Visions of the Future (86 page)

What can you do to learn about these issues? There are many relevant books and discussions, and interesting material on the Internet. In order to get started, follow up on this paper’s endnotes and check out the Lifeboat Foundation website at http://lifeboat.com.

We have to be careful. Our save-the-world projects could have unintended consequences. It is said, “first do no harm.” However, that is not quite right. We have to compare the risk of doing something with the risk of doing nothing. The trick is to reduce risks without losing opportunities that are more valuable than the risks. We need to think adequately about that balance, but not to think so long that we stall appropriate action.

ENDNOTES

1. Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, estimates in [Rees,
   Our Final Hour
   , Basic Books, 2003] that humanity’s chance of surviving the next century is 50%. Dr. Willard Wells makes a similar estimate in [Wells,
   Apocalypse When?: Calculating How Long the Human Race Will Survive,
   Springer, 2010.]
   
2. Nick Bostrom, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority,
   Global Policy,
   Vol 4, Issue 1 (2013): 15-31. Also available at: http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.html. Dr. Bostrom is Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
   
3. For example, Dr. John Lewis makes a rough estimate that there is enough iron in the asteroid belt to build a habitat for 10,000,000,000,000,000 people in [Lewis,
   Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets,
   Perseus Publishing, 1997, pg. 194.] All of the other elements necessary for industry and life are also available in abundance.
   
4. Philip Metzger et al, “Affordable, Rapid Bootstrapping of Space Industry and Solar System Civilization,”
   Journal of Aerospace Engineering,
   April 2012. Dr. Metzger is a former NASA physicist and an expert in extracting resources from lunar regolith.
   

Earlier this year, the first mind-to-mind communication took place. Hooked up to brain wave headsets, a researcher in India projected a thought to a colleague in France, and they understood each other. Telepathy went from the pages of science fiction to reality.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that pick up and monitor brain activity, brain wave technology has been advancing quickly in the last few years. A number of companies already sell basic brain wave reading devices, such as the Muse headband. Some companies offer headsets that allow you to play a video game on your iPhone using only thoughts. NeuroSky’s MindWave can attach to Google Glass and allow you to take a picture and post it to Facebook and Twitter just by thinking about it. Even the army has (not very well) flown a helicopter using only thoughts and a brain wave headset.

Despite the immense interest in brain wave technology, little attention has been paid to what translation apps—such as Google Translator—will mean to an upcoming generation that will likely embrace brain wave tech. Youth will surely ask “What is the point of learning a second language if everyone will be communicating with brain wave headsets that can perform perfect real-time language translations?”

The question is valid, even if it’s sure to upset millions of second language teachers and dozens of language learning companies, like publicly traded Rosetta Stone. Like it or not, sophisticated brain wave headsets will soon become as cheap as cell phones. A growing number of technologists think the future of communication lies in these headsets, and not handheld devices or smart phones.

However, the question of whether it will be useful to learn a new language in the future is about far more than just human communication and what technological form that takes. Different languages introduce us to other cultures, other peoples, and other countries. This creates personal growth, offering invaluable examination on our own culture and how we perceive the world. The process broadens who we are.

Being proficient in other languages also offers certain nuances that knowing only one language cannot. French offers far more romantic and poetic gist than English ever can. But Arabic is steeped in more historical imagery and connotation than French. And nothing compares to Hungarian’s ability to effectively curse in ways that all other languages fall far short of.

Perhaps most importantly, learning a second language offers the physical brain a chance to grow in new and meaningful ways. The study of a new language, for example, is often suggested to early-onset Alzheimer’s patients to help stimulate the brain’s proper functioning.

Ultimately, the most quintessential question rests on whether there are more important things to be doing in today’s busy world than learning a new language. With radical transhumanist tech changing our most basic functions like communicating, is society better off pushing its youth to learn how to write code, or to speed read, or to play the violin? In hindsight, I would’ve rather spent my time becoming a proficient martial artist than the six years I studied Spanish in school.

Whatever your opinion, the future of learning languages and how we communicate is in flux. Speaking at the 2014 World Future Society conference in Florida, Singularity University Professor José Cordeiro said, “Spoken language could start disappearing in 20 years. We’ll all talk with each other using thoughts scanned and projected from our headsets and maybe even chip implants. This will radically increase the speed and bandwidth of human communications.”

Twenty years isn’t that far off. I’m not ready yet to drop my 4-year-old daughter’s Chinese lessons, but I am keeping my eye on whether technology is going to change some of our basic communication assumptions, like the value of learning a second language.

At a recent neighborhood meeting in the medium-size city that I work for, a comment about the growing dog population sparked a heated conversation. Residents—even pet owners—said that they find the increasingly large number of dogs on park pathways difficult to manage. Together, the citizens and city council promised to keep dogs on the agenda. They could stay there for the next 20 years.

