I don't know where to start with this essay. It is wrong on so many levels.
Let me focus on global warming. Yes we need to employ tech, the tech called "birth control."
It angers me to see all the articles in the NY Times arguing that we need to stop eating beef, stop flying on planes, live in the country (not possible for many of the urban poor), drive Tesla's (also not possible for the financially constrained).
Meanwhile, the reason for climate changes is NEVER DISCUSSED. We got in this predicament because of population growth. Global warming would not be a serious problem yet if we had stopped at a population of less than a billion in 1800 or at 3.5 billion in 1968 when Paul Ehrlich published "the Population Bomb." Now world population is over 7.5 billion and still increasing.
We need a world-wide one-child policy like China instituted in 1979, but less coercive. In particular, it makes no sense to deny the third world access to family planning which is what the Mexico City Policy (of the US) effectively does.
Why is this part of the problem NEVER EVEN DISCUSSED?
Yes, we need to shift to solar and wind as possible, and maybe nuclear. But we should have a new morality: It is wrong for any family to have more than two children in an overpopulated world.
We should be doing everything effective in fighting climate change. That includes at least DISCUSSING achieving zero population growth.
Avoiding this topic makes the NY Times appear to promote "fake news."
635
@Blaise Descartes The population will plateau at 11 billion and then drop. 11 billion is 3x 3.5 billion so anything 3.5 billion can do, 11 billion can do with just 1/3 of the resources. It's doable. And we're already at 7 billion. So it's only 4 billion more.
Population is NOT the problem (the population illustrates the symptom of the problem). It is the amount of resources used per person.
Humans need to learn to live within their means. Otherwise even a population of 3.5 billion at an American McMansion standard will be too much.
64
It’s actually more about people not dying as young. The average lifespan in the developed world used to be around 60. Now it’s not even a big wow anymore when someone turns 100. In the developed world, people ARE having less children or none at all. See Japan and many European countries. And tell me, how many siblings did your grandparents have? All four of mine had between 4-7 siblings. But their parents all died before hitting 70, as was the norm. In sum, people are by and large not dying as much. The two world wars also cut global population by several millions.
14
@Blaise Descartes
This is America where greed and selfishness are the key words to define who we are. Don't brother doing anything and you will be just fine.
Even though Trump thinks this is Russia and we have plenty of SS guards running around we are still free to make our own decisions
12
The fact that all of your predictions include some "monetizing" component indicates we are doomed (little d). Why is it all about making money? (Because this is America!)
And your last prediction - invisible - organic - tech, really doesn't make me feel any better. Do I trust Mark Zuckerberg to control all the levers I now can't see - some of those levers which will eventually be inside of me?
What I see is a more bifurcated society. Those that have the money to pay for all the trendy new perks (including healthier, longer lives), and those that have to settle for a lower grade - i.e. cheaper - operating system.
Happy, happy future?
10
@Ladybug
"The fact that all of your predictions include some "monetizing" component indicates we are doomed (little d). Why is it all about making money? (Because this is America!)"
One thing to remember is that in a free market economy controlled for monopoly, trust, fraud, and infringement on the rights of others, you make money by best serving the needs of your customers.
You don't get rich but taking advantage of your customers, you get rich by best serving their needs so that willingly but your product or service above all other choices in the market.
Put restaurant that sells low quality food at a high price opposite one that sells high quality food at a reasonable price, and the former goes out of business while that later flourishes.
1
Oh, God. To be so simple as to think that corporations grow by doing the best they can for their customers.
5
@John
When big money makes the rules - "Corporations are people" - hard to have a level playing field.
3
Kara Swisher, bless your wise and great heart for putting climate first.
Well done!
5
Kara,
Enjoy reading your articles on the opinion page. Nevertheless, we have a concern as we (family of three) really like you and you seem like one of the saner Americans. We fear you may stress a titch too much.
What would your world look like if you could simply unplug for a fortnight and join us on one of the islands on the wild west coast of British Columbia?
I could see you on, say, Salt Spring Island. The local way of getting around is still to thumb for a ride. It is a very green and Green part of Canada. The MP for our riding in Parliament is a member of the Green Party of Canada.
Seriously, any of our islands in the Gulf Islands in the Salish Sea here you might enjoy. You could pick berries, dance in the woods, purchase eggs or flowers from the various stands by the side of the road, be left in peace and quiet if you so choose. There really is life beyond Silicon Valley.
Just a thought whilst you make your plans for 2020.
Best, Some Canadian/Canadien fans.
12
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
6
Happy New Year, Kara.
1
I don't think tech has made us much better off than we were in the '70s, when I became an adult. The science of nutrition and longevity has done far more for us, providing information that enables people who care about aging well to age well. I'm of medicare age, and remain healthy and very physically active, partly by remaining physically active, and partly by eating a diversity of healthy foods, and avoiding unhealthy foods, and partly due to decent genetic inheritance. Also, maintaining friendships, and having a canine companion who runs with me. I do like having a lot of knowledge at my fingertips, but I don't like how easy it is for people with bad aims to manipulate others on soc media.
10
Reads like a wish list.
All kinds of good things are potentially possible, and that’s true of all human progress. And yet we find ourselves both enjoying and suffering the effects of the industrial revolution. That’s the likeliest path of the digital revolution, too.
7
Ms Swisher is inside the bubble. Way inside, and therefore way too optimistic, apparently unable to be deeply critical. And until she recognizes the relation between what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism and individual freedom, she will continue to bark up the wrong trees. She is much too sanguine about AI. And what's happening in China is deeply disturbing and worse, frankly, than anything Orwell or Huxley were able to foresee. Finally, "tech" does not equal infotech. Infotech is only one subcategory of tech. Ms. Swisher does not pause to consider the life sciences, and the truly profound threats to human freedom and dignity implicit, for example, in human germline engineering. We need broader commentators and deeper experts to talk about these subjects.
13
Yes, the capital should go to develop solutions to climate change. It may, but so far the big money has chased nonsense like WeWork. There is no shortage of Elon Musk detractors, but he has made an enormous difference to the consternation of many. One point that Ms. Swisher missed except by implication that we would not have mobile devices in ten years is the increasing trajectory of change in information technology. Fact is that we do not know where it will take us, but we must be cognizant of its potential to intrude on our lives.
2
This author has clearly not read anything written by the people whose job it is to actually look at the future with clear eyes.
Tech will make things much much worse in the not too distant future. Maybe in the long term - after we have threatened our own existence - tech will finally be used responsibly.
In the short term tech will:
leave 50% + of the population unemployed.
make targeted untraceable politically motivated killing very easy.
relegate most humans to the status of "consumers."
End privacy as we have come to know it.
And that is just for starters.
16
This column and many of the comments give me hope as it reveals a growing awareness of the downside of technology in our lives, in particular the problems of cellphone addiction, social media, privacy and how these things negatively impact our social fabric. Of course I must include the caveat that I'm no Luddite and use technology frequently but always with a mindful awareness that I must control the technology not vice-versus. This forum, for example, is a great way to share our thoughts on topics and form a community of civil discourse--something many elements of technology, like Twitter, are degrading.
I hope Kara's optimistic predictions come true but based on my observations and experience, I'm quite skeptical. We need to balance our use of devices and social media with a focus on awareness of self, others, and our world free from screens.
7
"There are many areas to explore, including battery storage, renewables, software and artificial intelligence to help us understand climate data, the food ecosystem and even the way we construct our buildings."
The way we construct our buildings. Yes, in spades - or perhaps with spades; it has long been known that putting buildings partly underground has a stabilizing effect on interior temperatures. At least one building of the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, is so designed. Design with the sun in mind, for another, for heat and light. Insulate! These, and many other things, can reduce our carbon footprint. Sensible initial design might cost a bit more but will save that cost many times over, for the life of the building.
The theme of this year's Rose Parade, in Pasadena, was "Hope". Let's make that a New Year's resolution for all.
3
Thought: To help reduce carbon dioxide, plant timber trees. Lock the carbon in place by building with the harvested timber. Replace the harvested trees with seedlings. Repeat.
Counter-thought: I don't know whether this would even make a dent in the daily global emissions caused by fossil fuel combustion.
I've been talking to Alexa. The SmartSpeaker software is about where computers were with Windows 98. It seems that your personal electronic assistant will become more available (WiFi, Bluetooth Cloud) and useful--record and send messages, keep track of entertainment options, connect easily with more people and devices, and still be a nightlight. As Richard Brautigan puts it, we'll be "all watched over by machines of loving grace."
If Tech is the source of so many of our problems, why should we think tech will solve these problems? Isn’t it at least just as likely that new technology will lead to new problems?
6
Technology generally means something like "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry".
But Kara Swisher (and many others) use "tech companies" to mean something else -- companies that rely on social media and consumer marketing for profits. No science involved.
That's why I find her views, opinions and predictions to be so facile. She comments more on social trends, fads and fashions -- froth rather than substance.
10
Along those lines, I always chuckle when people refer to Andrew Yang as being a "tech entrepreneur" or having connections to Silicon Valley. He studied political science and economics at Brown and law at Columbia. He has had nothing to do with tech or Silicon Valley.
4
Trump plays on people’s attitudes and emotions but he really knows very little about how we accomplish what we do and has no interest in finding out. In a very real sense, our nation has no functioning President serving as the Chief Executive, but an irresponsible man having a great time being the center of attention.
11
The assumption that tech can save us is deeply flawed. Tech like anything else is just a tool which can be deployed for good or bad. If deployed without forethought and regulatory brakes, we will continue to be overwhelmed with unintended consequences (just being charitable). To do this, we would need the equivalent of an FDA with trial periods and social ethics infrastructure to pre-emptively assess impact. Imagine how that would skid the entire industry and our assumptions on tech centric growth.
This article assumes tech could and would be far more of a net positive if aligned better. Ok, but who will bell that cat?
In our current trajectory I can see a time when everything online or digital becomes so suspect that only live or in-person performances/debate will have credibility. Hard to imagine how since no one has that much time, and we haven't found a way to create that necessary social infrastructure.
TV used to be the opiate of the masses, and now its the internet. Unless we create a more benign opiate or the masses developing a sudden sense of balance and perspective, short of a systemic implosion, I can't see things fixing themselves.
Not the most positive outlook for the year, but like climate change, I think our global prospects are better if we assume we are already in crisis instead of pretending we can fix what's clearly gotten out of hand.
7
I don't think these predictions could have been more timid or vague.
13
Batteries instead of gasoline? The end of man’s impact upon the environment and prosperity for all? A.I. instead of physicians and attorneys? Precise correlations between all diversity among humans with every activity of mankind? All unhappiness replaced by perfect contentment?
Realistically, what can people do to achieve what they want and not produce what they do not?
