2 things.. a url and the copy beneath, both from the WEF's horse's mouth
Here's how life could change in my city by the year 2030
These are the words and writings of one
Klaus Schwab (Founder and executive chairman of the World Economic
Forum).
Klaus Schwab, a man born and influenced when motherland was deeply
into eugenics.
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“partnerships between businessmen, politicians, intellectuals and
other leaders of society to ‘define, discuss and advance key issues on
the global agenda’.”
“the inclusion of stakeholders and the distribution of benefits”
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: “As human cloud platforms classify
workers as self-employed, they are—for the moment—free of the
requirement to pay minimum wages, employer taxes and social benefits”
“Aging is an economic challenge because unless retirement ages are
drastically increased so that older members of society can continue to
contribute to the workforce (an economic imperative that has many
economic benefits), the working-age population falls at the same time
as the percentage of dependent elders increases”
“While it may not feel momentous to those of us experiencing a series
of small but significant adjustments to life on a daily basis, it is
not a minor change—the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a new chapter
in human development, on a par with the first, second and third
Industrial Revolutions, and once again driven by the increasing
availability and interaction of a set of extraordinary technologies”.
“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies are truly disruptive—they
upend existing ways of sensing, calculating, organizing, acting and
delivering. They represent entirely new ways of creating value for
organizations and citizens”.
“a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work,
and relate to one another”
“Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people
connected by mobile devices... a fusion of technologies across the
physical, digital and biological worlds”
Sensors.... “installed in homes, clothes and accessories, cities,
transport and energy networks”
“Establishing trust in the data and algorithms used to make decisions
will be vital,... Citizen concerns over privacy and establishing
accountability in business and legal structures will require
adjustments in thinking”
Where it gets interesting...
* “The tools of the fourth industrial revolution enable new forms of
surveillance and other means of control that run counter to healthy,
open societies”
* “As capabilities in this area improve, the temptation for law
enforcement agencies and courts to use techniques to determine the
likelihood of criminal activity, assess guilt or even possibly
retrieve memories directly from people’s brains will increase. Even
crossing a national border might one day involve a detailed brain scan
to assess an individual’s security risk”
* “The mind-boggling innovations triggered by the fourth industrial
revolution, from biotechnology to AI, are redefining what it means to
be human,”
* “The future will challenge our understanding of what it means to be
human, from both a biological and a social standpoint”.
* “Already, advances in neurotechnologies and biotechnologies are
forcing us to question what it means to be human”.
** “Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at
becoming part of the physical world around us—they will become part of
us. Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become
an extension of ourselves. Today’s external devices—from wearable
computers to virtual reality headsets—will almost certainly become
implantable in our bodies and brains. Exoskeletons and prosthetics
will increase our physical power, while advances in neurotechnology
enhance our cognitive abilities. We will become better able to
manipulate our own genes, and those of our children. These
developments raise profound questions: Where do we draw the line
between human and machine? What does it mean to be human?”
* “These technologies will operate within our own biology and change
how we interface with the world. They are capable of crossing the
boundaries of body and mind, enhancing our physical abilities, and
even having a lasting impact on life itself “.
* “active implantable microchips that break the skin barrier of our
bodies”, “smart tattoos”, “biological computing” and “custom-designed
organisms”
* “sensors, memory switches and circuits can be encoded in common
human gut bacteria”, “Smart Dust, arrays of full computers with
antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, can now organize
themselves inside the body”
* “Synthetic biology” “the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA”.
“animals could potentially be engineered to produce pharmaceuticals
and other forms of treatment”
“Researchers have already started to engineer the genomes of pigs
with the goal of growing organs suitable for human transplantation”
* “That it is now far easier to manipulate with precision the human
genome within viable embryos means that we are likely to see the
advent of designer babies in the future who possess particular traits
or who are resistant to a specific disease”
* “This gives rise to an inequality that goes beyond the societal one
described earlier. This ontological inequality will separate those who
adapt from those who resist—the material winners and losers in all
senses of the words. The winners may even benefit from some form of
radical human improvement generated by certain segments of the fourth
industrial revolution (such as genetic engineering) from which the
losers will be deprived. This risks creating class conflicts and other
clashes unlike anything we have seen before”.
