ThrowForward Thursday 163: The Great 50 year global drought
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Release Date: 09/13/2024
ThrowForward Thursday 174: Imagine - end of 2024 message
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Imagine... the future is imaginable. And our imaginations help to set the tone for how we engage with the future, and the world around us. <P>So, at the end of 2024, let's imagine the best possible future we can - whatever that might mean for you. For me, it would be a world without war. Thank you for your support and feedback on our scenarios over the past year. <P>We plan to come back in the new year with a whole new format for these scenarios - we are excited to share that with you. But first... take a break. Have a refreshing and rejuvenating holiday, and we will see you in...
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ThrowForward Thursday 173: CEOs are not safe
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
On December 4, 2024, the CEO of one of America's largest healthcare insurers was shot dead on the streets of Manhattan. Angry people, living in a world that is filled with inequality and feeling squeezed on every side, will eventually snap. This is not something we want, nor is it a call to arms. But it is a possible future scenario that CEOs of large companies might need to be as careful of their personal security as many politicians currently are. <P>The antidote is to build future-proof businesses that see doing good as good for business. This isn't just a cute tagline - it is a core...
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ThrowForward Thursday 172: A Data Center sues town for all its water
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
It could happen. Sometime in the future. Data centres use an incredible amount of electricity and water. Towns that incentivise these data centres to locate nearby for jobs and tax benefits might find themselves dealing with unrealistic demands for power and water - to the point where a data centre could sue the town to continue providing them with water even if it means the people living in the town get cut off. <P>For more details of just how much power and water data centres use, listen to Paris Marx’s 4 part mini series on the Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast:...
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ThrowForward Thursday 171: The 15 hour work week
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Nearly 100 years, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030 we would all be working just 15 hours a week. If only, right? <P>What went wrong? There is an answer, but you're probably not going to like it. We need to change the whole system to ensure we are not crushed by a system that seeks relentless productivity, endless activity and soul sucking workloads. <P>Maybe the 15 hour work week is an idealistic fantasy. Or maybe it's a motivating goal to drive a change in our current world of work?
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ThrowForward Thursday 170: My AI assistant chooses who I vote for
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Elections are messy, noisy and can overwhelm voters with too much information and too many choices. In the future, it could make sense for us to rely on our personal AI assistants - algorithms trained on our preferences, understanding our worldviews and able to mimic who we are in communications and interactions - to analyse every politician, their promises, their track record and what we expect them to be able to achieve, and advise us on the best person to vote for in any given election. It’s a great application of the power of data analytics and pattern recognition that GenAI apps are...
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ThrowForward Thursday 169: The End of Company Emails
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Don't get too excited by the title - it's not quite what you think. In the future, it is possible that companies will not supply us with email addresses, but we will rather bring our own (just like we buy our own cars, phones and have your own personal cellphone numbers these days). <P>This is more than a technology conversation - this is about fractional workers (senior people working for more than one company at the same time) and top talent being confident to say that their personal brand is more important than the brand of the company they work for (we do that already on...
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ThrowForward Thursday 168: The Day The Internet Dies
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Imagine logging into your web browser and there's just nothing: no websites anywhere. You check your internet connection, and that seems fine. Your phone seems to be working. Except most of the apps are showing error messages, and there are just no websites. <P>This is what would happen if the DNS system stops working. This is the system that turns your website request into an address the IP and HTTP systems can understand. And our DNS systems are incredibly fragile, completely out of date, and most are run by under supported volunteers. Yes, you read that right. One of the most...
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ThrowForward Thursday 167: The Talking Robots are Human Controlled
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Come with me to 2029, when a dark side of the robotic world becomes reality. The robots we will deploy in care homes and kindergartens - those humanoid robots who look after our elderly and children - are now revealed to be controlled by underpaid and overworked human operators in sweat shops on the other side of the world. Yes, of course, we will one day have fully autonomous, talking robots in the future. But for quite some time between now and then, the best way to achieve this is to have some level of human control. I don't think it will be benign and beneficial to the operators,...
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ThrowForward Thursday 165: Smartphone Innovation (seems a bit stuck to me)
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
It's sometime in the future, and the next version of your favourite smartphone has just been released. Once again, the marketing hype is astounding, but the reality disappointing. What did they say: it's a few millimetres smaller (or bigger), and slightly lighter, and the camera has some extra megapixels and zoom, and ... that's it? <P>Smartphones should be curing cancer already. There's more computing power in my smartphone than existed on the entire planet when I was born half a century ago. <P>As much as we live in a technology world, innovation seems to have stalled a bit....
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ThrowForward Thursday 165: Genetic Enhancement and Gender
Graeme Codrington's Future of Work
Imagine what the world would look like if we all had the data about our genetic makeup, and we could see the many multiple ways our genetics shape who we are and what we are capable of. Imagine that gender wasn't the issue it is today as we think of the classifications of sports codes - no longer would be it "male" and "female" as the only two categories, but rather many different categories based on whatever genetic characteristics were most applicable. And then imagine, we could also apply genetic enhancements to these sporting codes? <P>We can only imagine now. But this is our future...
info_outlineIt's September 2082, and we mark the 50th anniversary of the official start of what has become The Great 50-Year Global Drought. Cities have been emptied, country borders changed, wars fought and entire economies gutted... and there seems to be no end in sight.
<P>This episode of ThrowForward Thursday is based on historical facts. Back in 1177BC, a 300 year drought caused the almost complete collapse of multiple civilisations in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean areas. You can listen to Dan Snow's History Hit podcast, as he interviews Eric Cline, the author of '1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed': https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-bronze-age-collapse/id1042631089?i=1000664352855
<P>It's a sobering lesson from the past. It's an alarming possibility for our future.