BH: Why is everyone talking about the future right now?
JS: In less than a century our average IQ has increased by 24 points – known as the Flynn effect.
Our capabilities as students, workers and leaders have catapulted beyond what we could achieve prior to the industrial revolution.
The leaders of our business world are thinking about and focusing on worlds beyond today or tomorrow – beyond earth as we know it.
Richard Branson wants to go to the moon, Elon Musk to Mars, Bill Gates suggests that artificial intelligence should be top of college students' agendas and Stephen Hawking predicts we only have 1000 years left on this planet – then adjusted that figure to 100.
There’s a fear that something big is going to happen, that "I might not have a job soon", there’s the threat of artificial intelligence – and to some extent the threat is real.
It certainly is if we keep doing what we did 50 years ago, or just jazz things up with new ways of doing the same old things – working agile, sitting on bean bags and having walking meetings.
The speed of change is mind-boggling. It can’t be fought, resisted or stopped. And the potential that technology has to disrupt, detonate and reinvent industries is so great that it’s possible that the future business landscape will look nothing like today's.
Being future-focused is vital.
If organisations are too inwardly focused,and continue in the old way, there is a real risk they will become redundant. But the better focus of our energy, time and thoughts is not on fear or the threat of artificial intelligence, but the potential it brings.
The potential we have to do better than we did before, in protecting the environment, in our relations with each other and in our ability to work with purpose and joy.
BH: What does the future look like?
JS: I join the many individuals in the world who see the future as exciting, positive and holding enormous potential for the human race.
As Bergman says: “Jobs are for robots and life is for people.”
The hangover from the industrial revolution is still with us.
It seems ludicrous to me that for the most part we are all bundling into cars and trains at 7am to get to work at the same time, creating gridlock and chaos every day – all to mill out of offices after 5pm and return the next day for more of the same.
We spend the best parts of our day inside, we see our children at night and on weekends. We are over-scheduled, overworked and yet what are we actually doing? What are we achieving?
Time is no longer the currency of work and we no longer need to be tied to desks from 9am-5pm.
There are so many industries that could re-think the way their people work – the benefits would go beyond the individual worker and the organisation.
In the future I envisage people are excited to go to work, the mundane work will be taken over by artificial intelligence and instead we will be left to solve problems, challenge the status quo and to dream.
Continued next page.
"Jobs are for
robots and life is for people."
Futurist
Rutger Bergman
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