the inexorable five
19th September 2016 - The Inexorable Five
Inexorable is such an expressive word. It reminds me of an elephant making its way across the plain, effortlessly swatting bushes and trees aside as it wanders. Or a swarm of locusts munching across the landscape, oblivious to humans and habitations in its path.
As I consider the future, five things stand out as being particularly inexorable: population growth; climate change; automation induced unemployment; the rise of big personal data; and increasing inequality.
Experts predict that the world’s population will grow from the present seven billion people to ten billion during this century. However, it’s not births that are driving the growth. In just about every country around the globe, the number of offspring per woman has dropped dramatically. Instead people are living longer and could, given advances in medical science, live much, much longer. More people will consume more precious resources. Greater population density will bring more disparate people physically closer together.
Climate change seems to be hotting up: global temperatures reach record levels month after month; the oceans are warming; polar ice caps and glaciers are melting, with a cruise ship visiting Canada’s far north for the first time this month; sea levels are rising and shorelines are eroding; storms are fiercer and thousand year floods have engulfed parts of every continent; ever fiercer forest fires are blamed on global warming; and droughts are lasting longer. People are starting to migrate from zones of extreme high temperatures and low rainfall.
Ne’er a week goes by without yet another company reporting job cuts. The banks are cutting tens of thousands and last week IBM announced forty nine thousand layoffs and Caterpillar ten thousand more. No doubt PWC and Deloitte will respond to the huge lawsuits they faced recently by further automating the audit process and reducing the numbers of audit clerks they need. And so it goes relentlessly, with production and profits rising even as the number employed reduces.
Already computers are able to know your every movement; most of your conversations and written message exchanges; the state of your health minute by minute; every purchase and payment you make; every web site you visit; and a whole lot more. Microsoft is pillaging the Skype user files, while Facebook is merging the details of WhatsApp’s 200 million users with its own. Because of the Internet, much of the data is distributed globally. To date the owners of these big databases of personal information have only used the contents to target advertising more precisely and, by the likes of Amazon and Uber, to monitor the second by second movements and performance of employees and agents as a first step to automating jobs. Down the line we can expect new medical, financial and other products tailored specifically to our needs, as well as greater surveillance by governments and management.
It’s a couple of years now since Thomas Piketty pronounced on global inequality. Of late there have been mutters that the extent of inequality has levelled off. However as I look at the rate of automation induced unemployment, on the one hand, and potential shareholder returns from automation and ownership of big personal and financial data banks on the other, I fear the gap could once again start to grow, despite the latest positive American remuneration data.
Each of the inexorable five carries its own particular opportunities and, more often, challenges. It’s instructive to consider how government and business leaders, as well as us ordinary folks, respond to the inexorable five. Generally they fall into three groups: those, generally educated and affluent, who keep a close watch on the macro picture and have the resources to react timeously; those too absorbed and, for the time being, unaffected, to care; and those, often at the bottom of the economic totem pole, who are angry yet without understanding the causes of their misfortune.
By and large the issue of population growth is ignored – longer lives and fewer births are celebrated, while urbanisation is treated as simply a symptom of the times in which we live. Populations everywhere seem to be split into those deeply concerned by climate change (many of whom at the same time feel quite helpless); the ostriches with their heads in the ground who want to fund more coal and oil projects; and a large group who are too concerned with other issues to worry. Migration is seen as a political issue and not a by-product of climate change or overpopulation.
When it comes to personal monitoring, most of us are like lambs to the slaughter. We post every trivial detail of our personal lives on Facebook; our kids are endlessly texting with their friends; fitness fanatics indulge in the latest medical jewellery; out of necessity, we take jobs in the new economy; and every day new surveillance cameras are erected around us. It all reminds me of the section of a history of Salonica I’m reading where the large Jewish population was shipped off to the gas chambers vainly believing they were headed for a better life in Poland.
Back in the nineteenth century the Luddite workers recognised and attacked the machines in the mills that were taking their jobs. Today governments everywhere promise more employment funded growth without having a clue how to achieve it. And their economically vulnerable citizenry flail at globalisation, trade treaties, regulations, the rich, immigrants and low cost Asian labour as they seek a target for their anger at job losses and stagnant wages. When they vote, they increasingly vote for populist, nationalist politicians promising to pull up the drawbridge of international cooperation and return to the security of the local past - even though many of the politicians know in their heart of hearts that this is impossible as the future unfolds inexorably.
In the past century mankind learnt to deal with marauding elephants and swarming locusts so I’m sure we have the ability to thwart the inexorable five. However, it’s going to demand strong leadership, clear, informed thinking and an unprecedented amount of international, national and local cooperation. I hope we can pull it off.
