I just spent an hour talking with a computer vision engineer at Magic Leap about how computers will “see” and “process” our world. Blew my mind. The 2020s are going to see more change in technology than ANY TIME before. Same for our culture. Same for our learning. Same for our manufacturing. Same for our transportation. A perfect storm of change is coming. By the time these nine year olds get out of high school literally every piece of human life will change.
Our understanding of what it means to be human is about to radically change. The 2020s will make the 1960s, with its cultural/music/political, drug, and technology changes, seem like a minor hill of change comparatively.
Have our political, cultural, entertainment leaders done a good job of preparing us for this? No.
(I listened to how our political leaders grilled David Marcus this week, and I look at our movies and still don’t see anything like an autonomous car chase, to give me the ability to definitively say that no one is really prepared).
Another way to look at it? Our nation’s best school for criminal justice is John Jay College of Criminal Justice. My son, Patrick Scoble, just graduated. Did he learn anything about using augmented reality or artificial intelligence there? No.
Yet my friend Brandon Wirtz has already caught thousands of criminals with his AI system.
As Irena Cronin and I write a book about this stuff I realize that I’m struggling to 1. Understand the change. 2. Communicate it with our readers. 3. Get over the fear of speaking the truth about what these changes mean for everyone.
The 2020s are the change decade. Literally everything we do will change. Everything. Name one thing that won’t be changed. I can’t come up with one thing. Even going to church will change. Even going to a historic site will change. Even having a baby will change.
Lots of people will resist this change. The act of resistance will, too, be changed. Going to the bathroom will change. Eating will change. Taking a hike in the woods will change. Going to a concert will change.
Today I talked with one of the best surgeons in the world. He told me about how his work is radically changing. One away from using radiation to see inside tumors to one where a system is fusing a bunch of data streams together and helping him almost play a video game while directing a little cutting tool inside his patient’s body while wearing a HoloLens. If his job is changing you can bet yours will too.
And, this is what happens when I stay sober for almost two years now (and off alcohol for more than four).
Does this post scare you?
Remember, most humans hate change, and that fear of having to change is what you are feeling. Me too. But I’m quickly getting over my fear and seeing the immense benefits we will get by the end of the 2020s.
I might not be here, no one is promised that, but many of you will, and you will be in a wonderous world then. Might even be ready for Elon Musk to hook you up to the machine. I hope I am here to “jack in” to the new digital deities that are being built. Why? They will help me learn even faster.
“Hey Google, how can you help me change?”
“I can do lots of things, I can play a game, I can tell some jokes, or we can see what random fun comes our way.”
(Actual answer to my voice question. Google gets it. So will we all).
Scobleizer 