Currents and anchors (what will change and what will remain the same)

Personal Experiments · Source

💡 Warning and note to self: *“*He who lives by the crystal ball is bound to eat ground glass”.

These are just notes — some of which are gut instincts. More of an opinionated piece than a thoroughly research documents

1. Currents: what is going to change

GPUs are going to continue becoming smaller, faster, more energy efficient, and ever more ubiquitous [already commonplace in phones. to become commonplace in wearables – both smartwatches and airpods?]
Machine Learning will continue becoming better. Transfer learning, in particular, will be applied to more domains (in particular, audio) and to more learning types (including reinforcement learning) -- developers will be able to train very effective models on relatively small datasets and with relatively limited compute
Techniques for online learning and with limited compute and memory (on-device) will become better, leading to far more predictive models for individuals
Generalists will fare better than specialists

People will have more time on their hands as automation takes over. This will lead to more free time in office (folks watching movies/listening to podcasts when they’re at work) and/or more free time at home
“Boredom is now causing more problems than distress. It is becoming increasingly crucial, as progressive automation will lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker. Many of them will not know what to do with their newly acquired free time. When the rush of busywork is over, the void in people becomes increasingly manifest.” - Viktor Frankl in the 1980s
Sex will continue to be far more liberalized -- people will get it on with more “partners” (human and machine), in different ways, in different places, and in different physiological states (ecstasy-like narcotics, viagra-like drugs)
Love will continue to get decoupled from sex. The economic implications of this are difficult to predict

The world will become more insular, with the flow of people (and perhaps goods) becoming far more restricted
Western Liberalism will cede ground to Chinese-styled authoritarianism

Universal Basic Income will become a mainstay policy – leading to much greater purchasing power for the poor (and the associated spending related benefits this would provide)

Global Warming will continue to be a problem; air+water will probably be cleaner
Pressures on water tables (specially in South Asia and Middle-East) will spur investments in desalination technology

The world will get older
People will have fewer children everywhere
Developed countries will continue getting less religious while less developed ones will remain devout

Status seeking behaviour (attempting to improve others’ perception of self) will persist (wealth, physical attractiveness, real-life influence, digital influence)
Esteem maximisation behaviour (attempting to improve own perception of self) will persist (self-improvement, value addition to community and society)
Storytelling will continue to be something that people crave (using different mediums)
Desire for geographical exploration (physical or virtual) will persist
Desire for pleasurable sensory experience (comfort seeking, taste, art, music) will persist
(For most of the population) Desire to remain physically, mentally, and emotionally fit will continue to persist
Humans in general are still idealists

People will continue searching for meaningful camaraderie and companionship — platonic and romantic. We’re already seeing pets provide some of the same companionship that humans used to. Will be fascinating to see if smart machines start to do the same
Tensions between us and them will continue to persist – though the fulcrum of these tensions might change from ethnicity/religion to class/ideology

Governments will continue finding ways to do more with less
Governments will continue finding ways to know everything they can about their constituents
Politicians will continue finding ways to influence voters
Tensions between the net-taxed and the net-subsidised will continue to exist