Life 2050

This is an extension of the buzz in Workables Hive called Retirement 2051

In this the focus envisages 2050 and beyond but not as wide-eyed futurism, but through the lens of most realistic guess.  Usually when we think of the future it is not how we individually live but futuristic wonder of incredible cityscapes and cars that do all sorts of technically wonderous things.  We don't think that in 2050 we will still live in a home, still sleep in a bed, still eat at a table and still study in a chair, for all the technological changes imminent, the room we live in 2050 will still be a room.

The big shift is not the life we lead in 2050 but the mindset we have now.  People who talk about abundance today are quick to show that there mindsets are about sharing, but sharing is a concept of scarcity.  If abundance exists it is how we individually use it that matters, for what is the benefit of sharing something that is abundant and in its abundance accessible to all.  Like our futuristic imagination, we tend to associate the future with thinking that is set in the past.

How can we envisage the future when we we barely comprehend our own present.  We continue to live our life backwards as we all move forward into the future.  The more backward facing we are the, the more negative we can extrapolate the future, but if we got present focus and then became forward looking from that center, then we are in a position to welcome the future, but a few may over-reach as well as set their minds entirely in the future, and that too creates negative consequence because the present should be a human world but we have suffered from people in the past designing for the future, while totally missing the present they design for. 

This principally was the flaw of architects in their urban design, which architects today have awoken to.  Technologists and scientists are now repeating their mistake and they too will eventually take pause and take stock of accelerated change with depreciated humanity.  That should not make us strike out against innovation, but make us realize the conversion of that innovation into useful human form.  Corporations are trying to envisage this innovation and where that vision is grounded and seemingly rationale, it has interesting perspective.

Rees does go beyond 2050 but we are contemplating 2020 and not really doing well at that. As decades pass, this futuristic forecast become historical outlook and the smaller the gap between the reality of the future is with the imagination of the past, will probably reflect a society that is starting to become less backward looking, where the present is informed by what we know (memory) than what we can individually create or participate in (imagination).  It is entertaining to talk about the future, but much more rare to be reflective enough to turn this into a personal education and also an adaptation to change happening now.  The future is not a tech toy, it is with here today and so it reinforces my belief that the past is for followers, but the future is for explorers.  Where there were a few explorers in the past, the explorers become the majority in the future, but are we equipped personally for that exploration, or are we merely followers, because the present is not where we are, and we are really living units of the past?