Apogee

As kids, most of us got familiar with the 'Dippy Bird.'  The essence of the mechanism was that between the capillary action at the beak and the weight of the fluid between the neck and the bottom of the dippy bird would cause the bird to oscillate and dip its beak in the water once in a while. A second more complicated mechanism made it work through the principles of a heat engine, that required the use of a specific chemical that allows it to work at room temperature.

I bring up the example of the dippy bird to make the point that when enough variables come together, it can make a system move dramatically.  It occurs to me that as I scan the world and the amazing progress that has been demonstrated in multifarious fields, we might be approaching our own dippy bird moment in human affairs.

Some examples.

Manufacturing and Supply Chain

Economist Magazine - Cover

The Economist magazine has a cover story on 3-D Printing this issue.  They have been beating the drum on 3-D printing for nearly a decade now.  I finally got curious and decided to do a little exploration, being an old manufacturing hand myself.

I came upon this youtube video demonstration of 3-D printing that totally blew my mind.  An actual real life, honest to goodness tool, a wrench is actually replicated.  It is about 4 minutes long and really worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ-aWFYT_SU

The apogee of modern manufacturing is the perfected, gigantic global supply chains.  Epitomized by Walmart + China.  Walmart being the gigantic outlet selling the products at the cheapest possible price by beating up suppliers and and making the supply chain efficient.  And China as we have all come to know has been dominating the manufacturing side of things.

But it is now popularly known that the value, for example in the case of the iPad is in the majority in the design and the applications and the manufacturing cost of the iPad itself is in the approximately 10% range of the product.

Imagine a world, where each of us has some version of this 3-D printer in our garage.  (We own a car worth tens of thousands of dollars - so imagine a replicator at that cost).  We would be paying for design (a sweater for example) - and replicating it ourselves.  In the least, you can imagine, local 'printing villages' where everything is produced.

In this world, there is no need for global supply chains, large box stores.  The value is for the intellectual capital and the production is highly customized and highly local.

Today's manufacturing and global supply chains have perfected what Henry Ford started.  Tomorrow, we might finally realize a series of interconnected villages, in a way fulfilling Gandhi's vision - but in a 21st century way.

Education

To this day, we are all striving for and aspire for our children the best education at the best institutions.  A degree from the Ivy League, undergraduate or graduate.  That is the stepping stone.

But right under our noses, information, education, know-how is exploding through multi-media - be it podcasts, youtube lectures or TED talks.

Bill Gates and Salman Khan

Bill Gates wrote about Salman Khan, the creator of the Khan academy.  This is one of the most prescient articles about education that is worth reading.






http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2111975_2111976_2111942,00.html

Another example is Harvard Professor Michael Sandel's lecture on Justice - that has been viewed more that 3.5 million times!  One of the most powerful lectures on ethics and moral reasoning you will ever hear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

In such a world, what is the value of college education - particularly when the cost of education has been outstripping inflation multiple times every year for nearly two and a half decades?

At some point, society is going to challenge the notion of a $300K college education, by professors interested more in research and less in teaching, when most of the content is all around us anyway.

(As a child reared in an academic household, in an academic environment, I say this with full awareness of the import of this point).

Environment

Not a day passes, when our son does not remind me of some aspect of our behavior that is not environmentally friendly.

Between mining, and dumping and garbage creation, we have been flooding the planet with waste - including nuclear waste.  At the same time around the world we have been denuding forests at an alarming rate.  Glaciers are disappearing in front of our very eyes.

But the environmental consciousness has been rising so that if not in our generation, in the next, we could well see the return to more preservation and less exploitation.

With accelerating economies in China, India and Brazil - there won't be enough oil and coal left to fuel rapid growth.  There is no question that out of sheer necessity we will need to shift to solar, wind and other renewable resources.

Most corporations are already getting serious about 'Green' and the carbon footprint.  Imagine a time, when you are in a meeting - and NO ONE brings paper - NONE.

How about if the U.S. President issues an edict just to his executive branch - no paper in any meeting.

Can you imagine if the US Government stopped using paper?  It is not inconceivable that this could happen!

Work

Work as we know it today was epitomized by Gregory Peck in the movie 'The Man in the Gray Flanneled Suit.'  A company man, loyal to his organization - making a work-life balance choice.

With the world economy in the condition it is, there is increasing necessity to find work that best suits your skills.  The imperative is building a career that best fits your needs.

Our son's ski instructor during the summer season is a race car driver and during the fall an automotive consultant.  That is NOT a man in a gray flanneled suit!

For two decades now we have been talking about the transition from manufacturing to a service economy.

