Within the next thirty years to 2040, the following scientific and technological trends will be deeply embedded in the global Medical / Health Ecosystem-
Global-Personalised Medicine
Most developed countries will have established comprehensive electronic Health Record Systems to track lifetime patient medical and general health histories including DNA genome sequence and microarray SNP test results.
By 2030 it will also be possible to sequence the human genome at the personal level for less than $200, providing more accurate individual disease prediction and prevention. In addition, an individual’s medical records will provide personalised drug and vaccines protocols based on genetic response variants. Whole-of-Life e-health records will be accessible initially within countries and regions across the developed and much of developing world, eventually allowing the creation of online global networks of personalised records from pre-birth to death.
As well as the information records technologies outlined above, there will be a major trend towards providing expert biomedical advice and services to individuals and populations across the planet, utilising the communication modalities of the Web.
Libraries of medical and hospital patient records including scanned images, will be linked in vast virtual databases by 2030, to provide remote expert support to local medical teams and practitioners. In addition advanced surgical techniques, applied remotely using robotic, virtual and augmented reality technologies will be in widespread use.
Smart mobile phone technologies will also function as personalised helpers, performing real-time monitoring and transmission of patient status data- pulse rate, blood pressure etc, via inexpensive sensor networks, forwarding continuous data to expert hubs for online analysis and intervention.
The Grid/Mesh/Sensor Web will provide ubiquitous communication support for the acquisition and delivery of knowledge on a global basis. It will incorporate virtually limitless bandwidth as well as high levels of redundancy and security to guarantee continuous and fail-safe operation. Sensor webs, collections of wireless processing nodes that can capture local sensor data and transfer it to a processing hub, will play a vital role in customising and updating mobile devices such as smart phones; supporting applications that constrained by a constantly varying environment or context such as the monitoring of patient well being.
These developments will be particularly valuable for developing countries with limited health support resources.
The Intelligent Web 4.0
By 2030, current versions of the Social Web 2.0 and emerging Semantic Web 3.0 will have evolved to the next level of autonomy and intelligence-Web 4.0. The Web’s evolution will have made many important contributions to the biological sciences through the application of new knowledge, network science, logical inference and artificial intelligence.
Web 4.0 will be ubiquitous, powered by a smart computational sensory, computational grid/mesh enveloping and connecting human life and encompassing all facets of social and scientific activity- always on and available. It will connect not only most of the 9 billion individuals existing on the planet by 2050, but also link with other biological and artificial life forms, as well as countless everyday electronically available objects. It will interact with the repository of most available knowledge of human civilisation- including algorithms, protocols and processes, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis.
Through Web 4.0, human intelligence will have co-joined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence, creating a higher or meta-level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting the immensely complex decision-making and problem solving requirements essential for civilisation's future progress, including medical diagnosis and management.
Systems Biology
The power of the web will be supported by a new way of unlocking a deeper understanding of nature and its evolution- Systems Biology. This marks a paradigm shift from traditional reductionism to a more holistic level of understanding of biological phenomena- interpreting organisms in terms of information processing networks at the system rather than component level of genes, proteins, environmental factors etc.
Systems biology also marks the beginning of a more quantitative science, highlighting the causality and dynamics of biological interactions by applying mathematical models and the capability of simulating interactions at all levels- cells, organs and the total organism.
This paradigm will be central to further progress in understanding the patterns of life in terms of biological networks processing digital data.
Genetic-Tissue Engineering
Applying genetic engineering or gene therapy techniques, corrected genes can be inserted into cells including adult stem cells taken from a patient affected by a particular disease. The future treatment of diseases such as heart failure and breast cancer will also be revolutionised by the option of growing new organs and tissue inside the human body using the patient’s own stem cells and biodegradable scaffolds to avoid immune rejection.
Molecular engineers are already beginning to create custom-built proteins with enhanced functions, including the capability to correct disease genes causing haemophilia, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anaemia.
Stem cell therapies, including both adult and embryonic stem cell differentiation, will be commonly applied by 2030 to the scaffold synthesis and repair of human tissue and organs including—complex skin sheets, cartilage, blood vessels, bone, eyes, spine, pancreas, liver and heart muscle- mimicking their biological counterparts.
Molecular biology has largely been applied as a reductive science but now synthetic biologists are building machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells, deriving energy, processing information and reproducing.
Flexible reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components- from the ground up.
Cyber-Human Symbiosis
The linkages between cyber-computer technologies and human biological systems is now well advanced and includes development of the following applications-
Interactions through Virtual and Augmented Realities;
Sensory augmentation implants- such as the Cochlear and early retinal devices;
Prosthetics- such as the recent DARPA funded neurally controlled prosthetic arm –combining technologies of signal processing, electrical and mechanicalengineering and neuroscience.
Brain interfaces-which will enable a paralysed person to pick up a cup and drink, using interpreted brain signals.
Artificial hippocampus- to assist patients with memory deficits;
Brain image extraction- reconstructing and displaying images using fMRI mapping; Building brain functions at the system level- applying evolutionary self organising and learning principles;
Interactive humanoid robots- to provide company and support
Current developments including synthetic biology, cyber-human symbiosis and bioengineering also signal the creation of new and enhanced life forms for the first time in human history. This will open a portal for the explosion of human potential beyond the confines of biological evolution alone.
The impact of cyberspace on the evolution of the brain is also likely to be very significant over the coming decades. Children are constantly being neurally rewired as the interactive Internet becomes a seamless part of their lives for example in the form of video games and social networks.
NeuroEngineering
NeuroEngineering technology will be commonly applied by 2030, involving a greater understanding of brain function and enabling enhancement of human intelligence, memory and creativity. Significant advances are already being made towards simulating and emulating the brain’s capacity for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, using advanced 3D fMRI and Optogenetics. This recent technology combines genetic engineering with optics to study specific cell types, using fluorescent dyes to better visualise the functions of various groups of neurons and their interactions. This allows the location and dynamics of neural circuits controlling behaviour in animals to be studied and controlled, including food seeking, decision-making and stress avoidance. It also reveals new targets for drugs that can regulate neurons and lead to better treatments.
Cognitive enhancement compounds will also be widely used by 2030; applied to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia as well as enhancing human decision-making, alertness and memory capability. Two enhancers- methylphenidate and amphetamines, have already been shown to alter the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine in neural synapses. Enhanced dopamine signalling may improve learning by focusing attention and interest on a task.
Brain simulation is also a nascent field offering huge future potential. IBM has already simulated a brain with a billion neurons and ten trillion synapses- equivalent to a cat’s cortex or 4.5% of a human brain; while a team of European scientists have taken the first steps towards creating a silicon chip designed to function like a the cortex of a human brain. By simulating a fundamental microcircuit, down to the level of individual neurons it can be used to test genetic variations in particular neurotransmitters, mimicking what happens when the molecular environment is altered using drugs.
With research and development converging on all fronts in this field- both at the hardware and software level, it will be only a matter of time until a brain with human-level complexity is scaled up for experimental use.
NanoBioEngineering
Molecular biology has largely been applied as a reductive science but now synthetic biologists are building machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells, deriving energy, processing information and reproducing.
Flexible reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components- from the ground up.
The technologies of the first generation of Medibots is now well progressed. Medibots are tiny robots that only a few millimetres in size that can work internally- and are designed to enter our bodies through the mouth, ears, eyes and lungs and swim through the bloodstream. Bby 2030 they will be commonly used to conduct robotic surgery, install medical devices inside the body, including a camera in a capsule small enough to be swallowed, deliver drugs and take tissue samples. remote control is conducted by a surgeon via a computer console, in the same way that a present day astronomer works.
Self-replicating, autonomous nanoscale robots are also being bioengineered and will change the face of healthcare and life enhancement. Nanoscale machines and motors will be inserted inside cells which can then self-assemble and seamlessly integrate with the cell. Smart implants and tiny biological fuel cells are also on the drawing board, capable of producing electricity from glucose and oxygen in the bloodstream.
The Web Takes Control
As previously outlined, the intelligent Web 4.0 will be in full play by 2040 and beyond as a symbiotic extension of life-intelligence on a global scale. It already functions as the central information- processing hub for life on the planet, enabling the successful design and delivery of most complex knowledge generation projects.
The web is evolving, not as an application sitting on top of the Internet, but as a living organism in its own right; because it encapsulates all human as well as artificial intelligence. In addition it already links biological life and artificial life in forms such as software agents and learning machines such as intelligent robots, as well as providing enormous computing power for civilisation’s repository of knowledge.
Most importantly it will have co-joined with human intelligence as an active partner, creating a higher or meta-level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting autonomously the immensely complex decision-making and problem solving essential for civilisation's future progress.
By 2040 the evolutionary trajectory of the Web, within its human and planetary environment, will have necessitated it taking responsibility for most major medical and health management decisions, becoming the senior decision partner in the process with humans.
