The following is adapted from a speech Mr Devadas at the Women in Community conference at the Singapore Management University, 2nd March 2013.
By Devadas Krishnadas
The future is a something we should all care about but about which we are badly equipped to think about. This is because of the way we are cognitively hard wired. This essay tries to demonstrate the main limitations to our thinking about the future and to present a set of ideas about the major driving forces at the global level extending forward over this century.
Fallacies About The Future
Let me begin by making three assertions about the future.
First, most of us do not think very much about it at all. This is largely because we have cognitive saturation just coping with the present and the immediate past. This is not unnatural.
Second, when we do think about the future we are cognitively geared to think of it as a linear path from the present flowing forward. More so, our minds do a very good sub-conscious job of retrospectively presenting the present as a linear flow from events in the past. We do this because we intuitively dislike disorder and uncertainty.
Third, the future is not a given. As we think about the future in linear terms, we are liable to fall into the cognitive trap of thinking events are either predetermined or that events which are will always be. Let me assure you that there is no such thing as pre-determinism and there is no certainty of the continuity of anything – either ill or good.
This is true no matter however much how minds conjugate different events to retrospectively make up a coherent narrative of explanation for events. We are all actors with the ability to also be script writers and directors of the unfolding drama about the future. Things change. They eventually always do.
The net result of these 3 features of cognition is that we find ourselves repeatedly surprised by events. These surprises shift the trajectory of our lives and force us to make adjustments. For some, such adjustments represent opportunities while for others they cause distress and dismay.
However, more of us could be in the former category if we could anticipate the future to some degree. Doing so begins with being aware of these default settings in our daily experience and changing them.
Convergence
These same features have led to a false way of looking at the future. Some of you may have heard of the notion of convergence. This is the way several strands of technology become compressed into fewer and fewer platforms. Smart mobile phones are an excellent example of this phenomenon.
This notion most acutely applies to technological progress but there are some who point to globalisation, commoditisation and brand dominance as manifestations of convergence. Convergence is superficially attractive as an explanatory theory about the future because of its simplicity.
However, a closer look should give us pause. Convergence yields little to be celebrated as, if true, it implies that we would be reducing diversity in the human experience.
Diversity
Diversity is not only what makes life interesting. It is arguably also what underpins the continuity of the human experience. Diversity, through all its manifestations – political, physical, emotional, religious and sociological – gives us, the human species, different perspectives and different ways of thinking. That helps us find ever evolving ways to solve our challenges, whether specific or common. Diversity is thus a good thing.
Those who believe in convergence as defining the future of the human experience are likely to find themselves the most surprised by how divergent it will be in reality. Today I am going to share with you 3 divergences which will, and to some degree already are, create the conditions for new paradigms, possibilities and partnerships at all levels – global, regional and local.
The First Divergence – Age
The world is an ageing place and in the future it will be characterised by large swaths of old punctuated by patches of youth. Future labour force growth will be found in countries and regions, such as the Middle East, most of the African continent, parts of Central Asia, Central and South America and in India.
These will also be the future markets. Unless the countries in this regions can stabilise and educate their young the world will have no one to sell its high end goods to and it will have fewer sources of innovation.
It is of utmost importance that the sources of youth become politically stable and progressive. Failing which we, at a global level, will face an imbalance which may bring into doubt whether we can continue to see macro-growth and with it, uplifting of more people to their full potential and the creation of wider boundaries of employment for an ever larger population base.
The future paradigm will probably be a choice between a divergence between old workforces and the young looking for work. How wide a divergence this will be will depend on whether governments and institutions can be effective and whether societies can lay aside grievousness and also adopt progressive attitudes towards education and labour.
This same demographic distribution is the loci for two other divergences of global significance.
The Second Divergence – Technology
We have been living in a technological age for the past 250 years. It is now in the digital stage. Computing is a widespread phenomenon which has come to define the entire range of human interactions. Everything from market prices, supply chains, infrastructure systems, communications and even romance is affected by computing.
However, while the benefits of available and affordable computing have been common place for advanced and the upper tier of developing economies, it is quite the converse for those at the bottom half of developing economies and even worse for economies of failed States.
The technological divergence will only worsen because technological advances happen at a faster rate than industrial advances in the past. Hence, even if the lagging economies do not see a worsening in their technological state in absolute terms, they will still be worse off in relative terms.