We are headed from a service to a knowledge economy.  WIth service being delegated to robots that can do everything from keep your house and refrigerator at the right condition to vacuuming your house.

This is not far fetched at all.  Just think about the amount of tasks you can do now just with our iPhone or Android that required service workers.  Banking, shopping, Reading, Listening.  Well Siri is not there yet.  But any doubts that Siri 2.0 is round the corner?

Longevity

There are more trends that can be brought up.  Longevity.  Human longevity has increased by leaps and bounds and it is no longer surprising when we regularly cross 100 years old.  That is 35 years past traditional retirement.  In fact traditional retirement is near being retired.

Dick Bavetta - Referee

The notion that we might live after the age of 65 for as long as we had worked until that point gives rise to reasons to re-think everything from financial planning, to activities and responsibilities.

With regard to financial planning, it seems to me to be pretty clear that it is not enough to have a 'number' - i.e. assets in the portfolio when one reaches a pre-determined age.  But rather infuse it with meaning from the past and the future.  Earlier, I had written about three key questions to ask:

Question 1:  What was it like with money growing up for you?

Question 2:  If you had a calamitous emergency today, that wiped out your savings, what would you do?

Question 3:  If you had all the money you need today, what would you do?

With the population in the oldest segments growing fastest around the world, policy makers are going to be pressed to come up with ways of addressing new issues - such as delivering elder related health care services at scale.

Genetics  

We are unraveling the 'toolkits' within the gene (and not just human genes) that are responsible for various things including growing organs.  Imagine organ farms that grow organs that we need.

Sean Carroll is a Professor of Molecular Biology  ('EvoDevo') at the University of Wisconsin.  He had an excellent podcast on this topic.  http://www.podcast.com/Science-and-Medicine/Natural-Sciences/I-480674.htm

Synthetic life.  We are creating micro-organisms from scratch that can follow instructions and do various tasks for us.  Here is a great story about Craig Vetter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form.


A vision (strawman)

It is of course tough to predict what date and time these will converge and what shape the converged outcome might take.

But one can sketch out a vision - a strawman, as we say in business circles (in political circles, a strawman is used very differently).

Imagine in the future we will choose to live in smaller communities.  We won't go to college, and we won't work Nine-to-Five.  There won't be large factories spitting out product.  There won't be defined careers either.  There won't be any mega stores to go to.  Neither will there be paper or plastic much around.  There won't be paper currency either.

Here, we would be living in a highly inter-connected world, plugging into knowledge and education uniquely tailored to each individual and paced accordingly.  Value will be based on unique and new ideas contributed to human understanding and endeavor.

A designer will come up with an idea, it will show up at everyone's home electronically (perhaps even through holograms).  And we would pay for the idea and have it locally produced - maybe in your garage or in the village central - and the most of the value would be for the design and not the material or the production.

The information about the earth, its waters, its bio diversity, the map of the universe with its galaxies would all be digitized and be at your fingertips (literally).

You could communicate with anyone anywhere (five years ago, my brother was able to send me a blackberry message from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!) about what's happening.

In this world, we would be free in the truest sense of the word, to pursue what we each individually like and derive value to the overall network of knowledge contributors (not workers) around the globe and a silent, virtual exchange of digital currency.

Lest this be confused for a 60s commune, this is not 'give up everything' idealism.  Rather a convergence of amazing knowledge, scientific progress and technology that will allow us to jump in headlong into human affairs, but not be caught as a cog in a giant wheel.

In the future, 'Gone Fishing,' might not necessarily mean absconding from your responsibilities.  It might mean you are doing the most natural thing in the world.  While out there, you by the brook, fishing rod out, with a gentle breeze swishing by and your dog Rover lolling in the sun; you might have an Emily Dickinseon insight (in tune with, 'I'm nobody! Who are you?'), and oh by the way post it on the future generations' version of facebook for friends, family and the general public to react - and they might credit your account should they feel it have value!

Summary

Nanotechnology.  Computing power.  Digitization of information.  Private space flights.  Mining Asteroids.  There is even more!

Just like the dippy bird analogy that I used at the top of this post, these trends - both individual and societal are converging.

An ever present caution.  One does hope that the Yang, that will accompany this Ying, with bad guys having access to the same technology and knowledge can be kept at bay!

But looking, reading and absorbing these trends, it is pretty clear that we are nearing an apogee in human affairs.  Apogee in the sense that we have pushed twentieth century organization, scale manufacturing, global supply chains to its limit and that perhaps now events will start reverting in an evolved sense and headed back to a perigee where things are more localized and customized.

This is going to be fascinating to watch unfold.