specific
task which makes them susceptible to committing errors outside of their immediate scope of
knowledge. This makes them typically unable to apply simple rules of logic to general
propositions. However, machines today have far more mobility and dexterity than ever
imagined and instead of having to be preprogramed for each motion, machines are gradually gaining
autonomy, being able to detect objects and predict movement. The second reason is due
to unpredictable, excessive developmental costs. The research and development cost of
automating a specific task, can often exceed the cost saved by the automation itself. The
third reason also has to do with affordability, high initial costs. Automating a new product
requires an initial investment which is usually quite expensive when compared with the unit
cost of the product, even though the cost of automation may be spread among many products
over time. The decision to automate is therefore reserved for products which have proven to
be profitable and unlikely to change, as any alterations could require the re-programing
of machines. These three problems have been an issue since
factory automation began, but as time goes on, the machines improve and the cost of automating
declines. For simple assembly line tasks, it's certainly been cheaper to have human
workers. However, in mid-2012, an American company called "Rethink Robotics" launched
the Baxter robot. Baxter is a revolution in assembly line manufacturing as it can be programed
to perform a multitude of tasks and the best part is you don't even have to be a programmer.
Simply grab his arms, guide him through the motions of the required task and then leave
him to get on with it. If another task is required later on, simply grab his arms again
and re-program the motions. Baxter is currently on the market for around fourteen thousand
pounds which is an extremely affordable initial investment cost and taking into account the
average life span it works for less than three pounds an hour, twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week and doesn't require tea breaks. This robot is set to revolutionise the entire
manufacturing industry.
Application Aside from factory jobs being replaced by
machines, there are many products today which are quickly becoming altogether irrelevant.
For those of us with smart phones and tablets, the following examples may appear too obvious
to require a detailed analysis. But for those of you who have yet to acknowledge this trend,
let's take a look at the implied future of the smart phone "App". Currently Apps
are in the process of killing a vast range of physical products. Most obviously, paper
products; novels, comic books, cook books, puzzle books, phone books & yellow pages,
dictionaries, encyclopaedias, magazines, newspapers, shopping catalogues, road maps, photo albums,
calendars, diaries and of course, many products associated with stationary. Then there are
electrical products such as calculators, radios, alarm clocks, camcorders, voice recorders,
remote controls, karaoke machines, guitar tuners, amplifiers and effects peddles, GPS
navigation, video game cartridges and even board games are having their physical necessity
challenged by software.
Personal Computer Now what about desktop computers? Most people
only really use their PC's for surfing the web, socialising, listening to music and watching
videos. All of which can now be done on those same smart phones and tablets. PC's, while
not disappearing entirely, will decline in numbers because of this, effecting many jobs
associated with producing not only the computers themselves, but think of all those peripheral
devices associated with them, the keyboard, mouse and webcam. As well as hardware components
such as ram chips and graphics cards. Now, this might seem overly pessimistic. However
a survey by the International Data Corporation showed tablets to account for a third of all
computing sales in 2012 and even Microsoft are acknowledging the inevitable outcome,
and with the advent of 4G wireless networking which allows for high speed internet on our
mobile devices, we can now use applications like Skype and Face time to make phone calls
to and from anywhere in the world for free, the implication being the demise of traditional
land line phones and mobile tariffs. British Telecom has been preparing for this and have
already launched their cloud network. Now, digital alternatives may not yet be adopted
by the majority, perhaps mostly because of nostalgia rather than efficiency. But the
children of the future are not going to care about the toys of the past.
Media Products & Appliances VHS, CD and DVD players as well as free-view,
sky and virgin media boxes are all facing redundancy by the advancements of the smart
TV. Why? Because smart TV's stream content from the internet, making it possible for
Sky and virgin media to exist entirely in app form. So what of all those lavish book,
CD and DVD collections which most of us equate to our status and identity? These erroneous
collections are no longer optimal as we now have digital media libraries, with the likes
of iTunes and iBooks. And when digital libraries are rehomed to our TV's as well as our phones
and tablets. Just as VHS collections were phased out by the improved format of the DVD,
our current wasteful, vanity orientated physical media collections will be phased out and replaced
with non-physical digital formats, alongside their required physical media players. In
fact, in January of 2013, tech giant "Philips" gave in and sold their home entertainment
appliances division and now only producing coffee machines, juicer's, toasters and
electric razors.
The rise of high speed fibre optic broadband will also extend the extinction of irrelevant
peripherals to Blu-ray players and video game consoles. That's right, even video games
will be played via internet streaming. Sound far-fetched? Well Sony entertainment doesn't
think so. In July of 2012 they spent $380 million purchasing the cloud-based video game
streaming network "Gaika". Even Xbox co-founder Nat Brown has expressed his concerns over
the implications of Apple entering the games industry, acknowledging the potential of their
already established infrastructure to easily replace the Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo
consoles.
3D-Printing Now, obviously there are many physical products
on the market which aren't threatened by digital downloading.
However in October of 2012, the city of London was host to the world's first-ever consumer
3D print show, displaying how 3D printing can allow consumers to download and print
a vast range of products as and when they need them. This is not merely a glimpse into
a hypothetical future; 3D printers can already build products from a range of materials including
plastic, chocolate, glass, concrete and even metal. So what products could be printed?
Well, just about any basic household items from plates, bowls, mugs, bottles, cutlery,
tupperware, lamp shades, photo frames, furniture, musical instruments, figurines, even a wrench
printed with fully moving parts. So you may be wondering just how far in the future 3D
printing is, and how expensive these things are going to be? Well let's look at the
Rep-Rap project. Rep-Rap is a self-replicating 3D printer. Meaning it can print most of its
own parts, so if you have one, you can make another one. And the great thing about rep-rap
is that it is open source, meaning its design is not owned or constrained by copy write.
It's completely free for anyone to use and improve. Today, 3D printers can be purchased
from open source groups like reprap and fab@home, or commercially through pp3dp.com & cubify.
Perhaps you don't have the room for a home 3D printer? Well there is the option of ordering
3D printed products online through services such as shapeways, sculpteo and i.materialise.
Companies can also employ the mass producing of 3D printed products through organizations
such as Thingiverse and kraftwurx.
The world of 3D printing is huge and it's here today. And just like every other technological
advancement - as time goes on these things will become more and more affordable. And
every company which currently produces all those house hold items will simply become
financially unsustainable. Pay It Forward
A group called PIF3D aim to exploit the replicating ability of RepRap by taking the machine to
universities and hosting twenty-four hour 3D printing parties, where they give people
the skills to build one of these things. The objective being that those people can "Pay
it forward". Once they have built two or three RepRap printers, they repeat the process
of taking it to schools and showing others how to make their own, and the process repeats.
