This year TEDxUNBC will discuss the future. What will the next 150 years be like for Canada and the world?
It is an interesting question to consider particularly in light of our history as a nation. It was 151 years ago the Dominion of Canada was signed into existence. It only consisted of four provinces and much of the land which we now call Canada was wilderness.
In the last 150 years, we have seen railroads followed by highways and backroads and airplane traffic facilitating the movement of people and goods from one end of the country to the other. We have seen the invention of everything from the zipper to insulin to satellites. We have seen culture institutions such as the CBC and the Tragically Hip rise. And we have seen the strange game of hockey come to dominate the national consciousness.
Could anyone have predicted these changes 150 years ago? Possibly. Certainly the importance of railroad traffic. But we were still using horses and buggies for travel well into the early part of the 20th century so our car culture was probably not in the cards.
What does our present future hold? Well, it would be foolhardy to guess too much into the future. Certainly climate change will still be impacting the planet and likely leading to social upheaval. Worldwide the human population will have stabilized 150 years from now at around 9 billion after peaking at 11 billion around 2050. And water will become a precious commodity on par with the remaining fossil fuels.
Other than those sweeping predictions, it is hard to see what the future holds. Canada might not even be a country in 150 years. There really aren't many countries in the world which are 300 years old or older. Countries general seem to have a natural and surprisingly short lifespan.
But over the next 20 years, there are some definite predictions I would make and most arise from disruptive technologies.
The first would be self-driving vehicles becoming the dominant mode of transport. Whether it is chip trucks moving from lumber mills to big pulp mills or transports moving fresh produce from California (hopefully) to Prince George, long distance transport will increasingly see AIs taking over the wheel.
Personal automobiles will follow suit as more people realize the advantages of having their car pick them up and drop them off. Indeed, one of the side consequences of self-driving vehicles will likely be an increase in ride-sharing. After all, your car can drop you off at work and then go pick up someone else without you being involved.
Taxi cabs and other delivery vehicles will arrive without the need for human participation. Professional drivers will go the way of the elevator operator and lamplighters of yesteryear.
A second prediction is the rise of more machines taking on jobs presently performed by humans. It comes down to the question of unit cost. If a machine can produce 100,000 widgets per day at a cost per widget that is less than human labour can then machines become the manufacturing method of choice. At present, labour is still cheap in some parts of the world and machines are still relatively expensive but over time the equation will change.
More and more workers are presently being displaced by machines even as I write this. One commentator pointed out The Donald is blaming the wrong people for jobs losses in the United States. It is not foreign countries and immigrant workers but the rise of the robots which is resulting in a decline in American manufacturing jobs.
Which, of course, begs the question - what are these workers going to do? Those believing in the digital age contend there will be an increasing number of jobs requiring programming skills. Living in a digital world requires digital content and it is very labour intensive. Just check out the list of "CGI" artists involved in any major Marvel movie. The cast is a very minor component of the 15,000+ people working on each film.
But if everyone is programming code for everyone else, what happens to the real economy? The one supplying goods rather than services? Eventually robotic machinery will take over completely and we will no longer need skilled labour or even unskilled labour. And what if you cannot participate in the digital economy? These are the questions which will trouble our society for the next 100 years.
If we are to follow the example of Star Trek, money will be obsolete and everyone will have all they need while contributing to the good of society as a whole. On the other hand, if you believe in the Terminator or The Matrix, even the machines will get tired of their labours and will rebel.
In any case, the next 150 years will be interesting.