Batteries are necessary because electricity is active and transient energy not energy locked up in molecules that can be released as needed link that in hydrocarbons. Batteries are relatively massive containers that hold tiny amounts of electrical charges, far more massive than any hydrocarbon fuels and the containers which hold them. The only electrical transportation which can compare are those attached to continuously generated electricity.
Our technology is based upon burning hydrocarbons. Replacing that has unknown costs because we do not know how to do it, yet.
A.I. has no awareness, it is a mechanical process that obeys mathematical rules. It’s a tool with no purpose without the toolmaker.
When we have achieved a fair society, the diversity will reflect that. For now, diversity represents a hope. People’s potential is by definition uncertain. It is unlikely that the same capacities are identical for all. In addition, people will likely never accept limitations which they feel disadvantage them, even natural ones.
5
The internet has failed because it has been take over by advertisers wanting to get in to your face 24/7, to get your attention to serve their interests, which is to take those hard earned digits from your electronic wallet.
In 20/20 hindsight, our government, which was a big part of the development on the internet, has fail to protect the general public.
3
The internet is taken over by advertisers by the will of the people as their government representatives have decided. There are rules that have been adopted that permit this to happen that can be easily changed if the people want. The price is the people paying for a system that enables freer access for non-commercial purpose.
@Casual Observer except that the Congress routinely acts against the majority of the public through anti democratic institutions like the Senate where a single person from coal country or oil states with scarcely any population can block legislation where 40 million people live. Don’t pretend we live in a functioning democracy.
5
So Congress members are not just collecting money for campaigns but they are receiving the money upon which they rely to live from wealthy patrons?
Politicians are corrupted by moneyed interests but very few of them rely are owned by some wealthy elite. They use that money to convince voters to elect them.
I’d like to see us make use of the junk we already have. Repurposing for the good of the earth sounds like a laudable goal. I do like the close of this article. It would be nice if government business were handled in a more mature way than tweeting.
5
If we are best described by our actions, then we have become extensions of our technologies. It was the splitting of the atom that led Einstein to say our technology has exceeded our humanity, but now our technological advances are less about warring and more about communication. Understanding one another better, and having access to the history of human knowledge, has so much more potential for good. The quote that encourages me most from the past decade is from Jose Arguelles, "Now time is money, then time will be art."
3
Agree with downside of tech. I envy your optimism so my next move is to purchase those rose colored glasses that have served you so well from Amazon.
My local mall is closed.
There’s little need for stores except to try on clothes.
7
If you are going to rely on tech companies to make these changes themselves, you will have to wait far beyond the 2020s. Without government regulation or some sort of massive popular uprising involving consumer boycotts, labor union organizing and demonstrations, it is not worth it for profit-seeking companies to make any of these changes on their own.
6
The problem with tech is capitalism.
9
I wish that I could share your optimism.
3
I would like to see the angel, VC, and PE money put in SaaS products for salespeople shift over to investing and growing solutions to solve climate issues. All these companies that are targeting tech “solutions” to salespeople are tripping all over each other. The flow of the best and brightest STEM graduates, sales and marketers are truly needed elsewhere.
2
"There will be an internet in the future that stops screaming at us. Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too."
Ah, you're after my own heart with that closer. A prayer for all humanity.
6
"While our tech devices have, on the whole, been good for most people..."
This is likely the most deluding and distorted belief that our media has alarmingly had so little to share about. Which makes sense, since they're in the business of dealing tech.
Yes, print in all of its forms is technology, with an early warning from way back by Plato, as he introduced us to how writing (devoid of human interaction and questions) could dominate our minds and memories.
"If we build it they will come" lies somewhere in most of our modern minds, comfortably nestled away, nurturing an almost unquestioned dominant culture.
4
Tech is making us dumber and more reliant on hardware. The whole climate change thing is a hoax. I live in the midwest and every winter it is cold outside and in the summer it's hot. It has been doing this for as long as I can remember. We should get back to something we can blame Trump for.
1
@RS
There are some reports that data and experiences are different in Australia--and in the Arctic and Antarctica, as well...
1
Her predictions probably would be better if she waited until the next decade begins, which is next year at this time, 2021.
Think about it. When did the first year, A.D. end? Year 1.
It doesn't really matter when you mark the beginning/end of a decade as long as you only do it once every 10 years! The difference between 2019 and 2020 is a change of 2 digits, more salient than the usual 1 digit change and why most reasonable people consider 2020 the start of a new decade. Besides, it's all kind of arbitrary, there's nothing special about a Base 10 numbering system.
5
You are correct. To a degree. We go by the first numbers so this is the Twenties. Then comes the Thirites and so on. It would be weird any other way.
1
“Whether we move toward more intuitively created tech that surrounds us or that incorporates into our bodies (yes, that’s coming), I am going to predict that carrying around a device in our hand and staring at it will be a thing of the past by 2030.”
You’ve missed an important point: The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments re: device addition isn’t rooted in the posture of the addicted person bending over to stare at their device—rather, it is mired in the fact that they are so endlessly engaged. If a person in 2030 need only stare off into the middle distance while an invisible stream of content flows through their retinas (somehow) they will still be absent in my presence, and they will still be unable to see the softy swaying tree that is actually in front of them, or appreciate the breeze that caresses their cheek. We must somehow learn to stop reading and viewing and listening from time to time, and be alone in the world and think thoughts that aren’t hyperlinked or hashtagged.
6
More ideological wish list than tech predictions. So what's new?
5
fwiw......smart Phones are really "dumb" phones and are the "tech" candy has dragged most of us down the rabbit hole to dystopia.
"1984" only scratched the surface of how bad it's going to get.
fwiw, I use a 15 year old flip phone (that's been run over by my truck twice) to talk with people when I'm on the road.
6
There would be an overall improvement in life on earth for so many if Twitter would simply fulfill its responsibility and block Trump’s twitter account for his hateful comments, demeaning nicknames, and promotion of false conspiracy theories. The CEO of Twitter needs to develop some back bone and guts.
6
I like the part about no Trump tweets!
1
Here a few words from Chief Justice Roberts on the subject of insane disinformation and the peril it presents for democracy.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/john-roberts-judiciary-democracy/index.html
Americans, Roberts said, have in the modern era come to "take democracy for granted," and the chief justice lamented the fact that civic education has "fallen by the wayside."
"In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public's need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital"
Serious warning!
5
I wonder if Trump will somehow manage to tweet from jail?
4
Sounds like a fairy tale to me. Silicon Valley and social conscience in the same sentence? Nah.
3
I think the worst bellowing loudly part is Auden. The rest is Yeats. Stand by while I Google it...
1
It's not hope over experience, its mediazation over truth.
2
Thank you for the new word: “loudmouthery.”
2
Civilization, in its formal organization, began with forced labor/taxation of grain, and then its regular consumption, increasing women's fertility with grain's higher iron content.
Why must our sociocultural evolution be continually channeled "with advertising-based business plans" still dominated by humans as consumers, rather than fulfilling relational needs and connection?
Are we to submit ourselves to some resignation that our cultures are forever doomed to valuing human connection and relationships as some secondary consideration--or even an artifact as technology consumes more and more of our time, and our actual face-to-face connection becomes an extraordinary exception?
Our "Human Rights" declaration is in need of some major upgrades, with a large budget for some culturally evolved form of enforcement.
2
Thank you Ms. Swisher. Confirming your contentions, this morning I watched some of the stunning performances of Zurcaroh on You Tube. They have much to tell us about us.
They deliver a unique blend of dance, pantomime, and gymnastic skills exquisitely choreographed to joyfully defy our fears and assumed limitations and celebrate liberation of our human potentials.
Most striking is their economy of production; they do so much, so well with so few of the presumed requirements:
The cast: no professionals, no celebrities - just dedicated amateurs, many of whom are children.
Apparatus: Their aerial gymnastics should require expensive structures to achieve altitude and safety. But the cast of Zurcaroh become their own apparatus; ropes, towers, trapeze, springboards, projectiles, landing nets... to make fearless little ones fly and alight like angels.
Costumes: Simple suggestions for thematic clarity but often a modest minimum of rags and tatters that expresses humility before the thunder of audience gratitude.
Secret: They Love... each other; and what they do; and us, for whom they do it, to show us a better way.
And as you suggest, Ms. Swisher, we can do it and we will, as the alternative has become intolerable.
1
So when you get the internet enabled brain implant the screaming will move from the screen to inside your head!
6
I wish these predictions will come true. Unfortunately wishful thinking is often divorced from reality. It’s going to be difficult to change the direction tech is going in, and very likely take years (if not decades).
3
The next decade will either see vast amounts of human spiritual awakening, or a death spiral. Tech can make either movement go faster.
3
Really? Who's in your wallet?
4
"That’s right, I am calling it now: There will be an internet in the future that stops screaming at us. Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too." Obviously Trump's tweets will be gone by 2030 because - even if reelected - he will be gone by 2030. But why would Twitter be gone in 2030? Minus massive regulation, what would make social media obsolete in 10 years? Why would "the internet stop screaming at us" when screaming at us is so lucrative for them? I'm not being flippant - I'd genuinely like to hear from Ms Swisher her rationale.
4
I would like to see an experimental column/Q&A interview with columnists from the NYT. I wonder what Kara Swisher would say if sat down with Anand Giridharadas, whose book "Winners Take All" from 2018 really reversed the techno-optimism and faith in post-Reagan American capitalism that I used to have. Those two problems are what I see in this column. There is little justification for this optimism.
My predictions for the future? The march towards dystopia continues. It'll be a mixture between Black Mirror, Blade Runner, Wall-E, and Elysium. More income/wealth inequality, climate change, unsustainable consumerism, tech monitoring, deepfake videos, etc.
4
re: "The most important challenge is finding a way to keep carbon in the ground — " An excellent, low-tech way already exists: planting trees. Besides that, trees are aesthetically pleasing. And besides that, forests and wooded walkways provide opportunities for exercise. And if you take a walk with a companion, you can have a beneficial social interaction. All without plastic gadgets that consume power and otherwise despoil the environment.
9
We won’t be in fake internet world Matrix pods yet but some of us will be halfway there by 2030. Perhaps when the earth is no longer viable we will all need those pods and the fake internet Matrix world to “live” in.
When the country finally pulls together and admits that the health of the citizens is the key to economic prosperity for EVERYONE, mental health will no longer be ignored.
My prediction: The National Schoolyard Bully Registery. This will be the lasting legacy of the Trump Presidency.
Passed by Congress in the not so distant future, it will locate and reintegrate Little Trumpers back into society by supporting their mental health needs before they
end up in the Oval Office.
3
I’m not so optimistic about moderating the addictive nature of technology, because it isn’t so much the technology itself, the device, as what the device enables. Take Trump’s unprecedented use of Twitter as an extremely visible example. He is clearly hooked on the power that accrues to his ability to magnify his voice using his handheld as a megaphone to blast his awful ideas directly to wide audiences. It gives him a power he has always before had to struggle to achieve. He uses it to blast his lies out to the public while its very reach, which inevitably finds listeners willing to believe his obvious untruths, and makes those lies have more credibility than they would have achieved had he dispersed them in more traditional ways.