The idea of paying it forward could easily spread like wildfire. Meaning just about everyone
in the world could own a 3D printer for next to nothing. Now, as 3D-Printers become more
mainstream, there will most likely be attempts to patent certain design elements and sell
each downloadable product commercially. However once a product is on a CAD file, there's
no real reason 3D designs would be immune to internet piracy.
Transport
Around 2.5% of the UK population have jobs which require a driving licence.
The first autonomous driverless vehicle was developed by, Sebastian Thrun director of
the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. In
2005 the Google car won the DARPA Grand Challenge and since then, Google have been developing
a commercial system. However progress has been held back due to
legal liabilities, for example if there was an accident, who would be at fault? The car
owner? the manufacturer? What if the accident was a result of a lost signal? Would the internet
providers be accountable? Filtering through legislation is a lengthy process, but they've
come a long way. In August 2012, the Google team announced
that they have completed over 300,000 miles of autonomous-driving, all without a single
accident. Nevada, Florida and California all passed laws allowing driverless cars.
Although it's hard to invasion a timeline, the remaining united states and the UK will
eventually pass similar legislations, and driverless cars will explode on to the market.
As well as the American based Google car which most of us are probably aware of, there is
also a German creation from "autonomous labs" at the Free University of Berlin.
The project has already been given approval to run a driverless taxi services throughout
Berlin and Brandenburg. For those of you who feel hesitant about assigning
the control of your vehicle to a machine, know that the kiva systems mentioned earlier
have essentially the same autonomy, and they too have yet to witness a single accident.
Compare that with the UK's current yearly rates of 3,000 motor vehicle incidents resulting
in fatalities, 35,000 resulting serious accidents and a total 276,000 severities. Clearly it
would be societally irresponsible to maintain human drivers while the safer option is available.
And in making a safer society all jobs associated with public transport and delivery of goods,
could be achieved without human involvement.
Agriculture Dairy
GEA farm technologies' provides technological solutions to livestock farming, including
the development of a fully automatic milking system for dairy farms. Dairy cows are guided
into these Mi1 milking units, the cows electronic tag is identified and their pre-allocated
amount of food is dispensed. A 3D camera scans and identifies the udders, then attaches to
the t-cups. It washes dries and pre-milks the cows. This amazing technology reduces
labour, increases milk production, lowers stress of both the cows and farmers, and electric
tagging allows for the ability to manage cows individually. So when is this technology being
implemented? Well looking at the UK alone, it's actually already been in use since
2011.
Precision Farming EGNOS Precision Farming is a system which
uses GPS guidance technology for crop cultivation. The auto track technology sends signals to
the tractors steering system via a GPS receiver. The resulting navigation is so precise that
Farmers can actually treat soil and crops in a site specific manner and ensure optimum
chemical doses are applied to the right places. The system has been shown to cut costs on
fertilisation and fuel, reducing the environmental impact, and because the tractors steer themselves
it also reduces operator fatigue. As you've probably already guessed, it is only a matter
of time before these tractors are also equipped with autonomous driving technology, spelling
the end of this particular human required task and allowing for the full automation
of crop cultivation.
Vertical farming But why limit crop cultivation to fields?
In 1999 a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University in New York,
Dickson Despommier challenged his students to feed the entire population of Manhattan
using 13 acres of usable rooftop gardens. The class calculated that only 2% of all the
people could be fed using this method. Unsatisfied with the results, Despommier made an off-the-cuff
suggestion of growing plants indoors and vertically. The idea sparked interests and by 2001 the
first outline of a vertical farm was introduced. Today scientists, architects, and investors worldwide are working together to
make the concept of vertical farming a reality. Unlike, traditional agriculture, a controlled
indoor environment is not susceptible to crop loss from severe weather conditions nor is
it limited by seasonal crop production.
Using the method of hydroponics which doesn't require soil, water is preserved in a closed
loop system, eliminating the concern of agricultural runoff, and since it is continually recycled,
the total water usage is 70% less than current requirements. Without soil this system is
immune to pesticides, meaning we could also do away with having to spray agrochemicals
on our food.
For those of you sceptical about the limitations of hydroponic farming, here is a list of already
commercially available products from hydroponically produced plants.
Health Care Cardiology
Up next it sounds like science fiction but Dr Nancy Snyderman reports on how your smart
phone may change medicine including warning you of a heart attack. By modifying an iPhone
with this ECG attachment and using the AliveECG app, your heart rate, temperature, oxygen
and fluid levels can all be recorded with the results directly upload able to your Cardiologist.
Blood, saliva, urine and even sweat can all be tested with this device. Combined with
a wireless ultrasound, full physical check-ups can be carried out remotely from anywhere
in the world. There's twenty million, over twenty million
echocardiograms done a year. That's twenty million times eight hundred dollars that's
a lot of money. Probably seventy to eighty percent we can get rid of, just by having
this part of the physical exam.
Medicine As for prescription medicine, perhaps the
biggest threat is not with technology but rather in the curing of illnesses. Fifteen
year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry Gwen Olsen, stated "the pharmaceutical industry
is in the business of disease maintenance and symptoms management, The are not in the
business of curing cancer, Alzheimer's or heart disease, because if they were, they
would be in the business of putting themselves out of business."
For those of you who doubt the medical establishment would knowingly put profitability ahead of
actually helping people, you need look for no further evidence than a 2002 UK clinical
trial which found most anti-depressants to be as effective as sugar pills, giving the
effects of a working drug through nothing more than a placebo.
It's not hard to see why the medical industry would chose to promote the constant reselling
of pharmaceuticals. If for example a cure for cancer was discovered and adopted by the
mainstream, it would cause considerable losses in profits generated through radiotherapy,
chemotherapy, hormone therapy, gene therapy and Immunotherapy. Not to mention the surgical
costs of removing tumours. So, what does it mean for their industry when a fifteen year
old boy from Maryland, discovers a new way of detecting cancer? Which studies have shown
to be potentially 99% accurate, 168 times faster and 26,000 times cheaper than our current
methods? Make no mistake, this amazing achievement, will be seen by the cancer profiteers as a
blow to the industry. But regardless of their somewhat corrupt profit driven mentality,
technology moves on and even when pharmaceuticals are the only option. Technology is yet again
providing solutions. Organic Chemists make molecules very complicated
molecules by chopping up a big molecule into smaller molecules and doing reverse engineering.
