Home · Book Reports · 2022 · The Fourth Industrial Revolution

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Thoughts

This is one of those books where, if you reference it, or even directly quote it, you will likely be called a conspiracy theorist. This is obviously used to deflect away from the very blunt language this book (and Covid-19: The Great Reset use to outline how Mr. Schwab and his merry band over at the World Economic Forum want to transform society. I suspect it is less painful for people to use the ad hominem attack of “conspiracy theorist” than it is for them to face what this and similar works portend. For those willing to set aside their cognitive dissonance and dive into the book(s)… strap in, because it is a wild ride indeed.

The main theme is clearly reshaping or transforming society. There is constant talk of collaboration. A call for public-private partnerships where everyone/all business/industries/governments/etc are involved.

Honestly I’m not seeing the difference between 3rd and 4th industrial revolution except 4th is faster. Schwab tries to differentiate, but the difference is in degree, not kind.

A few mega-trends, tech that will upend industries/societies in the coming decade(s): – autonomous vehicles – 3D printing – advanced robotics – new materials

On the bio-tech side, genetic engineering and neuroscience are the principle ingredients to the future. Both ostensibly, like the rest of the advancements, are to be beneficial to mankind, but if you read a little between the lines, they seem to usher in ever increasing controls to make and monitor humans so that we are more productive (ie - better slaves).

On the point of bio-tech, ethical considerations are “set aside”.

Schwab does outline some potential negatives with his vision:

• economic replacement of labor with capital (tech)
• more inequality as the haves have access to expensive tech
• middle class no longer middle class
• concerns about deflationary impact of tech

We see that these concerns are really about quelling potential revolution/revolts. The book in whole walks a fine line between rolling out population control mechanisms while simultaneously pacifying said populations.

Another faux concern voiced is changing demographics.

As people live longer there will be more old people. As people have less babies there will be less children. These children would be the ones paying into social security/welfare programs many of the elderly depend on.

The solution is clear cut: the need to “drastically increase” retirement age. Notice how it isn’t only increase, but “drastically”. This is framed as a positive because older people can no remain “productive” longer, as if productivity were synonymous with a good life.

Another problem Schwab foresees is that all this innovation/automation will lead to job loss. Like past industrial/digital revolution these job losses will be offset by creating new jobs in new industries.

The example given is agriculture, where the population working in it was 90% of US now 2%. I argue making apps and growing crops are not in the same league. A lot of this app/software work is more make-work. How man hundreds of thousands of man-hours go into things like the endless updates for Firefox and Chrome? Are these things really improving or is all that labor/creativity being syphoned off in the same of “everyone must have a 40-hour per week job”?

Interestingly he then goes on to say fourth industrial revolution is already creating less jobs than the previous revolutions and that growth/productivity is sluggish. I’d argue that productivity and growth are actually negative. So much of the economy is make-work and financial voodoo that, if you are being honest, one must admit is not real production. Printing trillions of dollars or repackaging financial instruments into endless derivatives is not growth.

An example of a positive impact is the increased efficiency in hailing a cab (uber). I have to wonder, does this really have some kind of meaningful impact?! It feels very similar to calling make-work productivity.

Another example given is the rapid increase in fuel efficiency/energy storage. To this I simply ask: where?

‘Farhad Manjoo: “We may end up with a future in which a fraction of the workforce will do a portfolio of things to generate an income – you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an Airbnb host and a Taskrabbit”.27’

How fulfilling! You can be busy as a bee 40 hours a week providing every convenience to our overlords.

The real problem here isn’t all the make-work to keep people busy in the rat-race. No, the real risk is global instability/violence brought on by inequality. If you read between the lines here, Schwab is concerned about maintaining the status-quo and keeping everyone “working”. This runs quite counter to the rest of the book. If we are to believe automation and the like will push out labor, shouldn’t we be looking to reduce the working hours of everyone? I recall reading about a claim made by (maybe) Buckminster Fuller at one of the first world’s fairs. He said something like the average person would only be working 15 hours a week while still producing as much as they did currently. In reality, Mom and Dad are now both working 40+ hours a week to raise 1-2 children whereas in the 60s only Dad worked to raise 2-3 children. So much for those technological gains reaching the working man.

A trend Schwab accurately recognized early on was that customers were beginning care more about the “experience” (ala Apple store as an experience) than the actual product. I think this is the thin end of the wedge when it comes to “you will own nothing and be happy.” Cars as a service, houseing as a service, everything as a service where the service is an “experience”.

On the front of neuroscience, which is to be used to make us more productive and provide a better work-life balance, there is no mention of straight up using it as hyper propaganda/brainwashing. Later an example is given where in an experiment at MIT depressed mice (I would be interested in knowing what that constitutes - not knocking it completely, actually interested) were “treated” by having happy memories triggered. Two things come to mind when I read this. First is, why are we not treating the root cause of the massive increase in depression instead of masking it? I think it is fairly obvious at this point that the increase in depression comes from several prominent modern world factors:

• Social isolation (social media is not a replacement for actual friends)
• Economic uncertainty
• Endless fear mongering by the media (terrorism, climate change, etc)

Secondly, if a technology exists to be able to alter your mood by triggering memories, could this technology be used to pacify someone completely? Could it be used to trigger fear? Hate? Love? This sounds like an utterly dystopian nightmare to me.

“Analysis provided by sensors placed on assets enables their constant monitoring and proactive maintenance and, in doing so, maximizes their utilization.”

Vaguely reading between the lines… assets = humans.

Everything will be a service (You will own nothing and be happy).

Long-distance truckers supposedly would rather pay by the mile for tires rather than simply buying them. The Tire companies would monitor the tires and offer end-to-end service. This is, unironically, tires as a service.

The ‘you will own nothing and be happy’ is doubled down at the consumer level:

“An increasing number of consumers no longer purchase and own physical objects, but rather pay for the delivery of the underlying service which they access via a digital platform. It is possible, for example, to get digital access to billions of books via Amazon’s Kindle Store, to play almost any song in the world via Spotify, or to join a car-sharing enterprise that provides mobility services without the need to own the vehicle.”

This is the “always in beta” philosophy of modern software that I despise. The example I’ve used many times is web browsers. They (Firefox/Chrome) are nearing version 100 as of now, but are they really better than they were a decade ago? The UI is rearranged (and I’ve never met anyone happy with this), the add-ons are managed differently, etc. The actual reading web pages hasn’t changed much. Things like HTML5 might constitute a browser update, but HTML isn’t updated frequently. In the end, I think most software development is busy-work that exists to keep people pacified in the rat race.

Power is shifting from state to non-state actors (Public-Private Partnership).

The 24-hour news cycle puts pressure on leaders to comment or act immediately to events, reducing the time available for arriving at measured, principled and calibrated responses.