It is crucial for all of us that this situation be improved. Why? It is crucial that technological penetration and dispersion take place to give the young in these places the best possible chance to ‘normalise’ with the state of information awareness and knowledge access available to the rest of the world. Unless this is done, they will be locked into a reductionist economic stage and not be able to move beyond being extractive economies.
There is large, perhaps infinite scope, for partnerships- public-private, International Orgnisations (IO)-Governments, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs)- Governments, and grassroots to IO and NGOs to address this divergence. We all are better off if the paradigm of the future is one of near technological equality. The task is urgent and needs addressing on scale.
The Existential Divergence – Health
The world we know today would not have been possible if not for antibiotics. The dramatic population growth we have seen over the past century despite two catastrophic world wars is a reflection of how important the action of two factors has been – higher standards of public hygiene and the wide spread use of antibiotics.
Prior to antibiotics – one could easily die of something as simple as the flu – indeed tens of millions did just that in the aftermath of World War I – in the so-called ‘Spanish Influenza’’ pandemic. The very young, women and the old have historically suffered the highest mortality rates. Antibiotics, higher nutritional levels and public hygiene standards and birth control have in combination saved billions of lives.
Looking forward from the present, we can expect that to change for the worse. We are coming to the edge of antibiotic potency. This is because of a liberal prescription of antibiotics which has gradually weakened its effects. This has been further complicated by viral and bacteriological adaptation which has created new and more virulent strains such as H1N1 and SARS. It is also because of insufficient investment into research and development of new drugs due in part to the peculiar economics of pharmaceutical research where it makes sense only if it is profitable enough to offset the large costs of research and trial. There is one direction of pharmaceutical development that offers the promise of a new plane of health.
This is pharmagenomics – where gene science permits the customisation of drugs. This has the effect of enhancing the effectiveness of any drug and reducing the risks of rejection. In doing so it also increases drug efficiency, thus lowering dosages.
However, there is a critical difference from a public health point of view between antibiotic- based treatments and pharmagenomics. Antibiotics have proved easy to scale and distribute and are subject to economies of scale. Pharmagenocmic drugs will be difficult to scale and are contingent on a sophisticated diagnostic and prescription chain.
Hence the future will be divergent between those who have to ride down the glideslope of antibiotics and those who can hop on the ascending slope of pharmagenomics. Eventually it could make the difference between the standard of health for billions.
What can be done?
First, it is important to find ways to extend the glideslope of antibiotic effectiveness through more disciplined prescription practices.
Second, it is important to invest in the concept of collective health. This requires public investment to upgrade public hygiene, educate the public in good health practices, and rigorously conduct vaccination and immunisation programmes to reduce the incidence of infectious diseases to the maximum possible extent. In this respect, women have a large and critical role to play – they are mothers and not only run the risks of child birth but most often have the responsibility of care for the extended family.
Third, it is important to lower the cost of health – not only through the expansion of the generic drug inventory but also through more innovative structures of public health provision.
Finally, it is vital that weaker nations consider banding together to create critical mass in markets and in indigenous capabilities to cross -over from one slope to the other.
The divergence in health outcomes will underpin the prospects of economies to grow and for societies to thrive. Without a healthy labour force and school cohorts neither will be possible or at least very difficult. And once again, the very young, women and the old will walk the edge of health risks unless a way is found to push the envelope of safety outwards over the next two decades.
The paradigm of the future is a choice between the healthy and the vulnerable. It will be a horrible irony if the old but rich live better than the young but poor – that is an imbalance that does not make sense at the species level.
Paradigms Are Not Inevitable
We live in a networked and interconnected world. We see that most clearly in telecommunications. That same network effect and interconnected nature can be made to work positively on these challenges. But only if there is affirmative action at all levels – from grassroots, through to national and international and through both government and non-government channels.
Women have a large and I would say disproportionate role to play in making this happen. This is because women, in their capacities as mothers, assume responsibilities for more than themselves. In the demographic regions which require the most attention, women are often undereducated and marginalised.
Unless we educate girls and women and afford them the full societal and political rights, it will not be possible for rectification action to be entrenched. Women should also have more than equal legal and political rights, they should have privileges extending to gender specific legal protection and financial assistance to help them juggle the multiple roles of career and family. These features – becoming common place in some societies – are anything but common in most parts of the world.
I would put to you that we must not see the advancement of women as a gender issue – because it is fundamentally an issue about human survival.
—————–
Devadas Krishnadas is a Director of Future-Moves, a foresight consultancy. He has been a frequent commentator on social and policy issues in Singapore.
Join IPS Commons’ Facebook page here.