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Ivar Moltke
Ivar Moltke
Future technologies
We live in a time of great disruptions. In many ways we are fast approaching a "Perfect Storm". All the strong drivers of disruption: globalization, demography, climate crisis, Moores law and the increasing competition for global resources are gathering force simultaneously. These drivers are also to a large degree independent of actions taken by the current generation of politicians, even if these politicians can initiate trade conflicts, financial crises and even wars making the future conditions for counteracting the impact of the "Perfect Storm" worse.
However, there is a way out of this gloomy forecast. We need to turn the threats into opportunities utilizing the potentials of disruptive technologies. We need to focus on improving "quality of life" in all our innovations activities. FTA may play a central part in understanding how this is about to happen. To illustrate the point: Artificial intelligence developing according to Moore´s law could lead to increasing the insights and knowledge we need to solve the problems contributing to prosperity for everybody through increasing productivity and superefficient and intelligent use of limited resources..
So in short, the better use of ICT as leverage, the more opportunities may be created. Our suggestion for a strategy would be to move as much of value creation in society into the fast moving virtual digital world as possible. Globalization could, besides delivering cheaper and better goods for the majority of the people in the world, also lead to a more radical, unionized global working class built around global cyber-union concepts and social media (web 3.0), which would lead to increasing wages and increasing demand in China and other fast-growing countries while reducing the strain on the competiveness of the countries of the old world and creating a more equal playing field. Equally, the rising global middle classes will require the use of disruptive technologies to safeguard their improved living conditions, conditions under treat by the "Perfect Storm". The global middle class is already demanding more security, better health and more individual opportunities. Disruptive technologies could be part of the answer.
Gene technology, stem cells, artificial organs etc. could lead to breakthroughs in the health sector reducing the need for healthcare, public senior service and pensions, enabling seniors to keep working well into the eighties, thus reducing the economic and social impact of the "age bomb". The potential is huge. As a society, we could apply more funding for stem cells, genome, gene therapy, robotics for the disabled etc. And we could apply more "employee-driven" innovation enhancing the changes of delivering better "quality of life" for all. New technologies like laser fusion could provide unlimited energy, allowing desalination of water and growth of food (in greenhouses) in the desert overcoming the food shortage and limit the risks of hunger catastrophes without adding to the problems of climate change.
Our key recommendation is that FTA must act as a means of communication to increase the understanding of the power of disruptive technologies, as an instrument of igniting coordinated of R&D efforts and as a globally accepted concept of understanding the need for more focus on the potential of disruptive technologies to address the problems created by the "Perfect Storm".
