Category Archives: Futurist

Growing Divide

As jobsare automated out of existence, the division between the very wealthy and the very poorwill grow and any notion of a comfortable middle class will vanish.

Thats according to Roey Tzezana, a future studies researcher at Israels Tel Aviv University, according to Haaretz. That stands in contrast to the common argument that new jobs will emerge as others vanish, painting a grim picture for the workforce and global economy.

Tzezana argues that the jobs that tend to survive automation are lower-paying, according to Haaretz, meaning that as companies generate increased wealth, almost none of it ends up in the pockets of workers. Instead, more people are stuck living paycheck to paycheck, even if unemployment rates are technically low.

This figure is the end of the world for the average people, Tzezana said, speaking about the growing gap between labor productivity and wages. It reflects a rather depressing picture: The state and the economy are advancing by storm but the workers are almost not benefitting from this progress and are left behind. It is almost a catastrophe.

The end result? A society defined by pockets of extreme wealth but otherwise dominated by people who barely have enough to get by.

READ MORE: Futurist Sees The End of the World as We Know It for Average Person [Haaretz]

More on automation: Globally, Most Workers Think Robots Couldnt Handle Their Jobs

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Futurist Predicts "The End of the World as We Know It" - Futurism

Will robots eventually take over the economy by performing most jobs? The opening-day keynote speaker, economist and futurist Jason Schenker, presented a pair of contradictory visionsat CFO Live, a recent conference hosted by CFO.

People are very focused on what I call the robocalypse, but the truth is, technology will end up creating a lot of jobs, he said.

As evidence, he pointed to Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that from 2000 through the end of 2017 the number of U.S. retail jobs declined by 500,000. Over the same period, 700,000 jobs were added in transportation, warehousing, and storage.

The supply chain is moving around, becoming more technology-oriented and creating new jobs, Schenker observed. And by the way, the lowest-paying of those [700,000] jobs pay more than the highest-paying retail jobs. Youre going to see this continue on.

Today, he noted, many college graduates are looking ahead to careers in content and social media marketing. There were no such jobs 10 years ago. And 10 years hence, college grads will be positioning to take jobs that dont currently exist.

But Schenker didnt completely disallow the possibility of a kind of en masse replacement of human employees by robots coming to pass. A prime cause of such an event, for example, could be a jump in labor costs. The culprit likely would be entitlement programs Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and welfare which Schenker collectively characterized as a $200 trillion off-balance-sheet obligation for the U.S. government.

Among all the tax cuts in the federal tax reform bill passed in late 2017, he noted, nowhere to be seen were payroll tax cuts. In the decade ahead if we were to see payroll taxes of 25%, I would not be surprised, Schenker observed.

And if employers payroll tax tab were to rise from the current 7.5% of employee wages to 12.5%, they might think about automating more jobs maybe even more than is reasonable, because theyd be over-incentivized to do it, he concluded. Thats a risk going forward.

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Avoiding the 'Robocalypse' - CFO Magazine

Futurist author Jeremy Gutsche kicked off the second annual Blockland Solutions Conference Monday morning, Dec. 9, explaining how blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt the way companies and professionals do business.

"When we think about why blockchain is needed, it's to control and understand transactions in the world of human interaction once we start mechanizing and moving at a much faster pace," he said, challenging the audience to recognize that there is "more potential in our grasp than ever before" and that the pace of change is accelerating because of technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.

Blockchain is a decentralized, digital technology whose built-in security allows digital information to be widely and safely distributed. It provides the basis for digital currencies like Bitcoin. Advocates contend it will be used for such things as tracking how assets move through a supply chain, from producer to dealers to buyers, more securely than other technologies.

The conference, at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, is the brainchild of auto dealer-turned-tech entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, whose Bernie Moreno Cos. have largely moved out of the auto business and into blockchain investing. He sees the two conferences he has led as the beginning of an effort to put Northeast Ohio at the forefront of blockchain thought leadership.

On Tuesday, Dec. 10, an announcement is expected on the next step in the creation of City Block, the revamping of The Avenue at Tower City into an entrepreneurial and technology center. In July, Moreno's company and Bedrock Detroit LLC, the Dan Gilbert company that owns the ailing shopping center that fronts Public Square, announced a plan for a $110 million, 350,000-square-foot "entrepreneurial center" that will include corporate office space, co-working areas, cafes and a public plaza at the Huron Road entrance to The Avenue.

