Surviving in a new world of smooth global economic shifts require that the individual understands how the simple flapping of butterfly wings can lead to a tornado thousands of miles away, or better still: how the outcome of a board game such as Go, can redirect the fate of billions of people globally.
Technology has broken down borders across nations, cultures, and ideologies. Globalization and identifying as a global citizen is now an ideological norm for many people, especially those of the millennial generation (and generations after them).
Through the Internet and, more recently the Internet of Things (IoTs), the web of our vastly interconnected world has become more susceptible to the idea of the butterfly effect. One computer program or technological breakthrough can lead to massive global disruption reaching down to people and communities who are naturally hard to access physically.
With information moving at the speed of light, policies from one end of the earth can affect millions of people at the other end of the earth, whether they want it or not. The stock market is now more volatile, easily susceptible to 280 character tweets from people such as Donald Trump or Elon Musk.
One successful business model can quickly come out-of-the-blue to become cancer that eats away the livelihood of millions of people all over the world. For example taxi drivers worldwide have no response to Uber’s malignant encroach into their domain. Furthermore, Uber can confidently do this without owning a single car while sitting at their corporate headquarters somewhere in Silicon Valley. On another hand, companies like Air BnB without owning a single building or hiring any hospitality staff can confidently give hotels all over the world a run for their money.
New job roles such as user experience designer, millennial generational expert, drone operator, driverless car engineer, wearable app developers, cloud service specialist, social media managers, etc. will continue to gain more traction even as some older jobs like taxi/truck driver, teller/cashier, sales reps, call center operators, etc. become slowly deprecated. Surviving landslides at such a global level will require that you and I approach updates and events all over the world with the keen eyes of a futurist.
The ability to pay attention to seemingly insignificant changes and updates will matter (remember the butterfly effect), even if this means paying attention to the tweets of Donald Trump or progress report from a small startup company like NeuraLink (a company owned by Elon Musk – with a mission to connect the human brain to computers). In this new age, to be forewarned is to be forearmed for survival.
China is one country that seems to have understood the zeitgeist of things for our world today. Since their Go champion was defeated (discombobulated) by Google’s Deep Mind AI, they have, as a nation, charted a new course for the ship of their country. Their destination is to land on the shores of global AI dominance. Losing one simple board game has pivoted the Chinese economy into cashing big in the AI sector – An industry projected to reach a valuation of $3.9 trillion by the year 2022 according to Gartner. This bold shift by the Chinese towards AI will not end in China. It will have a ricochet on another AI leader, the United States. Another very prominent example is the US-Huawei saga.
Whether for fear of technological dominance or fear of national security, the clash between the US and Huawei, which is a clash between the US and China will have indelible ramifications on the global economy and will filter down to everyone, even in the remotest part of the world. As these two superpower economies clash, the splinters from this clash will filter down into many other economies and nations. Overall this will have significant impact on the shape of humanity’s destiny.
Surviving in a new world of smooth global economic shifts require that the individual understands how the simple flapping of butterfly wings can lead to a tornado thousands of miles away, or better still: how the outcome of a board game such as Go, can redirect the fate of billions of people globally.
This cosmopolitan view of the world is needed in order for you to understand how you may be affected by the proliferation of technologies such as self-driving cars, augmented and virtual reality, nanotechnology, blockchain/cryptocurrencies, etc.
A universal cliché going forward into this new era will be, ‘To be forewarned is to be forearmed for survival.’
To your success and mine in the coming months and years.
Note: This article piece is an excerpt from chapter 4 of my book, 2020s & The Future Beyond. Click here to learn more.
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2020s & The Future Beyond, is a book that dives deeply into what the future of this decade and the ones that will come after will look like; especially as it relates to the development of AI and other emerging technologies. Click here to learn more.