As a chemist one of the things I wanted to ask my research group a couple of years ago
is, could we make a really cool universal chemistry set? In essence could we "App"
chemistry? Well to start to do this we took a 3D printer
and we started to print our beakers and our test tubes on one side and then print the
molecule at the same time on the other side and combine them together in what we call
"Reaction ware" and so by printing the vessel and doing the chemistry at the same
time we may start to access this universal toolkit of chemistry. Now what could this
mean? Well if we can bed biological and chemical networks like a search engine, so if you have
a cell that's ill that you need to cure or bacteria you want to kill, if you have
this embedded in your device at the same time and you do the chemistry, you make be able
to make drugs in a new way. So how are we doing this in the lab? Well
it requires software, it requires hardware, and it requires chemical inks, and so the
really cool bit is the idea to have a universal set of inks which we put out with the printer
and you download the blue print, the organic chemistry for that molecule and you make it
in the device. So you can make your molecule in the printer using this software. So what
could this mean? You don't have to go to the chemist anymore. We can print drugs at
point of need. We can download new diagnostics, say a new superbug has emerged; you put it
in your search engine and you create the drug to treat the threat. So this allows you on
the fly molecular assembly but perhaps for me the cool bit going in to the future is
this idea of taking your own stem cells with your genes and your environment and you print
your own personal medicine. And if that doesn't seem fanciful enough where do u think we're
goanna go? Ur goanna have your own personal matter fabricator.
As well as using bio-printing for binding molecules into medicine, bio-printing is also
being used to construct organs. Today we can print an entire lung.
Hospitals Now looking at hospital care, I'm sure most
of you are now aware of these "tele presence" robots which allows intensive care specialists
to remotely communicate with patients across multiple hospitals and as the robots have
the ability to transmit information regarding the heart and breathing, examinations can
occur much faster, while actually reducing the work load of hospital staff since it eliminates
the need for patients to be transferred to intensive care units in some cases. The hospital's
workload is also being reduced by "Aethon" TUG System in which an Autonomous robotic
courier can make their rounds, carrying prescriptions, medical waste, food trays and up to two hundred
pounds of laundry.
Home Care As for home care, meet Asimo, Asimo is a humanoid
robot created by Honda, with the aspiration of helping people who lack full mobility.
Since he was first introduced in 2000, he has gradually improved in mobility and communication.
(Thank you) Eventually Asimo will be capable of performing
most takes typically required of home-care staff.
Now, there are many people who irrationally fear technology, with their frame of reference
limited to what they see in movies. But in reality technology is the provider of many
solutions across the full spectrum of health and illnesses.
When she was born her legs were up by her ears and her shoulders were internally rotated
and she had ulnar deviation on her hands and rocker bottom feet. The geneticist came upstairs
and told us that she had arthrogryposis multiplex congenital. They brought her legs down and
they casted her and slowly and surly she started to develop. Our first year with Emma we found
out that there was goanna be a conference and it was in Philadelphia.
It was an arthrogryposis family meeting in Philadelphia where I described the WREX.
We watched a presentation on the WREX. And that's how it all started. We ended
up in Terick and Whitney's workshop. The WREX was attached to a stand and she was
able to put her arms into the WREX and for the first time be able to lift her hand up
towards her mouth. She just started throwing her hands around
and playing. We were bringing candy up for her to eat and
we were bringing toys up there and it was so fun for us to go up there and see her play
The existing WREX is all metal parts and it's kinda big and Emma was too small for that
so we required something light and small and would attach to her body and go with her.
So that's where we had this "Stratasys 3D printing machine" and we thought well
we could print it out for her. And he did it and the weight difference is
significant and for a child who only weight twenty five pounds it makes a big difference.
Whitney and Terick put their minds together and came up with a jacket and they would put
the WREX on that and were on our second jacket, she outgrew the first one and now we're
on our second one and its still evolving it's still growing into this incredible prosthetic
which helps her to use her arms. Without the 3D printer we would not be in
a position we're in with these younger kids making them a WREX device that can go with
them. This is one of those industries that matches
perfectly with 3D printing additive manufacturing because we need custom everything.
I think 3D scanning and printing technology is the future for this field.
The ABS plastic that they use is the same plastic they use in LEGO its human friendly
if you will, its really strong and durable to handle the abuse, we can answer a need
in a heartbeat. If the WREX breaks all I have to do is take
a picture and email it to whiney, he knows exactly what the piece is, he prints it out
I go to the hospital or he's even mailed them.
I don't have to worry about D-time to machine something or order supplies. I can just basically
go back to my program and print out another one.
And it's back together and it's working. When she started to express herself we would
go upstairs and we would say Emma ya know were gonna put the WREX on and she called
them her magic arms and everyone in the room cried.
We took it off of her on this one occasion to make some adjustments to it and as we took
it off she cried out "I want that" and we didn't think all that much of it but
when mom started to cry and uh. We look over and ask mom why she's crying and she kind
of takes a moment to recompose herself and tell us that that was her first complete sentence.
To be a part of that made it a little special moment for somebody else ya know can't help
but uh kinda tug at your heart strings.
Food & Accommodation The fast food industry for one is heavily
under threat by the same self-serving processes mentioned earlier. In May of 2011, McDonald's
announced its plans to install touch-screen technology across 7,000 restaurants in Europe.
Parts of the UK have already begun implementation and in some states in America, voice recognition
has replaced the drive thru. Can I get, can I get a twenty piece?
A twenty piece chicken nugget, what kind of sauces would you like?
Uh what is it? What kind of sauce do we have?
We got that honey mustard barbecue sweet and source we got honey style hot sauce that burns
for hours, we got that buffalo ranch if you need more ask chipotle barbecue ask me for
more and I'll tell you.
As for the kitchen staff, automated systems are already being used such processes as draining
and refilling deep fat fryers, making many human tasks redundant. But perhaps the largest
implied threat has to do with the American robotics company, "Momentum Machines"
which is predicted to revolutionise the fast food industry. They are currently preparing
to open the world's first "smart restaurant" with its automated burger machine. Capable
of dispensing around three hundred and sixty burgers an hour. Not only does their machine
construct and cook patties but it also slices the toppings to order and the technology even
allows for customisation, composed of meat ground to order and assembled in whatever
combination the customer desires.
Restaurants Restaurant jobs are also threated by atomisation,
whether it's assisting chefs or replacing them completely.
Waiters What about the job of the restaurant waiter?
Well aside from using robots, Germany is pioneering a different approach. You make your order
from a touch screen situated at your table and the food is dispensed via a railing system
and delivered to your table when ready.
Hotels Hotel services are a little harder to automate,
but obviously there are elements of automation which do reduce the workload.