Gutsche closed his presentation by cautioning attendees to not simply look at the emerging technologies for their business value but also to consider how they can be used to make the world a better place.

"It's an exciting world, and you should be excited because here we are, innovators in the greatest period of human history," he said. "And the rate of change isn't only faster, it's accelerating."

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Blockland Solutions Conference is underway at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland - Crain's Cleveland Business

I must admit that my new state of being probably helps me to see what is so unclear to others: An entire new society is emerging within our very homes and bodies. Imbuing tardigrades or water bears with sentinel duty at the microbial level (Bartlett, Peachpie, and Nuthatch, 2027) may have improved our resistance to super-viruses through our new helpers herding of microbial antibiotics as their sheep dogs, but it has done nothing to avoid hacking, the metric that haunts all of our biological transactions these days. We have already lost sex, the hug and the handshake to threats of hacking, left only with remote budding and pathetic five-senses Scryping. But, now, with animals bred from spores, how can we avoid contamination if we cant even be sure what were inhaling? Why shouldnt biotech become expert at using biotech to change us?

All I can report is that ever since the death of fiction and the rise of artistic biotech, I have more insight into what is happening because everything has become more personal than before, living under the skin. My last narrative biotech opera took the form of a giant bear linked forever in crude dance with my new home: a giant astronaut with an oblique face panel. That I now reside, in my squid-fungal form, in the water inside this astronaut suit, provides what I hope is a kind of fatal authenticity that will convince you. I thought I was protected by my new situation, but I too have woken up disoriented, stripped of cryo-currency, and in an unsafe place. I have experienced the contamination you may only feel lurking.

Despite these personal experiences, I am supposed to reassure you now. I am supposed to tell you of remedies. But I dont believe we can avoid contamination any more than we can avoid the calls of long-dead animals that burst forth from the air, our last gift of propaganda from fossil fuel companies. We ignore these sounds much as we once ignored roadkill, but ignoring something doesnt put a stop to it.

How ironic, then, if we did not actually outrun the climate crisis, but became It and were subsumed by It and now we do not know what we are, because we have been made so different. The unexamined life was once a source of joy, but now un-joys us in the remaking because our methods were suspect and extreme.

If you read this, inspect yourself. Find your contamination and greet it warmly. Attempt to make friends with it, and perhaps it will not destroy us.

For we are all arks of some kind now.

Jeff VanderMeer is a science fiction writer. His most recent novel is Dead Astronauts.

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Its 2071, and We Have Bioengineered Our Own Extinction - The New York Times

CultureArtsThe new exhibition explores how the avant-garde work of David Bomberg was not far removed from centuries of art that preceded it

Sunday, 8th December 2019, 11:24 pm

This is a small show, most works made for a single exhibition held when David Bomberg was 23 years old, and experimenting with dramatic fragmented figures and exploding arrangement of geometric shapes. Bombergs first solo show opened a month before the outbreak of the First World War: nothing sold, and most paintings went into storage until his death in 1957. Nevertheless, he caught the attention of the critics, and of the avant-garde: invited to join the Futurists and Vorticists, Bomberg high-handedly rejected both.

He was one of the Whitechapel Boys: artists from the East End whose studies at the Slade School of Art were funded by the Jewish Education Aid Society. The fifth of 11 children, his father had fled anti-Semitism in Poland, and was employed as a leather worker in Whitechapel where the family lived in a tiny flat without a bathroom or lavatory. Nevertheless, Bombergs ambition to draw was supported by his mother who found the money for lessons.

Three significant exhibitions in this period opened Londons art world up to changes on the other side of the channel: the vast Manet and the Post-Impressionists opened in 1910, with a sequel in 1912. The same year also saw the London debut of the Italian Futurists.

This is the young man we meet in an intense and forceful self-portrait drawing, the head beautifully modelled, the expression enigmatic but forthright. Bomberg had lost his mother the year before, and his gaze here is deep and arresting.

From there, he pitches himself headlong into a series of experiments. Vision of Ezekiel (1912) is a scene of resurrection: bones rising from the dead as living flesh. The bodies are reduced and machinelike, given fleshlike warmth only in the orange, brown and pink applied to them in flat planes.

The painting is part riot, part orgy, but at the centre a baby is held aloft: motherhood within the mele.