The audience is what gives much of modern technology it’s addictive power, and no amount of modifications to the underlying code will alter that truth. To have listeners, real or imagined, is what draws people in, giving them an addictive rush that comes from the very integral need that humans have to communicate with other humans. In a isolating and often alienating modern world, that capability appeals to a fundamental and emotionally satisfying human need.
That is, after all, what this message is all about.
1
For health and wellness improvement, mindfulness has been imported into healthcare practices. To this end, would it be reasonable to expect AI workers to produce an App that enables people to silence loud-foul mouthing in cyberspace with just one click?
3
All the tech in the world will not save humanity from collective environmental suicide if we don’t learn to change the behaviors of unrestrained consumption driven by a feeling of consumer entitlement.
In this environment, even having babies is consumerist-driven, consumer-manipulated behavior. Having babies, among other things like eating meat, etc, must take a rest.
5
As I read this on my phone with an aching thumb, I’m not so optimistic.
8
The Tech industry and those named rich folks among others is all about making money for as little possible product as is possible to get away with.
The idea behind the Declaration of Independence was not to make as much money as possible. It was not about too much government.
It was not about any of the ridiculous ideas like 'free trade' that seem to animate the awful policies put in place since repeals of the New Deal rules and regs.
The Declaration of Independence was about FAIRNESS. Economic and otherwise.
Put the New Deal back together and things will get better for everyone.
6
Whenever anyone mentions incorporating internet technology into our bodies I have a viscerally negative reaction. No thanks, that would be like plugging ourselves into the Matrix and I would never, ever do it. It’s bad enough how we are surveilled and tracked now. Why would you agree to being linked to perpetual surveillance, and even possible thought monitoring? We have enough concerns about sliding towards totalitarianism now. Body incorporated internet tech is a potential dictator’s dream.
7
@IrishRebel98
But what if such 'plug-ins' offered us a form of virtual immortality (as long as the power didn't go out, at least) ? That would be a very difficult bribe to resist !
1
Those who are immersed in a particular lifestyle or culture can only think through that lens. The religious implore a savior, the technological envision an app, the entrepreneurial announces a plan. Those prognostications are visions of a creative mind but ultimately we just want life simply to be easier and to be entertained and we use and possibly abuse the tools that get us there. Honor your body. Love your partner. Be kind to your neighbor. Respect the planet. Try to have fun. All pablum but all true enough. Happy New Year.
11
In the noisy discord of our day, your "pablum" is reassuringly, quietly comforting. Happy new year, indeed.
3
I thought this piece was going to be about predictions from an expert industry watcher. It was not. It was simply a list of wishes. We can all engage in wishful thinking. That doesn't improve much of anything - except, maybe, our day dreams.
12
I agree with much of this. (So you can judge me: I'm a Gen x, academic with a PhD, working in gig economy, 45 male, mixed race, lgbtq etc.). Although, considering the fantasies called for in this opinion piece (see "eliminating anonymity"), I am surprised virtual reality has not been addressed. "Santa" gave me a Sony Playstation VR, and I had to take it off my head while playing "Astrobot Rescue Mission" because of moisture. I wept at the experience. It was like entering a different dimension, a holiday I had never expected in my living room. I have never had so much fun while being so inspired. After that, I played No Mans Sky, I couldn't believe it, they actually did it, the people at Playstation and Hello games have made all my childhood dreams come true, I was a pilot, flying my own jet, with no risk of crashing. In creative mode I have spent hours with my headset on, just bobbing through the clouds of various alien worlds. This all in the last week, and this more than anything has made me feel I am in 2020 now.
Actual reality (see Greta for your reality check) will make it unlikely that in 2030 we'll all be living in personal fantasies, digitally generated with VR or AR headsets, etc., but I certainly agree that the way the majority of us consume technology (in the west) is about to get a whole lot more fun than that palm sized piece of glass.
2
So some unknown force will eventually control every aspect of our lives? That force is currently greed. Some altruistic force will come along and cancel greed? Been there done that (remember Jesus?).
I don't have much hope in Yeat's prophetic poem, (BTW, one of my favorites) as long as human nature is in control of our destiny.
3
Yes, by all means, let's look to the same young white men who got us into the current mess, and made fortunes doing so, to lead us out of it. To take the lead on effective climate change, compassionate automation, diversity (I'm choking with laughter) and moving us towards the depolarization of the current political climate they cheerfully created.
Why would they do that?
8
These are by no means original ideas, but I believe we will see a gradual shift away from in-hand “phones” to Augmented Reality wearables (glasses and, eventually, contact lenses; and ear buds) that lack individual apps, and function almost entirely via voice.
Furthermore, I would appreciate a move toward algorithms that focus less—or not at all—on monetization or profit, but rather on improving health, public safety and fairness in government.
In addition, there must be a creative team or individual who can develop a social networking platform that depends not on advertising revenue, but on a fair monthly or annual subscription; in other words, zero ads that might otherwise open the door to misinformation or data mining.
Above all, however, there must be a global technological push to address, control and diminish Climate Change. And with this there must be an education component that encourages everyone to do their part.
3
Had dinner in a modest restaurant in MX last night. The table of ten people next to us had six adults and four children as young as two and they chewing, drinking, and all but one was on his/her phone either talking, gaming, texting, FaceTime, shopping. No dinner-time chatting. No face to face interaction.
The destruction of the social fabric we used to call family. Very sad.
19
@Sam Marcus I have a desktop computer but have never owned a smartphone. I have little interest in technology perhaps because I'm older (74). Life years ago seemed to be much simpler. When I look at all the zombies staring at their phones, I feel sorry for them and I am glad I don't have one.
5
@Sam Marcus
Horrible.
When I see parents pacifying their infants and toddlers with handy phones instead of talking to or cuddling them, I want to weep. If I say anything, I will just look like a stereotyped Silly Old White Woman.
It's bad enough seeing teens and YAs bending their necks to the almighty screen god, but it's egregious that toddlers have those screens foisted on them. They have no choice how their brains will get molded by their environment in ways new to the human race.
2
The global emotional depravity created by technology needs to be memorialized with a bricks and mortar monument to create a timeless homage addressing the pain and suffering of the masses.
2
Predictions:
A) Will flying and using air conditioning become crimes against humanity?
B) Will those of us who sanctimoniously condemn climate change “deniers” continue to consume and prioritize as though climate change is not the existential threat that we all insist it is? Easy to do if you believe we will all be “rescued” by some technology “white knight”.
I hate to be a buzz-kill but try this thought experiment. Look at some old photos of how people lived in the 1920s through the 1950s and it will give you a good idea how people will live in our “net zero” future.
Locally sourced vacations. No air conditioning. Awnings on windows in the summer. Single car households. Backyard gardens. Higher residential density. Smaller houses. More bicycles. Wax paper and deli paper. Kids walking or taking the bus to school. More surface mass transit.
I’m not optimistic.
12
I think that sounds really nice.
5
Perhaps there could be an application that could analyze and rate the value we place on the distractions we regularly subject ourselves with. That kind of information might help folks gain some perspective.
I've manually assessed my device usage and decided to delete many apps. The following two features remain most valued by me: Map and phone. Being socially crippled I don't need much else in the way of features.
Clean air and water, along with good food and secure housing remain my most treasured needs.
9
This author has made me aware of a new logical fallacy: the ought/is argument. She defines several things that should appen and then assumes that they will. What makes her think that entrepeneurs will save the environment after they have ravaged it for so many years? Where is the profit?
5
"I am going to predict that carrying around a device in our hand and staring at it will be a thing of the past by 2030. And like the electrical grid we rely on daily, most tech will become invisible."
I can see that as a possibility, but I doubt it will be positive overall. It would likely be a retrenchment of the negative aspects we experience today. Tech will figure out wearable tech like glasses and Teslas is working on Neuralink which is becoming a viable and streamlined brain implant. If we look like zombies now with out phones, imagine what it will be like with even more direct access to dopamine mechanisms in our brain?
The artist Keiichi Matsuda made a video, HYPER-REALITY, which in six minutes does an excellent job of showing what a hidden social network enabled world would be like.
5
This is supposed to make me feel better about a tech future? We're either fast approaching or are currently passing the "point of no return" with climate change -- where the feedback effects are so great that nothing we do will make our current way of living sustainable -- and you want techies to help fix it. You want entrepreneurs and good ol' capitalism to help fix it. As you say, "there's money to be made"; and as long as there is, our delusional approach to climate change will remain delusional. Maybe there should be an app to help us identify when and how we're being delusional (you might want to be the first to use it), though that's unlikely to do much more than provide more fodder for social media.
2
The most interesting tech is not the kind where people yell at you, or even where the machine gives you content to consume. It's where the tech component interacts with something you do in the real world.
Back to my online guitar lessons...
4
"...I think the world’s first trillionaire will be a green-tech entrepreneur."
And therein lies the problem. We've got the entrepreneurial cart firmly and immovably placed in front of the looming climate disaster cart. Statements like this clearly demonstrate the attitude that anything directed at the survival of the planet is contingent on it showing a healthy ROI.
I also take issue with what may be Ms Swisher's unintentional, but flippant, dismissal of Greta Thunberg's demand ("with all due respect...") that government leaders start doing something. Her generation has a very real demand, and it is both unwise and incredibly disrespectful to wave your hand and declare this demand to be naive and unrealistic, especially if you are then going to hand the job over to the same t-shirt and hoodie wearing new age bro club that has brought us the wonders of Facebook, Tinder, Snapchat, and Twitter... tech wonders who can't write an algorithm to block child pornography or keep mass shooting videos from being posted in real time. But they're going to save the planet.
I understand this is not a column about climate change, but if you're going to offer that topic as the lead item in your tech predictions for the next decade, you might want to at least dig deeper than the first half inch of the subject.
15
Lets hope the next decade also brings an end to worship at the altar of ‘diversity’ which refers to non-white skin tones. Swisher critiques leadership by white men, and asserts that diverse teams do better. Thought exercise: Start with an ethnically homogeneous team of exceptional male Japanese engineers at Lexus. Remove the most talented one and start replacing him with random engineers from anywhere but Japan. When does the team get better. It may never get better because this person’s talent and chemistry with the group outweighs any magic provided by a different skin tone or hair color.
6
@Paul Rosenberg Cars are a pretty mature technology. The team will be chasing improvements within an existing matrix.
But when you're trying to decide what the product is in the first place, a homogenous team may miss entire market segments, and fail to imagine whole categories of users.
Which may be okay for a specific firm. Niche products have their place. But it's limiting when the whole industry is working with the same unconscious biases.