Major health decisions will require verification and confirmation by the Web’s enormous informational intelligence, encompassing as it will, all medical knowledge, protocols and diagnostic algorithms. In addition, this intelligence capacity will allow it to creatively partner and effectively manage key local and global medical research projects.
The benefits to humanity of autonomous Web intervention in the medical-health decision space will be seen as enormous; allowing far more efficient and rigorous diagnosis and problem-solving, with many lives saved and quality of care improved. For example, real-time, optimal planning will be particularly critical in managing future pandemics, particularly as global warming continues..
On the basis of the current Trendlines this capacity will continue to grow, with human decision input becoming increasingly peripheral; as is the case already in many major engineering, transport, communication, financial and logistical operational areas, where realtime responses are required and optimal algorithms scientifically accepted.
The Web 4.0 and its descendents will then have taken virtual control of the evolution of medical-health science and practice.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Future of Life
Cooperation is the key to the future evolution and survival of life, each species learning to work together cooperatively, facilitating information exchange with a higher probability of survival. Human cooperation takes the form of groups, families, communities, tribes, nations, trading blocks and now the beginnings of a truly global society; all maximising individual potential through the group's potential.
The human species is also linked to all other species on the planet through the web of life, currently undergoing enormous stress from global warming. In the near future our species will be linked via the internet to billions of additional electronically coded objects, computing devices and databases, generating an enormously powerful global intelligence.
Beyond biological life, the first forms of artificial life are now emerging, including intelligent software agents and robots. Intelligent agents are a particular class of computer software program, designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem solving support to humans through the application of knowledge-based methods.
As well as being equipped with the ability to perform information-related tasks such as discovery, filtering and negotiation, agents are already being equipped to learn from experience, problem-solve and think creatively. In effect they will become decision partners with humans, explaining and exploring alternative scenarios, discovering new sources of knowledge, recruiting other specialised agents and when necessary replicating and evolving more powerful variants of themselves. Already they assist humans in e-commerce, economic simulation, medical diagnosis, engineering maintenance and financial trading; gaining information or expertise on a specific topic by drawing on knowledge sources linked to the web.
Agents are a classic example of alternate forms of emergent artificial life- A-Life, in contrast to biological life or B-Life and mark a significant milestone in the evolution of the symbiotic relationship between human and computer-mediated intelligence.
By 2050, the symbiosis of A-Life and B-Life or Meta- life, cooperating via the Intelligent web, will be a common feature of our civilisation.
Intelligent robots are designed to learn and evolve progressively. They also have become more complex with the flexibility to act autonomously and simulate human behaviour and emotions. As with intelligent agents, they learn from the experience and the interaction gained in their physical environment in the same way that humans learn.
Eventually life on earth, both biological and artificial, will link with other life forms in the galaxy as an extension of the web of life on earth. From current research, it seems highly likely that life has the capacity to spontaneously generate in any environment capable of supporting complex auto-catalytic biochemical reactions.
For example life forms have been discovered in deep underwater volcanic vents and underground oil shales, so it is likely that other planets with similar environments revolving around main sequence stars will also have the capacity to support life. The first ‘other’ life forms may have already been discovered on Mars in the form of fossil bacteria and potentially exist on moons such as Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn’s Titan where signatures of water and hydrocarbons have been sensed.
The proven capacity of human life to create another life form in the laboratory is now very close to reality and will provide an enormous impetus to the next phase in the evolutionary trajectory of life.
This has ceased to be a purely philosophical conjecture. If life is confirmed on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system, the implications will be beyond estimate, providing critical evidence that life has the capacity to kick-start wherever water, complex carbon based molecules and appropriate energy sources co-exist. And if primitive life forms are ubiquitous throughout the universe, then it is also probable that higher intelligence such as mammalian, primate and human-like species will also eventually emerge, as a statistical outcome of the process.
The SETI- Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence project represents the first serious attempt to contact other intelligent life in the universe. This project represents a major mind shift by humans; acknowledging the real possibility of intelligence elsewhere in the universe and taking pro-active steps to exchange information with a view to future co-operation. The space exploration program is a similar acknowledgment that the boundaries of life must extend not just to the ends of the earth or even the outer limits of the solar system, but eventually to other star systems and galaxies.
Autonomous missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are already producing a huge expansion of our knowledge of other worlds. A probe to the Moon will assess whether water is available there, enabling a colony to be established and a manned mission to Mars is already on the drawing board.
By the time such missions within our own solar system become commonplace, probably by the middle of the 21st Century, the technology to explore other star systems via autonomous intelligent probes and perhaps ‘seed’ other worlds with life, will be well advanced.
This is not an ad hoc trend. It follows the same consistent pattern that life has taken through the centuries, continually pushing the boundaries of its potentiality. It applies the same drive that extended the capabilities of the horse with the automobile, terrestrial travel with air travel, and the boundaries of the old world with those of the new world. The push-pull ratcheting effect of evolution will ensure that this trend continues.
The human species capable of advanced technological innovation has existed in the universe for only several hundred thousand years. This species has now taken the first tentative steps to leave its planet of origin. Its descendants will over the next few thousand years begin to transform the universe on a cosmological scale.
Over time Meta-life will adapt and morph into much more flexible and abstract information-based forms, in order to withstand the extremes of extraterrestrial exploration and the requirement for vastly extended life-spans. One form will be the inter-stellar von Neumann probe, with human/web intelligence, capable of self-replicating and refuelling. These are likely to be released as early as the end of the 21st century. As they reach their target stars, copies will be made from available elements such as iron and nickel. The process will then be repeated over and over. Within the comparatively short timescale of less than a billion years, they will explore the entire galaxy and from there seed other galaxies.
According to a number of leading physicists and cosmologists, it is possible that our particular universe, initiated by the big bang, is but one of many, inflating eternally; perhaps only one an infinite number of universes all existing within a larger meta or multi-verse.
Leading cosmologists such as André Linde have postulated that it may be theoretically possible to induce an initial quantum fluctuation coupled with the addition of extra mass to establish the conditions for the creation of a universe artificially. This opens up the possibility that in the far future universes may be designed to specification; capable of evolving carbon-based life like ourselves or perhaps alternative life forms based on other exotic forms of matter.
Professor Frank Tipler, a major physicist and mathematician, in his book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life may be capable of infinitely delaying the end singularity or Omega boundary point of a universe by processing an infinite amount of information, preserving true immortality for a future meta-life.
Alternatively, if life is capable of achieving the immense level of intelligence as predicted, it is also likely to possess the capability of seeding a universe either in physical or simulated form which will support its continued existence, recreating the conditions for the spontaneous re-emergence of life.
Finally it is postulated that life has been selected by the evolutionary process within the universe, as the most efficient form of information processor. This capacity will eventually accelerate it to unimaginable levels of intelligence, while at the same time extending the life of the universe and by implication its own existence.
This therefore is Life’s future.
The human species is also linked to all other species on the planet through the web of life, currently undergoing enormous stress from global warming. In the near future our species will be linked via the internet to billions of additional electronically coded objects, computing devices and databases, generating an enormously powerful global intelligence.
Beyond biological life, the first forms of artificial life are now emerging, including intelligent software agents and robots. Intelligent agents are a particular class of computer software program, designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem solving support to humans through the application of knowledge-based methods.
As well as being equipped with the ability to perform information-related tasks such as discovery, filtering and negotiation, agents are already being equipped to learn from experience, problem-solve and think creatively. In effect they will become decision partners with humans, explaining and exploring alternative scenarios, discovering new sources of knowledge, recruiting other specialised agents and when necessary replicating and evolving more powerful variants of themselves. Already they assist humans in e-commerce, economic simulation, medical diagnosis, engineering maintenance and financial trading; gaining information or expertise on a specific topic by drawing on knowledge sources linked to the web.
Agents are a classic example of alternate forms of emergent artificial life- A-Life, in contrast to biological life or B-Life and mark a significant milestone in the evolution of the symbiotic relationship between human and computer-mediated intelligence.
By 2050, the symbiosis of A-Life and B-Life or Meta- life, cooperating via the Intelligent web, will be a common feature of our civilisation.
Intelligent robots are designed to learn and evolve progressively. They also have become more complex with the flexibility to act autonomously and simulate human behaviour and emotions. As with intelligent agents, they learn from the experience and the interaction gained in their physical environment in the same way that humans learn.
Eventually life on earth, both biological and artificial, will link with other life forms in the galaxy as an extension of the web of life on earth. From current research, it seems highly likely that life has the capacity to spontaneously generate in any environment capable of supporting complex auto-catalytic biochemical reactions.