Bomberg had been taught to draw a grid as a compositional aid when planning a painting. We can see this grid in the drawings here, but they also start to appear in the paintings themselves. In Ju-Jitsu a subject suggested by visits to The Judaeans gym in the East End frequented by his brother Mo a lattice of diamonds slices through figures, shattering the sense of mass and reducing it instead to pure movement.

The stress and flurry suggested by the shattered grid becomes monumental in In The Hold (1913-14) a shipboard scene in which migrants are barely glimpsed emerging on deck. The painting is dominated by a large figure, arms outstretched and apparently sheltering, while all around him is dim panic and chaos.

The Mud Bath a tight and plunging composition of angular blue and red forms emerging from a blood-red pool was hung on the outside of the gallery during Bombergs 1914 show. Apparently it literally scared passing horses. It certainly seems prescient of the coming war. Bomberg signed up a year later: his time in the trenches was so horrifying that he shot himself in the foot. His service record saved him from the firing squad: he was patched up and sent back out.

Young Bomberg covers a hot-headed five-year period in which he grappled with fresh directions in painting and emerged with new (and to a contemporary audience, alarming) ideas. Irritatingly, those wishing to test Corks thesis that Bomberg still looked to the Fat Man of the Renaissance that he professed to hate at the time must search out paintings for themselves in other rooms of the National Gallery (or buy the catalogue, in which they helpfully appear side by side.)

With Gertler, we travel beyond Young Bomberg to see the swerve back from radical experimentation in the painful post-war period. The machine world that seemed so vital and modern now evoked the horror of combat. Gertler, like Bomberg, moved in a new direction. The latters claustrophobic Ghetto Theatre (1920) is shown downstairs at Ben Uri. Gertler, meanwhile, was drawing views from the sanatorium where he received treatment for tuberculosis. Suicide would take him before the next war. The last we see of him seems like a vestige of an earlier time: The Coster Woman (1923), a market trader dressed in her finery on a day out on Hampstead Heath.

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Young Bomberg and the Old Masters at the National Gallery: the Renaissance influences on an East End radical - inews

NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Futurist, author, and keynote speaker, Cathy Hackl,has been named one of the Top Voices in Technology in 2019 by LinkedIn. It is the highest honor a content creator can receive on the platform, and only 346 individuals out of more than 260 million users made the list.

"Everyday, more than 2 million posts stream through the LinkedIn feed. That's a lot of great conversations happening and our LinkedIn Editors team set out to uncover some of the best professionals igniting those exchanges. The result is our 2019 #LinkedInTopVoiceslist," wrote Laura Lorenzetti Soper, Senior Editor, Special Projects at LinkedIn.

To find the top voices on the platform globally, LinkedIn used a combination of quantitative and qualitative signals, starting with a custom algorithm from their LinkedIn Data Science team and then curated by their LinkedIn Editors.

"As part of the AR, VR, and Spatial Computing industry, I'm honored to be one of the top voices in tech on LinkedIn," highlighted Hackl. "Latina women hold only 5% of STEM jobs, so I'm hoping to inspire more women and minorities to pursue a career in technology."

According to LinkedIn, Hackl's updates give a glimpse into the future. Whether it's covering the convergence of virtual reality and augmented reality, transforming the physical into the digital or the intersection of art and technology, from her unique vantage point she continues to spark dialogues around the next big technology trends and all things AR, including virtual beings like Lil Miquela, Alexa and Mica, as well as the convergence of AI, AR, 5G and quantum computing. Follow Cathy Hackl on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/cathyhackl or visit cathyhackl.com.

About Cathy HacklCathy Hackl is one of the most sought-after keynote technology speakers in the world. Considered one of the top women in augmented reality, virtual reality, spatial computing, and innovation, she works at the intersection of future technology, strategy, and storytelling, engaging audiences across the globe and across industries.

She's spoken in more than 12 countries, including memorable talks at Twitter's HQ in San Francisco, Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park, and Sony's HQ in San Diego.

Media contact:Cathy Hackl 230410@email4pr.com678-913-8133

SOURCE Cathy Hackl

http://www.cathyhackl.com

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Futurist, Cathy Hackl, Named Top Voice in Tech by LinkedIn for 2nd Year in a Row - PRNewswire

In Providence, Rhode Island where Dr. Roey Tzezana now lives, signs on the street advertise Rent a Son. The signs are put up by people offering services that a son is supposed to do for his parents: shovel the snow, hang pictures and come for a visit. Someone looking in from the outside might think that this is a brilliant initiative after all, the population is aging and many of the elderly live alone. Why be just a handyman if you can be a son for rent?