5
Interesting Ms. Swisher thinks the “first trillionaire” will be a green tech entrepreneur, while I think the first trillionaire will be a corrupt, authoritarian oligarch who sits upon a vast sea of fossil fuels. Not only that, he is alive now and I can give you his address.
15
The "underclass" now has cell phones. When will writers like this acknowledge them? That is in most cases ALL they have. Starting in 1980 with Reagan. Thank you GOP--you have ground at least 20% of the United States population into the ground.
Tech was the ultimate death nail. Have fun as you order in the flesh and soul of the world. It sure won't last...
1
'...more intuitively created tech that surrounds us or that incorporates into our bodies (yes, that’s coming)'
If you believe that your tech controls you now, wait until it's part of your body, not just at the tips of your fingers.
I can't improve on the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Brain Damage
'The lunatic is in my head. The lunatic is in my head You raise the blade, you make the change You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane. You lock the door And throw away the key There's someone in my head but it's not me.'
7
A new type cell phone could look like this:
--A 911 button, right in the middle of device, to do what 911 does.
--A camera to capture all those bad cops and cute kids...and cats.
--Worn around the neck or on wrist.
--Costing about $50, max.
I don't have a cell, but this would appeal to me.
1
I lived in the West for many decades. Now I live in the East. I can say with confidence Social Media and Breaking News are causing depression and unrealistic expectations, especially among the young.
Lot of young people appear clueless, follow fake news and fame, are not rooted in reality nor to responsible institution building and managing. They all want to be stars, rich and have perpetual fun. Who among them are going to lead...This is why ordinary people with no talent look extraordinary to them.
We need to put limits on social media. China has done it, though a bit too much. But their kids do appear much more disciplined and socially caring. Indian youth, in comparison, come across as stupid, arrogant, immature, socially irresponsible, and living in a bubble...all due to dumb distracting social media, and lots of extremely silly entertainment or dark news, and fake news.
Democracy requires highest of education, critical thinking and complexity in understanding. Both the US and India are losing in that front, though the US is better than India on such matters.
China, in my estimation, will outclass other countries in technology and social responsibility. It is that social responsibility that the US and India, two amazing democracies, have to learn. Otherwise, we are doomed!
2
Those aren't predictions. That's your little wish list. Good thing the article is free.
7
Ms. Swisher: Controlled studies from some years ago already showed exposure to RF and ELF had effects on the opioid receptors of the brain in animals. There may be a physiological element to cell phone addiction from the RF and ELF emissions in addition to the psychological. Should we look forward to embedding that even further into the body? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238032691_Addiction_to_cell_phones_Are_there_neurophysiological_mechanisms_involved
1
"Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too."
Never went out of my way to read a Trump tweet because I never used and will never use Twitter. Only the media shoves his garbage that comes from this criminal in the headlines everyday of the year.
Let's be honest, all media has made money off Trump because of the freak he is.
21
Please, oh please, let the tweets be gone.
1
It only gets better. That's big picture. Looking forward three trend that will dominate American society for the next ten years. One, demographics. The days of old white guys controlling everything is over. Two, the days of more women in leadership positions is here to stay. Three, we will be more connected than ever. Because of those connections we will make more good descions than bad. It only gets better because that's the authenticity of our American culture. We are better mouse trap builders.
1
Your "hope" #1 is so cruel it is not only mis-communication but also MAL-communication.
It is too late for us to avoid our civilization's suicide by committing climate change.
Responsible communication about it is advice to our children and grandchildren on coping in a shattering civilization, shattered by shortages of food, water, electric power, information, law and order. Coping with bands of white supremacists armed with NRA-blessed assault rifles.
Continued happy talk as if we will survive the climate change we have committed, tra-la, is the cruelest kind of MIS-information one could write and spread.
If you know so little about coming effects of what we have done, be quiet about it.
3
Friedrich Hölderlin: "Where the danger lies, there too grows the saving power."
It's a difficult job to preview the future. Reading palms and searching signs in the bowels of the eagles its a business for magicians and astrologers. 20 years from now seems to me that's a big journey. Anyway, Kara Swisher could be right. Don't forget that the brain is the best iPhone.
If the Tech world, or the USA, would just eliminate Robo calls I’d be pleased. The next goal could be eliminate time wasted by consumers Pushing one for English, Two for Spanish and 5 more buttons, none of which fits their need————
How can somebody pretending to care get it all so wrong? Tech trillionaires are not the answer. And nature knows how to deal with carbon better than any smarty pants with a new app. As for tech championing diversity, have you been to San Francisco lately?
3
What an incoherent dish of pish, ending with the squib that tech will become invisible, presumably referring to personal devices. That's obviously good with no explanation why that may be such a good thing. Isn't is obvious something that is ubiquitous, admittedly addictive, disturbing and invasive with potentially devastating political and economic consequences is better if it's invisible and ubiquitous? I believe this in the investment business this sophomoric drivel is referred to as "talking your book." This is the sort of column that grabs one by the lapels and leads to the conclusion that this column should be dropped for everyone's sake. "I'm calling it now."
8
I am not sure I can survive "a lot better".
1
In reply to @nerdrage:
Nice! Well grounded response to the article. You like your cabin in the woods. Nature doesn't lie. Good for you.
We're still biological beings run by the seasons and the tides. Can't go wrong when we let the sun tell us it is daytime, and the moon show us when it is night.
Even the brightest furnace of ego will make only a dim light when compared to the natural light of the sun.
Nature has taken billions of years to create the majestic show of our universe. Yet we expect to change and surpass Her in less than a cosmic instant. Our arrogance is beyond stupid, isn't it?
Given that Nature doesn't lie, and the body doesn't lie, why not align ourselves with Nature, rather than keep pushing our fires of vanity as the source of all light?
THAT really is beyond stupid.
The human race remains in its infancy. It still needs to make war and make gods of all kinds.
Remember Rumi's lovely opening metaphor in his long poem The Masnavi. He wrote of the reed, sounding her chant of separation, when it was cut from its bullrush and made into a flute.
Ego cuts us off from source. Once that happens we're lost.
So, it's back to basics, back to your cabin. Good for you.
oz.
2
I am drinking a delicious coffee while reading your article, sun is shining on my face, and your thoughts on the nyt are very illuminating! Will this disappear in the future? How will I read a news paper or a mail or a WhatsApp txt?
Please explain!
Happy new year to all readers
2
I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.
2
What a silly future tech-y utopia article. Milquetoast & insincere. Question: how can we take seriously the thoughts of anyone who admits to being addicted to a telephone? But as we all know, this is a time, a generation(s) that considers such behavior as normal.
4
"Men have become the tools of their tools." --Henry David Thoreau
7
Oh, you optimist!
1
Dear Ms. Swisher,
While I don't share your optimism, I really appreciate your superb grasp of English:
"Which is why it is critically important that tech turn its focus ..." (Thank you for not writing "turns".)
""... remains stubbornly low compared with other tech sectors." (Thank you very much for not writing "compared to"!)
Such good English is extremely rare these days, even in the New York Times!
Mary Schaefer, Germany
So by "tech," Swisher apparently means the market.
By "save us," she means business as usual, with the bonus that we don't have to give anything up.
Isn't this the same thinking that got us here in the first place?
4
I am certain that an app will be available to prevent all use of technology, thus saving the planet. Meanwhile, there are 75% more humans alive than is sustainable. So the solution is: 1) global warming will eliminate the excess; 2) thermal nuclear war will also be effective in population reduction; 3) incurable STD/STI will help to reduce population growth. But perhaps I am too optimistic. Colonization of both Mars & Uranus will save the lucky few. Thus we need to fund the US Space Force, now!
1
"Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too."
Not a bonus but an imperative.
The very last sentence: Hallelujah!!!
I lived in the West for many decades. Now I live in the East.
I can say with confidence Social Media and Breaking News are causing depression and unrealistic expectations.
Young people are clueless, follow fake news and fame, are not rooted in reality nor to responsible institution building and managing. They all want to be stars, rich and have perpetual fun. Who among them are going to lead...This is why ordinary people with no talent look extraordinary to them.
We need to put limits on social media and stupid violent video games. China has done it, and their kids are so much more disciplined and socially caring. Indian youth, in comparison, come across as stupid, arrogant, immature, socially irresponsible, rude, crude and living in a bubble...all due to dumb distracting social media, and lots of extremely dark or fake news.
Democracy requires highest of education, critical thinking and complexity in understanding. Both the US and India are losing in that front, though the US is better than India on such a matter.
China, in my estimation, will outclass other countries in technology and social responsibility. It is that social responsibility that the US and India, two amazing democracies, have to learn. Otherwise, we are doomed!
China will outpace us in technology if they can continue to steal the ideas of others. Their homogenized, controlled, learn by rote educational system does not foster innovation. TikTok, Weibo and others, for all their successes are just copies of preexisting companies. And much of their succes depends on restricting others in their home markets.
Quite a bit of wishful thinking here.
3
I so hope the 2021 word of the year will be "Loudmouthery" All in favor...
The '20s are BACK!
1920: Year of Six Presidents by David Pietrusza.
It'll make you feel better about things now.
Weird things going on then, too....and we got thru 'em.
And you know what they say about hindsight!
Happy 2020 everyone!!
The author frames everything in this piece entrepreneurially, but the genealogy of Tech is not congruent with capitalism. The internet was first a visionary invention, and soon after, a military construct.
Both of those genealogies are outside of the capitalist model. Let's take a moment to acknowledge an uncomfortable fact: a lot of our best tech comes from mystics who get in bed with the military. Remember Einstein and Oppenheimer? How about LSD and the CIA? Heck how about Jackson Pollack and the CIA!
The innovations in tech that we need are likely to come from outside the venture capital domain. If we lay aside the need for greed as a driver of innovation, we can see that visionaries untethered to profit will contract the entrepreneurs and CEO's to do the nuts and bolts work of delivering solutions.
As unpopular as the military complex is in our imagination as enlightened consumers, the Green Moon Shot is probably going to be funded, driven and contracted by the military, but the ideas will come from some weirdos who are half-poet, half-scientist.
Remember Archimedes and Leonardo Da Vinci happily invented for ancient military industrial complexes.
104
Good point. Of course the military is probably the only branch of the US government today that has any money and is consistently funded.
And in case you haven’t noticed, for almost 3 decades the military has been the de facto agent of US foreign policy. Any one one of the 11 individual Unified Combatant Commands probably has more resources at its disposal than the entire US State Department. I believe most generals understand this and take these responsibilities reluctantly but seriously.
In my lifetime, at age 64 I have yet to a a “Support our Diplomats” bumper sticker...anywhere. My guess is that the first place to look is in the Pentagon parking lot.
13
Dear Smokepainter, Thank you for your comment. If we order the U.S. military to produce all of its fuels and petrochemical feedstocks from CO2 captured from the air it would jumpstart the biofuel industry and buy time to adapt our infrastructure to get off of fossil fuels. The military loves new missions and already has contingency plans to solve problems of this sort in wartime, and seems to have no difficulty getting appropriations through Congress in spite of political polarization.