Straight away you have automatic check in and a restaurant which turns into a dance
floor. Were at Yotel New York which opened in June
2011, Yotel is a fun and futuristic brand. Some of the things we have in the hotel are
motorised beds in the rooms and we have Yobot which is our answer to futuristic luggage
handling. At the moment what we do is we take people's luggage and they store it in the
bins provided and Yobot takes it and stores it up on the wall. What we've done now is
we've agreed with the airports for example like the jet-blue terminal you'll be able
to choose which airport you want to go to, say JFK or Newark, the bin will come down,
you'll put the luggage in there and then Yobot will shift your luggage through tunnels
in new York and you'll be able to pick it up at each of the airport terminals. Also
were looking at a luggage tracker which we'll be able to download on our mobile app so youll
be able to follow your luggage form its journey here at the hotel all the way to the airport
and were also even looking at being able to sip people and the luggage for yotel new York
to one of our airport hotels in the future.
Even cleaning and maintenance is potentially threatened by a series of robots such as the
Roomba autonomous hoover and the Winbot autonomous window cleaner. But perhaps there are some
non-automated threats to the traditional process of accommodation. Couchsurfing.com is a sort
of social network community, where people register their hospitality. The idea being,
if you want to travel, you simply type where you want to go, specify how many of you are
going, and then search from a list of willing participants. Within this type of community,
you could potentially travel the world without any need for paid accommodation.
Mining and Quarrying The Sandvik Group are currently the leading
global suppliers of service and technical solutions for the mining industry. Sandvik
Automine has focused its efforts on developing a comprehensive solution for improving the
safety, efficiency and productivity of underground mining operations, using autonomous trucks
for loading and hauling they have created a flexible system which can be adapted to
the unique working environment of individual operations, even processing ore to high grade
copper concentrate on site. Through automation they have eliminated many human required jobs,
while increasing production with improved drilling accuracy which has also been shown
to lower the risk of damage incurred by machines. Currently Sandvik Automine are optimistic
about achieving 100% automation of mining. Similarly, since 2009 the Australian mining
company Rio Tinto has been using a fleet of Komatsu trucks. The trucks are over twenty
feet tall, weigh over ten tons, and are capable of carrying over three hundred tons of material.
The trucks are fitted with Komatsu's Autonomous Haulage System which allows navigation from
loading units to dump locations, including waste dumps, stockpiles and crushers.
However let's take a step back. Looking at the end product of a mining operation,
the reason we associate gold and silver with such a high value, is because of the difficulty
in obtaining and processing these materials coupled with the time it takes for the earth
to naturally produce a diamond for example. The ability to produce a diamond in a lab
has been around for a long time; however gem-quality results have only been achievable in the last
few years. Specifically the American company "Gemesis" have made huge advancement in
the production of synthetic diamonds, with an output of up to forty rare gems each day.
As for the cost, a one-carat yellow diamond from nature equates to about thirteen point
five thousand pounds whereas and a synthetic replica costs just four thousand pounds.
So when we begin to speculate about the future of synthetic materials perhaps it's not
too farfetched to think we could create copper, coltan, gold and silver and bring these materials
to market for a much lower cost than they are today, which would, invariably reduce
the costs of all technological applications which depend on these materials.
Construction Construction employs over 2 million people
in the UK and accounts for just under seven pecent of the nation's GDP.
Firstly let's look at construction as it is today. Because of all the different trades
involved, Construction is prone to management inefficiency and corruption. The actual process
itself is slow, labour intensive & inefficient as well as being costly and usually over budget
it is also highly wasteful of resources and responsible for producing vast amounts of
carbon emission. As far as safety is concerned, construction is more dangerous than both mining
and agriculture. Each year an average of sixty workers are fatally injured with seventy four
thousand non-fatal injuries. Now let's look at the alternative. Contour
Crafting is a process developed by the University of Southern California's Information Sciences
Institute. Though initially conceived as a method to construct moulds for industrial
parts, the technology of rapid home construction was proposed as a way to rebuild cities after
natural disasters occurred. Currently it uses a computer-controlled crane to distribute
concrete layer by layer incorporating, plumbing and electrical network installation. With
Contour Crafting buildings are rapidly and efficiently constructed with zero manual labour,
zero waste and little emission. It is estimated an average family home could be built in less
than twenty hours. However the homes of the future will not be constrained by today's
architectural limitations for these machines can extrude intricate and complex designs.
Perhaps the design of your home will only be limited by your imagination. Now Contour
Crafting is still relatively new, however, it is easy to see how in the near future this
project could be commercialized as a means of streamlining the entire construction industry.
Destroying a numbers of not only those associated with construction but also those of plumbers,
electricians and perhaps even architects.
Education Today
The mainstream method of education currently requires an all knowing authority figure fulfilling
the role of teacher and relaying imperial information to student's after which said
teacher will then review and grade the work of the students. This traditional approach
to learning has been widely criticised throughout recent years, as it relies on rote memorisation,
teaching students what to think as opposed to how to think. And using the grading system
has also been shown to create structural classism. Sugata Mitra is a Professor of Educational
Technology at the University of Newcastle. His first experiment in child learning began
in 1999 with the hole in the wall project. Initially, a computer was placed in a kiosk
built within a wall in a slum at New Delhi and children were allowed to use the computer
freely. The experiment aimed to show that kids could be taught by computers very easily
without any formal training and independent of adult supervision. Mitra termed this approach
"Minimally Invasive Education". The experiment grew and was repeated in many places, currently
there are more than twenty three hole in the wall kiosks in rural India and in 2004 was
extended to Cambodia. The results have now demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective
of who they are or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their
own, using public computers in open spaces such as streets and playgrounds, even without
initially knowing any English. I wanted to test the limits of this system.
The first experiment I did out of Newcastle was actually done in India and I set myself
an impossible target. Can Tamel speaking twelve year old children in a south Indian village
teach themselves biotechnology in English on their own? I thought I'll test them,
they'll get a zero, I'll give them material, I'll come back and test them, they'll
get another zero, I'll go back and say yes we need teachers for certain things. I called
in twenty six children they all came in there, I told them that there's some really difficult
stuff on this computer I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't understand anything. It's
all in English and I'm going. I came back after two months, the twenty six children
marched in looking very, very quiet. I said well, did you look at any of the steps, they
said yes we did, did you understand anything, they said no, nothing. So I said, well, how
long did you practice on it before you decided you understood nothing, they said we look
at it every day, so I said for two months you are looking at stuff you didn't understand,
so a twelve year old girl raises her hand and says, apart from the fact improper replication
of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease we've understood nothing else (crowd laughs).