For example life forms have been discovered in deep underwater volcanic vents and underground oil shales, so it is likely that other planets with similar environments revolving around main sequence stars will also have the capacity to support life. The first ‘other’ life forms may have already been discovered on Mars in the form of fossil bacteria and potentially exist on moons such as Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn’s Titan where signatures of water and hydrocarbons have been sensed.
The proven capacity of human life to create another life form in the laboratory is now very close to reality and will provide an enormous impetus to the next phase in the evolutionary trajectory of life.
This has ceased to be a purely philosophical conjecture. If life is confirmed on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system, the implications will be beyond estimate, providing critical evidence that life has the capacity to kick-start wherever water, complex carbon based molecules and appropriate energy sources co-exist. And if primitive life forms are ubiquitous throughout the universe, then it is also probable that higher intelligence such as mammalian, primate and human-like species will also eventually emerge, as a statistical outcome of the process.
The SETI- Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence project represents the first serious attempt to contact other intelligent life in the universe. This project represents a major mind shift by humans; acknowledging the real possibility of intelligence elsewhere in the universe and taking pro-active steps to exchange information with a view to future co-operation. The space exploration program is a similar acknowledgment that the boundaries of life must extend not just to the ends of the earth or even the outer limits of the solar system, but eventually to other star systems and galaxies.
Autonomous missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are already producing a huge expansion of our knowledge of other worlds. A probe to the Moon will assess whether water is available there, enabling a colony to be established and a manned mission to Mars is already on the drawing board.
By the time such missions within our own solar system become commonplace, probably by the middle of the 21st Century, the technology to explore other star systems via autonomous intelligent probes and perhaps ‘seed’ other worlds with life, will be well advanced.
This is not an ad hoc trend. It follows the same consistent pattern that life has taken through the centuries, continually pushing the boundaries of its potentiality. It applies the same drive that extended the capabilities of the horse with the automobile, terrestrial travel with air travel, and the boundaries of the old world with those of the new world. The push-pull ratcheting effect of evolution will ensure that this trend continues.
The human species capable of advanced technological innovation has existed in the universe for only several hundred thousand years. This species has now taken the first tentative steps to leave its planet of origin. Its descendants will over the next few thousand years begin to transform the universe on a cosmological scale.
Over time Meta-life will adapt and morph into much more flexible and abstract information-based forms, in order to withstand the extremes of extraterrestrial exploration and the requirement for vastly extended life-spans. One form will be the inter-stellar von Neumann probe, with human/web intelligence, capable of self-replicating and refuelling. These are likely to be released as early as the end of the 21st century. As they reach their target stars, copies will be made from available elements such as iron and nickel. The process will then be repeated over and over. Within the comparatively short timescale of less than a billion years, they will explore the entire galaxy and from there seed other galaxies.
According to a number of leading physicists and cosmologists, it is possible that our particular universe, initiated by the big bang, is but one of many, inflating eternally; perhaps only one an infinite number of universes all existing within a larger meta or multi-verse.
Leading cosmologists such as André Linde have postulated that it may be theoretically possible to induce an initial quantum fluctuation coupled with the addition of extra mass to establish the conditions for the creation of a universe artificially. This opens up the possibility that in the far future universes may be designed to specification; capable of evolving carbon-based life like ourselves or perhaps alternative life forms based on other exotic forms of matter.
Professor Frank Tipler, a major physicist and mathematician, in his book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life may be capable of infinitely delaying the end singularity or Omega boundary point of a universe by processing an infinite amount of information, preserving true immortality for a future meta-life.
Alternatively, if life is capable of achieving the immense level of intelligence as predicted, it is also likely to possess the capability of seeding a universe either in physical or simulated form which will support its continued existence, recreating the conditions for the spontaneous re-emergence of life.
Finally it is postulated that life has been selected by the evolutionary process within the universe, as the most efficient form of information processor. This capacity will eventually accelerate it to unimaginable levels of intelligence, while at the same time extending the life of the universe and by implication its own existence.
This therefore is Life’s future.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Future of Cities
By 2015 over half the population of the planet will be living in high density cities, with dozens of mega-cities having populations greater than 10 million. On current estimates of access to basic services this level of population density will make them unsustainable in terms of acceptable quality of life standards.
Major cities today are already facing escalating problems of survival including transportation gridlock, critical lack of low cost public housing, massive pollution, high crime rates and ongoing disruption caused by natural disasters.
Urban planners are beginning to have some success in solving these problems. For example standards for both public and private architecture are going through a major transformation aimed at energy conservation and sustainability. At the city planning level, China is building its first ecocity- Dongtan, on an island near Shanghai in the Yangste Delta. It offers a model for sustainable cities of the future, designed to be completely self sufficient, generating its own power, zero carbon emissions and the capacity to feed its inhabitants. Similarly in Abu Dhabi, work has begun on the first zero-carbon, zero-waste city in the region at Masdar.
Building and planning codes will also seek to minimise natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, arctic storms and sea inundation, for city dwellers. Such catastrophes are now occurring more frequently and at greater intensity across the planet due to climate change, causing serious loss of life and billions of dollars of damage and disruption each year.
By 2025 the impact of global warming will dominate city planning, with water and waste recycling mandatory for all households and businesses. Buildings will be designed to conserve energy, with surfaces utilising flexible organic solar panels. In addition, high growth public gardens, green belts and mini-parks will generate cooling air-flows and most surfaces will be utilised to collect runoff water to support sustainable horticulture.
Garbage will be totally recycled, including paper, plastics, metals, chemicals and electronics, with organic waste generating significant levels of methane energy for local heating and power grid usage.
At the same time, in all major cities, planning and architecture will shift towards the design of small self-sufficient interconnected neighbourhoods, within walking or cycling distance of essential service centres. These will provide the full range of communication, education, work, health, leisure and social resources.
In addition, locally available high bandwidth web infrastructure will provide community and home-based alternatives to today's physical shopping malls and office blocks. Those facilities already built will be largely recycled over time to create community low cost living, work and leisure facilities.
Most conventional vehicle-based transport infrastructure will be replaced in favour of flexible urban public transport including rapid bus transit and automatic monorail pods operating on demand for personal use. Very high speed trains travelling up to 500kph will also replace a large percentage of cross-country aircraft travel, as is already occurring in China.
By 2035 cities will be operating primarily as complex service and knowledge hubs fostering high levels of innovation. Fully automated supply, manufacturing and distribution centres will function with near-zero carbon emissions on the outskirts of cities connected by underground automatic rail links to ports and storage centres, eliminating the bulk of truck transport congestion, damage to roads and risk of accidents.
Planning and control centres will be distributed within city neighbourhoods, with sections of the urban environment built underground to conserve energy, avoid extreme weather events and also free up more land for local sustainable city horticulture.
By 2050, cities will have evolved to become fully integrated service, supply and knowledge ecosystems, largely supported by the intelligent Web 4.0( Ref Future Web). Ongoing higher education and trade-related skills for populations will be mandatory and constantly updated to meet evolving societal requirements. Earlier problems such as traffic congestion, capacity bottlenecks and pollution within cities will have been largely eliminated. Physical and petty crime will also have been significantly reduced by automatic implementation of ubiquitous security monitoring and prevention.
In the future, the current and growing complexities and population densities of cities will be recognised as lifestyle assets to be exploited and leveraged by their populations rather than liabilities to be avoided.
Major cities today are already facing escalating problems of survival including transportation gridlock, critical lack of low cost public housing, massive pollution, high crime rates and ongoing disruption caused by natural disasters.
Urban planners are beginning to have some success in solving these problems. For example standards for both public and private architecture are going through a major transformation aimed at energy conservation and sustainability. At the city planning level, China is building its first ecocity- Dongtan, on an island near Shanghai in the Yangste Delta. It offers a model for sustainable cities of the future, designed to be completely self sufficient, generating its own power, zero carbon emissions and the capacity to feed its inhabitants. Similarly in Abu Dhabi, work has begun on the first zero-carbon, zero-waste city in the region at Masdar.
Building and planning codes will also seek to minimise natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, arctic storms and sea inundation, for city dwellers. Such catastrophes are now occurring more frequently and at greater intensity across the planet due to climate change, causing serious loss of life and billions of dollars of damage and disruption each year.
By 2025 the impact of global warming will dominate city planning, with water and waste recycling mandatory for all households and businesses. Buildings will be designed to conserve energy, with surfaces utilising flexible organic solar panels. In addition, high growth public gardens, green belts and mini-parks will generate cooling air-flows and most surfaces will be utilised to collect runoff water to support sustainable horticulture.
Garbage will be totally recycled, including paper, plastics, metals, chemicals and electronics, with organic waste generating significant levels of methane energy for local heating and power grid usage.
At the same time, in all major cities, planning and architecture will shift towards the design of small self-sufficient interconnected neighbourhoods, within walking or cycling distance of essential service centres. These will provide the full range of communication, education, work, health, leisure and social resources.
