Daily Archives: July 29, 2017

Author Richard Yonck at SXSW in Austin, Texas, to promote his new book Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence.

Daydreaming about the future is one thing. Actually being an authority on whats to come or at least how to be better prepared for it is quite another.

Richard Yonck is afuturist, author and speaker with Intelligent Future Consulting. Hes also GeekWires latest Geek of the Week.

I help businesses, readers and audiences become better prepared for a rapidly changing world, Yonck said. With a focus on emerging technologies and the increasingly intelligent ecologies these generate, my perspective is informed by 25 plus years as a futures, computing and media technologist.

Yonck is a widely published author who haswritten extensively about computing and information, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, biotechnology, nanotechnology, transhumanism and science literacy.

His new book, Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence, explores the rapidly developing technologies that interact with human emotions and how this will soon transform our relationships with technology and with each other.A best-seller in two Amazon categories, the book was well-received in the New York Times Book Review (by Ray Kurzweil) and elsewhere.

Yonck is also taking part in the 15th gathering of theAssociation of Professional Futurists in Seattle this week. The event runs through Saturdayand includes speakers from the Gates Foundation, Boeing, the University of Washington, the Living Future Institute, Planetary Resources and more.

Learn more about this weeks Geek of the Week, Richard Yonck:

What do you do, and why do you do it?As a futurist I love helping organizations, readers and audiences identify tomorrows challenges and opportunities so we can work together to bring about their preferred future. This can take many forms, such as working with clients, writing books and articles about a range of emerging technologies or presenting tomorrows world to audiences large and small.

Whats the single most important thing people should know about your field?There are two major, almost contradicting misconceptions about futures work. The first is that the future is unknowable which is far from true. Different things happen with different degrees of reliability. The orbit of the earth and the motion of the tides are very reliable while other events and developments have lesser probabilities of occurring. Taking such variables into account, strategies can be developed to prepare for one or more eventualities without overextending resources.

The other misconception is that there is one fixed future out there, as if we were traveling along some preordained timeline, but this isnt the case. Most futurists speak in terms of futures plural the possible, probable and preferable futures that could potentially occur depending on different choices that are made and paths that are taken in the present. With this in mind, its then possible not only to plan for a range of eventualities but to also be proactive in taking the actions that promote ones preferred future, ideally beginning sooner than later. A basic example of this is the 20-something who recognizes theyll one day retire and so begins saving early on instead of waiting till their 50s. The earlier a desired future is identified and acted upon, the greater the likelihood of realizing it.

Where do you find your inspiration?Life and the world around us. We live in such an incredibly rich, vastly complex universe, I cant help be continually fascinated thinking about how it functions, how it came about, and where its going.

Whats the one piece of technology you couldnt live without, and why?Language. The written word.

Whats your workspace like, and why does it work for you?Increasingly my workspace is wherever I am, especially if I can connect my mind with that massive exocortex called the internet. Whether compiling data at my office, researching at a library, doing an interview at a research facility, speaking at a think tank, addressing an audience on stage, or doing a reading at a bookstore, thats effectively my workspace.

Your best tip or trick for managing everyday work and life. (Help us out, we need it.)Change is inevitable. When it does, often the best thing to do is see it as an opportunity. A static world view is very limiting and is likely to get you steamrollered.

Mac, Windows or Linux?I try to be OS agnostic, but Im most familiar with Windows.

Kirk, Picard, or Janeway?Kirks acting style and fighting methods are unequaled in this or any other quadrant of the galaxy.

Transporter, Time Machine or Cloak of Invisibility?A Time Machine. If I could travel into the future, I could pretty much collect all three, couldnt I?

If someone gave me $1 million to launch a startup, I would I would explore the terrain of emerging technologies looking out over the next 10 years, identify key opportunities as supporting technologies and infrastructures were forecast to come online, consider what I could remain passionate about for several years, factor legal and regulatory considerations and then decide. At that point, Id bring in the necessary talent and continue from there.

