|
With
your arms around the future; And your back against the past the Moody Blues
Wyoming was on my mind, even though
I was basking in 70-degree temperatures in Texas recently. Let me explain:
One of the high points of our
annual New Year’s trip to see Dallas relatives is my yearly visit with the
smartest person I know.
Of the 301,000 employees at Hewlett
Packard a few years ago, one special employee stood out, their lone futurist,
Jeff Wacker.
He is retired now and working on a
book.
He also used to live in the same
neighborhood as our daughter in Allen, TX.
A Nebraska native, Jeff would fit
comfortably in Wyoming. His values and those of the Cowboy State pretty much
line up. If his wife Nancy did not have some health issues, he might be living
right now on the family homestead in near Sidney, an area he calls “eastern
Wyoming.”
He has the same typical bad news
for fossil fuels we Wyomingites all are hearing. But he blames it on an amazing future of
batteries and even exotic fuel sources like anti-matter.
Wacker feels strongly that the
hysteria about global warming is over-stated. He is an expert on just about
everything. He challenges folks who believe Al Gore’s theories to dig into
where that “90 percent of scientists . . .” story came from. Instead, he says
we are in a 1,000-year cycle and the heating of the earth occurs 600 years
after CO2 increases.
As a futurist, he thinks on a
global scale and in big pictures. He
worries about eternal life. “We are very
close to providing a path where people don’t have to die, that one of the
biggest future problems will be should we die and how should we die? Suicide?”
He also says the future of work
could be the biggest issue of the 21st century. Automation, unique
robots including microscopic nanobots, and Artificial Intelligence will
continue to erode the job market. “I
have a friend who says we will always need people to keep the robots running –
really? We already have robots that repair other robots,” he says.
He divides all the various
technologies into five areas:
• Nanotech is the creation of super
tiny robots that can float around inside your bloodstream and keep you healthy.
He sees billions of nanobots taking care of the trillions of cells in the body.
• Biotech will see cures and
inventions occurring at fantastic rates in the near future and far future.
Again, he really believes a huge problem for the youngest people living on the
planet today is how do they want to die? He believes young people in the near
future have the potential to live as long as they want to.
• Robotech is
already changing the world. “What will people do when there are no jobs?” Typical workweek might be 26 hours or less.
He says three-fourths of all manufacturing jobs are already “gone and not coming back.”
• Infotech leaves him discouraged especially
when it comes to social media. He quotes a favorite author who said, “When
everybody is an author, there are no editors.”
He thinks amazing sensors will be
developed on a the micro level while, on a macro level, the world will be
covered with satellites similar to the doomsday prediction of the Terminator
movies, which saw all those troubles caused by a structure called SkyNet.
• Energytech may see more change
than any other sector. “Look back 200 years to 1820. We have advanced 2,000 years in the past 200
years. This will just accelerate,” he concludes. He also credits it to the
gradual warming of the climate over those two centuries. “We went from horse
and buggy to planning a Mars launch today.”
In 1820, the most valuable material
on earth was aluminum because it was only created when lightning would strike
bauxite. A nine-inch pyramid-shaped piece
of aluminum is used as the cap of the top of the Washington Monument, for
example.
Having this chat with Jeff Wacker
left my head spinning. We are heading into a strange new world that sounded
both hopeful and daunting to me.
Wacker really is worried about the
robots with artificial intelligence taking over. “When it happens, it will happen
exponentially, so we probably will not know what hit us until it has already
happened!”
On that dreary note, Happy New Year
and Happy New Decade.
| 