In addition, locally available high bandwidth web infrastructure will provide community and home-based alternatives to today's physical shopping malls and office blocks. Those facilities already built will be largely recycled over time to create community low cost living, work and leisure facilities.
Most conventional vehicle-based transport infrastructure will be replaced in favour of flexible urban public transport including rapid bus transit and automatic monorail pods operating on demand for personal use. Very high speed trains travelling up to 500kph will also replace a large percentage of cross-country aircraft travel, as is already occurring in China.
By 2035 cities will be operating primarily as complex service and knowledge hubs fostering high levels of innovation. Fully automated supply, manufacturing and distribution centres will function with near-zero carbon emissions on the outskirts of cities connected by underground automatic rail links to ports and storage centres, eliminating the bulk of truck transport congestion, damage to roads and risk of accidents.
Planning and control centres will be distributed within city neighbourhoods, with sections of the urban environment built underground to conserve energy, avoid extreme weather events and also free up more land for local sustainable city horticulture.
By 2050, cities will have evolved to become fully integrated service, supply and knowledge ecosystems, largely supported by the intelligent Web 4.0( Ref Future Web). Ongoing higher education and trade-related skills for populations will be mandatory and constantly updated to meet evolving societal requirements. Earlier problems such as traffic congestion, capacity bottlenecks and pollution within cities will have been largely eliminated. Physical and petty crime will also have been significantly reduced by automatic implementation of ubiquitous security monitoring and prevention.
In the future, the current and growing complexities and population densities of cities will be recognised as lifestyle assets to be exploited and leveraged by their populations rather than liabilities to be avoided.
The Future of Economics
The recent failure of classical economics to predict and manage the catastrophic failure of the world’s financial system has triggered a re-evaluation of the whole basis of current economic theory, which has been applied to sustain capitalism for the last 100 years. .
By the end of the 20th century traditional economics was dominated by the classical paradigm based on notions of rational consumers making rational choices in a simple supply/demand world of finite resources, with prices constrained by decreasing returns; all driving the economy to an optimal equilibrium point.
Twentieth century economists had finally realised their dream of creating a rational, rigorous and well-defined mathematical model for describing the workings of the global economy. This standard model has been applied by business leaders, finance ministers, central bankers and presidential advisers ever since.
Up until recently classical economic theory has appeared to work adequately by a process of trial and error. In stable times people are generally rational and optimistic and the theory describes reality reasonably well. But in extreme circumstances people panic and the theory fails spectacularly, including the performance of the quantitative risk algorithms beloved by hi-tech stock market traders.
Unfortunately such a clockwork model has proved over the last four decades to be seriously out of synch with reality, as global markets have been roiled by a series of disastrous credit, market, liquidity and commodity crises. The predictions of the standard model have failed to match real world outcomes, generated in succession by the Savings and Loan, Asian, Mexican, Dotcom and now toxic mortgage bubble disasters.
In this ‘mother of all’ excess greed debacles, high risk mortgage loans were repackaged many times over into opaque risk financial instruments, such as Collateralised Debt Obligations or CDOs, which ended up through the unregulated banking system in the portfolios of nearly every bank and financial institution around the world. Because of lack of regulation, members of the shadow system such as hedge funds and merchant banks borrowed scores of times their own worth in cash. When the CDOs finally failed, the losses rippled through the world economy. The banks stopped lending, leading to further business failures and investors were then forced to sell previously sound stocks causing a stock market crash.
But this crash now increasingly likely to be followed by a period of major long term recession is far more serious- perhaps even more than the Great Depression, as it cannot be contained within borders as easily or so simply solved by mass lending and job creation programs. Now we have the biggest banks, manufacturers, miners, energy suppliers and even national economies including- Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and perhaps even Scotland and the UK toppling like dominoes around the world, under trillions of dollars of debt - with no end in sight. And now the US is losing its AAA rating with a $15 trillion debt equal to 80% of GDP.
In fact a number of interdisciplinary thinkers, starting in the seventies, began to question the credibility of the entire basis of the classical economic model, likening it to a gigantic academic exercise rather than a serious science. And it gradually began to dawn on this group that at a number of the key premises or axioms underpinning the existing model were seriously flawed.
As mentioned, the first is the assumption that humans are rational players in the great game of market roulette. They are not. Behavioural scientists have shown that while people are very good at recognising useful patterns and interpreting ambiguous or incomplete information in their decision-making, they are very poor when it comes to performing complex logical analysis, preferring to follow market leaders or flock. This can further amplify distorting trends.
The new theories of behavioural finance argue that during a bubble the rate of buying and selling can become manic, resulting in irrational decisions. Making money actually stimulates investor’s brain reward circuitry, causing them to ignore risk and making it difficult to value stocks accurately.
But perhaps the most critically flawed assumption is that an economic system always reaches an ideal point equilibrium of its own accord. In other words, the market is capable of self-regulation- automatically allocating resources and controlling excesses in an optimum way, with minimum outside interference.
Since the nineteenth century the fundamental principle underpinning economics has been based on the idea that the economy is an equilibrium system- a system that moves from one equilibrium point to another, driven by shocks from external disruptions - technological, political, cultural etc- but always coming to rest in a natural equilibrium state.
The new emerging evolutionary paradigm however postulates that economies and markets, as well as the internet, enterprises and the brain, are all forms of complex adaptive systems in which agents dynamically interact, process information and adapt their behaviour to a constantly changing environment- but never reach a final equilibrium or goal.
In biological evolution, the natural environment selects those systems that are able to best adapt to its infinite variation. In economic evolution, the market is a combination of financial, production, trading, cultural, organisational and regulatory elements which adapt to and influence a constantly changing ecological, social and business environment.
In essence, economic and financial systems have been fundamentally misclassified. They are not perfect self-regulating systems. They are enormously complex adaptive networks, made up of individual agents which interact dynamically in response to changes in their environment- not merely through simple price setting mechanisms, tax or interest rate cuts, liquidity injections or job creation programs. They must be understood and managed at a far deeper level.
Modern evolutionary theorists believe that evolution is a universal phenomena
and that both economic and biological systems are subclasses of a more general and universal class of evolutionary systems. And if economics is truly an evolutionary system and general laws for evolutionary systems exist, then it follows there are also general laws of economics which must be harnessed. This contradicts much of the standard theory in economics developed over the past one hundred years.
The economic ecosystem is now fed by trillions of transactions, interactions and non-linear feedback loops daily. It may in fact have become too complex and interdependent for economists and governments to control or even understand. It may therefore, as several eminent complexity theorists have recently stated, be on the verge of chaos. Too much or not enough regulation can distort the outcomes further- creating ongoing speculative pricing bubbles or supply and demand distortions.
There is now an urgent need to understand at a much deeper level the genie that modern civilisation has engineered and now let loose. This can only be done by admitting the current crumbling edifice is beyond repair and building a radical new model from ground zero; a system that incorporates the hard science of network, behavioural and complexity theory.
A new adaptive evolutionary model is not only essential- it is the only option.
By the end of the 20th century traditional economics was dominated by the classical paradigm based on notions of rational consumers making rational choices in a simple supply/demand world of finite resources, with prices constrained by decreasing returns; all driving the economy to an optimal equilibrium point.
Twentieth century economists had finally realised their dream of creating a rational, rigorous and well-defined mathematical model for describing the workings of the global economy. This standard model has been applied by business leaders, finance ministers, central bankers and presidential advisers ever since.
Up until recently classical economic theory has appeared to work adequately by a process of trial and error. In stable times people are generally rational and optimistic and the theory describes reality reasonably well. But in extreme circumstances people panic and the theory fails spectacularly, including the performance of the quantitative risk algorithms beloved by hi-tech stock market traders.
Unfortunately such a clockwork model has proved over the last four decades to be seriously out of synch with reality, as global markets have been roiled by a series of disastrous credit, market, liquidity and commodity crises. The predictions of the standard model have failed to match real world outcomes, generated in succession by the Savings and Loan, Asian, Mexican, Dotcom and now toxic mortgage bubble disasters.
In this ‘mother of all’ excess greed debacles, high risk mortgage loans were repackaged many times over into opaque risk financial instruments, such as Collateralised Debt Obligations or CDOs, which ended up through the unregulated banking system in the portfolios of nearly every bank and financial institution around the world. Because of lack of regulation, members of the shadow system such as hedge funds and merchant banks borrowed scores of times their own worth in cash. When the CDOs finally failed, the losses rippled through the world economy. The banks stopped lending, leading to further business failures and investors were then forced to sell previously sound stocks causing a stock market crash.
