Our world in 2050

Megatech

Technology in 2050

Edied by Daniel Franklin

Publisher: Hachette India/The Economist Books

Pages: 242

Price: Rs 499

In 2050, this article may be beamed directly into your brain. America’s Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is actually working on building a bridge between digital devices and the human cerebral cortex. 

Will this happen in the manner envisaged? The answer is not evident today but it is clear that the future of biology is more than just that.  It could be a merger of electronics, computing technology and, of course, the human anatomy. So the term “connected individuals” might take on a whole new meaning in coming decades.

Technology has touched all of us in ways we never imagined; transport, the internet, medicine and communications, the way we use mobile phones including cutting-edge software parked in the form of simple applications like Uber, making us more productive and efficient.

If we have come so far so fast, what will life be like in 2050? This is tough question to answer and somewhat hazardous to even attempt, as many futurists have discovered in the past to their peril. 

Megatech: Technology in 2050, edited by Economist executive editor Daniel Franklin, takes a shot nevertheless by compiling an interesting collection of essays written by scientists, industry leaders, academics, science fiction writers and journalists. 

The essays gaze into future with a firm sense of the history without wandering too much into standard science fiction territory involving robots waking you up and personal jetpacks waiting to transport you to work.

The personal robots and jetpacks might come too — given a few are already in test stage — but, as the book argues at various points, it is more important to understand how and where the innovation or change might come and what might drive it.  

More importantly, will all of it be good or some of it bad too? What are the early trends we see around us that will determine the future? What are the questions we should pose that will help us understand where technology and innovation should take us in different fields and in society?

Now, if you are sitting in the western world, a book like this is very interesting and depicts developments, from biotechnology to energy or computing to advanced manufacturing as a foreseeable upgrade from life as it is now.

But sitting in India, as we are, things don’t look so clear. Will, by 2050, a country like India better address the biggest challenges we face, in education and health care? 

The path to feeding billions is clear from the western view — a chapter on “Farming Tomorrow” talks of Farmer Giles using his harvesting phone app to bring in a barley crop and scheduling a robot combine harvester, which in turn is shared with several neighbours.

The barley is a fertiliser-free strain that fixes its own nitrogen using live-in bacteria in its roots, has been genetically optimised both for the fields and its ultimate destination, the local brewery. 

Though it is easier to see how Farmer Giles will benefit from technological advances, it is not clear how and where technology can solve the problem of perpetual poverty, scattered land holdings and climate change impacting agricultural output back home. More to the point, will technological advances accentuate inequality or will they reduce it?

One way of answering that is by saying, we don’t know. Economist columnist Ryan Avent says exponential growth processes are deceptive. There were horseless carriages rattling around in the late 19th century but it was a long time later that cars materially lifted growth all around.

 Manufacturers had to figure out how to reduce cost, governments had to amend regulations and invest in new forms of infrastructure and firms had to experiment with new business models around the automobile. And we will come to the issue of regulation in a moment.

Similarly, says Avent, scientists experimenting with electricity had made many of the critical advances in the fundamentals by 1890. But the productivity-boosting applications did not arrive en masse, rather in dribs and drabs as firms found clever new ways to deploy electricity. Or telegraphy, which appeared early on but the use of it for productivity gains came much later.

So the good news is that the solutions to today’s problems might already be there in technology around us but the solutions we are looking for might take a little longer to arrive. As is the case with Uber, which has relatively little to do with recent advances in computing speed.

A big challenge in the future, as it was in the past, will be regulation. How will invasive medical procedures like attempting to link computers to neural networks be regulated? How will developments in biotechnology as a broad area be governed? Will it come under health and medicine or technology? 

The challenge of regulation will be easier solved when it comes to areas like energy and renewables. Indeed, we can anticipate a world where the use of fossil fuels will recede dramatically like fuel shifts in previous epochs. 

As science journalist Anne Schukat points out, unmistakable signs of this transformation are already here; electricity generated by renewables already accounted for around 90 per cent of new power generation in 2015, with wind alone producing more than half. 

Remember the first practical solar cell was unveiled by Bell Labs way back in 1954. Things didn’t move for a while after that.

Military technology is transforming too; guided bullets will be fired by soldiers fully encased in powered, bullet-proof exoskeletons. Military robotics are apparently so good that Boeing and Northrop Grumman are building unmanned fighter jets.

Two years ago, US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 will almost certainly be the last manned strike aircraft it will ever buy. And by 2050 drones will range from stealthy spies that can live off the land for months at a stretch, combusting leaves and wood for power!

So what is the role of man here and to what extent will machines powered by artificial intelligence take complex decisions? How should this form of war be regulated to the extent that wars are, what new conventions will have to be written? Well, once again, we don’t know.

What we do know is that people will be empowered. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda Gates argues that empowering poor people with information on health care and education can have a transformative impact — particularly as more and more women own and use smartphones.

She admits that technology by itself cannot usher in gender equality but by helping forge connections they never had, the smartphone can make a big difference.

The answer to the questions about how our world will look in 2050 would perhaps lie there.

TECH-TONIC SHIFTS: Philanthropist Melinda Gates argues that technology by itself cannot usher in gender equality but by helping forge connections they never had, the smartphone can make a big difference. Photo: Reuters