So the schools have gone up from 0% to 30% which is an educational impossibility under
the circumstances, but 30% is not a pass. So I found that they had a friend, a local
accountant, a young girl, and they play football with her. I asked that girl if they would
teach them enough Biotechnology to pass and she said how would I do that, I don't know
the subject, and I said no, use the method of the Grandmother, she said what's that
and I said what you've got to do is stand behind them, and admire them all the time
(crowd laughs), just say to them, that's cool, that's fantastic, what is that, can
you do that again, can you show me some more. She did that for 2 months, the score went
up to 50% which is what the posh schools of New Dehli with the trained Biotechnology teachers
were getting. So I came back to Newcastle with these results and decided that there
was something happening here that definitely was getting very serious. Across the River
Thames, five thousand miles from Dehli, is the little town of Gateshead, in Gateshead
I took thirty two children and I started to fine tune the method, I made them into groups
of four, I said you make your own groups of four, each group of four can use one computer,
and not four computers. You can exchange groups, you can walk across to another group if you
don't like your group etc. You can go to another group, peer over their shoulder, see
what they're doing, come back to your own group and claim it as your own work. The children
enthusiastically got up to me and said what do you want us to do? I gave them six GCSE
questions. The first group, the best one solved everything, in twenty minutes, the worst,
in forty five, they used everything that they knew: Newsgroups, Google, Wikipedia, Ask Jeeves
etc. The teachers said, is this deep learning, I said well, let's try it. I'll come back
after two months, we'll give them a paper test, no computers, no talking to each other
etc. The average score when I done it with the computers and the groups was 76%. When
I did the experiment, when I did the test after two months, the score was... 76%. There
was photographic recall inside the children; I suspect because they were discussing with
each other, a single child in front of a single computer will not do that, I have further
results which are, almost unbelievable of scores which go up with time, because the
teachers say after the session is over, the children continue to Google further. Here
in Britain I've put in a call for British Grandmothers, after my Kupum experiment, the
deal was they would give me one hour of broadband time sitting at their homes, one day in a
week. So they did that and over the last two years, over six hundred hours of instructions
have been over Skype, using what my students call, the Granny Cloud. (Girl in class talking)
Back in Gateshead, a ten year old girl gets into the heart of Hinduism, in fifteen minutes,
you know stuff which don't know, anything about (crowd laughs), Two children watch a
TED talk, they wanted to be footballers before, after watching eight TED talks, he wants to
become Leonardo Da Vinci (crowd laughs) (applause), it's pretty simple stuff. This is what I'm
building now, they are called SOLEs, Self-Organised Learning Environments, the furniture is designed
so children can sit in front of big, powerful screens, big broadband connections but in
groups. If they want they can call the Granny Cloud, this is a SOLE in Newcastle, the mediator
is from Umea, India. So how far can we go, I think we've just stumbled across a self-organising
system. A self-organising system is one where a structure appears without explicit intervention
from the outside, self-organising systems also always show emergence, which is when
the system starts to do things which it was never designed for, which is why you react
the way you do because it looks impossible. I think I can make a guess now, education
is organising system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon, it will take a few years
to prove it experimentally but I'm going to try but in the meanwhile there is a method
available. One billion children, we will need one hundred million mediators, there are many
more than that on the planet, ten million SOLEs, one hundred and eighty billion dollars
and ten years, we could change everything!
So, children left to their own devices are capable of self-learning, perhaps limited
only by their ability to search for information. But what if this process was made easier?
What if there was a website which consolidated a vast range of subjects with short educational
explanatory videos, detailing almost every aspect of mathematics, history, healthcare,
medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, civics and
computer science. Well that website exists; it's called the Kahn academy, developed
by Salman Kahn in 2006. The site currently has more than 4,000 micro lectures and has
delivered over two hundred and forty million lessons worldwide. In fact the Kahn academy
has been so successful it is likely the primary inspiration behind Academic Earth, which has
evolved the concept to include actual lectures form more than forty top US colleges including
Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Since Academic Earth, a group of educators
from Stanford University have formed Coursea. Adopting the same premise as Kahn and Academic
Earth, However, with Coursea upon the completion of on-line courses, students are awarded certificates
which can and indeed have been used to gain employment and in some cases, as a substitute
for credit in real world educational institutions.
Arts & Entertainment Incentive
In looking at the future of the arts in relation to jobs, I feel an important distinction must
be drawn. There are really two concepts of employment
which tends to go unacknowledged. The first is driven by financial necessity. This version
makes employment something we submit to in order to gain access to our life supporting
needs; the other is driven by passion, making employment a creative outlet where financial
stability is a by-product and not the primary motivation. In fact when it comes to art,
or any process involving creativity, monetary rewards are actually in-verse to productivity.
Our motivations are unbelievably interesting. The science is really surprising. The science
is a little bit freaky, okay. We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as you
would think. There's a whole set of unbelievably interesting studies. I want to give you two
that call into question this whole idea that if you reward something you get more of the
behaviour you want, if you punish something you get less of it.
So let's go from London to the mean streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the northeastern
part of the United States, and let's talk about a study done at MIT -- Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Here's what they did: they took a whole group of students and
gave them a set of challenges. Things like memorizing a string of digits, solving word
puzzles, other kinds of spatial puzzles, even physical tasks like throwing a ball through
a hoop. They gave 'em these challenges and they said to incentivize their performance,
they gave them three levels of rewards, okay. So if you did pretty well you got a small
monetary reward, if you did medium well you got a medium reward, and if you did really
well, if you were one of the top performers, you got a large cash prize. We've seen this
movie before. This is a typical motivation scheme within organizations. Right? We reward
the very top performers, we ignore the low performers, and the folks in the middle...okay,
you get a little. So what happens? They do the test, they have these incentives, and
here's what they found out: (1) As long as the task involved only mechanical
skill, bonuses worked as would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.
That makes sense. But here's what happened: once the test called for even rudimentary
cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance! Now this is strange...a larger
reward led to poorer performance. How can that possibly be? Now what's interesting about
this is that the folks who did it are all economists -- two at MIT, one at the University
of Chicago, one at Carnegie Mellon -- okay, the top tier of the economics profession,
and they're reaching this conclusion that seems contrary to what most of us learned
in economics, which is that the higher the reward, the better the performance. And they're
saying, once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill, it's the other way around. The idea
that these rewards don't work that way seems vaguely left wing and socialist, doesn't it?