But this crash now increasingly likely to be followed by a period of major long term recession is far more serious- perhaps even more than the Great Depression, as it cannot be contained within borders as easily or so simply solved by mass lending and job creation programs. Now we have the biggest banks, manufacturers, miners, energy suppliers and even national economies including- Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and perhaps even Scotland and the UK toppling like dominoes around the world, under trillions of dollars of debt - with no end in sight. And now the US is losing its AAA rating with a $15 trillion debt equal to 80% of GDP.
In fact a number of interdisciplinary thinkers, starting in the seventies, began to question the credibility of the entire basis of the classical economic model, likening it to a gigantic academic exercise rather than a serious science. And it gradually began to dawn on this group that at a number of the key premises or axioms underpinning the existing model were seriously flawed.
As mentioned, the first is the assumption that humans are rational players in the great game of market roulette. They are not. Behavioural scientists have shown that while people are very good at recognising useful patterns and interpreting ambiguous or incomplete information in their decision-making, they are very poor when it comes to performing complex logical analysis, preferring to follow market leaders or flock. This can further amplify distorting trends.
The new theories of behavioural finance argue that during a bubble the rate of buying and selling can become manic, resulting in irrational decisions. Making money actually stimulates investor’s brain reward circuitry, causing them to ignore risk and making it difficult to value stocks accurately.
But perhaps the most critically flawed assumption is that an economic system always reaches an ideal point equilibrium of its own accord. In other words, the market is capable of self-regulation- automatically allocating resources and controlling excesses in an optimum way, with minimum outside interference.
Since the nineteenth century the fundamental principle underpinning economics has been based on the idea that the economy is an equilibrium system- a system that moves from one equilibrium point to another, driven by shocks from external disruptions - technological, political, cultural etc- but always coming to rest in a natural equilibrium state.
The new emerging evolutionary paradigm however postulates that economies and markets, as well as the internet, enterprises and the brain, are all forms of complex adaptive systems in which agents dynamically interact, process information and adapt their behaviour to a constantly changing environment- but never reach a final equilibrium or goal.
In biological evolution, the natural environment selects those systems that are able to best adapt to its infinite variation. In economic evolution, the market is a combination of financial, production, trading, cultural, organisational and regulatory elements which adapt to and influence a constantly changing ecological, social and business environment.
In essence, economic and financial systems have been fundamentally misclassified. They are not perfect self-regulating systems. They are enormously complex adaptive networks, made up of individual agents which interact dynamically in response to changes in their environment- not merely through simple price setting mechanisms, tax or interest rate cuts, liquidity injections or job creation programs. They must be understood and managed at a far deeper level.
Modern evolutionary theorists believe that evolution is a universal phenomena
and that both economic and biological systems are subclasses of a more general and universal class of evolutionary systems. And if economics is truly an evolutionary system and general laws for evolutionary systems exist, then it follows there are also general laws of economics which must be harnessed. This contradicts much of the standard theory in economics developed over the past one hundred years.
The economic ecosystem is now fed by trillions of transactions, interactions and non-linear feedback loops daily. It may in fact have become too complex and interdependent for economists and governments to control or even understand. It may therefore, as several eminent complexity theorists have recently stated, be on the verge of chaos. Too much or not enough regulation can distort the outcomes further- creating ongoing speculative pricing bubbles or supply and demand distortions.
There is now an urgent need to understand at a much deeper level the genie that modern civilisation has engineered and now let loose. This can only be done by admitting the current crumbling edifice is beyond repair and building a radical new model from ground zero; a system that incorporates the hard science of network, behavioural and complexity theory.
A new adaptive evolutionary model is not only essential- it is the only option.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Future of the Media
By 2013- most print media has been forced to radically adapt towards an online multimedia model. Newspapers are already in turmoil as they switch to a primarily online model with advertising revenues collapsing as traditional revenue streams dry up and loss of classified and banner advertising unable to be compensated by online revenues. Already mass layoffs of journalists and support staff are in train- 12,000 this year alone, as page layouts and editorial are contracted out.
To boost news gathering and editorial in the face of diminishing revenues newspapers and online specialist commentary sites will open up reporting to largely unpaid citizen journalism and freelance bloggers. This in turn will encourage syndicated commentary via blogging.
There will also be the beginning of a major trend to local online reporting by major newspapers and news sources aimed at attracting small community interest groups and advertisers. This trend will be reliant on combining both citizen and staff reporting.
Traditional news media, both local and global, will be rapidly reduced to a stream of headlines with minimal analysis. Special editions and feature articles will continue in reduced quantity, but online short-burst information- text, video and audio streams, will be increasingly popular, distributed via multimedia platforms such as new generation smart phones and tablets, already in common use.
By 2020- traditional free to air television channels will have largely disappeared, along with many cable channels, with television advertising similarly caught in the headlight glare of change. The switch will be to web channels covering every topic- personalised to individual taste- viewable anywhere, anytime and watched primarily on mobile media screens. The personalised channel will be ubiquitous- news and information will be filtered and customised to every personal taste.
All print media including magazines and books will have followed newspapers to a multimedia model distributed over the web, using almost exclusively electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle, iPads and smart phones for flexible viewing. Terabyte flash memory will be used for offline personal media storage- but will be largely redundant due to the availability of virtually unlimited archival storage utility sites run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc.
Most print and video media will be available via direct ultra-fast wave division multiplex wireless downloads. Bookstores, despite the use of print-on-demand Xerox machines as a short term stop-gap will also convert exclusively to downloads and be forced to compete for business with coffee houses and other social/cultural hubs, offering direct media experiences. These hubs will morph into the dominant local community knowledge and workplace centres of the future (ref Future of Cities).
In addition, the trend towards alternate realities will continue, with entertainment media such as virtual worlds combining with social gaming to become a dominant form. News and sport will also become interactive, overlapping with gaming and increasingly available within 3D holographic spaces for maximum immersive effect.
The media will focus on a number of differentiated streams available from thousands of web hubs, aggregation sites and social networks in three broad forms. First- news headlines and short synopses of current events as currently available online, competing with traditional news feeds and wire services. Second- indepth reviews and features relating to past events and narratives, merging with traditional book and blog formats. And third- future scenario analyses and forecasts tied to current trends. These scenarios will also feed back into current events creating additional news.
In addition the number of individual and small group freelance multimedia blogs, twitter conversations and wikis, distributed via syndicated web sites, webcasts, social networks, media feeds and aggregation sites, will have grown exponentially- to at least triple current levels- exploring every aspect of societal experience. Citizen journalism and stream-of-consciousness twitter conversations will continue to expand.
By 2030- free-to-air networks, except for public broadcasting, special demographic and dedicated sponsored channels will have disappeared, eliminated by reduced advertising revenue and the ready availability of unlimited web on-demand material.
Public broadcasting will continue to receive strong support from community groups.
Specialised channels covering real-time activities, such as major sporting events, will survive, but increasingly these will be produced by freelance groups and directly brokered to consumer groups for distribution on social networks for example.
Film and video makers will be dominated by small independent producers and creative groups working on particular projects within virtual teams; marketing their services directly to consumer groups or market brokers.
All news including geopolitical, weather, economic, financial, arts, cultural, environmental and technology coverage, will be handled automatically as 24 hr feeds, operating largely independently of human intervention. Analysis will be available as a product of contracted specialists, not permanently connected to any particular media organisation.
The web behemoths such as Google and Microsoft will have become the largest media as well as advertising players. However a reverse trend will have begun with citizen journalism playing a major role, together with greater acceptance of the Global Commons model- a free sharing marketplace of material and knowledge accessible for the global benefit. This will make in-house news gathering and reporting functions largely redundant. In addition, traditional advertising will have become increasingly irrelevant as markets fragment and consumers begin to take control, dictating their own information in-depth requirements on a need-to-know basis. Low key informational advertising, embedded within social media but only available on a request basis will become the dominant form.
Alternate knowledge and social hubs such as the thousands of Wikipedia look-a likes, controlled by consumer groups, will start to compete with and displace the power of the media and ultra web enterprises such as Google, which will be forced to cede part of its global knowledge control in its own survival self-interest.
The Web will be controlled by and open to all nations via the global commons in conjunction with a specially constituted body such as the present ICAAN, devolving away from US control.
By 2040- news analysis, as well as its gathering and distribution, will be largely automated and fluid- available independently on demand and on a push feedback basis- tailored to all net-citizens and ever-changing special interest groups, operating in diverse virtual social realities.
Traditional advertising as we know it will have largely disappeared. Product and service information will be available instead via reliable consumer assessment feedback networks supported by semantic and intelligent web assessment (ref Future of Web ) and assisted by a small number of specialised human information researchers- continuously updated, with factual information available on demand or pushed to meet personal preferences.
Advertising will have morphed to provide consumer virtual experiences on an entertainment and support knowledge basis. At the same time future trend analysis and scenario creation will become increasingly significant and the largest media growth segment, merging with the gaming and entertainment markets.
