At the Compute Midwest conference in Kansas City today, Intels resident futurist Brian David Johnson kicked off the proceedings talking about his job. That job? He figures out the timeline of the technology in the next 10-15 years and sits down with engineers at Intel about whether they can get started acting on it.

What will the future look like? He asks. One thing he noted is that most pictures of the future lack the things that make us comfortable and diverse. Showing a picture of a typical futuristic, sterile apartment, he asks, Where are the baby toys? Where are the family photos? Where are the pillows?

These types of futures, he said, are kind of insulting to people. He then showed a future that looks, in his words, real a woman in a comfortable, more realistic looking living space. Yes, it has connected technologies, but also clutter and pillows.

Brian David Johnson

He then described that what he did as Futurecasting which is not, he emphaisized, not about predicting the future. But rather using social science, psychology, technology to figure out what the future should feel like and then build it.

You dont want to be the person who says, I was right, he said. Its our job to get right.

That is, he clarified, about creating a vision for the future and then figuring out how to get there.

One of the key technologies he focused on in his talk is that the size of computers keeps shrinking. But the goal, he said, isnt just to get them smaller. Its how making them smaller can make peoples lives better.

Essentially, what this means, he says, is that when were surrounded by smart devices, were all living in a giant computer. And computers, he note, can be optimized.

But the question is, he said. If were optimzing, what are we optimizing for?

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Intel's Brian David Johnson On Building A Human Future