Optimism at the Worlds Fair Nano
Are we gonna be Okay? We’re gonna be ok.
I recently got a ticket to the first of many Worlds Fair Nano festivals put on by the Worlds Fair USA organization trying to resurrect the global showcase of innovation. Uncharacteristically for me, I went alone in the hopes of meeting interesting future thinkers. While I didn’t forge any new lifelong friendships, what I saw was reassuring in the midst of a deluge of news on the Trumpocalypse.
The Technology Playground
Filling the massive Pier 70 in San Francisco was a mini burning man sci-fi showcase of over 50 companies. I arrived early so I was first in line to demo whatever I liked.
I got to ride my first electric skateboard (they set it to “baby mode” for me) from Inboard through a flurry of motorized LED furries on wheels. After that I got to fly my first drone from Mota. I recommend picking up their JETJAT Ultra if you want a starter mini-drone — I bought one on Amazon for $80 that night and I’ve been bothering my cat with it ever since. It auto stabilizes and streams video to my iPhone+Cardboard for VR flying and it’s just awesome.
Speaking of Virtual Reality there was a whole VR Village set up for demos. I got to test some pretty compelling hand tracking software, watch people play life size VR Pong, and see this awesome haptic suit for the HTC Vive by Hardlight VR.
Aside from the usual suspects there were large and small scale 3D printers, modular camper vans, connected sex toys, meditation nerve stimulators, and educational robotics kits. It struck me how incredible this tech all was and how unsurprising it seemed at the same time — like either the wild innovators started making marketable things or people started wanting what the wild innovators are making.
The Speakers
The Future of Cities Panel
This talk was basically the reason I came to the Worlds Fair Nano. Not that I knew any of the panel members, but my interest in civic design has spiked in the past year after seeing some truly impressive thinking coming from cities outside of America (Singapore, Barcelona, Medellin, etc). I highly recommend watching this youtube video for a current state of civic innovation.
The panelists came from grassroots activism, data analytics, and modern architecture, with a professor at UC Berkeley as moderator. I was particularly engaged in their discussion of bad plans to make the future better — these included building neo-utopias in the dessert ala Dubai, replacing all human interaction with automation like we’re seeing with robot baristas launching this year here in San Francisco, and creating privatized civic vacuums which put emphasis on monetizing public space through advertising.
As for good ideas the panelists seemed excited about rapid prototyping of spaces with 3D printing, VR models of public spaces to get the public excited, and taking a modular approach to building design so a space can change over time rather than being demolished.
My takeaway from this talk was the power individuals hold on a city government level. They gave great resources like SPUR and EcoDistricts.org to get involved with. The fact is, not many people show up to town hall meetings. Unlike state or federal agencies, if you have an idea it’s not hard to get an audience with the right people, and history has proven that compelling change happens at a city level first.
The Future of Automation — Dr. Michael Chui
Automation is the problem of our generation. The big one. The one that will affect how this world works long after we’re dead and gone.
We’ve only seen this type of rapid change twice in civilized humanity’s past.
The agricultural revolution took humans from living nomadic lifestyles circa 10,000 BC to settling in one place for generations. This meant not everyone needed to be hunter/gatherers anymore — so we invented new jobs like farming, pottery, politics, and philosophy.
The second was the industrial revolution in the 1800’s. We forget that at that time upwards of 80% of Americans were farmers, today that number is only 2%. Massive amounts of people migrated from the countryside into cities. They were either evicted from their property or out of work due to new technology. Factories were the new normal, life was harder and working conditions were dismal. If you haven’t read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, it’s essential. This process was not a quick or painless — but it is one we can learn from. Most of the jobs we do today *ahem* web design *ahem* would have been unimaginable back then.
The automation revolution is happening whether we like it or not. We can’t undo the work done on self driving cars or 3D printers, nor should we. The only issue to tackle is what to do with everyone today doing a job a computer can do better tomorrow. So while lots of jobs might go away, just like in the past new jobs will emerge we find unimaginable today.
Dr. Michael Chui of the McKinsey Global Institute had some compelling data to share on this front. He is careful to separate occupations from activities. In this context occupations are defined as “jobs” we do that are made up of a series of activities. His department was able to identify 800 unique occupations made up of 2000 unique activities. Now this next bit is important.
49% of the identified activities can already be automated with existing technology, but only 5% of occupations can be 100% automated.
This means automation won’t put everyone out of work, but it will fundamentally change what we do at work. Working in congress with machines will absolutely be required, in fact coding may become the next generation’s blue collar job.
On a deeper level, this revolution may bring answers to the most profound question of our race, what it truly means to be human. Once machines can produce, create, facilitate, calculate, and automate — what is there left that is intrinsically human? Something no machine will ever be able to replicate? I have a suspicion we aren’t quite as special of a species as we give ourselves credit for, but perhaps we can become more benevolent when we have automated the necessities of life. If crops can be grown and shipped by sustainably powered machines, houses 3D printed, and goods crafted with no human intervention I hope we can look past what we do for a living and raise the standard of living for all people — to give ourselves the time to look inward at what makes us, us.
The Rest
Outside of these talks I got the lowdown on the future of digital medical records, artificial intelligence, personalized nutrition, and participate in a guided meditation in a room of 200 people.
As I reflect on this festival I’m reinvigorated. I’ll be the first to tell you that the future is going to be great if we let it get here. There are geniuses working on things you and I have never thought possible. The best thing for us regular folk to do is embrace science & technology by opening our minds at awesome events like this one. Oh and try to prevent an extinction event through nuclear war or climate change. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