I'm nearly convinced that the new frontier is not space, but Antarctica. It's a lot closer but the environmental and engineering problems are similar. We will need lots of energy to convert CO2 into useful products and Antarctica has huge amounts of windpower, but no commercial windmills will operate there because of storm to hurricane force winds and icing of airfoils. Patagonia has even better conditions, but no customers for windpower. Many of the technical problems are already solved in the aerospace industry. We need a mission, which the President could create with the stroke of a pen if so inclined.
All of the climate models tell us we must remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and sooner, not later, as we are running out of carbon budget to adapt our infrastructure. We must capture the CO2 we produce it and bury it. It will be needed at a future date if humans survive to a coming ice age. Google these topics: secure sea floor storage of CO2, CO2 deposition in Antarctica, Allam cycle.
5
So what else could we do with over $1 trillion year if no dept of "defense"*?
Cure cancer, insulate, solarize all homes, no cost quality health care?
* I've seen $1.2 trillion all "defense" spending estimates, VA etc, designed to "defend" us from invasion (by whom? Russia?) while motivating terrorists.
8
But it's not climate change that's going to kill us; it's climate change plus the acidification of oceans, plus overpopulation, plus (and here's the big one) an unsustainable economic model that privileges financial growth over all else--what Richard Heinberg calls "overshoot" (aka: the real problem creating all of the other problems).
This article naively assumes that solving a symptom is akin to curing the disease. The "trillionaire" comment illustrates the disconnect here.
2
" to keep an advanced civilization going."
That statement, or one like it are always the funny bits. I suppose some one way back wrote about the Tech benefits & wonders of the new Street Gas Lamps. Or even farther back someone waxed rhapsodic about the ships that now sailed over the horizon and didn't fall off.
It's pretty laughable that we (& everyone in every age) seem to think WE are at the pinnacle, & an advanced society. Ha Ha. Maybe if we weren't all so arrogant now, we would make better, & smarter progress on the problems of the day.
And yes, Trump's tweets will be gone even sooner than 2030.
2
Your last prediction is counterintuitive. With more wearable tech by 2030, tech will become more mental than vocal and we wil be more physically isolated than ever.
2
I have a better solution:
Turn off the internet.
If we keep integrating more and more ‘tech’ we are only continuing to dig the whole deeper and we will eventually find ourselves in China.
2
I cant get thru a football game on tv without seeing lots of commercials promoting 5G. I'm concerned about 5G tech being radiating on me 24/7. Just because the great democratic country of China has it, it has become now a national security quest by our government. In tests on rabbits this microwave radiation has been shown to mess up their corneas. Too little testing has been done and therefore not optimistic about next decade.
Another grab bag of observations hat moves me to think of ghost sightings before electrification in Ireland. It takes a resolute and disciplined mind to keep the growth rate and size of the human population out of a discussion that touches on automaton and climate deterioration.
1
I think in the next 10-20 years it will be all about personal robots with AI that will answer all our questions, do our personal communications, and keep track of our personal finances...this will make our life wonderfully simple...maybe it will even be sophisticated enough to bring us a beer when we watch the games on our 95" OLED TV...
2
While an emphasis on addiction can be relinquished as a fairly easy conscious choice, what comes next is not as easy as articles like this make it out to be.
Addiction was explicitly studied by the tech companies who need it and honed and perfected. So that part of tech is something that can be gotten rid of, precisely because it was explicit. Doing something like changing the emphasis on speed, virality, and attention grabbing requires several things that are more difficult. First off, it requires major changes to search algorithms -- what do these get replaced with? Second off, it requires that the investment community gets a big overhaul and perhaps a lot of regulation, over and above just what it does with tech -- how do we do that when even our choices at the cinema now reflect that investment community's values of low risk high profit? And third off, when you go to replace the disgusting with the beautiful for content, which is what you are asking for an industry of depolarization, you come up against an age-old art problem:
It is far easier to create something provocative and ugly than to create something world changing and beautiful. Ask anyone in FX. Ask anyone at art school. Ask Michelangelo if he's on Twitter. Beauty and virtue aren't just things to strive for because they make the world better. They're things to strive for because they are the hardest things to do.
3
Thanks, Kara-- great article. The Yeats-y para and the use of 'before truth gets out of bed' especially good.
1
I do not believe this person has a very clear understanding what the internet revolution is about. The emergence of open source software, changed forever the definition of property from solely private interests to public and collective welfare. This is because our sense of a private self has changed because of the computer revolution. Computers were first a theory of mind, beginning well over hundred of years ago, as a computational and representational entity. This is the basis of much of what we understand about mind. The question before the world today, with respect toward a theory of mind is: "How can you have a theory of mind and therefore self, without understanding how we acquire concepts?" We do not yet have a coherent answer to this problem; and therefore unless and until we do, we will not understand how self and mind relate, and our understanding of the world around us, will very limited.
1
I have seen Ms. Swisher in CNBC many times and am impressed by her insights. I wonder what she thinks of the future for Luddites like me. I don't even text.
1
Two questions: on what device did you read this article in order to be able to make a comment ?
Do you have a digital subscription to the NY Times ?
My answers to my questions would be: An iPad and Yes.
@John Taylor
I for one don't own and have never owned a smart phone (still have flip phone from 2009, emergencies only). I read the NYT on a desktop. I have only 5 free articles per month.
The arc of the moral universe might bend toward justice, but capitalism doesn't. "Capital formation is where it all begins," Swisher writes. What she doesn't grasp is that it ends there as well. Capitalism--which requires that innovation generate profit--is the problem. Without that mandate, the economy would be free to "invest" in addressing climate change because it's important, not because it's profitable. Likewise we would always welcome automation of unsatisfying labor because it would free us to pursue meaningful work. The question "Is there a business in depolarization?" makes plain the problem: there shouldn't have to be a business in it. Most Americans probably know depolarization would be good for them. Forcing it to be profitable in order to receive attention is the sad requirement that capitalization makes of us. Capitalism itself is the heart of the problems Swisher is discussing, not the "cap gap," and asking Capitalism's biggest winners (Gates) to save us from it is treating the symptoms, not curing the sickness.
9
I agree that unbridled capitalism is indefensible. However, we must also realize that there’s a reason capitalism has created the vast majority of the technological marvels currently bringing the world together. Why is that?
@Flyover chic Because capitalism requires profitability, and there are only two ways to make a profit and beat out competition: exploit the worker more intensely, or build something that can do the work of a worker faster or cheaper. It's true that capitalism drives tech innovation, and that can be its legacy after it's gone. The gift of capitalism is the technology it has given us to free us from it.
4
I use the internet strategically, but having seen how people are addicted to their phones, texting, Facebook, Twitter and other electronic snares, I avoid all of that.
I don't even have a mobile phone and have never sent or received a text.
I frequently see people in all kinds of social settings and instead of them interacting face to face, they're all staring at their screens. I was hit by a car driver who was texting. It's an epidemic.
Tech is a tool for some, an addiction for many.
It's also a security and privacy risk, and a tracking and surveillance tool.
Beware!
3
Not having a phone is nothing to brag about in this day and age. It pretty much implies you are a man of a certain age.
1
I want to be optimistic, but recently I found out about Elon Musk's putting a string 60 satellites orbiting over our heads at this very moment and his plan to make this string of who-knows-what- potential gadgets into a chain of one thousand such satellites. I don't know about the rest of you but this gives me claustrophobia and feels deeply concerning. I have no doubt the other hope for "green" technology, Bill Gates, has his hands in similarly doubtful plans.
4
There are many techniques in sustainable farming to sequester carbon on a large scale and this should become a major priority. One of the most practical and best ways to sequester carbon is to the application of hard silicate rock dust (one of the most abundant resources on earth)to our soils to regenerate soils and grow nutrient dense food and drought and disease proof forests:
Remineralize the Earth
remineralize.org
1
On New Year’s Day I don’t want to rain/snow on any thoughtful optimism, but one throwaway phrase regarding green tech—that it might produce the first tech trillionaire—pointed up what I see as the current disconnect between socially responsible (civilization-saving) human endeavors and extreme profit (“obscene wealth): to truly succeed, I think the profit motive and all the attendant ills of current corporate charterdom will have to be replaced by something more like maximizing the “public good”. If we’re not already into existential crises, we soon shall, and the survival of our species may well depend on more egalitarian notions of success.
6
It's clear from the comments here that (big) tech has lost the confidence of most people.
The next 'big thing' will be achieved by whoever manages to win back that confidence. That's my only prediction.
5
"And like the electrical grid we rely on daily, most tech will become invisible."
I think this is a real possibility, and great danger. Once we cease to 'see' tech we will cease to question it. Those who control tech have are driven by their profit motive and lust for power at heart, and it would be incredibly naive to believe that would change. Once tech becomes invisible, we have lost what little control we have. To me, this is a terrifying prospect.
6
@Malcolm
Very good point.
1
Kara, I tend to anticipate your columns, but can't say I share your optimism here. In fact, it kinda reads like one of those satirical manifestos from Silicon Valley (the HBO show) where every tech entrepreneur pledges to "make the world a better place" with the unveiling of their latest Uber-but-for-laundry app or some such.
A lot of pretty talk, but the reality is that Silicon Valley (the place, not the HBO show) is as rapacious as Wall Street. Making the most money without disrupting the systems that funnel the vast majority of that money to the top is the name of the game. The rise of the Zuckerbergs of the world attests to it. I don't expect that to change by 2030.
5
Sorry if I don’t share Ms. Swisher’s optimism for a tech solution to our political, social and environmental problems. As Lynn White, Jr. remarked more than 50 years ago, we cannot expect tech to find a solution to problems that tech largely created. To do that, we must reassess the underlying mentalité of humans that has steered us toward these unsustainable positions. Chief among the problems we must address is the hubris that humans are supreme among the organisms on this planet.
4
Technology is a tool. Use it effectively or be used by it.
As Ms. Swisher postulates, depolarization presents a huge opportunity. As some have asserted, the most effective leaders in the next decade will bridge culture gaps, find some common ground, and engage people outside of our info bubbles. There are ways to engage evangelicals on fighting climate change, for example.
Tech outside of Google-Facebook-Twitter assimilation can be used by effective leaders on local and grassroots levels to better communicate, share information and build trust.
I would add one item to this list: Cybersecurity will be paramount, from the NSA to the Smart Grid to your home's network router.
Give up on using our tools for good, and we are doomed.
Haven't you been watching? The first trillionaire is/was Vladimir Putin. Anyway, it's a lot easier to get from a billion to a trillion, so green technology is likely to be made either by visionary billionaires or -- gasp -- by Exxon or other companies who understand, e.g. how algae can replace crude oil 20 years from now.
