I spend way too much time watching TED talks. But it’s a bit of an addiction of mine. I like to listen to all these ideas and concepts so well presented and so thoroughly explained that you would at times believe that anything is possible.
A presentation last week got me thinking. This TED talk was about growing meat and leather in test tubes and culturing these for human use. The speaker speculated on a future where ranches didn’t exist and we just “brewed” meat and leather. But then that got me thinking, how would such a world work?
So I’ve been making mental notes on possible futures and in this installment I would posit a future that takes us away from primary resource gathering.
Professions such as mining and ranching are a thing of the past. Robots take the place of miners in dangerous and strenuous mining jobs. Ranching is of course replaced by cultured cells creating meat and leather. Farming is mainly automated and some of it is accomplished in factory type settings using vertical and airponic techniques.
Heavy construction and factory jobs have been supplanted by robotic labor. The only real human positions in these fields are supervisory positions.
Shipping is going to be automated as high-speed rail and automated trucks bring goods either to local distributors or right to the home.
So what are people doing then? Well there are still many service and light construction jobs available. Even in the distant future things like plumbing and electrical repairs need to be done. Roads need to be repaired and some construction specialties can’t be automated.
But the real growth will be in the intellectual and information sectors. A heavier emphasis on using your mind to create new designs, new programs, and new entertainment content will increase the gross national product without involving the use of more resources.
This will mean that we will work, play, and live more online than ever before. Commuting will become less and less necessary, work schedules will be more flexible, health rates will rise as people feel less stress and take more time to relax and improve themselves.
This increase in the number of people working on new technologies and in science will lead to more and better inventions intended to curve energy use and to create new sources of cheap reliable energy.
Living standards will rise worldwide as this model spreads through the globe and larger and larger parts of the world formerly set aside for agriculture will be returned to pristine wild states further helping to alleviate global warming.
I know, a really, really sunny and bright outlook and somewhat improbable. Next time I will go to the opposite end of the spectrum.
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