But Tzezana, an Israeli future studies researcher, who studies the job markets of the years to come, too, sees the signs as a glimpse into the future. Tzezana, a researcher at the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center of Tel Aviv University, and a research fellow at the Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative of Brown University, says such services are exactly the jobs that those who cant find a place in technological professions will be forced into and some are being forced into them now.

This forecast is not good news for most people: The polarization in the job market will only grow and the inequality between those who buy the new smart machines, those who build them, and those who cannot will only widen.

In an interview with TheMarker, Tzezana sets aside all the most recent reports, such as that of the World Economic Forum, which shows that in addition to the forecasts of millions of jobs being eliminated, new jobs are created too because this, he says, is simply the wrong debate.

The deeper and more interesting questions are not whether new jobs will be created, but what is the pace that old jobs disappear and new jobs open up, or what is the pace at which the tasks the jobs require change and create a demand for new expertise, specializations and skills. The speed of closing tasks and opening new tasks is changing, and it is overwhelming, he says.

All the reports of the McKinsey consulting firm talk about technological progress requiring up skills and the ability to adapt; a view that is possible to develop, learn and grow and a way of thinking of an entrepreneur all the time looking for opportunities. All these are wonderful slogans that the large international consulting companies spread and there is a reason for it the profile of the employees in these organizations is that of young workers who learn all the time, says Tzezana. But he points out that the researchers who are happy to talk about adopting new capabilities, lifelong learning and all sorts of other buzzwords that are heard everywhere do not ask themselves whether it is appropriate for everyone.

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Many already recognize the reality that Tzezana is describing: We arent talking about a 45-year-old employee who lost a job and no one want his skills. Certainly there are people who can learn new things at any age. But how many of these people are there? Most of those in their 50s are sure they know and think they deserve to enjoy the fruits of their efforts and the seeds they sowed that experience has value.

Recently the Boston Consulting Group released a report on global trends in future jobs and found that the jobs of the future are ones such as waiting on tables, cleaning, child care and nursing care and the groups of job skills with the highest rate of growth after digital skills is social services and education.

BCG analyzed millions of job ads over three years and found that some professions have a high growth rate without being related to digital skills, such as child care, animal care, fitness training and behavioral analysis skills, are all related to the growing pursuit of general well-being and leisure. But if you ask Tzezana, this is part of the problem.

We see large polarization of the job market, in other words a continuing rise in polarization, he says, mentioning what Andrew Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, said back in 2015. Even though technology has created many new jobs in recent centuries, at the same time it has led to polarization too, those with jobs requiring expertise, preferably in the exact sciences, have higher wages, while those who make do with a lower level of expertise receive lower pay. This is a result of the continual inflow of professionals in the middle whose jobs are disappearing because of automation those with a medium level of expertise.

Haldane asks, justifiably, whether we want to become a society with extreme inequality with a small number of super-rich and a great number of poor, which we are already seeing in the United States, says Tzezana. We are seeing people moving from the middle class, for example manufacturing workers whose factories closed down because the work moved to China. Now factories are returning to the United States, and this doesnt help anyone because they are automated, he says.

A factory that in the past employed 1,000 workers needs only 100 today. Those with high-level skills know how to operate the machines that replace the workers, but the workers who in the past were responsible for the machines or who did the same task as the machines need to find a new job. They are going to work in services for Uber or renting out apartments, says Tzezana.

So this is entrepreneurship, creativity? An excellent example of the entrepreneurial spirit, no?

The salary of someone who moves into the service professions drops dramatically sometimes a quarter of the previous salary, and this is not the problem of just one or two people, says Tzezana. When a lot of people experience this drop, we are talking about an economic crisis: It is not just a problem only for those who cant pay their mortgages. Sixty percent of the sales of most companies are to the general public and if the public cant afford to buy a new computer, the entire economy enters a crisis.

Penty of McJobs

So low unemployment doesnt tell the real story?

The level of unemployment in the United States is the lowest ever, but many of the new jobs only keep those filling them alive so they dont complain too much. In general, from the 1950s we have been seeing that the productivity compared to the effort invested has risen at a stupefying pace that is how the world will become a better place. To produce more with less.

