Why the next BIG THING after VR/AR and self-driving cars is health
If you’ve been following the news and trends as of lately, you’ve surely been bombarded with images and articles regarding the current trends in technology — virtual reality and self-driving cars.
I’ve seen VR gaming studios pop-up right after the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and many AR companies refresh their apps and experiences in order to get with the trend. I get it, if Facebook is betting on this trend, it must be a winner.
Likewise, companies like Google and Tesla have been at the forefront of the self-driving car trend, with Uber and Apple supposedly catching up fast. And these are only the media darlings — many, many more companies are betting big on self-driving cars becoming a really hot industry in the next few years.
And all this is marvelous. I can’t wait to be fully immersed in a VR experience while in a self-driven Uber on my way to the office.
But I will argue that on our way to supreme entertainment and convenience, we will become the least healthy of all species. And before we reach a point of no return as we did with global warming, we need to take action.
Unless you’re one of the 1%, you’ve probably noticed that the cost of your healthcare increases each year and it gets worse as you start feeling the effects of aging. If you’re well over 30 like I am, you certainly start to budget for health issues. And the new daily habits — like sitting for hours, eating on the go and lack of leisure activities — add up to the burden and facilitate disease. You end up paying retroactively for what could’ve been easily avoided.
There are far better, beyond-personal reasons why health should and will become a major concern long before the current trends wear out. I’ll just point our three:
- Mark Zuckerberg will connect the world through Internet.org. And as Peter Diamandis puts it, we’ll soon connect 3 billion fresh new brains ready to have their say. And these 3 billion people need to be as healthy as possible in order to truly contribute to global knowledge; if we want to be healthy as a species, we need to help them set their health bar high, not only ours.
- Bill Gates has expressed his concern regarding an outbreak bigger than the recent Ebola one. He estimates that the chances of this happening in his lifetime are 50%; given the current average healthy human lifespan, that means around 35 years. We already know that proper health education and living a health-conscious life can drastically reduce the probability of getting infected — we just need to make more people aware of this.
- If we are to survive as a species, we must become a multi-planetary civilization. Elon Musk and his SpaceX are already paving the way to colonize Mars. And we simply cannot afford to be unhealthy as a species if we’re seriously considering colonizing other planets. For one, we need to survive the trip and second, we don’t really want to bring disease to our new homes, do we?
Personalized medicine is already in its sunrise and I can’t wait to be able to take drugs that are tailored for me, based on my genome. I’m also looking forward to the day that surgeries will be done at the molecular level with little or no recovery time.
But before we reach that point (and we are working towards these ideals), we need to have a foundation to build upon. This foundation is health education, along with preventive and proactive healthcare.
It really comes down to choice as what the next big thing is. A choice which you can consciously make and start acting upon it now.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson
This also applies to global warming — whether you believe in it or not, it’s happening and no sane person could deny seeing first hand the changes in global climate in the past years.
Many say that global warming has already reached its tipping point. It means that even Leonardo diCaprio (finally, congratulations!) winning the Oscar for Best Actor and urging action on climate change in his acceptance speech can’t really turn the tide. As if.
All things considered, we screwed up with global warming. It affects us, our loved ones and everyone for generations to come.
You could argue that we’re constantly on the verge of screwing up — like #Camacho2016 — and you’d be spot on. But there’s really one thing that if not taken dead seriously will drive us into the ground (pun intended). It doesn’t take into account your race, gender, sexual preferences, or religion. And that is health.
This is something we simply cannot afford to screw up. There’s really no better time to start not screwing up than the present.
If the above struck a cord, I’d appreciate if you would hit the ❤ button and share this story with your friends and family. Let’s raise awareness for health education, preventive and proactive healthcare, and a healthy lifestyle.
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