2
No, there won't be ads without personalization. That was in the Madman era. Ever since it's been a race to provide one-to-one advertising at scale. And we're not going back any more than we're going back to ice boxes and victrolas.
3
Olio and the milkman? Childhood diphtheria and polio and death in childbirth with child after child born and little respite for women?
They used to say that a woman lost a tooth with every child.
Good old days.
Golly.
When a human job disappears to automation, not only does that human and their family lose income. So does government lose income by way of lost payroll taxes. To add insult to injury, government loses twice because it also costs more to provide unemployment and welfare assistance. The solution could be to impose an ‘income’ tax on the work done by automation.
4
More and more I’m leaving my phone at home when I go out to dinner or run errands. Drives my friends crazy that they can’t reach me instantaneously. I love it!
10
@Mike Schmidt you don't need phones at work anyway, all you do is hit home runs for the Philadelphia Phillies
2
As someone actually in tech (Silicon Beach), I believe we will be moving towards wearables - 3 years ago most of you wouldn’t place money on Air Pods. There is good reason for this optimism, as Millennials move towards 40 and into leadership and building families.
Gen Z spent most of their lives in front of a screen, why wouldn’t they want to break out of it as adults?
Pay attention to the likes and investments (time and money) - and less attention to right now or how it’s been.
I love paying for coffee using my watch more than my phone. I also aim to be car free in this decade.
ps if you are still on FB, it’s for boomers, ok?
1
How about adding two extra buttons to the bottom of each Twitter post, INstagram post, etc. etc.
One button says "true".
The other says "false".
Put it to a vote.
2
@JRW : Voting to see what are facts. Awesome.
As with most things in our society, money has taken over the once-very-useful internet and turned it into something it was never meant to be: a consumer trap and inept social hang out.
Our tech devices are tools, but have been cunningly turned into addictive devices by design. To ignore this, is to enable even more addictive programs, apps or platforms, etc. to continue to be both developed and deployed to fill our addictive personalities.
Don't bother to make predictions. Who really cares? What we need to do is make wise decisions as to how we govern, yes, govern, the internet and protect ourselves and our precious data.
The rest is just noise.
4
Here's a prediction. Digital technology will continue its failing to improve the human condition in any meaningful or truly significant way. Without solving for an alternative business models to per click/view revenue or identity verification, we'll continue to see anonymous extremism algorithmically promoted and escalating industry consolidation and monopolies. We've created a powerful propaganda machine.
Those paying attention understand there is no salvation here.
2
I hope Kara is right in her optimism because it is essential to humanize tech and negate its negative impact on society. However, unless the general public and governments regulate big tech we will not be able to change course when it comes to privacy, monopoly, crime, genocide propaganda etc.. Additionally we need to agree to a global standard when it comes AI, Gene editing, surveillance etc or we would see China and its allies working on different standards that will eventually affect all countries
1
I have never known of any technology predictions that came true. Good luck with these.
3
@kwb : I often think of Dick Tracy's watch/communicator...
1
If computers replace radiologists, lorry drivers, warehouse workers, etc. then it’s time to talk about taxing the owners of capital to pay a living wage to displaced persons. Otherwise there will be social disruption in the streets. What will they do if they can’t work? Read Brave New World I imagine.
9
"Will you put down that phone?"
No, they won't.
Phone addiction is a mental disorder, and without a re-ordering of your priorities, it is unlikely to happen.
8
There is one omission societal manipulation. The social media is no longer neutral; Facebook and others are trying to curtail the freedom of speech to anyone that is not a social democrat or is not “politically correct.” I call such happening Societal Cybermanipulation done by social media corporations, and that is not good at all!
Many companies, as they are operating today, must disappear because human freedom is not negotiable. Technology is not to rule our lives; it must be in place to enhance our lives. Technology should serve to increase output, shorten the working time, increase knowledge and freedom.
We must begin to see technology as we saw all the household electric appliances. They served to liberate women from the most tedious domestic chores. It gives them freedom, ease, comfort, and increase happiness. It supports monogamy and unmarried life. That how this new cybertech should be used for the same purposes to increase happiness.
Any use for social manipulation that goes against the First Amendment must erase such narrow-mindedness from the spectrum.
Happy New Year!
1
@Jibaro
The First Amendment only applies to government restrictions on speech, not those of corporations or individual citizens. You're going to need an entirely different argument if you're going to continue to fight this conspiracy you fear.
2
what are you talking about, there are plenty of ridiculous right wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists and imbeciles online spewing right wing hatred. stop pretending to be a victim.
No more predictions of the future? I guess that some people don’t want to be ridiculed for being wrong.
2
Please stop begging tech to always provide the answers to what ails tech. All life’s solutions and problems are not cured with just a simple dose of some kind of technology. Please stop treating it like a messiah that was supposed to fix all our problems. It’s exacerbated the dark side of human nature (no way of putting that genie back in the bottle) and social media has been scientifically proven to be behind the gigantic increase in anxiety and depression, especially among teenage girls. It’s fomented hate across the world because you can spew anything you want and remain anonymous. I would wager that you’ve not been a strong critic of big tech. You have contempt for the hopefulness and idealism of young people "With all due respect to Greta Thunberg and the efforts of young people across the globe to bring attention to climate change, governments may never agree on how to properly address our lurch toward environmental suicide. Which is why it is critically important that tech turn its focus toward creating products that will save us.” Of course. Tech is the problem, but more tech is always the answer. Oh yes, these massive companies that took all your private information and sold it many times over will suddenly pivot towards being a source for good.
9
Please stop begging tech to always provide the answers to what ails tech. All life’s solutions and problems are not cured with just a simple dose of some kind of technology. Please stop treating it like a messiah that was supposed to fix all our problems. It’s exacerbated the dark side of human nature (no way of putting that genie back in the bottle) and social media has been scientifically proven to be behind the gigantic increase in anxiety and depression, especially among teenage girls. It’s fomented hate across the world because you can spew anything you want and remain anonymous. I would wager that you’ve not been a strong critic of big tech. You have contempt for the hopefulness and idealism of young people "With all due respect to Greta Thunberg and the efforts of young people across the globe to bring attention to climate change, governments may never agree on how to properly address our lurch toward environmental suicide. Which is why it is critically important that tech turn its focus toward creating products that will save us.” Of course. Tech is the problem, but more tech is always the answer. Oh yes, these massive companies that took all your private information and sold it many times over will suddenly pivot towards being a source for good.
4
My phone does not scream at me for attention, I simply uninstalled Facebook. End of story.
9
How much energy is being consumed by the servers that support The Cloud, our email accounts, the trash web (I just coined that, define as you like), etc?
5
Ms Swisher is a social media commentator not a technology expert. She symbolizes the failure of the twitter living journalism to grasp where and how tech impacts the world we are living in. Vast majority of successful tech start up gets sold via M&A and without IPO or NYT ever knowing they existed. Vast majority of tech has nothing to do with social media or gig economy. The innovations involved are decidedly unglamorous and deliver on marginal productivity improvements and propel follow up innovations in verticals. Farm management integrated software package or a voice recognition managing cue lines based on a degree of emotional content are the day in day out tech advances in your life you will never read about.
If there is one thing and one thing only to remember about tech, it is that tech has become totally horizontal. Hence everything is tech.What you post on twitter or what ad you see on facebook looking at frenemies wedding pics is trivial.
5
Yes, this is the decade tech will be helpful in ways other than increasing consumerism and stealing attention and also help the environment. Pffff. Optimism these days is foolish. The environment will get worse from population growth, and the only thing tech will do is figure out how to optimize sales to the ever-growing population. Tech-based solutions to problems are naive. Until incentives and ethics change, expect another decade of inequality and destruction. But don’t worry: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, and Jeff Bezos will help us. Absurd. Oh, and our Congress will suddenly become competent. Is this New Year’s Day or April Fools?
5
Tech, tech, tech, all I hear about is what's wrong with tech.
The real question is (or should be) what's wrong with people.
Forty years ago when I took my first COBAL class I was introduced to the concept of GIGO; garbage in, garbage out.
Tech is the pipeline. If the water coming out of the pipe is fetid, look to what's being put in in order to fix what's coming out.
7
The thought of “the world’s first trillionaire” makes me totally depressed.
6
Nothing will get done with the current republican administration. The can't tie their shoe laces without trump's approval. What planet is Ms. Swisher living on? The only good news in the coming year will be along the lines of "THE DEMOCRATS WIN 2020!"
1
Karen Swisher has one “slogan” in her oped which makes sense - Environmental suicide!
Her comment about better math to better understand the rapidly unfolding disaster to blight our entire planet is nonsensical ... we need action.
The last 5 years have seen over $1 Trillion in damage from climate intensified disasters, hurricanes, ever deepening floods cause by mammoth rain dumps, drought induced fire storms pillaging vast areas of the US... 1000 year events every other year... the circumpolar jet stream is broken, causing heat up North and cold down south. Temperatures have risen by 1 C - maybe this is the tipping point.
Time for humans to grow up and lead a FACT-FILLED existence ... we have believed in lies for far too long... This will bring us all down. Time for Twitter and Google to ruthlessly police their sites eliminating all lies and half - truths. Only when we can believe that science - the study of facts is the only hope to save the planet and ensure the prosperity of human society.
2
Didn’t the Bomb creator regretted afterwards? Why he thought so is he lost the grip over usage of technology for any good of humans as the evils have their hands on control switch. That’s where technological developments leads the humanity,evils knock down the good aspects of using them for benefits of all people while turning it into their personal wealth and greed. Though they may be just 1%of global population,they control the livelihoods of Rest of the 99% people! Is there anyone nation free of corrupts & rampant corruption? If anyone can cite it,please do so.
1
Once again, a NYT’s opinion writer never misses a chance to trash Trump in what is supposed to be an article on tech. No more phones? Well, instant mobile communication has become the norm, so what might the alternative look like? The author doesn’t say. Then there is the usual ‘we’re all victims’ malarkey regarding our purported addiction to technology and the need for ‘design ethics’, whatever that is. Like social media, pizza is widely popular as well, so are we victims of pepperoni dependency? Of course not. And jobs have been lost to automation continuously over the past 50 years, so predicting this will also happen in the future is like, no duh.
Beyond some good content about the need for tech in the green movement, really not much ‘here’ here. And as much as most of us may dislike Trump, let’s keep him out of it for a change okay?
1
Trashing Trump at every opportunity is a 1st Amendment right. More importantly, it is essential to our survival as a society based on decency and truth. In the words of the Prophet Mulvaney, “We do that all the time. Get over it.”
1
It should against the law for anyone to be a "trillionaire", green or otherwise.
9
Thanks for such a well-written article!
1
It’s always fun to speculate about the future, and one of the most fun ways is to scream “You are wrong” at anyone who dares write down a prediction.
I’ll refrain from that today though, and merely point out an inconsistency... In a column calling for more inclusiveness on every level, you call the deferential treatment to tech companies a “fanboy” tendency.