This constant churn of news also serves as a memory hole. In a few days the “old” news is forgotten by most.

Decentralized payment (ala bitcoin)

“The countries and regions that succeed in establishing tomorrow’s preferred international norms in the main categories and fields of the new digital economy 5G communications, the use of commercial drones, the internet of things, digital health, advanced manufacturing and so on) will reap considerable economic and financial benefits. In contrast, countries that promote their own norms and rules to give advantages to their domestic producers, while also blocking foreign competitors and reducing royalties that domestic companies pay for foreign technologies, risk becoming isolated from global norms, putting these nations at risk of becoming the laggards of the new digital economy.42”

Norms are what the majority is doing, not what is best. You could argue that those nations to protect their internal norms might very well be the best places to live, assuming you want those norms.

“Redefining individual identities: Individuals used to identify their lives most closely with a place, an ethnic group, a particular culture or even a language. The advent of online engagement and increased exposure to ideas from other cultures mean that identities are now more fungible than previously. People are now much more comfortable with carrying and managing multiple identities.

“Redefining family identity: Thanks to the combination of historical migration patterns and low-cost connectivity, family structures are being redefined. No longer bound by space, they often stretch across the world, with constant family dialogue, reinforced by digital means. Increasingly, the traditional family unit is being replaced by the trans-national family network.

These two quotes are part and parcel to the elimination of nations/cultures at the highest level and families/individuals at the lowest.

James Giordano, a neuroethicist at Georgetown University Medical Center, “The brain is the next battlespace.”51

What a joke. Aquino wrote From PSYOP to MindWar - The Psychology of Victory in 1980 and I think there were a few earlier works detailing the same ideas.

The appendix lists lots of negative impact in addiction/escapism with digital connectedness.

Some of the ideas touched on include:

• IoT
• implantable computers
• smart home/grid/city
• AI
• big data
• driverless cars
• automation
• “sharing” economy
• Additive manufacturing/3D printing (Klaus loves this)

One major negative, that at least is mentioned repeatedly is there will be an almost a total destruction of privacy and total centralized control.

There are three “shifts” that I want to focus on here, but all of them are interesting to read through.

Shift 16: Bitcoin and the Blockchain

The tipping point: 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) stored on blockchain technology

By 2025: 58% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

Positive impacts

• Increased financial inclusion in emerging markets, as financial services on the blockchain gain critical mass
• Disintermediation of financial institutions, as new services and value exchanges are created directly on the blockchain
• An explosion in tradable assets, as all kinds of value exchange can be hosted on the blockchain
• Better property records in emerging markets, and the ability to make everything a tradable asset
• Contacts and legal services increasingly tied to code linked to the blockchain, to be used as unbreakable escrow or programmatically designed smart contracts
• Increased transparency, as the blockchain is essentially a global ledger storing all transactions

Bitcoin is listed with literally no negatives. I thought globalists hated bitcoin?!

Shift 18: Governments and the Blockchain

control over monetary policy.

it creates the ability for new taxing mechanisms to be built into the blockchain itself (e.g. a small transaction tax).

Shift 23: Neurotechnologies 104

neuroscience to monitor and manipulate the brain

• The Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program by DARPA is a precursor to memory restoration and enhancement
• Depression symptoms in mice could be cured by the artificial reactivation of happy memories as evidenced by Neuroscientists at MIT

Again, instead of treating the cause of depression we gloss over the symptoms (with literal brain manipulation).

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 01: The Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Chapter 02: Drivers
• Chapter 03: Impact
• 3.1 Economy
• 3.2 Business
• 3.3 National and Global
• 3.4 Society
• 3.5 The Individual
• The Way Forward
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix: Deep Shift
• Shift 1: Implantable Technologies
• Shift 2: Our Digital Presence
• Shift 3: Vision as the New Interface
• Shift 4: Wearable Internet
• Shift 5: Ubiquitous Computing
• Shift 6: A Supercomputer in Your Pocket
• Shift 7: Storage for All
• Shift 8: The Internet of and for Things
• Shift 9: The Connected Home
• Shift 10: Smart Cities
• Shift 11: Big Data for Decisions
• Shift 12: Driverless Cars
• Shift 13: Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making
• Shift 14: AI and White-Collar Jobs
• Shift 15: Robotics and Services
• Shift 16: Bitcoin and the Blockchain
• Shift 17: The Sharing Economy
• Shift 18: Governments and the Blockchain
• Shift 19: 3D Printing and Manufacturing
• Shift 20: 3D Printing and Human Health
• Shift 21: 3D Printing and Consumer Products
• Shift 22: Designer Beings 103
• Shift 23: Neurotechnologies 104

Introduction

page 7:

• Of the many diverse and fascinating challenges we face today, the most intense and important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution, which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind.

• …governments and institutions are being reshaped, as are systems of education, healthcare and transportation, among many others. New ways of using technology to change behaviour and our systems of production and consumption…

page 9:

• one of the book’s goals:

• to provide a platform from which to inspire public-private cooperation and partnerships on issues related to the technological revolution.

Chapter 01: The Fourth Industrial Revolution

1.1 Historical Context

page 11:

• The first industrial revolution spanned from about 1760 to around 1840. Triggered by the construction of railroads and the invention of the steam engine, it ushered in mechanical production. The second industrial revolution, which started in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, made mass production possible, fostered by the advent of electricity and the assembly line. The third industrial revolution began in the 1960s. It is usually called the computer or digital revolution because it was catalysed by the development of semiconductors, mainframe computing (1960s), personal computing (1970s and 80s) and the internet (1990s).

page 12:

• [The Fourth Indusrial Revolution] is characterized by a much more ubiquitous and mobile internet, by smaller and more powerful sensors that have become cheaper, and by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

• Digital technologies that have computer hardware, software and networks at their core are not new, but in a break with the third industrial revolution, they are becoming more sophisticated and integrated…

• So the 3rd and 4th are ‘different’ in degree, not kind.

• The second industrial revolution has yet to be fully experienced by 17% of the world as nearly 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity. This is also true for the third industrial revolution, with more than half of the world’s population, 4 billion people, most of whom live in the developing world, lacking internet access. The spindle (the hallmark of the first industrial revolution) took almost 120 years to spread outside of Europe. By contrast, the internet permeated across the globe in less than a decade.

page 13:

• …the world lacks a consistent, positive and common narrative that outlines the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, a narrative that is essential if we are to empower a diverse set of individuals and communities and avoid a popular backlash against the fundamental changes underway.