* “the world lacks a consistent, positive and common narrative that
outlines the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial
revolution, a narrative that is essential if we are to empower a
diverse set of individuals and communities and avoid a popular
backlash against the fundamental changes under way”
* “It is, therefore, critical that we invest attention and energy in
multistakeholder cooperation across academic, social, political,
national and industry boundaries. These interactions and
collaborations are needed to create positive, common and hope-filled
narratives, enabling individuals and groups from all parts of the
world to participate in, and benefit from, the ongoing
transformations”.
* “The young generation is firmly at the vanguard of social change.
There is little doubt that it will be the catalyst for change and a
source of critical momentum for the Great Reset”
* “New approaches are currently being imagined through the combination
of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as nanoparticles
and other advanced materials”
* “blanket the planet with communications pathways that could help
connect the more than 4 billion people still lacking online access”
“will only come about through improved global governance” “Some form
of effective global governance”
* “Individuals used to identify their lives most closely with a place,
an ethnic group, a particular culture or even a language. ... Thanks
to the combination of historical migration patterns and low-cost
connectivity, family structures are being redefined”
“We must re-establish a dialogue among all stakeholders to ensure
mutual understanding that further builds a culture of trust among
regulators, non-governmental organizations, professionals and
scientists. The public must also be considered, because it must
participate in the democratic shaping of biotechnological developments
that affect society, individuals and cultures”
* “public-private data-sharing agreements that ‘break glass in case of
emergency’. These come into play only under pre-agreed emergency
circumstances (such as a pandemic)”
His newbook new book, Covid-19: The Great Reset... * “a succinct
predictive analysis provided to private investors, global CEOs and
opinion- and decision-makers”
* “conjectures and ideas about what the post-pandemic world might, and
perhaps should, look like” “The Great Reset”
* “one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experienced over
the last 2000 years” “the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health
and mortality will be mild compared to previous pandemics” “It does
not constitute an existential threat, or a shock that will leave its
imprint on the world’s population for decades”
* “There are obviously fundamental dissimilarities between a pandemic
and a war (that we will consider in some detail in the following
pages), but the magnitude of their transformative power is comparable.
Both have the potential to be a transformative crisis of previously
unimaginable proportions”
* “Some leaders and decision-makers who were already at the forefront
of the fight against climate change may want to take advantage of the
shock inflicted by the pandemic to implement long-lasting and wider
environmental changes. They will, in effect, make ‘good use’ of the
pandemic by not letting the crisis go to waste"
* “It is our defining moment” “The societal upheaval unleashed by
COVID-19 will last for years, and possibly generations”. “Many of us
are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response
is: never”
* "Radical changes of such consequence are coming that some pundits
have referred to a ‘before coronavirus’ (BC) and ‘after coronavirus’
(AC) era. ... Many of our beliefs and assumptions about what the world
could or should look like will be shattered in the process"
* “new ways of using technology to change behavior” “The scale and
breadth of the unfolding technological revolution will usher in
economic, social and cultural changes of such phenomenal proportions
that they are almost impossible to envisage”.
“At first glance, the pandemic and the environment might seem to be
only distantly related cousins; but they are much closer and more
intertwined than we think” “they are global in nature and therefore
can only be properly addressed in a globally coordinated fashion”.
* “This crucial difference between the respective time-horizons of a
pandemic and that of climate change and nature loss means that a
pandemic risk requires immediate action that will be followed by a
rapid result, while climate change and nature loss also require
immediate action, but the result (or ‘future reward’, in the jargon of
economists) will only follow with a certain time lag”.
* “The pandemic will mark a turning point by accelerating this
transition. It has crystallized the issue and made a return to the
pre-pandemic status quo impossible”.
* “The pandemic will accelerate innovation even more, catalysing
technological changes already under way (comparable to the
exacerbation effect it has had on other underlying global and domestic
issues) and ‘turbocharging’ any digital business or the digital
dimension of any business”.
* “With the pandemic, the ‘digital transformation’ that so many
analysts have been referring to for years, without being exactly sure
what it meant, has found its catalyst. One major effect of confinement
will be the expansion and progression of the digital world in a
decisive and often permanent manner.
* “In April 2020, several tech leaders observed how quickly and
radically the necessities created by the health crisis had
precipitated the adoption of a wide range of technologies. In the
space of just one month, it appeared that many companies in terms of
tech take-up fast-forwarded by several years” “the pandemic will
fast-forward the adoption of automation in the workplace and the
introduction of more robots in our personal and professional lives”.
