From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
With technology, we're creating a lot more hammers – and with more hammers, we're able to find more nails. The question is whether those hammers are being made for the right purposes, and whether they will serve the right purpose. I often worry that when we talk about health-tech – it almost seems that in certain areas the tech is taking over the health.
Over this 99.9% of human existence, when technology advances, population advances and counterbalances any potential increase in human prosperity. Suddenly once technological progress reaches a tipping point, families start to invest in education, they economise on the number of children, and technological progress is converted into richer people rather than into more people.
I think that inequality within societies and between regions has become a key cause for conflict, exacerbated by rapid information dissemination, as people are (now) more aware of inequalities.
All you have to do is walk through an airport, for example, and notice that it is very difficult to navigate through it. You will encounter humans (almost statue like) who are glued – looking at their mobile phones, unaware of what is happening around them, because they are addicted to their technology. That is by design that people are addicted to technology.
You cannot show-off in space, we must be humble. The only purpose for us to seek journeys into space is to learn about the unknown. That's a spiritual conquest. Leaving the solar system has no commercial benefits.
For instance, while AI can generate images that appear real, it cannot create convincing backgrounds that can be geolocated, since they do not correspond to actual places.
Design is the great 're-configurer' of problems for business… for example design takes an engineering solution for transmitting signals called a phone and reconfigures it into a hyper complex problem of glass and metal shapes, etc.
Today you have the unique chance to change this situation, and at the same time to bring invaluable benefit to your country and the entire world, and write your name in world history, by supporting the creation of the immortality industry.
Ageing is malleable, we can control it. 20% of our health in old-age is due to genetic factors, and the rest is due to our lifestyle. We can measure this clock. It's literally measuring chemicals in our own DNA.
Previously, there were a lot of gatekeepers that controlled how you were supposed to listen to music… you'd walk into a record shop, and there was a special room for classical, and different genres in different places… that's all gone now, and you can follow your enthusiasm and affection for music however you want to. There's something beautiful and liberating about that.
Generally power is diffusing. New corporations such as Google and Facebook are also examples of power diffusing from nation states and moving to new forms of entities. Technology will only accelerate this trend.
Distraction is one of those epidemics that we didn't realise existed until quite recently. At a societal level, it's inevitable that our distraction will be impacting our ability to communicate with each other, and will lead to a lowering of focus and attention across our whole population.