Expanding Human Horizons...

Meta-category - Expansion: Technologies that exponentially expand human effort and activities. By Jona Nalder, with Rhys Cassidy

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“I don’t think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
- Stephen Hawking

Expansion. Throughout our history, exploring for survival or new opportunities has been a constant theme. At the dawn of time, the Hawking’s of that era would perhaps have been warning about the need to move beyond Africa, or away from somewhere an ice age was beginning. During such migrations (1), it has often been the development of new technologies which have enabled such moves to succeed. For Vikings fighting the scarce resources of their arctic homes, the longship enabled commerce, trade and exploration. For sailors in the 1700’s, the sextant allowed ships to cross oceans with the certainty of success required before global travel could become commonplace, and today, millions of people cross borders and oceans held aloft by carbon fibre wings that are given lift by spinning turbo-fans. All of these are part of the story of technology impacting human efforts and abilities.

This lens of ‘the ways in which technology is impacting humanity, work and learning’ is the basis of the Future-U framework (2) developed to help us begin addressing the vast story of humans and technology into a discussion that can be most useful for us right now. ‘Expansion’, the third meta-category in this framework, follows on from both Automation and Augmentation. Rather than focusing on technologies that replace or assists human activities as they do however, it refers to the technologies that exponentially expand human possibilities. 

Specific examples in our current time-frame include the internet (information everywhere) and the smartphone (access and share information everywhere). In our near-future timeframe, ‘Expansion’ covers the arrival of low-cost renewable energy, access to free high speed internet, ‘New Space’ activities like asteroid mining and autonomous Artificial Intelligence and Robots. Any one of these have the potential to bring exponential change on a scale similar to what electricity did for our grandparents. 

Mining of Asteroids and the moon for example are now forecast to facilitate huge increases in building in space and expansion on Earth. Countries such as the US and Luxembourg are evolving policy and law to allow for mining in space, and several companies are racing to develop technologies to identify, mine, utilise and transport the vast quantities of resources found in asteroids (3). This includes Moon Express, the first private company to receive a government licence to go to the moon (4). The database of Asteroids compiled by Asterank details several whose equivalent value of trillions of dollars is the same as the total wealth produced in an entire year on Earth (5).

The long and continual process of expansion illustrated in maps of human migration (1) does make it hard to imagine that humans won’t soon continue this process and migrate off-planet. What will become possible when we are no longer limited just by the resources found only on Earth? Exponential expansions which build on automation and augmentation technologies like asteroid mining have the potential to increase our ability to cater for a growing population on Earth and beyond in ways that until recently were found only in Science Fiction. The ability of today’s learners to soon explore and settle our solar system does raise important big picture questions about our responsibility for this planet and our place in the universe however. Will we replicate Earth systems in space or use technology to devise new ways of being? Will this expanded awareness lead to different approaches to old and new problems? Future-U is here to help kickstart the answering of these questions. The future is you, and us. Let’s get started. 

1. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/ 

2. This Future-U framework acknowledges that no one schema can ever encompass all the developments and directions technology is taking. However, it is important to make a start now that the impact of technology has accelerated so greatly. 

3. http://www.planetaryresources.com/2016/11/the-second-age-of-exploration-has-begun-in-space/

4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/moon-mining-company-moon-express-google-lunar-xprize-a7528606.html

5. http://www.asterank.com

Super-humans? The Rise of Augmentation Technologies

Meta-category — Augmentation: Technologies that directly assist human effort and activities. By Jona Nalder, with Chris Hills and Rhys Cassidy

‘Augmentation’, or the rise of technology which assists humans to do more than they could naturally achieve, has been integral to humanity’s journey through all historical epochs. The Agricultural revolution circa 10,000 BCE allowed the first farmers to provide food in quantities far beyond what hunters or gatherers had been capable of. The discovery of metallurgy for creating bronze and iron gave workers and warriors strength and abilities much greater than natural tools like wood and bone. Likewise, the invention of the steam engine made the Industrial revolution of the 1700’s possible as previous levels of horse and animal power were exceeded many times over. From the 1800’s, the combustion engine and electricity only increased this trend of technology extending the amount of physical assistance available.

The invention of the microchip in the 1960’s was also a development that significantly assisted human effort and activities but in the mental rather than physical realm. In this way it is more similar to inventions like the abacus or sextants which augmented what the human brain was capable of calculating. It also marked the beginning of the digital age which has led to the array of other modern technologies that can be grouped under Augmentation, as well as those in Automation meta-category overviewed in part 3.