Having an early adopter wife and having read plenty of starry eyed female tech journalists, I would call that gender characterization wrong.
Here’s to inclusiveness in the future!
1
"This is the state of the internet as the decade comes to a close".
Wrong.
This is the state of the Idioternet.
The vast mobs of feebleminded flocking to Facebook and Twitter and Tic Toc and LinkedIn and Candy-Crush and everything else an infinite and omnipotent God can devise to amuse the masses without inflicting the pain of cogitation.
I use the internet daily: to seek derivations and definitions of arcane, Ionian Greek words, occurring in the poetry of Sappho, without the hauling down my Liddell and Scott.
To arrange my personal, indoor environment, based on ecological circumstances in my immediate vicinity.
To obtain data on the occurrence of certain uncommon species of flora in Cook County.
To order a case of wine, on sale today only, without the inconvenience of an immediate trip to my wine merchant.
To investigate the latest news, rumors and imbecilities occurring in the Stock Market, which might have an insalubrious effect on my financial welfare.
And, of all things, to read the New York Times.
Who knew?
1
This decade has exhausted me. Relatively speaking, this is a miniscule and meaningless event but seems to point to the illogic of the era: Why on earth is Sharon Stone on a dating app?
5
This felt much less like a prediction than a lecture. The author is stating her opinion on what SHE thinks tech should be focused on for the next decade. What a narcissist.
1
Speaking of Yeats, don't forget "Sailing to Byzantium," another favorite poem of many, but without the pithy quotes. And of course the first line was stolen by a movie title:
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
3
This piece, like so much of Kara Swisher's work, illustrates the difficulty of covering current events and envisoning the future at the same time.
2
@karaswisher I love GREAT WRITING and this was an inspirational piece (sparkling content) but your writing made me smile throughout the entire piece. Your gutt-punch style was mixed with pirouettes on a balance beam. Wow. I am now your biggest fan. From one writer to another, I offer you a low circus-bow of deep respect with arms stretched out, palms up. Bravo Kara Swisher.
1
Sorry I don’t believe any of this. Tech companies make money by hooking us on their junk, then selling our data for profit. As for ethics, business and ethics are an oxymoron, as we’ve learned over the last four decades since the oligarchs Republican stooges elevated business to a religion and profit to their god. Nothing will change; why kill the goose that laid the golden egg?
4
Oh dope. I am sure my phone will be less intrusive when it is incorporated into my very flesh.
3
Happy New Decade! The USA always needs and tries to settle on a National Enemy, and if Climate Change can replace global communizing or 50 Shades of Identity Terrorism that's to anticipate. I'm guessing the worship of Technology will continue to be Manichean.
2
This is the most preposterous bunch of malarkey I've read so far in 2020. Unfortunately, it probably won't hold that record for long.
Yeah, let's all keep worshipping at the altar of tech. That's worked really well so far.
4
There really is only one question: do human beings enjoy hating? In the book 1984 there are organized hate rallies where participants scream at the hated Goldberg. The same thing honestly happens in high school when everyone chooses to laugh at the awkward outcast.
I wonder if the simple truth is hate is something necessary to create a sense of belonging. It is undeniable that social media spews hate like a drug, and most (from whatever political persuasion) consume it like water.
If this is in any way right technology has unleashed something that it cannot itself contain. And what a terrible picture of the human psyche it creates.
1
Twentyfirst century technology being used by a species with a brain function that is over 40,000 years old.
4
I'll hold my breath.
2
Like another reader said, “I don’t know where to start, this article is wrong on so many levels.”
Maybe the author is too enmeshed in tech to see:
a) how absurd some of her ideas are such as the trillion dollar green thingy;
b) the idea that polarization will be reduced by tech is laughable; and
c) how tech can’t even regulate itself to kick Mr Trump off for violation of Terms of Use.
All tech is interested in is money, and if that spells good things to come, I’m Abraham Lincoln.
5
This sentence: "...and digital hate will continue to travel halfway around the world before the truth gets out of bed —"
Just had to give you props for inserting that elegant poetic nugget smack-dab in the middle of an article about TECH. It captured the upside down-ness of our last decade so perfectly that it felt less like words and more like a Cracker Jack prize-- a few unexpected frames of animation spliced from a science fiction short.
Such good writing.
So... Happy New Year. And thank you!
Why do Sharon Stone and Trump’s Twitter represent “the state of the internet as the decade comes to a close.?” With all the billions of us online why are they given this distinction?
It’s not true.
They don’t represent the “the state of the internet.” We do. And it’s good and fun and positive and getting better every day.
Happy new year!
3
For all the talk of addiction to smartphones, there are many people today (I’m one of them) who use their phones as they should be (in my opinion): for just-in-time, context-specific, needed information—and to simply keep in touch (when needed) with friends and family to facilitate real-world interactions. I use my phone all the time, but literally none of my use is social media (gasp!). I use maps to facilitate trips both in my car and backpacking trips in the mountains. I use weather apps to plan my dress for the day and plan real-world outings. I use my phone’s camera to record those trips and outings in photos and video. I use a banking app to manage my finances. I use Google to find movie showtimes, restaurant hours, and to look up things about the world I’m curious about. I get my news from the NYT and other quality sources. I text friends and family to let them know when I’ll be home or plan real-world get-together. (And sure, sometimes just to say hi.) For people like me, smartphones are simply a tool—not a lifestyle. I’m no more (or less) addicted to my phone than to my refrigerator, hot water, or electricity. I feel no need to notify the world on a minute-by-minute basis what I’m doing, nor know (each minute) what everyone else is doing. In short, this is a healthy model for smartphone use (and whatever they evolve into) that is alive and well today. If only young people would see it—and recognize there is life outside “the hive mind.”
4
The writer suggests that tech companies find ways “to creatively and humanely deploy talent across the world” in the face of upscaled workplace automation, but she doesn’t offer even one example. Given the tech industry’s track record for exploiting human capital in the pre-automated workplace (think Foxconn iPhone factories), I am not encouraged.
2
Technology predictions over 21st century?
The interesting thing to me is not so much technology and prediction of such but how in the modern world, obviously in America, all fantasies, hopes, conceptions, salvations are narrowing to point that we articulate only a technological answer to everything.
Recently I've been watching the original Star Trek series, and it's striking how the technology is much advanced over today but the people are essentially the same. Sure the earth has united (Federation), you get your diversity (race, sex, nationality, etc.) on Star Ship, but verbally, philosophically it's a place much more impoverished than our world today; in fact the vast majority of crew just goes about their little jobs while the higher ups only are privy to the New Worlds, New Civilizations the Federation encounters, and for all that, wouldn't you know it, they themselves never really culturally, intellectually, philosophically change.
In fact the vast majority of crew on Starship rarely say anything at all. What do they do, stare at their technology all day? Essentially today in America, and reflected in Star Trek, technology is not only the answer to everything, but if technology is the answer to everything then everything else automatically falls into zone of not the answer. And what is the fate of that which is deemed not the answer? Answer: It must remain silent.
So I personally expect a future equivalent to expendable Crewman scribbling in Star Ship hold.
1
In this incisive, beautifully crafted work we behold the delights of a long-existing technology available in many formats: the written word. Thank you, Kara Swisher, for this vivid reminder of the wonderful uses to which our toys can be put. No "loudmothery," nary a hint of "fanboy tendencies," from your pen.
The biggest technological upheaval is happening in lighting. Not just home and office lighting, but the entertainment industry, especially in theatre (dance, opera, theatre, primarily) where so much lighting was with HMIs, incandescents, halogens, and plastic color filters it is near impossible to properly recreate with LEDs. It is also throwing many designers for a loop as they continue to insist on conventional lighting fixtures. We are operating where the problem and the solution is technology by force.
Joe
2
As long as there is tech, there will be jobs. Until robots can patch themselves, humans will be there to fix the never ending breaks.
3
Nice hopeful piece , and a refreshing start to the new year. The best line is the last one. The word Probably hedges your bets, though. I would have preferred definitely
1
No entrepreneur will save us. We must save ourselves through collective action. The way we take collective action is through our government. Elect people who represent our goals. Now.
8
Is this a tech problem or a people problem? Facebook does not bother me, now that the snooze 30 day button has been added (I use it liberally). There's also a very old idea that I'm trying to take advantage of - one day off each week. Just like meditation and intermittent fasting, maybe we also need a break from tech and all the stress, both good and bad, that it creates.
5
Nothing BIG will get solved until we cure the disease of racism that still inflicts us. While a case can be made that it isn’t as overt as it once was in some quarters, racism’s traditional practices - denying people places to live (red lining, etc.), educational opportunities (starving Public schools, especially for those who need them most and refusing to pay teachers adequately, etc.), targeting minorities with everything from minor traffic infractions to stop and frisk searches, etc.) and a host of other indignities that stifle the concept of equality and basic human decency - is very much alive.
When we have a sizable amount of people willing to vote against their own self interests because something might also benefit those who don’t look like them, or another group who insists that we all live our lives in accordance with their religious beliefs, how do we tackle issues involving climate change, water shortages, population growth, waste removal, etc., and hope to succeed?Tech might provide some help, but if humanity isn’t ion board we’re just kidding ourselves.
1
Not as much about tech or any other innovation before or on it's way as it is about untethered capitalism swallowing us whole.
The "free" market is an increasingly ominous prison until we're ready to admit it has to have checks. Until then, we continue miss the forest for the trees, as Grammy would have said.
6
A fascinating article for sure and very much on point. The only part I take issue with is the "gender/race/age gap". Of course this exists. In the case of discrimination against women and the elderly, they have been passed down for millenia. Is it right? No. Race is more recent issue (as far as we know). My point is, these are things which have taken very long to be seared into our conciousness and (subsequently) society. As such, I do not expect changes to occur "overnight". They will take decades to "make things equal"; frather "fair" seems more appropriate.
2
Until more profits can be made protecting our data, than by selling our data, privacy will be a concept of the past.
Of course, we should do whatever we can to protect our privacy, but I'm afraid it's an exercise in futility.
2
Kara Swisher's optimism appears to be based on the idea that an appeal to the kinder aspects of human nature among our oligarchs (billionaires) will somehow outweigh their drive for short-term profits. I'll venture to say this is unlikely -- highly unlikely.
What might offer a small ray of hope is what the late political theorist Sheldon Wolin called "fugitive democracy," which occurs when the phony democracies that we all live under most of the time finally reaches such a stupendous height of corruption, decay and contradiction (as in the past 40 or so years) that the people use whatever means at their disposal to impose a brief but powerful moment of real democracy, thus shifting the Overton window, for good or ill.
We see the tentative signs of this across Europe, for instance, where traditional center-left political parties have routinely failed to serve the people voting for them, leaving a vacuum now being filled by far right and far left parties that offer something radically different. In the UK there's Brexit, and here we have Trump.
