Anupam- The Dreamer

The future has never been so uncertain and unpredictable in the history of humanity, as it is now.  This may seem a little exaggeration to some of you, but don’t rush, it will be clear to you in a few minutes if you are ready to be patient.

Earlier, the pace of change throughout human history was very slow. For around 3000 years or so till the end of 17^th century, when the economy was primarily agrarian, there was no major change in the lifestyle of people. They ate the food grown in the fields with the use of primitive tools, the production persisted at sustenance levels with not much left to trade, the life was slow as the world was still not much interconnected, and so on. Centuries after centuries, there was no major technological change that defined their lives.

Then came the industrial revolution in around 17^th and 18^th century AD. The technological advancement fundamentally changed the way the food was produced in agriculture with the use of modern tools and machinery, the way manufactured goods were produced at a massive level, the enormous rise in the trade across the world, the unprecedented way of movement of goods and people across the world, the modern gadgets like cars, radio, telephone etc. The pace of life became faster– people were busy in their work (atleast 8-12 hours), the interconnectedness of the world made the news of one part of the world travel faster to another part which now concerned the people, the means of leisure and pleasure increased with increased flow of money etc. This continued till 1980s and 1990s.

Then came the biggest change the world was about to witness hitherto. The Internet Revolution or the Information Technology Revolution!!!! It changed the way the agriculture, manufacturing, service sector worked till now. The use of data and information made things faster, cheaper and easier to do. The use of technology started at a massive scale, never thought of before. The use of tools and software made the information across the world available at fingertips. This also changed the lifestyle of people from the previous age of industrial revolution. Now, the people are even more busier- as they are now information hungry and technology savvy, the rise of social media has fundamentally changed the way in which we interact with the world, the trend of news, fashion trends, lingos, songs etc. getting “viral” in virtually no time. Effectively, the manner in which we spend 24 hours daily now, has changed a lot from the times of industrial age, and much more than the times of agrarian age.

But now, something bigger is happening which will fundamentally alter the future. We are entering in an unchartered territory of a super information age called the “Age of Artificial Intelligence”. This has the power to change the way the industries are working right now. The use of AI will alter the supply chains, the technology use in any industry, the movement of goods and services across the world, the level of human involvement in the industries. Again, the impact on the lifestyle and culture will be huge. The boundaries of human innovation and machine innovation will dissipate. You will not be able to differentiate whether the music is made by human or a machine, whether the poem is written by a human or a computer, whether the code is written by a human coder or is it the humanoid robot, etc. The enormous amount of information flow will have huge ramifications for the entire world. Anything happening in any part of the world, either good or bad, will impact the other part. It will feel like anything happening in the world, is happening inside your own home or office. The excessive information flow will overwhelm the governments, institutions, industries, and individuals alike.

Why I am calling this as an unchartered territory is because earlier we considered history as a guide or a source of learning to help us understand the future better. Whenever, we encountered wars, or recession, or disruptions in the world economy, we always looked back in history to learn our lessons and salvage the present situation. But now, the rate of change has become so exponential that it will be difficult for us to fall back upon historical learnings to make the corrections and move forward. We will not be able to say that something like this happened earlier, so it can happen again now. Maybe in future, the events will be of such magnitude, of such intensity, and so sudden and sporadic that we will not be able to rely on our past learnings to chart our future path. This will require a completely new way of thinking, new technological tools, new skills etc. to navigate our path into this unchartered territory. “Change” will be the norm walking into the future. We will no longer be able to sit back and think that things will continue to be stable, as they are now. The world will be more uncertain than ever before….

So, unless we brace up to encounter this sort of uncertainties in the world, we may fall flat on the ground. We may think that- why this is happening now or how can this happen to us, but the point is that the unprecedented things will happen soon. And infact, they are happening right in front of our eyes. We cannot choose to be ignorant of the changes happening around us. So, it all boils down to his- Are you ready to embrace the change or you want to the change to sweep the world below your feet?

Till next time…..