Useful Links
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
World Population History
Facebook and WhatsApp
Nationalism and Globalism
Hillbilly America
Trump Supporters
Inexorable is such an expressive word. It reminds me of an elephant making its way across the plain, effortlessly swatting bushes and trees aside as it wanders. Or a swarm of locusts munching across the landscape, oblivious to humans and habitations in its path.
As I consider the future, five things stand out as being particularly inexorable: population growth; climate change; automation induced unemployment; the rise of big personal data; and increasing inequality.
Experts predict that the world’s population will grow from the present seven billion people to ten billion during this century. However, it’s not births that are driving the growth. In just about every country around the globe, the number of offspring per woman has dropped dramatically. Instead people are living longer and could, given advances in medical science, live much, much longer. More people will consume more precious resources. Greater population density will bring more disparate people physically closer together.
Climate change seems to be hotting up: global temperatures reach record levels month after month; the oceans are warming; polar ice caps and glaciers are melting, with a cruise ship visiting Canada’s far north for the first time this month; sea levels are rising and shorelines are eroding; storms are fiercer and thousand year floods have engulfed parts of every continent; ever fiercer forest fires are blamed on global warming; and droughts are lasting longer. People are starting to migrate from zones of extreme high temperatures and low rainfall.
Ne’er a week goes by without yet another company reporting job cuts. The banks are cutting tens of thousands and last week IBM announced forty nine thousand layoffs and Caterpillar ten thousand more. No doubt PWC and Deloitte will respond to the huge lawsuits they faced recently by further automating the audit process and reducing the numbers of audit clerks they need. And so it goes relentlessly, with production and profits rising even as the number employed reduces.
Already computers are able to know your every movement; most of your conversations and written message exchanges; the state of your health minute by minute; every purchase and payment you make; every web site you visit; and a whole lot more. Microsoft is pillaging the Skype user files, while Facebook is merging the details of WhatsApp’s 200 million users with its own. Because of the Internet, much of the data is distributed globally. To date the owners of these big databases of personal information have only used the contents to target advertising more precisely and, by the likes of Amazon and Uber, to monitor the second by second movements and performance of employees and agents as a first step to automating jobs. Down the line we can expect new medical, financial and other products tailored specifically to our needs, as well as greater surveillance by governments and management.
It’s a couple of years now since Thomas Piketty pronounced on global inequality. Of late there have been mutters that the extent of inequality has levelled off. However as I look at the rate of automation induced unemployment, on the one hand, and potential shareholder returns from automation and ownership of big personal and financial data banks on the other, I fear the gap could once again start to grow, despite the latest positive American remuneration data.
Each of the inexorable five carries its own particular opportunities and, more often, challenges. It’s instructive to consider how government and business leaders, as well as us ordinary folks, respond to the inexorable five. Generally they fall into three groups: those, generally educated and affluent, who keep a close watch on the macro picture and have the resources to react timeously; those too absorbed and, for the time being, unaffected, to care; and those, often at the bottom of the economic totem pole, who are angry yet without understanding the causes of their misfortune.
By and large the issue of population growth is ignored – longer lives and fewer births are celebrated, while urbanisation is treated as simply a symptom of the times in which we live. Populations everywhere seem to be split into those deeply concerned by climate change (many of whom at the same time feel quite helpless); the ostriches with their heads in the ground who want to fund more coal and oil projects; and a large group who are too concerned with other issues to worry. Migration is seen as a political issue and not a by-product of climate change or overpopulation.
When it comes to personal monitoring, most of us are like lambs to the slaughter. We post every trivial detail of our personal lives on Facebook; our kids are endlessly texting with their friends; fitness fanatics indulge in the latest medical jewellery; out of necessity, we take jobs in the new economy; and every day new surveillance cameras are erected around us. It all reminds me of the section of a history of Salonica I’m reading where the large Jewish population was shipped off to the gas chambers vainly believing they were headed for a better life in Poland.
Back in the nineteenth century the Luddite workers recognised and attacked the machines in the mills that were taking their jobs. Today governments everywhere promise more employment funded growth without having a clue how to achieve it. And their economically vulnerable citizenry flail at globalisation, trade treaties, regulations, the rich, immigrants and low cost Asian labour as they seek a target for their anger at job losses and stagnant wages. When they vote, they increasingly vote for populist, nationalist politicians promising to pull up the drawbridge of international cooperation and return to the security of the local past - even though many of the politicians know in their heart of hearts that this is impossible as the future unfolds inexorably.
In the past century mankind learnt to deal with marauding elephants and swarming locusts so I’m sure we have the ability to thwart the inexorable five. However, it’s going to demand strong leadership, clear, informed thinking and an unprecedented amount of international, national and local cooperation. I hope we can pull it off.
Useful Links
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
World Population History
Facebook and WhatsApp
Nationalism and Globalism
Hillbilly America
Trump Supporters
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