It's this weird, socialist conspiracy. For those of you who have those conspiracy theories,
I want to point out the notoriously left-wing socialist group that financed the research:
the Federal Reserve Bank -- the most mainstream of the mainstream coming to a conclusion that
seems to defy the laws of behavioural physics! So this is strange, strange findings. So what
do they do? They say let's go test it somewhere else. Maybe that $50, $60 prize isn't sufficiently
motivating for MIT students. Let's go to a place where $50 is more significant relatively.
So we're gonna take the experiment and go to Madurai, India -- rural India -- where
$50, $60, whatever the number was is actually a significant sum of money. So they replicated
the experiment in India roughly as follows: the small rewards were roughly the equivalent
of two weeks' salary; medium performance, about a month's salary; high performance,
about two months' salary. Those are good incentives, so you're probably goanna get a different
result here. But what happened was that, the people offered the medium reward did no better
than the people offered the small reward. But this time around the people offered the
highest reward did worst of all! Higher incentives led to worse performances. What's interesting
about this is it isn't all that anomalous. This has been replicated over and over and
over again by psychologists, by sociologists, and by economists -- over and over and over
again. For simple, straightforward tasks, these kinds of incentives -- "If you do
this then you get that" -- they're great. For tasks that are algorithmic, you just follow
a set of rules; get a right answer, if then, carrots and sticks...outstanding. But when
a task gets more complicated, when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, those
kinds of motivators demonstrably don't work. Fact: money is a motivator at work, but in
a slightly strange way. If you don't pay people enough they won't be motivated. What's curious
is there's another paradox here, that the best use of money as a motivator is to pay
people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough that they're
not thinking about money, they're thinking about the work. Once you do that, it turns
out there are three factors that science shows lead to better performance, not to mention
personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed -- to direct our own lives. In many ways,
traditional notions of management runs afoul of that. Management is great if you want compliance;
but if you want engagement, which is what we want in the workplace today as people are
doing more complicated, sophisticated things, self-direction is better. Let me give you
some examples of this. One of the most radical forms of self-direction in the workplace that
leads to good results. Let's start with Atlassian -- an Australian software company, and they
do something really cool. Once a quarter on a Thursday afternoon, they say
to their developers, "For the next 24 hours you can work anything you want. You can work
on it the way you want, you can work on it with whoever you want. All we ask is that
you show those results to the company at the end of the 24 hours." And it's a fun kind
of meeting, with beer and cake, and fun, and other things like that. It turns out that
that one day of pure, undiluted autonomy has led to a whole array of fixes for existing
software, a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise would have never emerged. One
day! Now this is not an "if then" incentive.
This is not the sort of thing I would have done three years ago, before I heard this
research. I would've said, you want people to be creative and innovative? Give 'em a
freakin innovation bonus. "If you can do something cool, I'll give you $2,500." They're
not doing this at all. They're essentially saying, you probably wanna do something interesting,
let me just get out of your way. One day of autonomy produces things that would never
emerge. Now let's talk about mastery. Mastery is our
urge to get better at stuff. We like to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical
instruments on the weekend. These people act in ways that don't make any sense economically.
They play musical instruments on the weekends. Why? It's not gonna make them any money. 'Cause
it's fun. 'Cause you get better at it, and that's satisfying. Go back in time a little
bit. Imagine. I imagine if I went to my first economics professor, a woman named Mary Alice
Shulman, if I went to her in 1983 and said, "Professor Shulman, can I talk to you after
class a minute? I got this inkling...I've got this idea for a business model; I just
wanna run it past you. Here's how it would work: you get a bunch of people around the
world that are doing highly skilled work, but they're willing to do it for free and
volunteer their time -- twenty, sometimes thirty hours a week." She's looking at me
somewhat skeptically now. "Oh, but I'm not done! Then, what they create, they give it
away rather than sell it. It's gonna be huge!" She would have thought I was insane. It seems
to fly in the face of so many things. But you have Linux powering servers in one out
of four Fortune 500 companies. You have Apache powering more than the majority of web servers.
You have Wikipedia. What's going on? Why are people doing this? Why are these people, many
of whom are technically sophisticated, highly skilled people--who have jobs, they have jobs,
they're working at jobs for pay doing sophisticated technical work -- and yet, during their limited
discretionary time, they do equally if not more technically sophisticated work, not for
their employer, but for someone else for free! That's a strange economic behavior! Economists
have looked into it: why are they doing this? It's overwhelmingly clear: challenge and mastery,
along with making a contribution, that's it. What you're seeing, more and more, what's
arising is what you might call the purpose motive. Organizations want to have some kind
of transcendent purpose -- partly because it makes coming to work better, partly because
that's the way to get better talent. And what we're seeing now is when the profit motive
becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen. Bad things ethically sometimes,
but also bad things like just like not good stuff. Like crappy products, like lame services,
like uninspiring places to work. When the profit motive is paramount or when it becomes
completely unhitched from the purpose motive, people don't do great things.
More and more organizations are realizing this, sort of disturbing the categories between
what's profit and what's purpose. And I think that heralds something interesting. I think
the companies that are flourishing, whether they're non-profit, for profit, or somewhere
in between, are animated by this purpose model. Let me give you a few examples: Here's the
founder of Skype. He says our goal is to be disruptive but in the cause of making the
world a better place, pretty good purpose. Here's Steve Jobs. I wanna put a ding in the
universe. Alright, that's the kind of thing that might get you up in the morning racing
to go to work. So I think we are purpose maximizers, not
only profit maximizers. The science shows that we care very, very deeply about mastery,
and the science shows that we want to be self- directed. So I think the big takeaway here
is that if we start treating people like people, and not assuming they're simply horses -- slower,
smaller, better smelling horses -- if we get past this ideology of carrots and sticks
and look at the science, I think we can actually build organizations and work lives that make
us better off, and I think we also have the promise to make our world just a little bit
better.
So, while the all the mundane repetitive jobs are being assigned to machines, the jobs which
exist outside of a computer's creative capabilities, are in fact jobs which would exist regardless
of financial reward and in fact produce better results without the incentive.
Media Earlier we looked at the possibility of certain
media companies becoming exclusive to app form, but what would the future of media look
like if a website such as Youtube, decided to adopt the same feature of paid-subscription
viewing? Incorporating say, an embedded planner interface? Well for one, YouTube would have
an immediate advantage as their planer could be customizable, and rather than having pay
for an entire package of channels, users would have the option of paying for individual programing.
The programs themselves would no longer be constrained by the time slot limitations of
a typical TV network, for each program could have its own channel. But this is all merely
speculation right? Well no, turns out YouTube are currently preparing to switch on live
stream subscription viewing.