By 2050- traditional major media organisations will be extinct, with the last of the media barons and dynasties departed. Instead media generation and dissemination will begin to shift to countless creative individuals and small-scale media enterprises operating cooperatively and seamlessly in tandem with the medium of the global commons and intelligent web.
At the same time there will be an inevitable loss of direct individual control over media processing, as all aspects of news discovery, aggregation, processing, analysis and distribution are automated as a function of the combined fusing of artificial and human intelligence and the rigorous decision-making capacity of the Web 5.0.
The media will instead become a pervasive medium for recording local and global experience, generating new forms of knowledge and immersive entertainment for human civilisation- including automatic collection by embedded sensors in every artefact and environment on the planet- to instant delivery via ultra-fast bandwidth and direct neural/brain connection.
Its role will encompass, document and support the evolutionary progress of all cultural, political, artistic, scientific and technological experience of life's existence.
Web 5.0, as a synthesis of all human and cyber extended knowledge, sensory experience and intelligence will merge with and start to take control of this medium.
To boost news gathering and editorial in the face of diminishing revenues newspapers and online specialist commentary sites will open up reporting to largely unpaid citizen journalism and freelance bloggers. This in turn will encourage syndicated commentary via blogging.
There will also be the beginning of a major trend to local online reporting by major newspapers and news sources aimed at attracting small community interest groups and advertisers. This trend will be reliant on combining both citizen and staff reporting.
Traditional news media, both local and global, will be rapidly reduced to a stream of headlines with minimal analysis. Special editions and feature articles will continue in reduced quantity, but online short-burst information- text, video and audio streams, will be increasingly popular, distributed via multimedia platforms such as new generation smart phones and tablets, already in common use.
By 2020- traditional free to air television channels will have largely disappeared, along with many cable channels, with television advertising similarly caught in the headlight glare of change. The switch will be to web channels covering every topic- personalised to individual taste- viewable anywhere, anytime and watched primarily on mobile media screens. The personalised channel will be ubiquitous- news and information will be filtered and customised to every personal taste.
All print media including magazines and books will have followed newspapers to a multimedia model distributed over the web, using almost exclusively electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle, iPads and smart phones for flexible viewing. Terabyte flash memory will be used for offline personal media storage- but will be largely redundant due to the availability of virtually unlimited archival storage utility sites run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc.
Most print and video media will be available via direct ultra-fast wave division multiplex wireless downloads. Bookstores, despite the use of print-on-demand Xerox machines as a short term stop-gap will also convert exclusively to downloads and be forced to compete for business with coffee houses and other social/cultural hubs, offering direct media experiences. These hubs will morph into the dominant local community knowledge and workplace centres of the future (ref Future of Cities).
In addition, the trend towards alternate realities will continue, with entertainment media such as virtual worlds combining with social gaming to become a dominant form. News and sport will also become interactive, overlapping with gaming and increasingly available within 3D holographic spaces for maximum immersive effect.
The media will focus on a number of differentiated streams available from thousands of web hubs, aggregation sites and social networks in three broad forms. First- news headlines and short synopses of current events as currently available online, competing with traditional news feeds and wire services. Second- indepth reviews and features relating to past events and narratives, merging with traditional book and blog formats. And third- future scenario analyses and forecasts tied to current trends. These scenarios will also feed back into current events creating additional news.
In addition the number of individual and small group freelance multimedia blogs, twitter conversations and wikis, distributed via syndicated web sites, webcasts, social networks, media feeds and aggregation sites, will have grown exponentially- to at least triple current levels- exploring every aspect of societal experience. Citizen journalism and stream-of-consciousness twitter conversations will continue to expand.
By 2030- free-to-air networks, except for public broadcasting, special demographic and dedicated sponsored channels will have disappeared, eliminated by reduced advertising revenue and the ready availability of unlimited web on-demand material.
Public broadcasting will continue to receive strong support from community groups.
Specialised channels covering real-time activities, such as major sporting events, will survive, but increasingly these will be produced by freelance groups and directly brokered to consumer groups for distribution on social networks for example.
Film and video makers will be dominated by small independent producers and creative groups working on particular projects within virtual teams; marketing their services directly to consumer groups or market brokers.
All news including geopolitical, weather, economic, financial, arts, cultural, environmental and technology coverage, will be handled automatically as 24 hr feeds, operating largely independently of human intervention. Analysis will be available as a product of contracted specialists, not permanently connected to any particular media organisation.
The web behemoths such as Google and Microsoft will have become the largest media as well as advertising players. However a reverse trend will have begun with citizen journalism playing a major role, together with greater acceptance of the Global Commons model- a free sharing marketplace of material and knowledge accessible for the global benefit. This will make in-house news gathering and reporting functions largely redundant. In addition, traditional advertising will have become increasingly irrelevant as markets fragment and consumers begin to take control, dictating their own information in-depth requirements on a need-to-know basis. Low key informational advertising, embedded within social media but only available on a request basis will become the dominant form.
Alternate knowledge and social hubs such as the thousands of Wikipedia look-a likes, controlled by consumer groups, will start to compete with and displace the power of the media and ultra web enterprises such as Google, which will be forced to cede part of its global knowledge control in its own survival self-interest.
The Web will be controlled by and open to all nations via the global commons in conjunction with a specially constituted body such as the present ICAAN, devolving away from US control.
By 2040- news analysis, as well as its gathering and distribution, will be largely automated and fluid- available independently on demand and on a push feedback basis- tailored to all net-citizens and ever-changing special interest groups, operating in diverse virtual social realities.
Traditional advertising as we know it will have largely disappeared. Product and service information will be available instead via reliable consumer assessment feedback networks supported by semantic and intelligent web assessment (ref Future of Web ) and assisted by a small number of specialised human information researchers- continuously updated, with factual information available on demand or pushed to meet personal preferences.
Advertising will have morphed to provide consumer virtual experiences on an entertainment and support knowledge basis. At the same time future trend analysis and scenario creation will become increasingly significant and the largest media growth segment, merging with the gaming and entertainment markets.
By 2050- traditional major media organisations will be extinct, with the last of the media barons and dynasties departed. Instead media generation and dissemination will begin to shift to countless creative individuals and small-scale media enterprises operating cooperatively and seamlessly in tandem with the medium of the global commons and intelligent web.
At the same time there will be an inevitable loss of direct individual control over media processing, as all aspects of news discovery, aggregation, processing, analysis and distribution are automated as a function of the combined fusing of artificial and human intelligence and the rigorous decision-making capacity of the Web 5.0.
The media will instead become a pervasive medium for recording local and global experience, generating new forms of knowledge and immersive entertainment for human civilisation- including automatic collection by embedded sensors in every artefact and environment on the planet- to instant delivery via ultra-fast bandwidth and direct neural/brain connection.
Its role will encompass, document and support the evolutionary progress of all cultural, political, artistic, scientific and technological experience of life's existence.
Web 5.0, as a synthesis of all human and cyber extended knowledge, sensory experience and intelligence will merge with and start to take control of this medium.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Future of the Web
By 2020 Web 2.0- The Social Web- will have developed into a complex multimedia interweaving of ideas, knowledge and social commentary, connecting over three billion people on the planet. In combination with the Semantic Web 3.0 it will automatically analyse, interpret and create new forms of layered knowledge beyond the world of today's blogs, wikis, news, entertainment social networking and virtual worlds.
It will be accessible by all forms of seamless body and neural devices.
Over the next decade these early trends will continue to evolve at a frenetic pace- social networks will both fragment and unify, catering to special groups, but also overlapping and creating within the next few years a global social network of networks. At the same time, social networks and virtual worlds such as Second Life will converge, along with powerful simulation technology, to create the first realistic virtual realities.
By 2030 Web 3.0- advanced versions of the Semantic Web- will have made many important contributions to new knowledge through network relationships, logical inference and artificial intelligence. It will be powered by a seamless, computational mesh, enveloping and connecting most human life and will encompass all facets of our social and business lives- always on and available to manage every need. It will connect not only most of the 8 billion individuals on the planet, but also link with other biological and artificial life forms, as well as countless everyday electronically controlled objects. The Semantic Web and Intelligent Web will have combined.
By 2040, Web 4.0- the Intelligent Web- will be ubiquitous- able to interact with the repository of almost all available knowledge of human civilisation- past and present, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis. Web 4.0 will mark the beginning of a new intelligent entity- a sentient and cognisant multidimensional network, powered not only by billions of ultra-fast tiny processors and unlimited communications bandwidth, but by the first quantum computers, capable of processing trillions of operations in parallel. Human intelligence will have cojoined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence, creating a higher or meta level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting the complex decision-making and problem solving capacity, required for civilisation's future progress.
By 2040, Web 5.0- The Wise Web- will have emerged, embedding all biological and artificial life within a global cooperative intelligence. All critical decisions affecting our planet and life, including those relating to global warming, sharing vital resources and the ethical resolution of conflict and human rights, will be guided by this global intelligence.
