A snapshot of future

 

For the last couple of centuries we have been a knowledge-driven world. We have been harvesting, inventing and discovering facts with greater speed with the passage of time. So data, and their derivatives called algorithms, will be the new god. A new religion, artificial intelligence, will replace all other belief systems. In medical science the algorithms based on medical statistics will equip the artificial intelligence tools to spin out diagnosis, recommend medication and perform surgeries. The lawyers who used to burn midnight oil to draft their papers on the basis of thick tomes of law books will get all that done at the click of a button. The writers will be replaced by content generation tools. Music, arts, painting, name it anything will see artificial productions. Now the question arises, what will the humans do. We will be the operators. Mere operators, not the doer of things.

See, in ancient times a farmer drew furrows on ground with the help of crude wood and stone implements. Then he used cattle to pull the plough. Still, later he did it with tractor. Now, in the last one he is a mere operator of machinery. So we will be a civilization of operators primarily. Drones, robotic soldiers, unmanned military vehicles will be operated by the soldiers in office. The politicians will operate narrative machines and brand management through social media and other artificial applications of socializing and communicating.

Human mind cannot stop at any limits. It has to continuously spin out newer and newer realities. Virtual realities are a reflection of its urge to break all boundaries and flow out, do more, acquire more, control and manipulate more. The operating minds will be as busy as ever. We will devise more complex structures, problems, institutions, authorities, industry and corporate to adjust the new quantum leap in what we can accomplish. We have to be busy. The population will increase and to adjust the cravings of billions of fresh minds to do something, new avenues need to be set up.

What about the human resource problem? Suppose a team of ten content creators is replaced by one machine and its smart operator. What will the other nine do? They will have to be adjusted in labor intensive jobs. But labor intensive jobs will dry up over a period of time with unprecedented increase in the automation of tasks and processes. I think the civilization will come at loggerheads: operators (the new nobility) on one side and non-operators (the masses) on the other. But it will be so easy for the operators to tame the latter or even eliminate them.

Maybe the institutions of marriage, raising kids, maintaining lineage will crumble up. That might cut down population growth. Or even the operators will find smart ways to check population growth and maintain it at a sustainable level.