A colleague of mine is working on a white paper about various trends affecting agriculture over the next 10 years. These futuristic endeavors are fraught with peril because who really knows what the future will hold – no one. But clients and colleagues are constantly looking for ways to talk about the future with sufficient clarity and confidence that their audiences go away having more insight than otherwise.
What can one say about the future that holds true beyond the simple inevitability that the world will end and life on this planet will cease? Not much, it seems, if one is searching for specificity. But in general, there are several points that can be made which offer a framework for consideration when looking at the future.
My previous posting discussed “push” and “pull” business models. The embedded diagram illustrated a progression from individual products / services to integrated product / service combinations.
In the diagram below, this same progression forms a backdrop to highlight an increasing integration over time characterized by solutionizing and convergence.
The objective is human equivalence as introduced in an earlier posting. The balance of this diagram sets up two critical relationships that supplement increasing integration. First, developments in nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics continue to displace people from making things. And second, as artificial intelligence becomes more robust and capable of emulating human problem-solving, human intelligence is pressed into service to address an expanding awareness of the enormous complexity within the whole of creation. In other words, human intelligence leads artificial intelligence into areas of greater sophistication, ambiguity, and choice. This accelerates the advances in artificial intelligence hastening the day when it effectively achieves human equivalence.
Between now and then, the trends to watch are directly influenced by technology operating at the molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels, recombining DNA, and merging the biological with the mechanical. Whether related to care and consideration for the environment, applying agricultural practices to the production of food, feed, fiber, or fuel, or raising the quality of life, all are overshadowed by developments in these three areas. In general terms, to watch the evolution of technology as it shrinks to the barely detectable, rearranges genetic structure at will, and creates androids that eventually replace us will be exhilarating, unnerving, and perhaps traumatic, but inevitable. These then, are the primary trends. All others are of secondary importance. More later…
Originally posted to New Media Explorer by Steve Bosserman on Monday, April 24, 2006
Frameworks for Understanding the World 