The Wise Web will mark the beginning of a new threshold in human civilisation- a new form of global consciousness- in which all life will be embedded.
It will be accessible by all forms of seamless body and neural devices.
Over the next decade these early trends will continue to evolve at a frenetic pace- social networks will both fragment and unify, catering to special groups, but also overlapping and creating within the next few years a global social network of networks. At the same time, social networks and virtual worlds such as Second Life will converge, along with powerful simulation technology, to create the first realistic virtual realities.
By 2030 Web 3.0- advanced versions of the Semantic Web- will have made many important contributions to new knowledge through network relationships, logical inference and artificial intelligence. It will be powered by a seamless, computational mesh, enveloping and connecting most human life and will encompass all facets of our social and business lives- always on and available to manage every need. It will connect not only most of the 8 billion individuals on the planet, but also link with other biological and artificial life forms, as well as countless everyday electronically controlled objects. The Semantic Web and Intelligent Web will have combined.
By 2040, Web 4.0- the Intelligent Web- will be ubiquitous- able to interact with the repository of almost all available knowledge of human civilisation- past and present, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis. Web 4.0 will mark the beginning of a new intelligent entity- a sentient and cognisant multidimensional network, powered not only by billions of ultra-fast tiny processors and unlimited communications bandwidth, but by the first quantum computers, capable of processing trillions of operations in parallel. Human intelligence will have cojoined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence, creating a higher or meta level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting the complex decision-making and problem solving capacity, required for civilisation's future progress.
By 2040, Web 5.0- The Wise Web- will have emerged, embedding all biological and artificial life within a global cooperative intelligence. All critical decisions affecting our planet and life, including those relating to global warming, sharing vital resources and the ethical resolution of conflict and human rights, will be guided by this global intelligence.
The Wise Web will mark the beginning of a new threshold in human civilisation- a new form of global consciousness- in which all life will be embedded.
The Future of Food
By 2015- global warming will be beginning to have a major impact on food production. Dislocation in climate patterns, increasing frequency of droughts and floods-including the drying up of the major river systems of Asia, plus rising population and cultivation of biofuels will result in less arable land and rising costs of food production.
This will lead to increased prices of staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize as well as meat, forcing another 100 million people in developing countries into malnutrition, including 10 million children in India alone. This is in addition to the already 1 billion already affected by poverty and malnutrition.
This will have severe flow on effects for the future of developing countries as malnutrition severely impacts the cognitive capacity of the next generation.
Food aid will also be under pressure from richer countries, as governments are forced to provide priority for food security to their own populations, particularly following a decade of financial turmoil. Friction will also be created as major population countries such as China begin buying up arable land in poorer countries such as africa as a hedge against future food shortages.
By 2025- the world population will have grown to more than 8 billion. Global demand for grain and animal production will now significantly outstrip supply. To satisfy demand, cereal production needs to increase by 50% and animal production by 90%.
Additional arable land equal to 150 million hectares or a minimum 10% of the 1.5 billion hectares already under cultivation will be required to keep pace despite improvements in agricultural management and technology. This is likely to come in the short term from areas such as the Congo and Amazonia, accelerating the onset of global warming and drought as forests are further fragmented.
This will inevitably create global unrest and conflict with waves of mass migrations in developing countries to the cities. In turn this will accelerate the need to make cities and urban environments more food self sufficient, through use of treated sewage, local community food gardens, based on urban harvested water runoff and solar energy collection.
By 2030- major programs will be underway to recover genes from ancestor plant species that originally evolved to cope with drought and salinity, together with a return to original middle eastern and African dry land farming techniques.
There is recognition that conventional breeding techniques for plant traits such as tolerance to dry conditions, may be too complex and time consuming to achieve within the available urgent timeframes. Genetic modification provides the only answer, with accelerated cooperative science initiatives to increase crop yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance.
Bright spots will be a major shift from grains to tuber crops such as potatoes, which need less land and water than grain and are extremely nutritious, with four times as much complex carbohydrate and better quality proteins than grains. In addition meat products will synthesized from culturing the muscle cells of a broad range of animals, bypassing the need to slaughter them.
Animal production as a primary source of protein will also be seen as unsustainable, as is large-scale use of arable land for cattle grazing. Monoculture and irrigation farming is also phased out as unsustainable in terms of inefficient water and land useage. Poultry remains viable on edge of farmland and cities.
World fisheries are also at major risk by 2030, with fish traditionally providing 20% of animal protein. All fish, crustacean and sea mammal stocks are already severely depleted despite greater conservation controls. The oceans are rapidly becoming too acidic to support sea life including plankton and shellfish. Ocean dead zones, depleted of oxygen, are spreading fast.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization- FAO draws up contingency plans for global food management, planning for relocation of populations from the drying tropical zones to those of the more habitable northern and southern latitudes.
By 2040- glacial and mountain snow fed sources of water will be in full retreat across the globe. As a result the major river systems in Europe, South America and Asia, providing water to the traditional farming areas of southern Europe, Pakistan, China, India, Afghanistan and Vietnam, begin to dry up.
China’s vast rice fields, providing food for 400 million people and India’s wheat, fruit and vegetable farming locus in the Punjab are severely affected. Most of Africa, the Middle East and Australia will be in permanent drought, combined with major depletion and contamination by natural gas extraction of the groundwater aquifers.
Human habitation in the mid latitudinal belts- 30 degrees north and south of the equator, becomes unsustainable. The only regions with adequate rainfall, guaranteed to support stable food production and human society, are in the high latitudes such as- Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, part of Northern Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. Small communities continue to survive in drought areas by building shelters and growing food underground, using still active aquifers and solar energy.
By 2050- global warming will be out of control with unsustainable limits to suitable land for agriculture, with contention between retaining forest as a carbon sink and clearing it for agriculture.
Friction reaches flashpoint between the major nations over land, food and water security. Massive human migrations are occurring globally – from poorer to richer countries and from drier to wetter habitats.
Giant solar energy generating belts become operational across North Africa, Middle east, Southern US and Australia, providing power for high density population centers and high intensity farming hubs to feed them.
With the world population reaching 9 billion, an extra 1 billion hectares more land are needed for food production- equal to the landmass of US. At the same time commercial fish and seafood species have collapsed.
It is recognized that only global cooperation beyond national borders can avoid conflict, anarchy and starvation for billions. Global food production, distribution and allocation plans are activated under the auspices of the UN.
Global cooperation in achieving the equitable allocation of land, water, energy and food resources through the advanced communication and knowledge mechanism of the Intelligent web 4.0, becomes the only realistic means of avoiding global anarchy and the disintegration of human civilization.
National boundaries and political hubris become irrelevant when the survival of human life- perhaps the most advanced life-form in the universe - is threatened
This will lead to increased prices of staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize as well as meat, forcing another 100 million people in developing countries into malnutrition, including 10 million children in India alone. This is in addition to the already 1 billion already affected by poverty and malnutrition.
This will have severe flow on effects for the future of developing countries as malnutrition severely impacts the cognitive capacity of the next generation.
Food aid will also be under pressure from richer countries, as governments are forced to provide priority for food security to their own populations, particularly following a decade of financial turmoil. Friction will also be created as major population countries such as China begin buying up arable land in poorer countries such as africa as a hedge against future food shortages.
By 2025- the world population will have grown to more than 8 billion. Global demand for grain and animal production will now significantly outstrip supply. To satisfy demand, cereal production needs to increase by 50% and animal production by 90%.
Additional arable land equal to 150 million hectares or a minimum 10% of the 1.5 billion hectares already under cultivation will be required to keep pace despite improvements in agricultural management and technology. This is likely to come in the short term from areas such as the Congo and Amazonia, accelerating the onset of global warming and drought as forests are further fragmented.
This will inevitably create global unrest and conflict with waves of mass migrations in developing countries to the cities. In turn this will accelerate the need to make cities and urban environments more food self sufficient, through use of treated sewage, local community food gardens, based on urban harvested water runoff and solar energy collection.
By 2030- major programs will be underway to recover genes from ancestor plant species that originally evolved to cope with drought and salinity, together with a return to original middle eastern and African dry land farming techniques.
There is recognition that conventional breeding techniques for plant traits such as tolerance to dry conditions, may be too complex and time consuming to achieve within the available urgent timeframes. Genetic modification provides the only answer, with accelerated cooperative science initiatives to increase crop yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance.
Bright spots will be a major shift from grains to tuber crops such as potatoes, which need less land and water than grain and are extremely nutritious, with four times as much complex carbohydrate and better quality proteins than grains. In addition meat products will synthesized from culturing the muscle cells of a broad range of animals, bypassing the need to slaughter them.