1.2 Profound and Systemic Change

page 14:

• In 1990, the three biggest companies in Detroit had a combined market capitalization of $36 billion, revenues of $250 billion, and 1.2 million employees. In 2014, the three biggest companies in Silicon Valley had a considerably higher market capitalization ($1.09 trillion), generated roughly the same revenues ($247 billion), but with about 10 times fewer employees (137,000).3

• This feels misleading. The employees part I can accept, but the market cap and revenues… are they inflation adjusted? If not, the Silicon Valley revenue is terrible. Market cap is essentially meaningless, inflation adjusted or not.

page 16:

• progress of innovation (which compels companies to substitute labour for capital).

• As a result, the great beneficiaries of the fourth industrial revolution are the providers of intellectual or physical capital – the innovators, the investors, and the shareholders, which explains the rising gap in wealth between those who depend on their labour and those who own capital. It also accounts for the disillusionment among so many workers, convinced that their real income may not increase over their lifetime and that their children may not have a better life than theirs.

page 17:

• The concentration of benefits and value in just a small percentage of people is also exacerbated by the so-called platform effect in which digitally- driven organizations create networks that match buyers and sellers of a wide variety of products and services and thereby enjoy increasing returns to scale.

• aka monopolies, aka Amazon, Facebook…

Chapter 02: Drivers

2.1 Megatrends

2.1.1 Physical

page 19:

– autonomous vehicles – 3D printing – advanced robotics – new materials

2.1.2 Digital

page 22:

• internet of things (IoT)

• This will radically alter the way in which we manage supply chains by enabling us to monitor and optimize assets and activities to a very granular level.

• Any package, pallet or container can now be equipped with a sensor, transmitter or radio frequency identification (RFID) tag that allows a company to track where it is as it moves through the supply chain – how it is performing, how it is being used, and so on.

• Humans to!

• the blockchain often described as a “distributed ledger”, is a secure protocol where a network of computers collectively verifies a transaction before it can be recorded and approved. The technology that underpins the blockchain creates trust by enabling people who do not know each other (and thus have no underlying basis for trust) to collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority – i.e. a custodian or central ledger.

• Good to see the oligarchs/central planners promoting blockchain (ala bitcoin). But… I thought blockchain was bad for them… lol.

page 23:

• Bitcoin is so far the best known blockchain application but the technology will soon give rise to countless others. If, at the moment, blockchain technology records financial transactions made with digital currencies such as Bitcoin, it will in the future serve as a registrar for things as different as birth and death certificates, titles of ownership, marriage licenses, educational degrees, insurance claims, medical procedures and votes – essentially any kind of transaction that can be expressed in code. Some countries or institutions are already investigating the blockchain’s potential. The government of Honduras, for example, is using the technology to handle land titles while the Isle of Man is testing its use in company registration.

• technology-enabled platforms make possible what is now called the on-demand economy (referred to by some as the sharing economy).

• The on-demand economy and sharing economy have nothing to do with one another, unless you accept that things like rideSHARE have become nothing more than on-demand taxi services. (aka, no one is sharing anything)

• The on-demand economy raises the fundamental question: What is worth owning – the platform or the underlying asset? As media strategist Tom Goodwin wrote in a TechCrunch article in March 2015: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.” 9

2.1.3 Biological

page 24:

• ease of genetic sequencing

• Synthetic biology is the next step. It will provide us with the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA. Setting aside the profound ethical issues this raises, these advances will not only have a profound and immediate impact on medicine but also on agriculture and the production of biofuels.

page 25:

• The ability to edit biology can be applied to practically any cell type, enabling the creation of genetically modified plants or animals, as well as modifying the cells of adult organisms including humans.

• The list of potential applications is virtually endless – ranging from the ability to modify animals so that they can be raised on a diet that is more economical or better suited to local conditions, to creating food crops that are capable of withstanding extreme temperatures or drought.

page 26:

• We are developing new ways to embed and employ devices that monitor our activity levels and blood chemistry, and how all of this links to well-being, mental health and productivity at home and at work. We are also learning far more about how the human brain functions and we are seeing exciting developments in the field of neurotechnology.

• Please monitor my brain to make me a better slave!

• It is in the biological domain where I see the greatest challenges for the development of both social norms and appropriate regulation. We are confronted with new questions around what it means to be human, what data and information about our bodies and health can or should be shared with others, and what rights and responsibilities we have when it comes to changing the very genetic code of future generations.

• it is now far easier to manipulate with precision the human genome within viable embryos means that we are likely to see the advent of designer babies in the future who possess particular traits or who are resistant to a specific disease.

• A Brave New World.

page 27:

• New evidence, however, indicates that the career incentives and funding conditions in universities today favour incremental, conservative research over bold and innovative programmes.12 One antidote to research conservatism in academia is to encourage more commercial forms of research.

• outside of overview

2.2 Tipping Points

page 28:

• Two tipping points that were not part of the original survey – designer beings and neurotechnologies – are also included but do not appear on Table

• Interesting, two of the most controversial things are omitted.

page 30:

Table 1: Tipping points expected to occur by 2025

Chapter 03: Impact

page 31:

• The scale and breadth of the unfolding technological revolution will usher in economic, social and cultural changes of such phenomenal proportions that they are almost impossible to envisage.

• The next step from Cultural Patters and Technical Change

3.1 Economy

page 32:

• The fourth industrial revolution will have a monumental impact on the global economy, so vast and multifaceted that it makes it hard to disentangle one particular effect from the next.

3.1.1 Growth

• I am well aware of the potential deflationary impact of technology (even when defined as “good deflation”) and how some of its distributional effects can favour capital over labour and also squeeze wages (and therefore consumption). I also see how the fourth industrial revolution enables many people to consume more at a lower price and in a way that often makes consumption more sustainable and therefore responsible.

• Deflation is only bad for those that live and die by credit (that they are happy to have inflated away).

• You will own nothing, and be happy.

page 33:

• The world’s population is forecast to expand from 7.2 billion today to 8 billion by 2030 and 9 billion by 2050. This should lead to an increase in aggregate demand. But there is another powerful demographic trend: ageing. The conventional wisdom is that ageing primarily affects rich countries in the West. This is not the case, however. Birth rates are falling below replacement levels in many regions of the world – not only in Europe, where the decline began, but also in most of South America and the Caribbean, much of Asia including China and southern India, and even some countries in the Middle East and North Africa such as Lebanon, Morocco and Iran.

• How he can leave out Japan is unbelievable.

• unless retirement ages are drastically increased so that older members of society can continue to contribute to the workforce (an economic imperative that has many economic benefits), the working-age population falls at the same time as the percentage of dependent elders increases.

• Not only increased “drastically” increased

page 34:

• Over the past decade, productivity around the world (whether measured as labour productivity or total-factor productivity (TFP)) has remained sluggish, despite the exponential growth in technological progress and investments in innovation.17 This most recent incarnation of the productivity paradox – the perceived failure of technological innovation to result in higher levels of productivity – is one of today’s great economic enigmas that predates the onset of the Great Recession, and for which there is no satisfactory explanation.