According to the United Nations
1
, half of the world’s population already live in cities, and by 2050, nearly seven out of 10 people worldwide—more than 6 billion people in total—will lead urban lives. Already, megacities are responding to growth by becoming “smart cities.” They are linking tiny embedded sensors with big data analytics and automating systems to make real-time decisions. Suburbs like the one I work in—Kirkland, Washington—are already following in the footsteps of larger metropolises.

In most cases, city networks are monitoring people, cars, electricity, water, and other infrastructure. Intelligent transportation systems in Boston improve traffic flow, smart lighting in San Francisco can be controlled wirelessly and dimmed in the early morning hours if the streets are empty, and surveillance systems in crowded public squares in New York watch for signs of terrorism. New apps help citizens find parking and send Amber Alerts to all cellphones within a specific location. The cities of the future will know where cars, bikes, and people are. They’ll also know about the dogs.

In the United States, there is roughly one dog for every four humans, and the rate of canine ownership keeps rising. In 2011, the number of dogs in the city of Seattle was greater than the number of children: 153,000 dogs to 107,000 children
2
. New York City is home to more than 600,000 dogs
3
.

Owners are already keeping better track of their animals. Many dogs are chipped with RFID to identify them if they get lost. Northern Ireland has required chipping since 2013 and beginning in 2016, chipping will be required for all dogs in England
4
. Many canines also wear collars sporting GPS-enabled devices
5
that are least as expensive as their owners’ Fitbits. These chips are often used to find missing or stolen dogs, while everyday uses include keeping tabs on where your dog walker is taking your pooch and tracking the animal’s “personal training” goals. Whether it’s a show dog, a guide dog, or a rescue dog, the emotional cost of a lost animal is often considered incalculable. We want to keep our dogs safe, and we want to know where they are.

In addition to putting sensors on cars and in roads and parks, cities of the future will be able to map the dog population and the resources devoted to dogs. Dog owners can already look up amenities like dog parks and open water in phone apps. In a few years, they may even be able to tell in advance which dogs are at the park for Fido to play with. And the dog-phobic? They’ll like the same future. Even if there are more dogs in cities in 10 years, it will be easier to tell if they are near you.

Cities themselves might use more information about dogs in a number of ways. Locations for neighborhood parks and fire stations are already selected using geographic information systems to mash up maps with data about people. If city planners know where the dogs live, they can site dog parks using the same technology. Once the information is made public on open data sites, prospective owners of dog-related businesses can use the same tools to decide where to put the dog-friendly pub or dog-wash stations. Another possibility is that the current movement to create special green lanes for bicycles could be mirrored for dogs in certain locations, creating unique dog walks that can be advertised to residents and tourists.

If the United States follows England’s path and requires that all dogs be chipped, then the owners of dogs who end up as strays can be identified and fined. Actual data can be developed about incidents between dogs and people.

With so many four-footed walkers on city streets, keeping people safe from dogs matters. Even though just a small percentage of dogs are dangerous, no one wants to find themselves or their family dog attacked by an untrained animal with a poor handler. If it does happen, we want to find the perpetrator (owner and animal). Even more simply, if we have children who are afraid of dogs, we want to know when one is nearby. Similar to the way crosswalks or intersections with a large number of accidents are often improved, parks where dogs and people clash might be tweaked to improve safety for both.

When I was growing up, there were seeing-eye dogs. Today, they are called guide dogs, and there are also hearing dogs for the deaf and service dogs who help with a range of conditions including PTSD, poor balance, epilepsy, autism, and more. One of the most moving chapters in
Until Tuesday
6
, the best-selling book about an Iraq war vet and his dog Tuesday, covers an incident where a bus driver refused to believe that Tuesday was a legitimate service dog and tried to keep him off the bus. As more and more dogs of different kinds act as service dogs, knowing which ones truly are trained for crowded places like buses, concerts, and restaurants is going to become more important. RFID chips could easily identify service dogs and help keep the riffraff (ruffruff?) out.

Managing dogs adds costs to local government budgets. As city dogs continue to gain the attention of neighborhood meetings, pet licensing is going to become even more critical. Typically, licenses are designed to pay for at least part of the animal control resources in a city, including pounds, license enforcement, and education. Just for fun, I ran the numbers in my own county. Kings County, Washington, has roughly 2 million people, and thus about half a million dogs. At $30 a license, that’s $15 million a year (if all dogs were licensed). Licenses are physical tags, and it won’t be hard to add RFID, Bluetooth, and GPS to them in the near future.

I won’t be at all surprised if some time soon, when I register our dogs for new licenses, I have to enter their RFID and maybe GPS chip data. And just think of all the interesting apps that might be developed with open data sets about dogs.