Animal production as a primary source of protein will also be seen as unsustainable, as is large-scale use of arable land for cattle grazing. Monoculture and irrigation farming is also phased out as unsustainable in terms of inefficient water and land useage. Poultry remains viable on edge of farmland and cities.
World fisheries are also at major risk by 2030, with fish traditionally providing 20% of animal protein. All fish, crustacean and sea mammal stocks are already severely depleted despite greater conservation controls. The oceans are rapidly becoming too acidic to support sea life including plankton and shellfish. Ocean dead zones, depleted of oxygen, are spreading fast.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization- FAO draws up contingency plans for global food management, planning for relocation of populations from the drying tropical zones to those of the more habitable northern and southern latitudes.
By 2040- glacial and mountain snow fed sources of water will be in full retreat across the globe. As a result the major river systems in Europe, South America and Asia, providing water to the traditional farming areas of southern Europe, Pakistan, China, India, Afghanistan and Vietnam, begin to dry up.
China’s vast rice fields, providing food for 400 million people and India’s wheat, fruit and vegetable farming locus in the Punjab are severely affected. Most of Africa, the Middle East and Australia will be in permanent drought, combined with major depletion and contamination by natural gas extraction of the groundwater aquifers.
Human habitation in the mid latitudinal belts- 30 degrees north and south of the equator, becomes unsustainable. The only regions with adequate rainfall, guaranteed to support stable food production and human society, are in the high latitudes such as- Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, part of Northern Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. Small communities continue to survive in drought areas by building shelters and growing food underground, using still active aquifers and solar energy.
By 2050- global warming will be out of control with unsustainable limits to suitable land for agriculture, with contention between retaining forest as a carbon sink and clearing it for agriculture.
Friction reaches flashpoint between the major nations over land, food and water security. Massive human migrations are occurring globally – from poorer to richer countries and from drier to wetter habitats.
Giant solar energy generating belts become operational across North Africa, Middle east, Southern US and Australia, providing power for high density population centers and high intensity farming hubs to feed them.
With the world population reaching 9 billion, an extra 1 billion hectares more land are needed for food production- equal to the landmass of US. At the same time commercial fish and seafood species have collapsed.
It is recognized that only global cooperation beyond national borders can avoid conflict, anarchy and starvation for billions. Global food production, distribution and allocation plans are activated under the auspices of the UN.
Global cooperation in achieving the equitable allocation of land, water, energy and food resources through the advanced communication and knowledge mechanism of the Intelligent web 4.0, becomes the only realistic means of avoiding global anarchy and the disintegration of human civilization.
National boundaries and political hubris become irrelevant when the survival of human life- perhaps the most advanced life-form in the universe - is threatened
The Future of Space Exploration
By 2020- humans will have returned to the moon following the Apollo missions of the 60s and 70s, to create a permanent space colony and a base for future galactic exploration. The space station will continue to play a significant scientific research, communications and training role, supporting future space missions.
India, China and Japan will also have proceeded with their own exploratory missions to the moon and planets, but will increasingly work cooperatively with the US and EU under International Space Treaty protocols administered by the UN. Other middle rank G20 countries such as Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France and South Africa will also be major individual contributors to future space programs.
Most of Mars will have been mapped by the next generation robot explorers, which will finally determine the existence of past and present microbial life on the red planet.
The Constellation Orion Space Shuttle replacement will be launched in 2015, supporting the space station and future lunar missions, providing a means of repair and escape for astronauts if the shuttles are damaged by space junk or solar radiation. Power sources for space vehicles and interstellar probes will routinely combine plutonium nuclear generator, solar energy sail, gravity slingshot and ion drive technologies.
By 2030- most of the solar system's major objects- its planets, moons and larger asteroids will have been visited by probes and tested for signs of life. The potential for life to exist on many extra-solar planets will also be determined as well as the source and nature of organic molecules in space.
The construction and maintenance of the space stations, instrumentation and the lunar colony, will be carried out largely autonomously by robots, involving the mining and transportation of local materials.
Space tourism will become feasible but remain strictly limited because of the prohibitive energy costs and the ability to realistically replicate such experiences safely in virtual reality.
An asteroid and comet defence system will also have been established, capable of tracking and eliminating most major threats to Earth.
By 2040- all navigation, exploration tasks and missions will be automated and managed by the powerful capability of the Intelligent Web 4.0, extended to encompass projects and missions across the solar system. This will include the use of intelligent probes, which will rely on their own decision capability to analyse relevant data and determine items of interest for future exploration.
The entire space enterprise will be linked and coordinated via massive grid e-infrastructure environments such as the European Grid Environment- EGEE, which integrates networks, grids, middleware, computational resources, data repositories, instruments, and operational support for global virtual science collaborations. A vast amount of data will need to be downloaded, stored and processed by global space programs. EGEE currently has access to more than 20,000 petabytes or 20 million billion bytes of storage and 80,000 CPUs, which by 2050 will increase by a factor of 100.
Globalisation and cooperation will have reached an advanced stage on earth in the face of the extreme risks to society from global warming. Therefore the risk of conflict between the major powers over sovereignty rights resulting from space exploration will be minimal. As the space program gathers momentum, humans will increasingly see themselves as belonging to one world- not separate nations.
By 2050- colonisation programs, including Mars and possibly Europa and Titan will be launched, as well as the first interstellar robotic probes. These will be capable of self-replicating and evolving as agents in their own right. This will herald the second phase of the exploration and colonisation of the galaxy, as humans move beyond their own home solar base and accelerate the search for new knowledge and experiences, including other intelligent life.
Starships will follow later in the century, transporting humans and powered by nuclear pulse propulsion systems, allowing the nearest star to be reached in a few decades.
However the major task of exploring space will be carried out by autonomous, self-learning computational probes, managed by a vast communications and knowledge network extending across the galaxy.
This process will proceed exponentially as the ecosystem of smart probes replicates throughout the galaxy.
India, China and Japan will also have proceeded with their own exploratory missions to the moon and planets, but will increasingly work cooperatively with the US and EU under International Space Treaty protocols administered by the UN. Other middle rank G20 countries such as Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France and South Africa will also be major individual contributors to future space programs.
Most of Mars will have been mapped by the next generation robot explorers, which will finally determine the existence of past and present microbial life on the red planet.
The Constellation Orion Space Shuttle replacement will be launched in 2015, supporting the space station and future lunar missions, providing a means of repair and escape for astronauts if the shuttles are damaged by space junk or solar radiation. Power sources for space vehicles and interstellar probes will routinely combine plutonium nuclear generator, solar energy sail, gravity slingshot and ion drive technologies.
By 2030- most of the solar system's major objects- its planets, moons and larger asteroids will have been visited by probes and tested for signs of life. The potential for life to exist on many extra-solar planets will also be determined as well as the source and nature of organic molecules in space.
The construction and maintenance of the space stations, instrumentation and the lunar colony, will be carried out largely autonomously by robots, involving the mining and transportation of local materials.
Space tourism will become feasible but remain strictly limited because of the prohibitive energy costs and the ability to realistically replicate such experiences safely in virtual reality.
An asteroid and comet defence system will also have been established, capable of tracking and eliminating most major threats to Earth.
By 2040- all navigation, exploration tasks and missions will be automated and managed by the powerful capability of the Intelligent Web 4.0, extended to encompass projects and missions across the solar system. This will include the use of intelligent probes, which will rely on their own decision capability to analyse relevant data and determine items of interest for future exploration.
The entire space enterprise will be linked and coordinated via massive grid e-infrastructure environments such as the European Grid Environment- EGEE, which integrates networks, grids, middleware, computational resources, data repositories, instruments, and operational support for global virtual science collaborations. A vast amount of data will need to be downloaded, stored and processed by global space programs. EGEE currently has access to more than 20,000 petabytes or 20 million billion bytes of storage and 80,000 CPUs, which by 2050 will increase by a factor of 100.
Globalisation and cooperation will have reached an advanced stage on earth in the face of the extreme risks to society from global warming. Therefore the risk of conflict between the major powers over sovereignty rights resulting from space exploration will be minimal. As the space program gathers momentum, humans will increasingly see themselves as belonging to one world- not separate nations.
By 2050- colonisation programs, including Mars and possibly Europa and Titan will be launched, as well as the first interstellar robotic probes. These will be capable of self-replicating and evolving as agents in their own right. This will herald the second phase of the exploration and colonisation of the galaxy, as humans move beyond their own home solar base and accelerate the search for new knowledge and experiences, including other intelligent life.
Starships will follow later in the century, transporting humans and powered by nuclear pulse propulsion systems, allowing the nearest star to be reached in a few decades.
However the major task of exploring space will be carried out by autonomous, self-learning computational probes, managed by a vast communications and knowledge network extending across the galaxy.
This process will proceed exponentially as the ecosystem of smart probes replicates throughout the galaxy.
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