Exponential
technology and information are
poised to transform the world, but can the human species muster the
social will to let that happen? 
To date we’ve created amazingly fuel-efficient cars, robust water
purifiers, revolutionary stem cell -based therapies, and
better, cheaper light bulbs, all of which have met with great
social and political resistance, greatly slowing the pace of their
spread. This has caused many to scratch their heads in confusion,
others to curse up at the sky, and some to chuckle at the naivete
of their fellow meme-monkeys.
Take for example Dean Kamen, the
Edison of our time who invented compact kidney dialysis, the
Segway human
transporter and most recently a water purifier that could save
upwards of 5 million lives in under-developed nations if widely
deployed. Kamen’s innovations have repeatedly encountered social
barriers, causing him to proclaim that creating new technology is
the easy part.
“I’m disappointed with every project I ever do. Because you work
on something for years that you think should take hours. You
finally get it done and you think, ‘Now the world’s going to be a
better place,’ expressed Kamen in a recent Newsweek article,
“Then you find out that as fast as technology moves, people move at
the same slow, cautious pace they always did. If anything, people
have gotten more cautious, more afraid of change, more skeptical,
more cynical.”
Sloth-like technology diffusion is nothing new. The late great
Everett Rogers
taught us that all technologies except for Interactive
Communication Technologies (ICTs) spread at an amazingly slow rate
due to cultural barriers. Seasoned futurists all point out a
consistent bias in favor of overly ambitious predictions and
sternly warn their fellow prognosticators to avoid similar
mistakes. And now Kamen has joined the ranks of those with enough
experience to back up the notion. (cont.)
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By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
(Editors Note: Earlier today, my colleague at Future Blogger,
Dick Pellitier, had a thoughtful piece on the prospect of a space
elevator. I would like to add my two cents to this debate. The
following article was written this past fall and originally
appeared on TechCentralStation).
In the fall of 1825, New York Governor DeWitt Clinton boarded
the Seneca Chief and traveled 500 miles from Buffalo to New
York City to mark the opening of the Erie Canal. It was the
beginning of an enterprise of immense economic and political
significance in that it expanded the reach of American commerce and
established New York as one of the world’s leading financial
centers.
It is easy, in retrospect, to think the canal’s success was
ordained from the beginning. It wasn’t. In 1810, when DeWitt
Clinton, then mayor of New York City, first proposed building the
363-mile, 83 lock canal, Gouverneur Morris, responded by saying
“Our minds are not yet enlarged to the size of so great an object.”
Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, was more biting in his
criticism, writing to Clinton, “It is a splendid project, and may
be executed a century hence. It is little short of madness to think
of it this day.”
Jefferson’s reasoning was solid. The project was budgeted to
cost $6 million—a sum then equal to three-fourths of the federal
government budget. In fact, the scale of the project was so massive
that it was determined it would be the biggest public works project
since the Great Pyramid and would consist of digging and removing
over 11 million cubic yards of earth. It is no wonder that many
decried it as “Clinton’s ditch.”
Fortunately, Clinton persisted and while he wasn’t able to
persuade the federal government to support the idea, he did win
over the citizens of New York and in 1817 the state legislature
approved the funding for the project. (cont.)
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By Jack Uldrich
An Opinion/Question Piece
It was reported last week that US life expectancy
topped 78 years as a variety of diseases – including heart
disease, diabetes and flu – decreased this past year. 
More interestingly, life expectancy – which has been increasing
about two or three months from year to year – jumped an impressive
four months this year. This caused one demographer to note that the
increase was “an unusually rapid improvement.”
It was “an usually rapid improvement,” but I’d like to argue
that such rapid improvements will become “usual” for the
foreseeable future. If one tracks the amazing rate of progress in
biotechnology, genomics, stem cell research and nanotechnology; it
is hard – barring a devastating calamity that kills thousands or
millions of people – to envision how life expectancy will do
anything but continue to increase at an accelerating rate.
It seems only prudent, therefore, that we should at least begin
preparing for life expectancies in the neighborhood of 100 within
the next few decades.
Given the existing pressure on such social programs as Social
Security and Medicare, I believe one implication of this “unusually
rapid improvement” is that these systems will need to be radically
overhauled in order to survive this new demographic reality.
I’d be interested in hearing from other Future Bloggers and
readers what you think should be done to modify these systems or
whether you think that they will simply collapse under their own
weight?
By Jack Uldrich
In my new book, Jump the Curve, I make the case that one
strategy for “jumping the curve” and helping your organization
innovate into the future is to “develop a future bias.”
A future bias is the opposite of “hindsight bias” and hindsight
bias is, quite simply, the idea that after an event occurs
most people take credit for believing that the idea was
pre-ordained and that they “knew” it would happen. For instance, by
1920, most citizens claimed they knew that man would “always” fly.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true. Most people were completely
blind-sided by human flight. Lord Kelvin, the world’s most renowned
scientist claimed in 1899 that “Heavier than air machines are
impossible,” and no less an authority than the New York
Times wrote in an editorial in December 1903 – just two weeks
before the Wright Brother’s historic first flight – that human
flight would not be achievable for “1 to 10 million years.” My
guess is that if a poll had been commissioned at the beginning of
the turn of the 20th century the overwhelming consensus among the
American public would have subscribed to similar opinions or,
alternatively, something along the lines of “If God had intended
man to fly, He would have given him wings.”
In the future, as a result of exponential advances in technology
(see above chart,
source – Collapsing Geography), many things that sound
impossible today are, in fact, not only going to be possible they
are going to be commonplace. Therefore, in order to embrace this
future, it will be necessary to think exponentially – and not
linearly – about the future. As Ray Kurzweil says in his book,
The
Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, in the 21st
century humanity will experience the equivalent of 20,000 years of
change (using the 20th century’s rate of change). What he is trying
to do in an indirect way is to get people to develop a future bias.
(cont.)
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By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
As a result of my new book, I have been asked on a number of
occasions to describe what I mean by the title: “jump the curve.”
It is a fair question and when answering it I like to recall the
words of that old sage, Albert Einstein, who once said that if a
person – especially a scientist or technologist – couldn’t explain
what he or she was working on to an 8-year old child then that
person was either a fraud or a charlatan.
It’s an excellent test and because I have both an 8 year-old
daughter and a 6 year-old son, I decided to put the topic of my new
book to this test. Liking a challenge, I decided to see if my
youngest child could comprehend the idea of “jumping the
curve.”
Without using an example in the book, I asked my son, who has
yet to lose any of his teeth, whether he would rather receive a
single dollar for every one of his 20 baby teeth or if he would
instead prefer to receive a single cent for his first tooth and
then have that penny double for the next 19 teeth?
Being fairly good at numbers and knowing that his dad often
likes to trick him, my son selected the second option—the penny
doubling. (cont.)
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