The Inevitable

Do you think a lot about technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives?

Kevin Kelly does. Much of what will happen in the next three decades is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion.

Cheap, powerful, invisible, and omnipresent AI

It's hard to imagine anything that would "change everything" as much as cheap, powerful, invisible, omnipresent AI. Everything that we formerly electrified we will cognify.

We will surrender piece by piece of what is supposedly unique about humans, and we will face an identity crisis. 

The greatest benefit of the arrival of AI is that AI will help define humanity. We now question what humans are good for, what makes us special, and what is it that humans want to do. We need AI to tell us who we are. AI will help us better understand what we mean by intelligence in the first place.

Everyone will have access to a personal robot, but simply owning one will not guarantee success. Success will go to those who best optimize the process of working with AI bots and machines.

New interactions

In the coming 30 years, anything that is not intensely interactive will be considered broken. The future of technology resides, in large part, in the discovery of new interactions. 

We will use more of our body and senses to communicate with machines.

Computers are getting closer and closer to us. Computers have evolved from the basement, to smaller rooms, to our desk, to our laps, into our pockets, and now laid against on our skins (wearables). The only way to get closer than that is to go under the skin.

Personalization and instant access

We are going to pay for personalization and instant access. Anywhere we want personalization, new filtering inventions will follow. We need to pay attention to more and more sources to do our jobs and to learn. We need real-time filters upon filters to navigate the explosion of infinite choices. The filters will tell us what we want.

Hardware and software

Hard things will behave more like software due to embedded intelligence – there are so many more ways to provide a service than a hard product.

The truth?!

What's the truth?! The truth is not delivered by authors and authorities anymore but is assembled in real time piece by piece by yourself.

You make your own content and construct your own truth from the liquid stream of facts flowing through the web (hyperlinks, text, videos, images, sound). For every expert you will find an anti-expert. We have to constantly question what we think we know.

The status of creation will be inverted, so that the users, you, become the new creators. You will be a creator of digital products and content used to do your job.

Do we need more answers or better questions?

Technologies that help generate questions will be valued more. Question makers will be the engines that generate new fields. Questioning is simply more powerful than answering.

"The Inevitable" by Kevin Kelly

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