10 years from now?

“It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.” said Georg C. Lichtenberg, a German experimental physicist. This quote implies that what is now common sense, was once never before discovered. At the rate at which the scientific community is advancing, there is no saying what wonders humans are capable of achieving with technology. From video- calling to vaccines, these inventions seem mundane to people of my age but may seem magical to my grandparents, who were born even before the Internet came about. What seems magical to me, like the invention of the tablet might appear to be completely ordinary to my cousin who was born just ten years after me. As long as we are alive, we can expect incredible inventions to sweep us off our feet, and completely transform the way we live.

However, as the scientific field continues to burgeon exponentially, it leads us to question the implications for humans, the way we live as a society and how we interact. I am certain that in the few decades to come, the utopian model might be achieved; disparity could be significantly reduced, or I could be utterly wrong. As the tech sector continues to blossom, job opportunities open up but only to those with highly specialised skills and knowledge. Maybe instead of bridging gaps as science promises, so that Africans can enjoy similar standards of living as the Finnish, we could continue to drive the different classes of societies further apart to the opposite ends of the scale. Will the human race be able to keep up? Take California for example which is the home to Silicon Valley, the hub for tech geniuses. Despite being the world’s eighth- largest economy, California records the highest poverty rate in the country. The 25% of the population working in the high- tech sector drive up the cost of housing and other living expenses. Meanwhile, the employment growth revolves around retail and manual jobs, where wages are stagnant, or even declining. The nature of technology seems to have made it worse.

Today, we depend heavily on GPS to take us to a destination even if we already know the route by heart. Why is that so? Technology has convinced us that no matter how sure we are of things, inventions such as GPS know better. People have driven into rivers or to the ends of cliffs because they would not dream of questioning an app that collects gigantic amounts of data that is meant to show us the best route. In the years to come, when scientists have managed to crack the codes of human decision making, they would be able to gather enough data based on how we make personal choices. Once it has been proven to us that our compliance and dependency on this new technology is rewarded with satisfaction from the small decisions that we allow technology to make for us, who is to stop us from turning to technology when faced with important decisions such as buying a house or choosing a spouse?

All this is to say that the science and technology of tomorrow will not only change the way we live but it will also change the social, economic and political models all around the world. The impending technological revolution might push a huge amount of people out of jobs creating a massive new class of people who seem redundant. When this happens, I am uncertain that the world is ready to handle these upheavals. Therefore, the best thing the younger generation can do in preparation is to focus on being multidisciplinary. I think that those who are quick to adapt to the changes are the ones who will survive.