* “Consumers need products and, if they can’t shop, they will
inevitably resort to purchasing them online. As the habit kicks in,
people who had never shopped online before will become comfortable
with doing so, while people who were part-time online shoppers before
will presumably rely on it more. This was made evident during the
lockdowns. In the US, Amazon and Walmart hired a combined 250,000
workers to keep up with the increase in demand and built massive
infrastructure to deliver online. This accelerating growth of
e-commerce means that the giants of the online retail industry are
likely to emerge from the crisis even stronger than they were in the
pre-pandemic era”. “As more and diverse things and services are
brought to us via our mobiles and computers, companies in sectors as
disparate as e-commerce, contactless operations, digital content,
robots and drone deliveries (to name just a few) will thrive. It is
not by accident that firms like Alibaba, Amazon, Netflix or Zoom
emerged as ‘winners’ from the lockdowns”.
* “The pandemic may prove to be a boon for online education,” “For a
while, social distancing may constrain the practice of certain sports,
which will in turn benefit the ever-more powerful expansion of
e-sports. Tech and digital are never far away!”. “Online banking
interactions have risen to 90 percent during the crisis, from 10
percent, with no drop-off in quality and an increase in compliance”.
“The combined market value of the leading tech companies hit record
after record during the lockdowns, even rising back above levels
before the outbreak started… this phenomenon is unlikely to abate any
time soon, quite the opposite”.
* “The pandemic will certainly heighten our focus on hygiene. A new
obsession with cleanliness will particularly entail the creation of
new forms of packaging. We will be encouraged not to touch the
products we buy. Simple pleasures like smelling a melon or squeezing a
fruit will be frowned upon and may even become a thing of the past”.
* “In one form or another, social- and physical-distancing measures
are likely to persist after the pandemic itself subsides, justifying
the decision in many companies from different industries to accelerate
automation. After a while, the enduring concerns about technological
unemployment will recede as societies emphasize the need to
restructure the workplace in a way that minimizes close human contact.
Indeed, automation technologies are particularly well suited to a
world in which human beings can’t get too close to each other or are
willing to reduce their interactions. Our lingering and possibly
lasting fear of being infected with a virus (COVID-19 or another) will
thus speed the relentless march of automation, particularly in the
fields most susceptible to automation”
* “The necessity to address the pandemic with any means available
(plus, during the outbreak, the need to protect health workers by
allowing them to work remotely) removed some of the regulatory and
legislative impediments related to the adoption of telemedicine”
* “To date governments have often slowed the pace of adoption of new
technologies by lengthy ponderings about what the best regulatory
framework should look like but, as the example of telemedicine and
drone delivery is now showing, a dramatic acceleration forced by
necessity is possible. During the lockdowns, a quasi-global relaxation
of regulations that had previously hampered progress in domains where
the technology had been available for years suddenly happened because
there was no better or other choice available. What was until recently
unthinkable suddenly became possible… New regulations will stay in
place”.
“In April 2020, just as the pandemic began to engulf the world,
governments across the globe had announced stimulus programmes
amounting to several trillion dollars, as if eight or nine Marshall
Plans had been put into place almost simultaneously”. “COVID-19 has
rewritten many of the rules of the game between the public and private
sectors. … The benevolent (or otherwise) greater intrusion of
governments in the life of companies and the conduct of their business
will be country- and industry-dependent, therefore taking many
different guises” “Measures that would have seemed inconceivable prior
to the pandemic may well become standard around the world as
governments try to prevent the economic recession from turning into a
catastrophic depression.
* “Increasingly, there will be calls for government to act as a ‘payer
of last resort’ to prevent or stem the spate of mass layoffs and
business destruction triggered by the pandemic. All these changes are
altering the rules of the economic and monetary policy ‘game’.” “One
of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe and America
is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state.
It’s always been the case and there is no reason why it should be
different with the COVID-19 pandemic”. “Looking to the future,
governments will most likely, but with different degrees of intensity,
decide that it’s in the best interest of society to rewrite some of
the rules of the game and permanently increase their role”.
“The corporate move will be towards greater surveillance; for better
or for worse, companies will be watching and sometimes recording what
their workforce does. The trend could take many different forms, from
measuring body temperatures with thermal cameras to monitoring via an
app how employees comply with social distancing”
“The next hurdle is the political challenge of vaccinating enough
people worldwide (we are collectively as strong as the weakest link)
with a high enough compliance rate despite the rise of anti-vaxxers”.