Film The most profitable sector in the entertainment
business is the film industry. One of the reasons is due to just how expensive it is
to actually make a film, accounting for the sheer amount of people involved in production.
But many production elements are quickly becoming redundant by the ever improving capabilities
of GCI. If filming outside; you only have a few of hours of light each day to maintain
continuity. With CGI, backdrops and lighting can be controlled in a green lit studio. As
far as on screen performance, movies tend to have dozens of actors each requiring multiple
takes of a scene and character CGI has typically been reserved for cartoonish features. Well,
as the technology advances CGI is getting ever closer to reflecting reality.
Ok first thing smile, frown, look mean, eyebrows up, eyebrows down, move your mouth around
like this, now go A, A, E, E, I, I, O, U, very good.
With CGI an actor could perform every scene of a movie inside a green lit studio and since
his image is rendered, you could have a single actor performing multiple rolls. perhaps every
roll in the entire movie could be performed by just 4 or 5 actors and since their emotions
would be captured and stored on the computers, in the future, rather than having to shoot
a scene over and over until finally getting the desired emotional response, perhaps directors
will have the option of choosing from a database of preprogramed actions.
All of this implying mass reduction in the volume of people needed to make a film. Now,
I'm sure many will see the lump of labour fallacy here, and point out that new jobs
would emerge in the form building the CGI, however, video games are entirely CGI, and
the development of a game currently cost between $500k--$5M compared that with the starting
price of two hundred million dollars for a Hollywood movie. And then there's the open
source community. Blender for one is an open source 3D modelling program. Since the blender
project began, a community of volunteers have downloaded the source code and over time,
made gradual improvements to the programs functionality. Today blender is capable of
producing this. Why don't you just admit that you're freaked
out by my robot hand? Ahggg c'mon
Human! This is pretty freaky
"Tears of Steel"
Professional, Scientific & Technical
This sector covers a vast range of jobs and I feel it would be far too time consuming
to address each in great detail. So let's run through these quickly. The workload typically
required with legal advice and representation, is now being diminished through the use of
e-discovery, which enables 1 lawyer to do the work of 500
Accounting services are being replaced with software such as KashFlow which can actually
track bank transactions, obviating the need for manual input accounting.
Translation and interpretation services are also replaceable with software such as Lingual
which uses apple's Siri technology to translate between 35 languages in real-time.
Architectural work may over time become less of a specialist subject. As computers grew
throughout the 90's necessity demanded the majority of us familiarize ourselves with
operating systems. I believe the advancements in 3D printing will demand that people become
failure with computer aided design. And as the software improves, much of the architectural
process could be constructed in a program similar to a Sims game.
Engineering, Computer system design, Photography and Scientific research all seem to fall under
the umbrella of creativity which as demonstrated earlier would exist regardless of paid employment.
Advertising services may be under threat if YouTube were to eliminate their competition
and also incorporate a paid viewing feature which disables advertising.
Consulting services I think can easily be replaced with advanced voice recognition software.
Administrative & Support Services
The core job of an administrator is to process, filter, organize and categorise personal data.
Facebook has recently shown the potential of account synchronization. Instead of having
to fill out a form every time we register to a new website, Now we have the single click
option of "register through Facebook", where all the user has to do I click this
button and the website dose the rest. Of course Facebook is a social network and likely contains
information not necessarily relevant to third party organizations. But if the government
were to further the train of thought here, we could instate a nationalised social HUB,
whereby those of us with say a national insurance number, could at least have the option of
having our relevant details authenticated and synced with our national insurance accounts,
and once the information has been submitted and synced, applying for government benefits,
bank loans, college placements or even making a dentist appointment, could all be achieved
much faster through the on-line hub, reducing our dependency on the processing requirements
of these time consuming middlemen, and having a regulated information HUB could also extend
to the elimination or at the very least a downgrading of the postal service, for all
forms of documentation could be securely transferred electronically to authenticated email addresses.
Financial & Insurance
The world of finances and insurance is obviously dependent upon the circulation of money. So
rather than address specific elements of this sector, it's perhaps easier to simply look
at the root cause of our pending financial collapse. Far from automated systems the fall
of the global financial economy, will result from simple causation principles in mathematics.
Almost every form of trade in the world is represented through currency. Currency is
a proclamation where a certain value is identified by a number. One pound will represent a value,
which can differ slightly between traders but generally holds an accepted range, and
this ranging value is not determined or decided by politicians or bankers, it's a value
derived from the market. When calculating the cost of housing, energy, transportation,
as well as goods and services, we are presented with a consumer price index and thus derive
the overall market value of the pound. The markets themselves are predicated on consumer
spending. So if all consumers continually spend the same amount, the markets prices
would stabilize and the economy could potentially function harmoniously, neither growing nor
contracting. But let's step back and look at where money actually comes from in the
first place. All money in circulation was created by and is the property of the central
bank, in our case the bank of England. This bank loans money to the commercial and investment
banks, which then issue loans themselves to rival banks, consumers and businesses, so
since we are all trading borrowed money, cyclical consumption is not only a necessity for ensuring
the integrity of the pound, it is also a requirement for the banks, thus the currency, to remain
operational. Only one problem with this, this borrowing from the banks process isn't quite
the same as a game of Monopoly where a friend might loan you some cash until you pass go!
All the money borrowed from both the central and commercial banks, has to be paid back
with interest, but since the interest is in fact NOT created alongside the initial loan,
the ability to pay back more money than exists in principle is a mathematical impossibility
if the goal was maintaining economic harmony. So instead we try to resolve the problem generated
with interest, through a process called quantitative easing, in which the banks may temporarily
lower interest rates and the government will often borrow even more money at interest,
in an effort to grow the economy. See rather than address the fundamental flaw
of this system, we instead perpetuate an infinite growth paradigm, which of course, is ultimately
unsustainable on a finite planet, and in looking at the numbers it doesn't seem this quantitative
easing has had much effect, here's the average monthly consumer costs in 2008, compared with
today, we have an overall price increase of 25% while wages during the same time only
rose by 6%. These results are simply because perpetual growth is unsustainable and Bankruptcy,
redundancy, foreclosure, administrations, liquidations, loan defaults and the raising
of a country's debt ceiling, are all built in consequential and we should expect nothing
ells of this system.
Other Having looked at each sector of employment,
it appears we are heading towards a fully automated economy, some might say this would
still require lots of human workers? Machines after all do have at least one constraint,
while they can work without a monetary incentive, the do require energy.