• I’d argue that productivity is not sluggish, but down. Today, what do people produce? Much of it is digital, which I can concede has a place (like a movie, or a website), but how much of it is simply shuffling numbers? Accounting for example, produces nothing (and never has). What about working to release the 100th version of Firefox (or any other software) that by any measure should have had development stopped (or at least considerably slowed) 10 years ago. Millions of man-hours for the sake of “upgrades”. Feels like the Red Queen Effect to me.

page 35:

• Productivity is the most important determinant of long-term growth and rising living standards so its absence, if maintained throughout the fourth industrial revolution, means that we will have less of each. Yet how can we reconcile the data indicating declining productivity with the expectations of higher productivity that tend to be associated with the exponential progress of technology and innovation?

• Growth, we must always have growth. Why would a solid state economy be such a bad thing? No inflation = capital can be accumulated by anyone with excess income, prices remain steady so better future purchase planning can be used, debt becomes far less forgiving (so would be used less recklessly). In regards to the environment, a steady state economy would/should have a steady population. Renewable resources (like timber) could be expertly managed.

• One primary argument focuses on the challenge of measuring inputs and outputs and hence discerning productivity. Innovative goods and services created in the fourth industrial revolution are of significantly higher functionality and quality, yet are delivered in markets that are fundamentally different from those which we are traditionally used to measuring. Many new goods and services are “non-rival”, have zero marginal costs and/or harness highly-competitive markets via digital platforms, all of which result in lower prices. Under these conditions, our traditional statistics may well fail to capture real increases in value as consumer surplus is not yet reflected in overall sales or higher profits.

• This, bluntly, seems like bullshit.

• Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, points to various examples such as the increased efficiency of hailing a taxi through a mobile app or renting a car through the power of the on-demand economy. There are many other similar services whose use tends to increase efficiency and hence productivity. Yet because they are essentially free, they therefore provide uncounted value at home and at work. This creates a discrepancy between the value delivered via a given service versus growth as measured in national statistics. It also suggests that we are actually producing and consuming more efficiently than our economic indicators suggest.21

• More bullshit. The “increased efficiency of hailing a taxi”? Are you kidding me?

page 36:

• My optimism stems from three main sources.

• First, the fourth industrial revolution offers the opportunity to integrate the unmet needs of two billion people into the global economy, driving additional demands for existing products and services by empowering and connecting individuals and communities all over the world to one another.

• More people consuming (what a great thing given the fragility of supply chains as demonstrated by COVID and dwindling resources). Not to mention the environmental impacts.

• Second, the fourth industrial revolution will greatly increase our ability to address negative externalities and, in the process, to boost potential economic growth. Take carbon emissions… Rapid technological advances in renewable energy, fuel efficiency and energy storage not only make investments in these fields increasingly profitable, boosting GDP growth, but they also contribute to mitigating climate change, one of the major global challenges of our time.

• What fuel efficiency? What energy storage? More bullshit.

• Third, as I discuss in the next section, businesses, governments and civil society leaders with whom I interact all tell me that they are struggling to transform their organizations to realize fully the efficiencies that digital capabilities deliver. We are still at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, and it will require entirely new economic and organizational structures to grasp its full value.

• So there is so much rapid innovation that businesses can’t even utilize it?

• To sum up, I believe that the combination of structural factors (over- indebtedness and ageing societies) and systemic ones (the introduction of the platform and on-demand economies, the increasing relevance of decreasing marginal costs, etc.) will force us to rewrite our economic textbooks.

• I’d say those econ books need rewriting, or maybe even reverted back to some sane pre-neoclassical thought.

3.1.2 Employment

page 37:

• Despite the potential positive impact of technology on economic growth, it is nonetheless essential to address its possible negative impact, at least in the short term, on the labour market.

• technology-fuelled disruption and automation substitute capital for labour

page 38:

• Take agriculture as an example. In the US, people working on the land consisted of 90% of the workforce at the beginning of the 19th century, but today, this accounts for less than 2%.

• The app economy provides an example of a new job ecosystem. It only began in 2008 when Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, let outside developers create applications for the iPhone. By mid-2015, the global app economy was expected to generate over $100 billion in revenues, surpassing the film industry, which has been in existence for over a century.

• It feels like rotation farmers into app developers (obviously not what is being said here) leads people from actual production to make-work. While farms can and should utilize technology, what reason should people have to make apps? How many apps does on need? It is like my argument against things like the endless development of, for example, Firefox. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions by now) man-hours poured into something that was “done” a decade ago. Is this all for the sake of keeping people on the rat-race treadmill? Would the world (the people that make it up) have been better off not sinking all those hours into apps and instead enjoying time with friends and family? There is this insistence that everyone must work; this starts to fall apart what machines and technology can fulfill our needs. I don’t have the answer to this, but is trying to force the 40-hour work week on everyone when it is only producing (questionably and artificially at that) wants better than simple have less want production but more free time as individuals?

• The techno-optimists ask: If we extrapolate from the past, why should it be different this time? They acknowledge that technology can be disruptive but claim that it always ends up improving productivity and increasing wealth, leading in turn to greater demand for goods and services and new types of jobs to satisfy it. The substance of the argument goes as follows: Human needs and desires are infinite so the process of supplying them should also be infinite. Barring the normal recessions and occasional depressions, there will always be work for everybody.

• Needs are not infinite, but wants are. The question that isn’t being asked here is how the wants rank. Assuming you have your basic needs met (this is probably an argument for universal basic income - not that I am trying to make one) would you rather keep working 40 hours a week to buy apps and such, or would you rather work 0 hours a week and relax? Obviously you would likely fall somewhere in the middle; work 15 hours a week to buy some apps while still having plenty of time to relax and live life.

page 39:

• So far, the evidence is this: The fourth industrial revolution seems to be creating fewer jobs in new industries than previous revolutions. According to an estimate from the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, only 0.5% of the US workforce is employed in industries that did not exist at the turn of the century, a far lower percentage than the approximately 8% of new jobs created in new industries during the 1980s and the 4.5% of new jobs created during the 1990s. This is corroborated by a recent US Economic Census, which sheds some interesting light on the relationship between technology and unemployment. It shows that innovations in information and other disruptive technologies tend to raise productivity by replacing existing workers, rather than creating new products needing more labour to produce them.

page 40:

• Employment will grow in high-income cognitive and creative jobs and low-income manual occupations, but it will greatly diminish for middle-income routine and repetitive jobs.

page 47:

• we should take the opportunity of a transforming economy to redesign labour policies and business practices to ensure that both men and women are empowered to their full extent.

page 48:

• Ensuring that swathes of the globe are not left behind is not a moral imperative; it is a critical goal that would mitigate the risk of global instability due to geopolitical and security challenges such as migration flows.

page 49:

• The danger is that the fourth industrial revolution would mean that a winner- takes-all dynamic plays out between countries as well as within them.