But if until the 1970s the hourly pay for an employee rose at the same rate a relationship existed between productivity and hourly wages 40 to 50 years ago a dramatic change began. Productivity continued to grow, between 1973 and 2014 it rose by 74% but the hourly pay rose only by 9%. Its amazing. My explanation for this process is that at the same time the machines that were capable of being programmed came in, so did flexible work. You needed the average worker from the middle class less and it was possible to switch to machines to close factories and move them to China, where wages are lower, says Tzezana.

This figure is the end of the world for the average people. It reflects a rather depressing picture: The state and the economy are advancing by storm but the workers are almost not benefitting from this progress and are left behind. It is almost a catastrophe, he says. It doesnt match the ideas of democracy because democracy is based on the middle class. It is harder for workers from the lower class to vote in an intelligent manner and make intelligent decisions. It is a situation that over time does not enable the continuation of democracy as we know it.

This is just the beginning, says Tzezana. In a few more years we will be nearing a world in which machines will do everything at the level of human beings, and after a little while longer at a higher level. And then all the trends and forecasts will be scrambled. This is the point of singularity after which it will be hard to estimate what will happen because we have never been in such a situation in human history.

Nonetheless, Tzezana is trying to sketch a picture of the future. According to a survey conducted in the past few years among hundreds of artificial intelligence researchers, the Asian researchers believe that within 40 years artificial intelligence will do all the tasks that humans are capable of doing. This means that in another five or 10 years we will already see the changes in progress.

Dont we see it already?

We see it, but not completely. Many of the jobs have already opened, and someone who is hard-working and intelligent will find work, and in the worst case will manage barely to support themselves. Artificial intelligence knows how to give medical advice better than doctors, he says. Tzezana says the claim that people will still have a human advantage is wrong: We need to take into account technological developments, such as computers being able to understand people and the creation of avatars on the screen and in virtual reality. These avatars will be able in the next decade or two to provide more sensitive and considerate service than any human service representative can.

Status symbol

We will continue to buy services from other people, but not necessarily because we need them more because it is a status symbol, Tzezana continues. In medicine, the poor will receive a higher level of treatment from robots and machines. The rich will receive the same treatment, while the person representing the machine will be a human doctor who will say what the computer does and provide the feeling that a person is there. His role will be mostly to be an actor, a celebrity. People will come to him not because he is the best doctor, but because those who get services from him say about themselves: Im good. Tzezana says this will be true for many other professions.

The four winners will be those who control the machines, the programmers and owners the rich; those who have built up a reputation, so the rich will want to receive services from them; those who manage the teams and machines; and the fourth group, the entrepreneurs.

Whats the solution?

No one knows. What is clear is that it will be a period of large and fast changes, and it is a bit like asking me: What is the solution in the Industrial Revolution for all the remaining farmers. They will not stay farmers. In the short term, maybe it would be better to ask what is the solution that individuals can adopt so they have a better chance for work that will pay enough to support themselves respectably.

The answer is what is called the entrepreneurial spirit, learning all the time lifelong learning. To find 20 or 30 minutes a day to listen to podcasts, take online courses, even if you dont get grades or credit for them, he says. To expand your knowledge so the minute something new comes out you can jump on it before everyone and always remain a bit ahead of the crowd.

The second thing is to know how to work with computers not work on a computer, but with and alongside a computer, Tzezana says. Computers will become our collaborators in the coming decades. Governments must take a number of steps too. They must try to move as many people as possible to professions that require a high level of expertise and training, such as computer science, statistics and the exact sciences.

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Futurist sees the end of the world as we know it for average person - Haaretz

Buff Rodents

The International Space Station is about to get some unusually strong visitors.

On Saturday, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to deliver 2,585 kilograms (5,700 pounds) worth of cargo to the ISS. Amongst the supplies and equipment will be a few extremely muscular mighty mice and they could help ensure future astronauts stay healthy while in space.

For the Rodent Research-19 experiment, scientists on Earth genetically engineered mice to lack myostatin, a protein that limits how much the animals muscles grow. This causes the mice to have about twice the skeletal muscle mass of normal mice.

In addition to sending those mice to the ISS, theyre also sending some micethat arent genetically altered, which astronauts will treat with an experimental drug that inhibits myostatin.

Researchers hope that sending the mice to the ISS, where theyll be subjected to the same microgravity environment as astronauts, could yield valuable insights into how myostatin targeting could prevent muscle loss in humans in space andalso on Earth.

