From an anthropological-cultural perspective
CEO, Coach, Speaker and Innovator
Here are six predictions about the future made from an anthropological-cultural perspective. Most projections I read focus on the impact of technology and the changes it will bring, as if technology can bring about any change at all. It can’t - change only originates from what people do with technology, not technology itself. The following projections are based on human trends of behavior influenced by technological development, and how those trends are creating significant changes in society.
The predications apply mainly to the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Many times articles and books take studies and assumptions developed based on U.S. social dynamics and transfer them to a global scenario, not realizing that other countries have very different cultural and social development. In most of Latin America, for example, there was no such thing as a “Baby Boomer” generation since their participation in WWII was minimal. This makes much of the generational assumptions and categorizations made from a U.S. social perspective not really valid for a majority of the other countries in the continent.
ONE: Unemployed
A study by researchers at Oxford University projected that as many as 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are at risk of automation. Many of the pundits cheerily say that this is not a problem and that many new jobs will be created to replace the ones being lost, but the facts don’t support that outlook.
In the past, whenever new technology displaced the old, there were many jobs created, such as when the auto industry displaced most of the workers in the horse-related industry. The auto industry required thousands of workers to manufacture the actual cars, tires and other parts. This time the process is entirely different. The new industries require very few humans to actually operate, and with time they will require even less. Recently several IT companies announced they were starting operations in San Antonio, TX and the press release for one of the largest stated that it hoped to generate up to 46 new jobs!
As for the option of retraining the displaced workers for the new technologies; how realistic is it to think that you will be able to retrain millions of restaurant workers and transform them into sophisticated professionals? But even then, how far away are we from actually displacing surgeons, bankers, analysts and many other professions that were thought of as “safe” from automation?
Since a great majority of the people will be unemployed, the government will, have to step in with some kind of massive financial support on a minimum-wage scale, and since the actual middle class will have shrunk to almost non-existence, who knows where the financial resources will come from? Probably long-term loans that will never be repaid.
TWO: Staying at home
People will mostly stop going out for any activity not absolutely necessary. In England there were 3,144 night clubs across the country, according to the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR). Last year, there were just 1,733.
An article in Fortune highlights the news that the annual survey by the analytics firm ComScore and UPS found that consumers are now buying more things online than in stores. We can clearly see this trend just by the number of brick-and-mortar shops closing all over the country.
Why go out when you can simply order in? Why go to the movies when you can stream them in the comfort of your bed? Why go snowboarding in Colorado when you can virtual-reality snowboard in the warmth and safety of your couch?
THREE: Obese and happy
According to stateofobestity.org, since 1980, the childhood obesity rates have tripled, and according to reports from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention show that 38 percent of adults are obese, the highest yet.
Still, according to obesity expert Robert F. Kushner (cited in webmd.com) "For children and for many adults who are overweight, they are starting to perceive themselves as the new normal," he told WebMd, because they feel “everyone else looks exactly the same”.
In the next decades, being overweight will become the new normal, and together with people not going out and relating mostly online, it will actually lose much of its negative social stigma.
FOUR: Single and childless
All statistics show a dramatic decline in the number of marriages in industrialized nations. A Pew Research report mentions that the number of Americans who have always been single and will never marry is at a historical high, partly due to financial constraints, and partly because the concept of matrimony is falling out of favor. The same trend is reported in countries like the UK or Germany. In Japan the number of unmarried has jumped from only 1.5 percent for men and 2.5 percent for women in 1965 to 20 percent of men and 10% of women in 2010 and the trend continues unabated. It makes perfect sense, as the financial situation becomes more and more restrictive, and the concept of matrimony is seen as old-fashioned and impractical, being single will become the norm.
The other part of this trend is that people in industrialized nations are having fewer and fewer children, for the same financial reasons, and also due to an understanding that having fewer children or no children at all is the socially and environmentally responsible thing to do.
Of course both this trends will last only a couple of generations, and will be counterbalanced by the trends from cultures where having large families is still very much the norm. In the end, advanced, ecologically and globally conscious cultures will die-off and be replaced by more primitive clan-focused cultures that will continue reproducing at accelerated rates. Witness the exact process in Western Europe.
FIVE: Living in micro-housing
If you are not married, have no children and don’t have a job, and on top of that you basically live online, there is absolutely no reason to have a house or a large apartment. The trend will be to live in large cities, in micro housing units. Micro housing units tend to be less than 350 square feet, and is taking off in cities like New York and San Francisco. In japan the trend is well established, and in Western Europe you can see micro housing beginning to appear in major urban areas. As a matter of fact, a large majority of unemployed might live in even smaller units reserved for sleep and other personal activities but with common bathing and dining areas.
Think of Bruce Willis’ capsule-apartment in the movie The Fifth Element, but without the slim, good-looking people.
SIX: Impact on multiple industries that will drastically downsize.
Here are my thoughts on the impact on some very large industries due to the social changes:
- The auto and commercial airplane industry will shrink, as less and less people will need to travel anywhere. Most will be out of work, many of those that do work will most probably be able to do it from home, so autos will only be purchased by a small percentage of society.
- The apparel industry will very definitely shrink, as people continue changing to the perception that being “well dressed’ is something for snobs. More and more people will live in pajamas or at the most, jeans and t-shirts.
- The housing industry, for all the reasons already mentioned in the article.
- The restaurant industry, as more and more people simply order-in, the restaurant industry will probably transform into automated food kitchens with also-automated delivery services.
- Commercial banking branches will all but disappear, they are already pushing for clients to go online for all transactions, and closing down brick-and mortar locations.
What most business leaders appear not to realize in their rush to optimize costs by automating more and more jobs, is that when people don’t have jobs… they don’t have incomes and they can’t buy non-essential products, even low-cost ones. Most companies will simply go broke, and those few that survive, together with political leaders, will be headed by the last ruling segment of society.
Some final thoughts.
We have come to see technological evolution as something entirely positive in itself, without realizing that there is no such thing as an entirely positive development. There are many very negative sides to the accelerated technological development without a corresponding evolution in human consciousness.
Humanity will most likely succumb to technology in the future, not in a Sci-Fi war-of-the-machines kind of take over, but with humans willingly becoming physically passive users and dependents of technology, living in mostly virtual worlds. A mix between Wall-E and the Matrix.
We can still change this path if we realize that technology is only valuable in how it helps humanity evolve and improve, and that true positive evolution can only happen by going inside ourselves and reaching greater levels of insight and understanding. Unfortunately, technology is pulling us to live outside ourselves, in a constant stream of superficial data and virtual experiences that are very attractive because they don’t require any effort from us.
In the end, following the path of technology for its own sake, the least effort, the short term and “Me” will only lead to the decline of “Us”.
FUENTE: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/6-predictions-social-futures-alberto-garcia-jurado?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_POST
