Expert interview with Ray Hammond
Europe’s leading futurologist
Part 3
Posted on November 24, 2007 - Filed Under CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews |
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In part 2 Ray Hammond outlined the following Key Dreivers of the future:
1. World Population Growth And Changing Demographics
2. Climate Change
3. The Looming Energy Crisis
To read the entire part 2 of the interview, please click here.
4. Globalization
The term ‘globalization’ has many meanings and evokes many different emotions. At one extreme the word is used to mean ‘global economic exploitation of the poor by the rich’ and, at the other, ‘a global movement to reduce poverty and promote peace’.
World income has itself doubled since 1980 because of globalization, and almost half-a-billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990. According to current trends, adds the World Bank, the number of people living on less than the equivalent of $1 a day, will halve from today’s 1 billion to 500 million by 2030. This will take place as a result of growth in Southeast Asia, whose share of the poor will halve from 60 per cent to 30 per cent, while Africa’s share of the world’s poor will rise from 30 per cent to 55 per cent. This represents a continental inequality which carries significant dangers to world stability.
5. Accelerating, Exponential Technology Development
There will be more technological change in the next twenty-five years than occurred throughout the whole of the last century. And that was the century that produced aeroplanes, cars, plastics, nuclear power, television, the computer and the internet.
The reason I forecast such extreme change ahead is that the speed of technology development is itself accelerating. The key to understanding why this is occurring lies in realising that technology development is itself an extension of human evolution
I regard the phenomenon of accelerating technological development as the ‘joker in the pack’ when it comes to considering future trends. During the next quarter century it is possible that presently unforeseeable ‘wild card’ technologies will be developed that will solve the world’s demand for clean energy and, perhaps, even provide some degree of control over the world’s climate. It might even solve the drinking water shortage.
6. The ‘Prevent-Extend’ Model in Medicine (Disease Prevention and Longevity)Because humans often lack a language for the technological future I have invented a portmanteau phrase – “prevent-extend’’ – to describe a new form of medicine that will emerge over the next twenty-five years. Instead of attempting to provide cures for existing disease and ailments, the next medical revolution will produce a new discipline in the rich world that will focus on personalized medicine that will prevent illness and increase human longevity very dramatically.
Over the next few years the ‘master map’ of the human gene pool will be completed to a large extent and, as computer power rapidly increases, it will become possible to sequence the genomic map of each individual patient (at least, of those patients lucky enough to be living in the developed world).
In addition to such a powerful approach to diagnostics, gene therapy will harness the power of gene identification to produce new drugs and treatments many times more effective than present therapies.
Stem cell research is another exciting new development that promises to revolutionize medicine. A stem cell is basic embryonic human cell which has the ability to grow into almost any kind of cell. A number of stem cell therapies already exist, particularly bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukaemia. In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wider variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions.
In the near future stem cell medicine even promises to grow new bone and tissue for human use that is based on the patient’s own DNA. There is good reason to believe that stem cells may allow us to repair and regrow damaged organs and, eventually, to grow ‘replacement organs’ which would be at no risk of rejection from our immune systems. Replacement human bladders have already been grown and transplanted into humans using stem cell techniques. Recently heart tissue was grown from stem cells suggesting that within five years whole replacement hearts could be grown and scientists have recently succeeded in producing pancreatic cells from stem cells that produce insulin, holding out the hope that diabetes might one day be curable by the growth of a new pancreas. By 2030 such organ regeneration will be routine and almost all other organs will also be grown from stem cells. We will have our ‘backup’ parts.
7. What do you think about virtual business development for the next 5 years?
Business is going to make extensive use of ‘virtual worlds’ such as Second Life, MySpace and Face Book. IBM is already holding meetings with clients in Second Life and this method of virtual meeting appears to be far more satisfactory that real-life videoconferencing. I am certain that within a few years we will all be living several lives at once, both in business and in our personal lives; we will have our real world lives but we will also be supporting parallel world personalities within virtual worlds. It is our future.
end of the interview with Ray Hammond
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