One of the best current examples of Augmentation technologies that assist human efforts is accessibility technology. Christopher Hills [1]is a young man with no use of his limbs. Yet, using Switch Control, an accessibility feature built into Apple Macs, he has taught himself to be a certified Final Cut Pro Editor, runs his own ‘Switched-On Media’ [2] business and even advises Astronauts [3] — all with only the tap of a switch with his head. Companies and designers who have invested in creating such accessibility options are now finding that designing for those with extra needs has also meant that their tools become more useful for augmenting the activities of everyone. In fact Australia now plays host to a dedicated startup accelerator, Remarkable.org [4] due to the fact that interest in this sector is now so high.

Augmentation can also include developments such as wearable tech, virtual and augmented Reality headsets, tele-work tools, exo-skeletons, bio-tech and implants, and genome-editing. Augmented reality, for example, provides another layer of visual information on top of the real world that users can then interact with through a mobile phone or tablet screen or special headset. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with this technology in games like Pokemon Go and apps developed for the Daqri Smart Helmet and Microsoft HoloLens. Like other augmentation technologies, AR has the potential to impact every industry.

Even the smartphone in our pockets we now take for granted can be said to makes us ‘super-human’. Its ability to instantly record events, send and receive over vast distances, store what was previously a life-times worth of books and music and more has made it almost a ‘phantom limb’ or extension of ourselves to the point where according to a Time Magazine survey across 8 countries, 68% of people sleep with smartphones by their bedside [5]. It’s possible that many won’t even flinch as bio-tech enables such capabilities to live within our bodies soon.

Such profound and unprecedented extensions and changes to human abilities is one of the reason why Jona Nalder has created these meta-categories like Augmentation as discussion starters that a wide enough group of decision makers and global citizens can understand and use to begin adapting rather than just reacting as the huge transition that tech is bringing across all categories accelerates.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--J...

2. www.switchedonvideoediting.com.au

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZY...

4. www.remarkable.org/

5. http://content.time.com/time/intera...

What does Automation mean for THE future of work and learning?

Meta-category 1: Automation > Technologies that directly replace human effort and activities.

By Jona Nalder with Rhys Cassidy

“The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world.” — Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society

A post-work world made possible by automation as Rifkin is envisioning here may still be a long way off in the context of recent news story headlines like ‘I’m a GP- will a robot take my job?’ (1), and ‘Japanese AI Writes a Novel’, Nearly Wins Literary Award’ (2). As alarmist as these sound, real world developments like Google’s AI beating a champion human 4–1 (3), and driverless cars being deployed for real-world trials (4) show that this is a very real and present issue. How examples like these will lead to a post-work and post-wealth future is yet to be seen. What is important is that the transition stage is here, and a bigger-picture way of adapting to it is required.

Future-U is working to develop this bigger-picture view in its frameworks by grouping of a range of developments into ‘meta-categories’ rather than trying to explain each one in isolation; an approach we simply don’t have time for anymore. For Automation this means that in addition to AI and driver-less cars, there are a wide array of technologies such as conversation bots, Machine Learning, blockchain, the internet of things and artificial assistants that are linked to the bigger concept of ‘Automation’. All of these can be said to be technologies which are impacting society and work by replacing human activities and effort rather than just helping or ‘augmenting’ them. In fact it is this potential to replace not just assist that can be seen as a defining characteristic of the move beyond the 3rd industrial revolution (initiated by the microchip and digital tech) into the 4th: The information age.

One of the most far-reaching examples of Automation is the development of stores without human cashiers or sales staff. Initially this has meant supermarkets with customer-operated checkouts — but initiatives such as the Amazon Go store (5) have the capability to be run purely by interactions between apps, software and sensors. Where this gets interesting is when such developments are considered in the broader context of nations like Australia where retail jobs make up the highest single category of workers (6). Such nations may be able to navigate through one transition where large numbers of human workers are replaced. However, if the framework and mindset that decision-makers are using fails to include the full picture of Automation technologies, it may be the second of these two options proposed by Stephen Hawking that comes to pass.

“Everyone can enjoy a life of leisure if the machine-produced [robots] wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution” — Stephen Hawking

So, now that we have a meta-category to understand this particular aspect of the transition we are living through, we can perhaps proactively ask how it can be managed to benefit everyone. Merely reacting to individual developments one at at time using methods that worked in previous eras is not something future workers will thank us for — let’s start thinking how to use Automation to everyone’s advantage now.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/dec/29/im-a-gp-will-a-robot-take-my-job-in-2017

2. http://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/a-japanese-ai-wrote-a-novel-almost-wins-literary-award?

3. www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579

4. http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-making-driverless-cars-by-2020-2016-8/?r=AU&IR=T

5. https://www.wired.com/2016/12/amazon-go-grocery-store/

6. http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/whats-the-most-common-job-in-australia/news-story