• Unless public- and private- sector leaders assure citizens that they are executing credible strategies to improve peoples’ lives, social unrest, mass migration, and violent extremism could intensify

3.1.3 The Nature of Work

page 50:

• Farhad Manjoo: “We may end up with a future in which a fraction of the workforce will do a portfolio of things to generate an income – you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an Airbnb host and a Taskrabbit”.27

• How fulfilling!

• Is this the beginning of a new and flexible work revolution that will empower any individual who has an internet connection and that will eliminate the shortage of skills? Or will it trigger the onset of an inexorable race to the bottom in a world of unregulated virtual sweatshops If the result is the latter – a world of the precariat, a social class of workers who move from task to task to make ends meet while suffering a loss of labour rights, bargaining rights and job security – would this create a potent source of social unrest and political instability?

• Notice how ‘concerned’ Klaus is about making sure the proles don’t revolt. He only cares about remaining on top and not suffering any consequences as technology allows him to phase out as many useless eaters as possible.

page 51:

• Karl Marx expressed his concern that the process of specialization would reduce the sense of purpose that we all seek from work, while Buckminster Fuller cautioned that the risks of over- specialization tend “to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles.”30

• we are at a point where the desire for purposeful engagement is becoming a major issue. This is particularly the case for the younger generation who often feel that corporate jobs constrain their ability to find meaning and purpose in life.

3.2 Business

3.2.1 Customer Expectations

page 54:

• Customer expectations are being redefined into experiences The Apple experience, for example, is not just about how we use the product but also about the packaging, the brand, the shopping and the customer service.

page 55:

• It is the ability to tap into multiple sources of data – from personal to industrial, from lifestyle to behavioural – that offers granular insights into the customer’s purchasing journey that would have been inconceivable until recently. Today, data and metrics deliver in quasi-real time critical insights into customer needs and behaviours that drive marketing and sales decisions.

• Couple this with Klaus’ concern with revolt and neuroscience and you can see that data allows one to identify customer behavior and, say, dissident behavior in the exact same way.

3.2.2 Data-Enhanced Products

page 56:

• Tesla, for example, shows how over-the-air software updates and connectivity can be used to enhance a product (a car) after purchase, rather than let it depreciate over time.

• The reality is Tesla will disable features of the car to make second-hand buyers pay again!

• Analysis provided by sensors placed on assets enables their constant monitoring and proactive maintenance and, in doing so, maximizes their utilization.

• Assets humans

page 57:

• Long-distance haulers are interested in propositions where they pay tire manufacturers by the 1,000 kilometres of road use rather than periodically buying new tires. This is because the combination of sensors and analytics enables tire companies to monitor driver performance, fuel consumption and tire wear to offer a complete end-to-end service.

• Tires as a service, unironically.

3.2.3 Collaborative Innovation

3.2.4 New Operating Models

page 58:

• An increasing number of consumers no longer purchase and own physical objects, but rather pay for the delivery of the underlying service which they access via a digital platform. It is possible, for example, to get digital access to billions of books via Amazon’s Kindle Store, to play almost any song in the world via Spotify, or to join a car-sharing enterprise that provides mobility services without the need to own the vehicle.

• You will own nothing and be happy.

page 60:

• My sense is that successful organizations will increasingly shift from hierarchical structures to more networked and collaborative models.

• The Starfish and the Spider

page 62:

• In the automotive realm, a car is now a computer on wheels, with electronics representing roughly 40% of the cost of a car. The decision by Apple and Google to enter the automotive market shows that a tech company can now transform into a car company. In the future, as the value shifts towards the electronics, the technology and licensing software may prove more strategically beneficial than manufacturing the car per se.

• the philosophy of “always in beta” (always evolving) will become more prevalent.

• This is exactly the opposite of what a stable economy should want. It is also the source of much make-work.

Box B: Environmental Renewal and Preservation

3.3 National and Global

3.3.1 Governments

page 66:

• Governments must also adapt to the fact that power is also shifting from state to non-state actors and from established institutions to loose networks. New technologies and the social groupings and interactions they foster allow virtually anyone to exercise influence in a way that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.

page 67:

• Technology will increasingly enable citizens, providing a new way to voice their opinions, coordinate their efforts and possibly circumvent government supervision. I say “possibly”, because the opposite might just as well be true, with new surveillance technologies giving rise to all-too-powerful public authorities.

page 68:

• The 24-hour news cycle puts pressure on leaders to comment or act immediately to events, reducing the time available for arriving at measured, principled and calibrated responses.

• It also serves as a memory hole. In a few days the “old” news is forgotten by most.

• Agile governance means that regulators must find ways to adapt continuously to a new, fast-changing environment by reinventing themselves to understand better what they are regulating. To do so, governments and regulatory agencies need to closely collaborate with business and civil society to shape the necessary global, regional and industrial transformations.

• Public-Private Partnership, fascism when you realize the private parts (corps) are the ones calling the shots. “As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.” - Dewey, John

page 69:

• In summary, in a world where essential public functions, social communication and personal information migrate to digital platforms, governments – in collaboration with business and civil society – need to create the rules, checks and balances to maintain justice, competitiveness, fairness, inclusive intellectual property, safety and reliability.

Box C: Agile Governance Principles in an Age of Disruption

• The on-demand economy is also raising serious issues with regard to tax collection, as it becomes much easier and attractive for transient workers to operate in the black market. While digitally mediated payment systems are making transactions and micro-transactions more transparent, new decentralized payment systems are emerging today, which could significantly hinder the ability for public authorities and private actors to trace the origin and destination of such transactions.

• I think he means grey market. The black market is for illicit goods. Grey on the other hand would be things like working “under the table”.

• “Decentralized payment systems” bitcoin (and like ilk). It feels disingenuous that he portrays these as negatives (reverse psychology) since in their current state (outside Monero and maybe a few others) these e-coins are a central bankers’ dream come true. Nowhere to hide from negative interest rates.

3.3.2 Countries, Regions and Cities

page 72:

• the countries and regions that succeed in establishing tomorrow’s preferred international norms in the main categories and fields of the new digital economy 5G communications, the use of commercial drones, the internet of things, digital health, advanced manufacturing and so on) will reap considerable economic and financial benefits. In contrast, countries that promote their own norms and rules to give advantages to their domestic producers, while also blocking foreign competitors and reducing royalties that domestic companies pay for foreign technologies, risk becoming isolated from global norms, putting these nations at risk of becoming the laggards of the new digital economy.42

• Norms are what the majority is doing, not what is best. You could argue that those nations to protect their internal norms might very well be the best places to live, assuming you want those norms.