I once waited in line for The opportunity to speak with and get a book signed by Harlan Ellison.

Your role models:Beyond members of my family for obvious reasons when I was a young kid, I dont think I have specific role models. More accurately, Ive looked to luminaries from science and science fiction as general role models, amalgamating them into some quintessential figure seeking truth in the universe.

Greatest game in history:Hesses Glass Bead Game.

Best gadget ever:Sonic screwdriver.

First computer:My first computing experience was with a DEC PDP-11 when I was 12.

Current phone:iPhone 6, waiting for the iPhone 8.

Favorite app:Hootsuite.

Favorite cause:Eradicating ignorance.

Most important technology of 2016:Artificial Intelligence Deep learning neural nets.

Most important technology of 2018:CRISPR and immunotherapy.

Final words of advice for your fellow geeks:The apps, services, and technologies were building are not simply the tools of today. They will form the foundations and infrastructures of tomorrows world, the world of our children and grandchildren. With this in mind, we should continually ask ourselves: Are we contributing to a better world for the generations to come?

Website: Intelligent Future

Twitter: @ryonck

LinkedIn: Richard Yonck

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Geek of the Week: Futurist author Richard Yonck helps us better prepare for a rapidly changing world - GeekWire

Glen Hiemstra, the Seattle-based founder of Futurist.com, basks in the red glow of a corridor at the Seattle Public Library during the Association of Professional Futurists gathering. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Professional futurists are gathering in Seattle, for the second time in 15 years. But dont expect to recognize them by their business cards.

Many modern-day futurists tend to call themselves something else for example, foresight specialist, which is Jonelle Simunichs title at Arup, an engineering and consulting firm based in San Francisco.

I tell people Im a futurist, and they say, So, what, youre like a psychic?' Simunich told GeekWire today during the 15th-anniversary gathering of the Association of Professional Futurists.

The annual gathering isstructured as a series of seminars for about 40 futurists, rather than your typical trade convention. The group that became APF had its first gathering in Seattle in 2002. It didnt even have a name yet, Cindy Frewen, who chairs the associations board.

This year marks the first time we have ever been in the same place twice, Frewen told attendees at the Seattle Central Library.

One of the Seattle-based organizers of the event, Glen Hiemstra, isnt shy about the futurist job description. In fact, he owns the internet domain name for Futurist.com. Hiemstra acknowledges that APFs members use a wide variety of job titles, but he insists that being a futurist has a special cachet.

The simple way to describe it is, No. 1, help people anticipate the future, and second, help them design and envision the future. Hiemstra told GeekWire. People call futurists when they want to look further ahead than they usually do.

But when it comes to looking further ahead, even futurists need a little help sometimes. Thats the aim of this weeks gathering:

Tom Frey, founder of the Colorado-based DaVinci Institute, said being a futurist isnt just an exercise in navel-gazing. We spend a lot of time being thinkers and doers, and not just talking about it, he said.

For example, Frey has been working a concept for micro-colleges to train workers for high-tech jobs ranging from coding to drone maintenance in a matter of months. The first such micro-college, DaVinci Coders, has been in operation for five years.

So whats the future of futurism? One clear trend is the synergy of entangled trends for example, how pandemics could be made worse by climate change. That is one of the things that is actually going to make this harder, said Sarah Chesemore, the Gates Foundations senior portfolio officer for vaccine delivery.

Another example has to do with the rise of autonomous vehicles and its potential effect on the health care system. Frey said his calculations suggest that self-driving cars could reduce health care expenses by more than 15 percent. Thats half a trillion dollars that now gets spent repairing people after car accidents, he said.

The rise of big data is another biggie. Traditionally, futurists have not used a lot of algorithm-based forecasting, Hiemstra said. But todays bigger data sets have so much predictive power, for issues ranging from crime patterns to disease outbreaks, that theyll have to become part of the futurists toolkit.

And what about the future of Seattle? At GeekWires urging, Hiemstra took a swing at predicting the future of whats currently a tech boomtown.