Were also excited because we think that this could have applications for many many conditions that people experience here back on Earth in which muscle and bone loss is a serious problem, researcher Se-Jin Lee said in an ISS video.

READ MORE: SpaceX to Launch Beer Experiment, Mighty Mice and More for NASA Today. How to Watch [Space.com]

More on muscle loss: Scientists Want to Jack Astronauts up on Steroids

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SpaceX Is Sending Super-Muscular Mice to the Space Station - Futurism

Missing Stuff

Scientists recently discovered 19 small galaxies, all of which share a puzzling quirk: they appear to be totally devoid of dark matter.

Dark matter the invisible stuff thought to hold together galaxies is crucial to one of the leading explanations of galactic formation. But now, Live Science reports, astronomers are faced with a difficult choice: prove this new discovery wrong, or reconcile it with their understanding of the cosmos.

Scientists can tell that a galaxy is loaded up with dark matter if it spirals faster than it would if it were only subject to the gravitational forces of the matter that we can see, according to Live Science.

The 19 new galaxies appear to be spinning slower than a typical galaxy of their size would, according to research published last week in Nature Astronomy, suggesting theres no dark matter giving them a boost.

Some of the galaxies could have had their dark matter vacuumed away by the stronger gravitational pull of nearby galaxies, Live Science reports. But others are too isolated in the cosmos for that explanation to make sense.

Physicists told Live Science that the obvious next step is to not only revisit this new papers findings, but also to analyze the 19 galaxies with a variety of tools and techniques so they can get to the bottom of things.

READ MORE: 19 Galaxies Are Apparently Missing Dark Matter. No One Knows Why. [Live Science]

More on space: Astronomers Find Isolated Galaxy Packed Full of Dark Matter

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19 Newly Discovered Galaxies Appear to Be Missing Dark Matter - Futurism

Futurist Ray Hammond talks to Stephen Hyamsabout revolutions in healthcare, the future of work and cryptocurrencies

05 DECEMBER 2019 | STEPHEN HYAMS

Ray Hammond has a long record of accurate foresight about the future, such as identifying the coming importance of the internet shortly after its launch.

How did he become a futurist?

It happened by accident, he says. After finishing with journalism, I wanted to become a writer. During a small book tour in San Diego, I met the well-respected futurist Alvin Toffler. We kept in touch and he encouraged me to broaden out beyond technology, which was then my focus, to understand the way that todays trends may shape reality in 10 to 20 years time.

The future of health

Hammond is excited by the current revolutions in healthcare, of which he expects digital health to havethe earliest impact. Within 10 to 15 years, perhaps30% of hospital inpatients will be at home in bed but monitored so thoroughly that its almost as if they were in the hospital, he says. A team of mobile nurses will take care of their physical needs. Its also going to have a profound impact on the way drugs are developed, because drug companies can use the data that flows back from digital devices to learn how were responding. Eventually, it will be as if every patient is taking part in a real-time clinical experiment.

DNA-based and stem cell medicine will also play a significant role during the next five to 10 years. For privacy reasons, it will take a while for people to accept having their DNA stored., says Hammond. For many people, DNA stands for do not ask. Once the benefits of DNA analysis are understood fully, the word will spread and, with full consideration for privacy and data protection, DNA-based medicine will be an enormously powerful tool. He cites the detection of genetic abnormalities in the earliest stages of embryonic development during pregnancy as an example.

Its early days for stem cell medicine, but Hammond predicts that it will become very important within 10 years. It seems to have so many applications, a bit like penicillin, and promises to deal with lots of diseases that are currently intractable. Using stem cells from ones own body avoids the risk of rejection. Im certain that in 10 years time we will be taking organs off the shelf, or theyll be grown to order for us.

Hammond believes two other healthcare revolutions will have longer-term implications. The first is nanoscale medicine, which he believes will have a huge impact, but not for another 20 years. Manipulating molecules at the nanoscale level will enable the production of drugs designed to produce specific proteins that are tailored for certain illnesses. Nanoparticles are currently being developed for the targeted delivery of drugs, while there is some research involving nanoparticles that seeks to develop a vaccine for influenza. Hammond believes the other healthcare revolution will be in gene editing to enable removal of damaging pieces of DNA from a patients tissue but care is needed to avoid it affecting the germline, for fear of unintended consequences.