Box D: Urban Innovations

page 76:

• Intelligent street poles: Next-generation LED street lights can act as a platform for a host of sensing technologies that collect data on weather, pollution, seismic activity, the movement of traffic and people, and noise and air pollution. By linking these intelligent street poles in a network, it is possible to sense what is going on across a city in real time and provide innovative solutions in areas such as public safety or identifying where there are free parking spaces.

• What an improvement to life! How did we ever live without street lights identifying free parking spaces!

3.3.3 International Security

page 77:

• The critical danger is that a hyperconnected world of rising inequality may lead to increasing fragmentation, segregation and social unrest, which in turn creates the conditions for violent extremism.

Box E: Mobility and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

page 78:

• Redefining individual identities: Individuals used to identify their lives most closely with a place, an ethnic group, a particular culture or even a language. The advent of online engagement and increased exposure to ideas from other cultures mean that identities are now more fungible than previously. People are now much more comfortable with carrying and managing multiple identities.

• Redefining family identity: Thanks to the combination of historical migration patterns and low-cost connectivity, family structures are being redefined. No longer bound by space, they often stretch across the world, with constant family dialogue, reinforced by digital means. Increasingly, the traditional family unit is being replaced by the trans-national family network.

• These two quotes are part and parcel to the elimination of nations/cultures at the highest level and families/individuals at the lowest.

page 79:

• The fourth industrial revolution will affect the scale of conflict as well as its character. The distinctions between war and peace and who is a combatant and non-combatant are becoming uncomfortably blurred.

Box F: Emerging Technologies Transforming International Security

page 83:

• James Giordano, a neuroethicist at Georgetown University Medical Center, “The brain is the next battlespace.”51

• What a joke. Aquino wrote From PSYOP to MindWar - The Psychology of Victory in 1980 and I think there were a few earlier works detailing the same ideas.

page 84:

• With governments and government based structures, lagging behind in the regulatory space, it may actually be up to the private sector and non-state actors to take the lead.

3.4 Society

page 86:

• potential for rising inequality puts pressure on the middle class, and how the integration of digital media is changing how communities form and relate to one another.

3.4.1 Inequality and the middle class

page 87:

• According to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report 2015, half of all assets around the world are now controlled by the richest 1% of the global population, while “the lower half of the global population collectively own less than 1% of global wealth”.53

• a world of greater connectivity and higher expectations can create significant social risks if populations feel they have no chance of attaining any level of prosperity or meaning in their lives.

3.4.2 Community

page 88:

• From a broad societal standpoint, one of the greatest (and most observable) effects of digitization is the emergence of the “me-centred” society

page 90:

• As an example, a study of the impact of get-out-the-vote messages on Facebook found that they “increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes.”59 This research highlights the power that digital media platforms have in selecting and promoting the media we consume online.

3.5 The Individual

3.5.1 Identity, Morality and Ethics

Box H: On the Ethical Edge

page 94:

• Technological advances are pushing us to new frontiers of ethics. Should we use the staggering advances in biology only to cure disease and repair injury, or should we also make ourselves better humans? If we accept the latter, we risk turning parenthood into an extension of the consumer society in which case could our children become commoditized as made-to-order objects of our desire?

3.5.2 Human Connection

page 95:

• Back in 1971, Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, warned that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

3.5.3 Managing Public and Private Information

page 96:

• Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel has observed we seem to be increasingly willing to trade privacy for convenience with many of the devices that we routinely use”.68 Spurred in part by the revelations of Edward Snowden, the global debate about the meaning of privacy in a world of greater transparency has only just begun, as we see how the internet can be an unprecedented tool of liberation and democratization and at the same time, an enabler of indiscriminate, far-reaching and almost unfathomable mass surveillance.

The Way Forward

page 104:

• we need to develop positive, common and comprehensive narratives about how we can shape the fourth industrial revolution

• I firmly believe that the new technology age, if shaped in a responsive and responsible way, could catalyse a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a true global civilization. The fourth industrial revolution has the potential to robotize humanity, and thus compromise our traditional sources of meaning - work, community, family, identity. Or we can use the fourth industrial revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny.

Acknowledgements

page 106:

• I express my particular gratitude to Nicholas Davis, Thierry Malleret and Mel Rogers who were essential partners throughout the research and writing process. I am also thankful to my colleagues and all the teams who contributed to specific sections of the book, particularly Jennifer Blanke, Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, Silvia Magnoni and Saadia Zahidi on economics and society; Jim Hagemann Snabe, Mark Spelman and Bruce Weinelt on business and industry; Dominic Waughray on the environment; Helena Leurent on governments; Espen Barth Eide and Anja Kaspersen on geopolitics and international security; and Olivier Oullier on neurotechnology.

page 107:

• I thank members of the Emerging Technologies taskforce: David Gleicher, Rigas Hadzilacos, Natalie Hatour, Fulvia Montresor and Olivier Woeffray – and the many others who spent time thinking deeply about these issues: Chidiogo Akunyili, Claudio Cocorocchia, Nico Daswani, Mehran Gul, Alejandra Guzman, Mike Hanley, Lee Howell, Jeremy Jurgens, Bernice Lee, Alan Marcus, Adrian Monck, Thomas Philbeck and Philip Shetler-Jones.

• I am particularly thankful to Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson for inspiring my ideas on the impact of technological innovation and the great challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and to Dennis Snower and Stewart Wallis for underscoring the need for values-based narratives if we are to succeed in harnessing the fourth industrial revolution for the global good. Additional thanks to Marc Benioff, Katrine Bosley, Justine Cassell, Mariette DiChristina, Murali Doraiswamy, Nita Farahany, Zev Furst, Nik Gowing, Victor Halberstadt, Ken Hu, Lee Sang-Yup, Alessio Lomuscio, Jack Ma, Ellen MacArthur, Peter Maurer, Bernard Meyerson, Andrew Maynard, William McDonough, James Moody, Andrew Moore, Michael Osborne, Fiona Paua Schwab, Feike Sijbesma, Vishal Sikka, Philip Sinclair, Hilary Sutcliffe, Nina Tandon, Farida Vis, Sir Mark Walport and Alex Wyatt, all of whom I corresponded with or were interviewed for this book.

Appendix: Deep Shift

page 109:

• The survey report Deep Shift – Technology Tipping Points and Social Impact was published in 76September 2015. Reproduced below are 21 technology shifts presented in the study and two additional ones, including the tipping points for these technologies and the dates of their expected arrival to market.

Shift 1: Implantable Technologies

page 110:

• The tipping point: The first implantable mobile phone available commercially

• By 2025: 82% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

• Smart tattoos and other unique chips could help with identification and location. Implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a “built-in” smart phone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brainwaves and other signals.

