I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, right off Sand Hill Road, in Menlo Park, California. Supposedly, this is the seat of the modern Renaissance.
Technology is disrupting everything.
Technology will continue to disrupt everything for the foreseeable future.
Automation made possible with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics and such will wipe out 60-80% of the jobs in the next thirty to fifty years.
Self-driving cars and ride sharing will wipe out 10 million jobs and decimate the automobile industry along with its ancillary services sectors.
The population, meanwhile, will increase to 10 billion in due course.
In large part, this population will have nothing to do, and no means of sustenance.
Universal Basic Income will become a requirement to prevent society from devolving into anarchy, with crime, revolution, and other forms of social unrest becoming the norm. How we afford welfare at that scale remains to be figured out.
Colonizing Mars may be within the realm of possibilities, so perhaps some of that population will be moved to another planet. But what rules will govern that other planet?
Silicon Valley is charging ahead in its drive to automate everything.
Technology pauses not to consider the devastation on its path.
Wealth creation quests pause not to ponder philosophy.
Welcome to the twenty-first century!
Photo credit: Naotake Murayama/Flickr.com.