Healthcare outlook

What will be the collective impact of these developments? During the next 20 to 30 years they will transform healthcare, and I think it is likely we will see a return to higher rates of mortality improvements in the UK, following the period of lower rates seen during the past few years.

Hammond is excited by two recent pieces of research into anti-ageing, one of which removes senescent cells from the body. These cells are widely believed to contribute to ageing. The other work involves therapyto reprogram genes to reverse the ageing process.

In human trials, there have been some startling achievements in a single year, 70% to 80% of the patients had their biological clock reversed by two and a half years, he says. The results were so stunning that the researchers have easily been able to raise the money to carry out much wider trials. Until a year ago, I was highly sceptical about rejuvenation and life extension, but not any longer. By 2030 or 2040 I think we could see some patients extending their lives as healthy centenarians. Within the next 20-30 years, Hammond also thinks that most types of cancer will be controllable, as opposed to being cured.

How can we meet the cost of healthcare for an ageing population? During the next 10 years it will be a problem, but there are indications that things will improve significantly, mostly thanks to digital technology, says Hammond. The key is 5G networks, which will be super-fast and reliable, with instant, real-time responses and no bandwidth problems. This will facilitate distributed care, in which many patients are monitored from their homes, thereby taking the pressure off hospital space. The healthcare revolutions will mean fewer people in hospital, and for less time.

The collection and analysis of healthcare data is developing fast, and it must remain secure for people to remain comfortable in providing it. Could insurers seek to use the data for underwriting purposes? There are currently legal barriers to the discriminatory use by insurers of DNA information, while they are also no longer allowed to ask the catch-all question of whether there is any other information that would be relevant.

Digital monitoring devices will not be for everyone, while those who do use them will need clear instructions explaining that they are not fully accurate and no substitute for proper medical advice.

Robotics will have developed to the point where most of the non-medical tasks in a hospital are handled by machines, Hammond says. For example, a robot nurse in triage could perform standard tests before passing the patient to a doctor, if necessary. Remote robotic surgery will also become very efficient oneeye specialist in London might be treating people anywhere in the UK, or around the world. Another interesting development is the growing use of virtual reality as an alternative to conventional anaesthetic.

Technology and work

Will robotics and automation put jobs at risk? During the next 15 years, there will be a lot of disruption in the workplace, says Hammond. Peoples roles will change, and retraining will be needed, but there will still be a lot of demand for human employment. After that period, Im not so sure; by the mid-2030s I think robots will be so ubiquitous, powerful and capable that a lot of human endeavour will not be needed. Robots will be increasing productivity to such an extent that society will have enough money to give to people who are not employed.

Such a fundamental change brings challenges, though. For many people, work is part of their identity, and when theyre denied it an important part of their life disappears, Hammond says. I dont have the answerto that, but Im worried.

Part of the solution is to recognise and pay for carers in the family, and Hammond predicts there will still be plenty of demand here. Robots will empathise and form attachments, but when real help or comfort is needed,I think well want a human for the foreseeable future.

I ask about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI)on replacing human work. Today AI is, at best, as intelligent as a rodent. I think it will be at least 30 years before AI is a threat to humanity in terms of its decision-making capabilities.

Cryptocurrencies and cash

Hammond expects blockchain technology, invented for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, to have a huge and wide-ranging impact. Blockchain will be everywhere for example, managing patients in hospitals, or the assets and policies of an insurance company. The biggest drawback is its high energy demand, but there have been recent breakthroughs in that respect.

Cryptocurrencies do not need an issuing bank or government to authenticate them, as they are self-authenticating, so this poses a threat to the conventional banking industry and national sovereignty over finance, he continues. I dont see it happening on a big scale within 10 years, but in the longer term, if political will allows, there is no doubt that cryptocurrencies will replace fiat currencies.

Does this signal the end of cash? In my 1983 book Computers and Your Child I predicted there would be no cash in society by the year 2000, Hammond says.I was looking at the technology, and in that respect my prediction could have been correct, but I was forgetting human psychology. People like to feel they hold cash.I think cash will still be around in 10-15 years, but very much reduced.

I conclude by asking Hammond what his biggest concern for the future is. Climate change, with the extreme weather events that are going to become more frequent and severe and continue for at least the next30-40 years.

What excites him the most? The continuing improvement in human health. I love the idea of looking to a future where most serious illness is eradicated, with far less human suffering.

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Interview: Shaping the future - The Actuary