• Escapism and addiction

• Listed as negative.

• Image recognition and availability of personal data (anonymous network that will “yelp” people)

• This is listed as a positive.

Shift 2: Our Digital Presence

page 112:

• The tipping point: 80% of people with a digital presence on the internet

• By 2025: 84% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

• Increase in free speech

• Listed as positive; must be disregarding censorship since the platforms mentioned (Facebook et al.) are centrally controlled.

• Negative impacts

  • Privacy/potential surveillance
  • More identity theft
  • Online bullying/stalking
  • Groupthink within interest groups and increased polarization 78
  • Disseminating inaccurate information (the need for reputation management); echo chambers– Lack of transparency where individuals are not privy to information algorithms (for news/information)

• Unknown, or cuts both ways

  • Digital legacies/footprints
  • More targeted advertising
  • More targeted information and news
  • Individual profiling
  • Permanent identity (no anonymity)
  • Ease of developing online social movement (political groups, interest groups, hobbies, terrorist groups)

• At least the negatives are realistic. The unknowns, particularly no anonymity and digital legacies, seem to be solidly negatives IMHO.

Shift 3: Vision as the New Interface

page 114:

• The tipping point: 10% of reading glasses connected to the internet By 2025: 86% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

• Negative impacts

  • Increased addiction and escapism

Shift 4: Wearable Internet

page 116:

• The tipping point: 10% of people wearing clothes connected to the internet By

• 2025: 91% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

• Positive impacts

  • More positive health outcomes leading to longer lives
  • More self-sufficiency
  • Self-managed healthcare
  • Better decision-making
  • Decrease in missing children
  • Personalized clothes (tailoring, design)

• Some of these are a bit silly IMHO. How does an internet connected shirt make me live longer? I suppose if you can access your blood pressure (etc) you might make healthier decisions.

• How am I more self-sufficient when I rely on the gadget?

• Self-managed health care? What is stopping me from doing this now? Control your diet, exercise, and sleep… Tada! Self-managed healthcare.

• Better decision making (more reliant on the gadget to tell you what to do.

• Oh, think of the missing children! Pathos argument.

• Negative impacts – Privacy/potential surveillance – Escapism/addiction – Data security

• Reasonable negatives.

Shift 5: Ubiquitous Computing

• The tipping point: 90% of the population with regular access to the internet

• By 2025: 79% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

• In the future, regular access to the internet and information will no longer be a benefit of developed economies, but a basic right just like clean water.

• Ridiculous comparison.

Shift 6: A Supercomputer in Your Pocket

• The tipping point: 90% of the population using smart phones

• By 2025: 81% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

page 120:

• Already in 2012, the Google Inside Search team published that “it takes about the same amount of computing to answer one Google Search query as all the computing done – in flight and on the ground 84– for the entire Apollo programme!”

• This tells me that modern computation is extremely inefficient.

page 121:

Figure II: Countries with Higher Smart Phone Usage than PC (March 2015)

page 122:

• Society is headed towards adopting even faster machines that will allow users to perform complicated tasks on the go.

• What are these complicated task the average Joe needs to do on the go?

Shift 7: Storage for All

• The tipping point: 90% of people having unlimited and free (advertising-supported) storage

• By 2025: 91% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

• What are they storing? Videos of cats…

page 125:

• Negative impact

  • Privacy surveillance

• Unknown, or cuts both ways

  • Eternal memory (nothing deleted)

• A clear negative IMHO. Anything you’ve ever done, even when it wasn’t “offensive” years ago, will be used to cancel you. “Important” data shouldn’t be erased in the first place.

Shift 8: The Internet of and for Things

• The tipping point: 1 trillion sensors connected to the internet

• By 2025: 89% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 127:

• A recent study looked into how sensors can be used to monitor animal health and behaviour91 It demonstrates how sensors wired in cattle can communicate to each other through a mobile phone network, and can provide real-time data on cattle conditions from anywhere.

• Hint: YOU are the cattle.

• Positive impacts

  • Increased efficiency in using resources
  • Rise in productivity
  • Improved quality of life
  • Effect on the environment
  • Lower cost of delivering services
  • More transparency around the use and state of resources
  • Safety (e.g. planes, food)
  • Efficiency (logistics)
  • More demand for storage and bandwidth
  • Shift in labour markets and skills
  • Creation of new businesses
  • Even hard, real-time applications feasible in standard communication networks
  • Design of products to be “digitally connectable”
  • Addition of digital services on top of products
  • Digital twin provides precise data for monitoring, controlling and predicting
  • Digital twin becomes active participant in business, information and social processes
  • Things will be enabled to perceive their environment comprehensively, and react and act autonomously
  • Generation of additional knowledge, and value based on connected “smart” things

• Most of these seem like bullshit. How is the quality of life improved with the IoT? Oh, I am completely isolate in this digital world, but gee golly I can monitor my garage door from anywhere in the world!

• Negative impacts

  • Privacy
  • More complexity and loss of control

• Insurance companies like Aetna are thinking about how sensors in a carpet could help if you’ve had a stroke. They would detect any gait change and have a physical therapist visit.

• Source: “The Internet of Things: The Opportunities and Challenges of Interconnectedness”, Roundtable on Digital Strategies Overview, Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 2014

• Whew! I might not notice I had a stroke. Seriously though, how many people have unknown strokes vs. the cost of putting sensors in how many millions/billions of carpets?

Shift 9: The Connected Home

• Tipping point: Over 50% of internet traffic delivered to homes for appliances and devices (not for entertainment or communication)

• By 2025: 70% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 129:

• home automation, enabling people to control lights, shades, ventilation, air conditioning, audio and video, security systems and home appliances.

• Positive impacts

  • Resource efficiency (lower energy use and cost)
  • Comfort
  • Safety/security, and detection of intrusions
  • Access control
  • Home sharing
  • Ability to live independently (young/old, those disabled)
  • Increased targeted advertising and overall impact on business
  • Reduced costs of healthcare systems (fewer hospital stays and physician visits for patients, monitoring the drug-taking process)
  • Monitoring (in real-time) and video recording
  • Warning, alarming and emergency requests
  • Remote home control (e.g. close the gas valve)

• How could I share my home that wasn’t bugged top to bottom? Increased advertising is a positive? Remote home control? How many times have I wanted to close my gas valve in my winter home while I was summering in the Hamptons? Too many to count.