Its hard to imagine this boom continuing beyond 10 years, but its very clear were going to be a denser and still an economically vibrant place, he said. Thats going to mean that we have to be not just environmentally sustainable, but environmentally productive as a city. What that means is, moving from sustainable buildings to buildings that produce more energy than they use.

Read more:
Professional futurists converge on Seattle to pick up hints about what lies ahead - GeekWire

This week, UKs government set out plans to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040 so what else will we see in 23 years time?

Here, with the help of Europes top futurist Ray Hammond, we create a picture of how the world might look in the post-petrol age.

We will all wear a huge range of sensors that will constantly monitor things such as blood pressure, blood sugar and blood oxygen level.

Longevity will rise, with many living well beyond 100.

Children born in 2040 will have a more or less indefinite life. With gene therapy, stem cell and nano-scale medicine, barring an accident or fatal disease, we may live for ever and look much younger. With exoskeletons artificial, externally-worn support structures the elderly will stay mobile for longer. Now they are bulky and rigid but they will be soft and comfy.

People will fall in love with robot partners, which will impact relationships.

As it is we have a habit of seeing human characteristics in inanimate objects and with robots growing more advanced, it is inevitable that some people will couple up with them.

Weddings will become rarer and promiscuity will go off the scale as social attitudes get more relaxed.

On average, women today have nine sexual partners in their lifetime and men have 11 expect that to rise to 100 for women and 200 for men.

Most cars will be driving themselves, with motorways and roads having self-driving lanes.

Driverless traffic could travel in convoys, forming road trains and allowing vehicles to drive much closer together, freeing up motorway space.

The only place where you could experience being in control of a car yourself would be a licensed race track.

Ahead of the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars in 2040, we can expect scrappage schemes during the 2030s which will phase them out. Our roads will look and sound very different.

As for air travel, there will not be huge changes. The dawn of electric and self-flying planes is possible but they will still be a small minority.

We will see hyper-loops transport tubes through which passenger pods can travel at up to 700 mph.

As the worlds population booms from the present seven billion to more than nine billion, we will not be able to farm meat as we have done up to now.

There wont be enough space for all the animals we would need plus their methane emissions could cause unsustainable environmental damage.

Instead, we will see artificial tissue meat grown in factories, without the need for a living animal.

Burgers have already been produced and eaten in a lab and by 2040 up to 40 percent of meat will be artificial or from substitutes such as plants. It will be engineered to look, taste and smell like the real thing.

Insects will also be a staple in products resembling their meat versions, such as sausages or burgers. They are protein-rich, cheaper and greener.

And with most people living in cities, crops may be grown on vertical farms up the sides of skyscrapers.

Our smartphones will have more or less disappeared, replaced by control centers which we will wear in a series of devices around our body.

For example, we will wear smart contact lenses, with texts floating in front of our eyes and earrings that send messages from a virtual assistant into our ears.

We wont look as if we are wearing anything extra but it will be as if we are looking through a smartphone at the real world, albeit one more powerful than anything we know today.

Our social networks will also become integral to the real world. We may see a stranger in the street and, using facial recognition software linked to our control centers, will instantly know their name and be able to access their profile.

As a result, privacy will be a hot topic.

We will have to face the question of whether machines will be our slaves or our masters.

Computers will be as good at problem-solving as humans, with the prospect of soon surpassing us.

Then the question will be whether we let them take control or try to regulate and modify artificial intelligence. Or genetically modify humans so we can compete with machines.

Our decisions could have profound effects on world order. If the West chooses to regulate its machines, it could be at a disadvantage compared to countries that allow computers to develop unchecked.

Today people are glued to phones and iPads but to imagine life in 2040, magnify that by 100.

We will spend most of our time in virtual worlds, whether at work or at leisure. Instead of looking at a device, we will experience this as if it were real. It wont even seem artificial. The novelty will be leaving the virtual world to meet humans in real life, an activity that will become rarer.

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A futurist tells us what life will probably look like in 2040 - New York Post