Our current methods of energy cultivation result in the depletion of natural oil and
the burning of CO2 emitting fossil fuels, but these methods are wasteful, cumbersome
and quite frankly out-dated. Solutions to the energy crisis are often cited in the form
of nuclear power, but after the disasters in Japan, perhaps we should be looking to
cleaner, safer solutions. Solar energy is gradually becoming more and
more accepted by the mainstream, even the government are incentivising home owners to
adopt solar panels with the Feed-In Tariffs scheme, where participants will be compensated
for any surplus energy generated. While an initial solar panel investment may deter some
of us, it's reassuring to know that the cost of solar is currently dropping at a rate
of 30% per year. But could we really sustain our energy needs on solar panels alone? Well
firstly, solar technology is not limited to buildings.
An American company called solar roadways are developing photovoltaic solar roads. With
current technology it is estimated that full integration of solar roads across the US,
would generate enough power to satisfy the current energy usage of the entire planet.
These roads also incorporate LED displays which could probably be programed to coincide
with autonomous vehicles ensuring even greater road safety. The roads in colder climates
would be installed with embedded heating elements, eliminating ice and snow hazards as well as
the required jobs of snow ploughs and gritters. Solar energy aside, how about wind? According
to the US department of energy, if wind turbines were fully harvested in just 3 of Americas
50 states, the energy cultivated would be enough to power the whole of the USA. But
wind farming is also not limited to the gigantic turbines which most of us are aware of. We
could be utilizing vertical axis wind turbines with magnetic bearings, which cause the wind
vain to levitate. Reducing the friction and cut-in wind speed usually hindered by gears.
You could literally blow on these things and create energy,
So what happens when we placed vertical axis turbines inside street lamps? Well, when a
vehicle drives past it creates a gust of wind and in turn powers the lights.
Then we have tidal power. According to Crown Estate, the UK has the potential to harness
up to 153 gigawatts, accounting for more than 20% of our current energy usage. They also
found a potential 27 gigawatts from wave energy. And then of course we have geothermal power.
So here's the earth, in countries like Canada and the United States seasons come and go.
In the summer months it can be quite warm and in the winter very cold, while the temperature
of the surface for the earth changes with the seasons, the temperature of the ground
below the surface does not. Even at just two meters or six feet under the ground it is
about fifteen degrees Celsius or sixty degrees farenheight all year round. Geothermal takes
advantage of this consistent temperature and uses it to heat and cool homes. So how does
it work? First, a large hole is made into the ground and filled with a series of pipes
a special heat absorbing fluid constantly runs through the pipes. In the winter, heat
from the ground is absorbed into the pipes and pushed upwards where it can be circulated
throughout the house. In the summer the process is reversed, heat from the house is absorbed
into the pipes and pushed downwards where it can be stores within the cooler earth.
So what are the benefits of geothermal heating? Well for one you can save a lot of money geothermal
uses way less energy to operate and this means a heating bill that is up to eighty percent
lower than that of a traditional heating system, secondly geothermal doesn't run on fossil
fuels like oil or gas and therefore produces significantly less greenhouse gasses. So,
look into geothermal today for a cleaner and sustainable source of energy.
As well as heating homes, geothermal is being used to convert heat in to energy. And in
a 2006 MIT study, geothermal was found to have an energy potential of two thousand zenojules.
The total global energy consumption is currently around one half a zenejule per year, signifying
four thousand years of planetary power from geothermal alone. Meaning the powering of
an automated economy is simply a non-issue. But then there's the other argument regarding
machine maintenance. It is now a general assumption that all machines are in constant need repairs.
And well, this is true, at least with respects to market products. See within the market
there is planned obsolescence, in order to maintain cyclical consumption of goods, it
is crucial that products have a short lifespan. The biggest issue or potential flaw to me
over this invention is the fact, that it's not an invention or a product that actually
will be purchased more than once, you kind of almost want your product to break occasionally.
If we were to removed our dependency on cyclical consumption we could create products to last,
and the only threat to a machines lifespan, would be atmospheric erosion. This is why
in the future all machine parts will be treated with a super hydrophobic coating, which uses
nanotechnology to repel water and refined oils.
Problem
Even when we do recognize the implications of mass mechanisation, people tend to think
"not my job, not the job I happen to have spent four years studying for, the business
my family left me, the product I invested my life savings in, that job will be around
forever". I'm sorry to tell you that is merely wishful thinking, and yes your job
is vulnerable; even if not directly threatened by atomisation; we are all affected by the
mechanisms of causation.
When a store fails the products on those shelves thus manufacturing is affected, just as when
a product becomes obsolete, the stores in turn suffer. Also, when 50% of household products
are either redundant or freely downloadable, what do you think will happen to the world
of advertising? Autonomous cars eliminate the need for a driving licences thus the need
for driving schools and instructors, and since accidents are near impossible, there will
be a reduction in time with car insurance companies, repair shops and of course, taxable
offenses relating to speeding fines and the like. And as the overall state of the economy
weakens, commercial banks, real estate and government funded institutions such as education
and healthcare all be affected.
If by now you are asking "what's the real solution to the unemployment problem?" Well
my question is what's the problem? The loss of a job is historically synonymous with degradation
and poverty. Yet we are looking at a future in which organic food and clean energy are
cultivated with levels of abundance never before seen. Homes can be constructed within
a day without any human involvement. All tools, aesthetic objects and even medicine are designed,
downloaded, customized and printed on demand, either made from in your in the home or delivered
via autonomous vehicles, which have improved road safety and reduced travel time. Then
of course there's better healthcare, free education, less waste and this is all to say
nothing of the explosion in entertainment. The real solution would have nothing to do
with capitalism, socialism, communism, the free enterprise system or any other sub related
group. For these are market economies. And as the financial market dies, we need to transition
into a new sustainable economy, one which is designed around ensuring our survival,
meaning we must all have equal access to life supporting needs without the ridiculous number
game or any monetary exchange. We have the technology and the understanding
today of how to scientifically orient our resource distribution. But of course transitions
are never easy. There is nothing preventing a period of mass poverty and starvation. In
fact there is nothing preventing us from holding on to this out-dated, competition based, infinite
growth market economy, until we have nothing left.
By raising awareness of our technological potential and having the population understand
the imminent need to transition, we can alleviate the fear usually generated through ignorance
and allow the change to happen with little opposition. Luckily for us, I don't have
to sit here and propose setting up a mass awareness raising campaign, it already exists.
With over half a million members and hundreds of chapter's world-wide the zeitgeist movement
is the largest grassroots movement in history, and has set out to raise awareness as to our
true potential on this planet while at the same time advocating a transition in to a
new sustainable global paradigm.