• Negative impacts

  • Privacy
  • Surveillance

Shift 10: Smart Cities

• Tipping point: The first city with more than 50,000 inhabitants and no traffic lights

• By 2025: 64% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

• Negative impacts

  • Surveillance, privacy
  • Risk of collapse (total black out) if the energy system fails

Shift 11: Big Data for Decisions

• The tipping point: The first government to replace its census with big-data sources

• By 2025: 83% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 133:

• More data exists about communities than ever before. And, the ability to understand and manage this data is improving all the time. Governments may start to find that their previous ways of collecting data are no longer needed, and may turn to big-data technologies to automate their current programmes and deliver new and innovative ways to service citizens and customers.

• Establishing trust in the data and algorithms used to make decisions will be vital. Citizen concerns over privacy and establishing accountability in business and legal structures will require adjustments in thinking as well as clear guidelines for use in preventing profiling and unanticipated consequences.

• Negative impacts

  • Job losses
  • Privacy concerns
  • Accountability (who owns the algorithm?)
  • Trust (how to trust data?)

• Almost all of these future improvements will reduce privacy and increase state/corporate control.

Shift 12: Driverless Cars

• The tipping point: Driverless cars equalling 10% of all cars on US roads

• By 2025: 79% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 135:

• Negative impacts
  • Decreased revenue from traffic infringements

Shift 13: Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making

• The tipping point: The first Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine on a corporate board of directors

• By 2025: 45% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

Shift 14: AI and White-Collar Jobs

• The tipping point: 30% of corporate audits performed by AI

• By 2025: 75% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

Shift 15: Robotics and Services

• The tipping point: The first robotic pharmacist in the US

• By 2025: 86% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 142:

• …machines account for 80% of the work in manufacturing a car.93

• Yet car prices are at all time highs. From golden handcuffs to robot handcuffs?

Shift 16: Bitcoin and the Blockchain

• The tipping point: 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) stored on blockchain technology

• By 2025: 58% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 143:

• Positive impacts

  • Increased financial inclusion in emerging markets, as financial services on the blockchain gain critical mass
  • Disintermediation of financial institutions, as new services and value exchanges are created directly on the blockchain
  • An explosion in tradable assets, as all kinds of value exchange can be hosted on the blockchain
  • Better property records in emerging markets, and the ability to make everything a tradable asset
  • Contacts and legal services increasingly tied to code linked to the blockchain, to be used as unbreakable escrow or programmatically designed smart contracts
  • Increased transparency, as the blockchain is essentially a global ledger storing all transactions

• Literally no negatives listed.

Shift 17: The Sharing Economy

• The tipping point: Globally more trips/journeys via car sharing than in private cars

• By 2025: 67% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 144:

• Uber and Lyft provide much more efficient “taxi-like” services

• There is no “like” here, they are taxis.

• The sharing economy has any number of ingredients, characteristics or descriptors: technology enabled, preference for access over ownership peer to peer, sharing of personal assets (versus corporate assets), ease of access, increased social interaction collaborative consumption and openly shared user feedback (resulting in increased trust).

• First of all, sharing is a misnomer. It is simply business with a friendlier face. I remember in the early 2000s Craigslist had a rideshare section that people actualy SHARED rides and not simply offered taxi services.

• Second, you will own nothing and be happy.

• Third, increased social interation… so you don’t feel/realize you are isolated from any meaningful connections. I mean who needs friends when you can chat with you Uber driver?

• Unknown, or cuts both ways

  • Lack of clarity on what “wealth” and “well off” mean
  • Difficulty in measuring this potentially “grey” economy
  • Taxation and regulation adjusting from ownership/sales-based models to use-based models

page 145:

• The largest retailer doesn’t own a single store? (Amazon)
• The largest provider of sleeping rooms doesn’t own a single hotel? (Airbnb)
• The largest provider of transportation doesn’t own a single car? (Uber)

Shift 18: Governments and the Blockchain

• The tipping point: Tax collected for the first time by a government via a blockchain

• By 2025: 73% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 146:

• The blockchain creates both opportunities and challenges for countries. On the one hand, it is unregulated and not overseen by any central bank, meaning less control over monetary policy. On the other hand, it creates the ability for new taxing mechanisms to be built into the blockchain itself (e.g. a small transaction tax).

• Unknown impacts, or cut both ways

  • Central banks and monetary policy
  • Corruption
  • Real-time taxation
  • Role of government

Shift 19: 3D Printing and Manufacturing

• The tipping point: The first 3D-printed car in production

• By 2025: 84% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

Shift 20: 3D Printing and Human Health

• The tipping point: The first transplant of a 3D-printed liver

• By 2025: 76% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

page 150:

• Negative impacts
  • Uncontrolled or unregulated production of body parts, medical equipment or food
  • Growth in waste for disposal, and further burden on the environment
  • Major ethical debates stemming from the printing of body parts and bodies: Who will control the ability to produce them? Who will ensure the quality of the resulting organs?
  • Perverted disincentives for health: If everything can be replaced, why live in a healthy way?
  • Impact on agriculture from printing food

Shift 21: 3D Printing and Consumer Products

• The tipping point: 5% of consumer products printed in 3D

• By 2025: 81% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

Shift 22: Designer Beings 103

• The tipping point: The first human whose genome was directly and deliberately edited is born

• Negative impacts

  • Risk of interaction between edited plants/animals human/environmental health
  • Exacerbated inequality due to high cost of access to therapies
  • Social backlash or rejection of gene editing technologies
  • Misuse of genetic data by governments or companies

• The tipping point: The first human with fully artificial memory implanted in the brain

page 156:

• There is not one area of our personal and professional lives that cannot benefit from a better understanding of how our brain functions – at both the individual and collective levels. This is underscored by the fact that – over the past few years - two of the most funded research programs in the world are in brain sciences: The Human Brain Project (a €1 billion project over 10 years funded by the European Commission) and President Obama’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

• Understand the brain… to manipulate other people is what I read.

• Positive impacts

  • Neurofeedback, the possibility to monitor brain activity in real time, offers countless possibilities to help fight addictions, regulate food behaviour, and improve performances ranging from sports to the classroom.
  • Being able to collect, process, store and compare large amounts of brain activity-related data allows us to improve diagnosis and treatment efficiency of brain disorders and mental health-related issues.
  • The law will be able to provide customized processing on cases and address responsibility issues in criminal cases in a differential fashion rather than in a generic one now.

• Negative impacts

  • Fear of what thoughts/dreams/desires to be decrypted and for privacy to no longer exist,

page 158:

• The shift in action

  • Neuromorphic image sensors, i.e. inspired how the eye and brain communicate, will have impact ranging from battery usage to robotics
  • The Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program by DARPA is a precursor to memory restoration and enhancement
  • Depression symptoms in mice could be cured by the artificial reactivation of happy memories as evidenced by Neuroscientists at MIT

• With DARPA involved, you know it will be a benefit to humanity!

• Why get to the root of depression (in the modern era probably because of social isolation and hopelessness) when we can simply active a happy memory.