It’s just three days to 2020, and I thought it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the three decades that flew by while we weren’t watching. I first heard of Vision 2020 documents in 1994, when India’s economic liberalization was well underway, and global consultants were breaking down boardroom doors to advise the Business Maharajas of the day. Here are 3 things that stand out for me, and 3 thoughts on how we live, work and play in the near future.
The list of what stands out:
- Internet is Freedom: I still remember the first day I met the internet, which was soft launched among university campuses and all Indian users had to dial in through a squeaky modem to UIUC (University of Indiana, Urbana- Champaign). A green dot cursor on a black screen took me to the search for a lost cat in California’s Bay Area via Craig’s List. Geography had become history!
The same year, mobile telephony was launched, and I still remember the brick I would carry around later that decade because the software company I worked for those days had gone IPO and had provided me one. The size of the phone shrank, and somewhere in the middle became a ‘smart’ piece of Gorilla Glass, plastic, and other materials. Today, mobile is part of the ubiquitous connectivity, universal access, and uninterrupted bandwidth that techies and futurologists had not dreamt about- they were obsessing over hover boards, and teleporting. Others go about watching full length movies streamed on their phones and have replaced their wallet, cash, camera, and music systems, not all in that order.
However, more tech and connectivity did not guarantee safety. Starting the new century, as it did with the twin towers and other landmarks almost being taken down, (there were four planes remember?) the two decades brought out more low- tech ways of causing horrific harm to unsuspecting masses across the world. Later, that decade instant messenger platforms were used to coordinate 26/11 terror attacks, and now social media applications for hate crimes, fake news, and other such nasty business.
- Extreme weather is now a Climate Emergency: Whether you believe the Nobel prize winning and later questioned findings of IGCC or not, you are now more aware of extreme weather through your own personal experience. I remember a few decades back when the whole world got together and banned CFC gasses (Then a critical component of every air conditioner and fridge), so much so folks went and bought the CFC-Free versions as advertised by manufacturers, because science had linked the gas with a widening gap in the ozone layer. And yet, despite teenage student activists and global conventions, no roadmap for reducing greenhouse gasses to combat climate change and extreme weather is visible. This has now, as it did over millennia, started having an impact on human behaviour and migration. The nineteenth century concept of a nation state is under threat from now economic migrants and soon political migrants, because of extreme weather like perennial droughts as in Syria or flooding as in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, unless tech and science provides an answer as it did earlier, when organic chemistry saved the day for the mismatch on population growth and food production, human behaviour is unlikely to change without that one coherent ‘call to action’ like the CFC ban.
- Investment and imagination are not related: Three decades back, economic books taught students about India’s mixed economy model and an almost self-congratulatory Hindu Rate of Growth (3.5%) that India chose for itself between the 1950’s and 1980’s. The credit crunch of the late 80’s followed by the IMF bailout in 1991 with the consequent opening up of key sectors controlled by the government created new open spaces in aviation, media, technology, telephony (the last two now have Indian corporates in the global Top 10). The doubling of economic growth created new industries and competencies. In fact, the entire Indian BPO and IT outsourcing revolution happened because those businesses needed skills and imagination more than capital investment in equipment. Competency areas like HR, Corporate Communications emerged and evolved. Starting the millennium, as the tech world did with the dotcom bust, followed within a few years by the global financial meltdown, what stands out is that innovation happens irrespective. All the giants of tech today (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) either grew through the various downturns or started with it.
- That brings me to the core point- Knowledge is free, learning is not: While the world wide web has grown and grown, an increasing phenomenon prompted by user profiling via algorithms is the lack of deep search. For instance, if the search engine knows you browse car sites the search term ‘driver’ will have different results for you than if you browsed golf websites. With so much easy access available, more time is being spent by young and old consuming than creating, in finding than searching, the overall impact is showing up in auto- corrected and auto- translated messages, which makes learning a new language a dilletante’s dalliance rather than a career option. Similar scenarios exist in math and computing, and with data sciences making major break throughs in almost every sphere through usage of AI and ML in the workplace and through robotics and IoT- linked factories, the way work, life and play happens is headed for a re-invention.
So what happens next? I remember asking this question as a journalist of a bureaucrat, in the early nineties, then busily amending the nth version of a list which allowed open imports, into a land deep soaked on import substitution, self-reliance, and swadeshi. Change is the only constant he had replied, though qualifying it by saying the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The status quo has been ante-d, a new generation of Millennials are saying, “OK Boomer” to old ideas, preferences and philosophies. Whether that will propel us into more nature aligned, equitable, inclusive society is the BIG question.
Communicator 