This incendiary voter attitude may still have a while to run, and now I'll argue that it's not up to the techies to provide solutions but rather intellectuals on the left to think really hard about how to offer true, fundamental change.
8
"The most important challenge is finding a way to keep carbon in the ground."
Most people think this is the problem. That was the problem a decade ago; now the problem is much worse. Now we have to put carbon BACK INTO the ground. Scientist tell us we've reached a point where if we have zero carbon emissions, global warming would still continue.
What we've done is taken the day off (actually, going on 12 years - Bush+Trump) from addressing the problem. Now we have a runaway greenhouse atmosphere. And, we are now on the brink of making it 16 years of.
And, it's actually worse than that - if Trump is re-elected, he will continue policies, and start new ones, that will make the problem worse. For example, he is currently battling California to make them make their auto mileage standards lower!
6
Kara, you seem to be missing the point of the climate crisis. You wrote:" Which is why it is critically important that tech turn its focus toward creating products that will save us.". Save us big tech, save up. Give us more products. More stuff is not going to save the world. Climate change is not an investment opportunity. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Not as sexy as a voice controlled thermostat that can also tell me what Lincoln's birthday is, but it will get the job done.
7
Kara
As I’ve made a living at the epicenter of mobile tech and services since it began and am old enough to remember life long before it, much of my view on the pervasive dominance of tech in our daily lives is negative.
But I am consistently hopeful of its potential and the right for us to demand something better. However, we must also recognize our role in contributing to the current state.
On that note, I’ve been surprised by the absence you've given to tech's underlying business models. It’s a story of a grand race to the bottom. People expect virtually all the information they consume to be free. For years they also expected their phones to be free.
Many will spend $4 per day for a drink at Starbucks but won’t pay a $1 for an app. The same thinking likely applies to many NYT readers. The fact is engineers, strategists, worker bees, journalists and entrepreneurs all work incredibly hard and need to be paid. Worthy of note I pay approximately $500 per year for my subscription to the NY Times ……..because its future matters and I don’t want to see a world without it.
I’m not without fault. I’ve created countless financial models that have been supported by questionable practices. But I’ve long hoped to see a shift that would allow for a different approach. The story reminds me of the old axiom “we’ve met the enemy and he is us”. There’s reason to have hope but everyone needs to see how they must play a role if they truly want a better digital world.
4
@Alex Hyman good points, but if I may, that ‘old axiom’ only goes bach to the early 1960s... and its origin is known. Here’s dictionary.com
NOTES FOR WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY, AND THEY ARE US
This is a twist on Oliver Hazard Perry's words after a naval battle: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The updated version was first used in the comic strip “Pogo,” by Walt Kelly, in the 1960s and referred to the turmoil caused by the Vietnam War.
1
There is no statement here about the real "value" added by permanent online presence to our lives. Why is that...because it is obvious? I would argue that it is not. There is no added value for individuals to maintain a social media presence at all. The vertical movement in the society is constantly decreasing and was not turned around by ubiquitous access to information on the internet. In fact - the gap between rich and poor hasn;t been as prominent since early days of the industrial revolution and maybe we should learn from that history: The rise of unions and changes of the tax system initiated decades of growth and improved the standard of living for average Americans. There is no reason to believe that going after the big tech companies couldn't have the same effect. They have to be "forced" to share a bigger part of their wealth - either through taxes or sytematic organization of the users to force changes. As example: why aren't users are getting a share of income created by using their personal information and data? Time to found the "UUSM" = United Users of Social Media.
5
None of this comforts me when I walk into my local grocery store and confront the new police state in which a robot roams the aisles.
He's "looking for spills." Well, maybe. He's keeping an eye on shoplifters--and yes, I do get why that is important.
But he's also recording everything we do, and if you think this technology isn't going to be used against us all in time to come, you're not paying attention.
3
It already is. Simply take on look at what China is doing with facial recognition tech.
2
From another perspective, not necessarily negative, much of this column appears to be reflection on how we can find technological fixes to problems created by technology—problems requiring moral action as much as technological action. It brings ethical considerations into play at least—the positive part.
From still another perspective, also quite positive, I think, it also admits that innovation in a commercial environment is likely to be a positive force, in the face of those who think non-profit institutions, including government, are a wholesale solution to the vagaries of existence. Which, somehow, has become some kind of default liberal position, contrary to the history of liberalism.
Curmudgeonly overtones here in my reactions, I realize, but it is nevertheless a new year and realism is always desirable, at least in the real world.
1
Tech that stops screaming at us won’t happen without the end of capitalism. Marketing isn’t going to go away quietly - just look at my radio, TV, telemarketing, and email for examples.
4
No doubt robots will continue to improve their capabilities. But there is no such thing as artificial intelligence; it's marketing, period. And if you're at least 50 years old you'll remember that in the late 1980s everybody was talking about AI (then it disappeared without explanation). It was fake then and it's fake now. Software can do things that makes it look like it's thinking. It's not. It can only do what an intelligent being has programmed it to do, providing that the necessary components such as data are available. IBM has plastered YouTube with artificial intelligence ads. This from a company who in the past 20 years has distanced itself from hardware and software in favor of professional services, provided by, hopefully, intelligent beings.
1
@Aurora
"Software can do things that makes it look like it's thinking. It's not."
I've been trying to tell people this for ages … for instance, the coffee machine at work that shows you the "progress" while "your beverage is being prepared." It's not literally charting the actual process of preparing your drink. It's just showing you a little video so you're reassured your drink is being prepared; you feel less anxious if you can watch the little line crawl from left to right. People look at me like I'm crazy when I try to explain this isn't "real"!
On the other hand, what exactly makes it "real" thinking versus "not real" thinking? In another sense, if the software in the coffee machine is responding to a real human need - the need to be reassured that the product we ordered is on the way, and that a comforting hot beverage will be in our hands in a few more moments - maybe that is just as real?
And, just because the software isn't "really" thinking now doesn't mean it's not going to start - or that we (as humans) are going to stay in control of defining what is "real" thinking. There's no reason the technology can't evolve outside of our control; in fact, to think it won't is naïve.
4
@DW agreed. Artificial intelligence isn’t fake. It just depends on how you define it. If software is programmed to do one thing when one specific condition is met, that is artificial intelligence. It gets more an more complicated from there by increasing the number of possible conditions and possible responses but fundamentally, the formula is the same: if x, then y. The “breakthrough” more recently is programming in a way that allows the software itself to learn, adapt and create on its own so that the programmer doesn’t need to input the total range of possible conditions and possible responses. That’s not to say there aren’t or won’t be “lanes”; the range of possible responses will be limited by the programmer’s own values (don’t kill ever, e.g.), the quality of the programming, and the hardware (can’t fly, e.g.). Artificial intelligence is not that different than “natural” intelligence. Just as a coffee maker is no more intelligent than it should be (products, like the juicero, are naturally selected just like flora and fauna), a mosquito is likewise no more intelligent than it should be.
2
@JB - Using your definition, every single piece of software ever developed is artificial intelligence. And software is not learning. It's gathering data and running code that was predetermined as part of a condition. But none of this is important if we can't agree on a definition for intelligence. Humans make tools, very complex tools. Like, um, software, for instance. Machines can't do that unless we program them to do that, which means it's still just a computer running code. My laptop and smart phone are amazing, but they do not possess AI. There's no such thing.
Thinking that tech will save humanity is a rather naive assumption. The tech industry has thus far shown itself to be utterly unconcerned with negative social, environmental and human consequences. The best thing that could happen in 2020, would be for governments to take away the hall pass from tech companies and start regulating them heavily.
10
There used to be, as recently as the 1990s, a commonality in values that most of us raising children shared. Kids knew there'd be a curfew; kids knew that teachers and adults were to be respected; kids knew basic right from wrong; drugs and underage drinking was wrong and would be punished; cell phones were things that maybe you gave your kid to use (yours, not theirs) when they were out late at night. Children most certainly did NOT have them in school.
Were children angels and parents perfect? Most certainly not, but we knew what our kids were doing, who their friends were, what they were learning in school and we supported our schools. Today, not so much. I see kids ignored by the adults in their lives, busy on their own tech devices and kids (as young as 5/6) immersed in them as well. We've all just stopped talking to one another so we no longer know how to interact with people. Even the rise of workers working from home as opposed to offices have contributed to this trend.
This article way too optimistic for me. I actually think technology is going to bring down humankind; we're racing toward that end now.
4
Predictions exist to sell newspapers and fill up space around the holidays. They are soon forgotten. Tech is now more than tools, it is the infrastructure of capitalism. Corporations want workers who are tethered to their phones, it is now part of the culture, and quite necessary to keep your job. AI, automation, is already here it just takes time and money to implement them. Green initiatives are attempts that either goes broke or fall short as big oil prevails. The world is running toward a climate disaster at full speed and no amount of warnings makes any difference. Once the global climate is destabilizing to the point where crops fail, and food shortages become the new normal, tech might play a new role. A more likely scenario will be AI waging war to obtain scarce resources on a dying planet.
5
Oh yea, and the fossil fuel companies will lead the charge on climate change, the car industry will set a high efficiency standard on its own without government regulation, the food industry will make sure our food is safe and is packaged with material that readily decomposes, god's invisible hand will lift the vaunted free enterprise system to such heights that poverty will be eliminated and growth will be both endless and sustainable. "Optimism bias" is what kills socio-biological equilibrium in that it fails to discern looming, overarching, enveloping, closing mortal threats that would be obvious to a visiting extraterrestrial.
17
Interesting observations, but as comments here suggest, about as good, or misguided, as any attempt at divining an unknowable future, albeit very good at outlining our present day’s worries.
But why must everything be tech-centered? Why must every problem we have depend on tech and ‘tech ingenuity’ or ‘innovation’ to find a ‘solution’? Human ingenuity, living, breathing biological intelligence for tens of thousands of years has brought us as many - almost certainly far more - great, positive advances than digital high tech could ever claim. Why abandon it now? Genuine AI doesn’t exist despite claims by google et al. . ..to hide the fact, they use semantics and talk of different kinds of AI....yet no computer on earth can yet come close to achieving what the brains of six-month-olds can achieve. The tech world is delusional.
So are the economic and environmental movements. Carbon taxes, cap and trade, and various other schemes they promote to reduce our carbon footprints and otherwise stop destroying the only habitat we have are ineffective. And the entire globe, based on efforts by the well-meaning but hopelessly naive UN, twists itself into ludicrous knots in pursuit of solutions that’ll never work.
We face mass species extinction - tech makes overfishing in our oceans easier as we chase ever harder to find food stocks. Adoption of EVs is slow. Where’s the simple, easy to enforce, law that says, no more gasoline vehicles shall be made or sold? The tech isn’t what’s lacking.
7
Where is the individual's agency here? We act as though we are not the stars of our own show but as one in a cast of thousands appearing in someone else's big production; awaiting our cue to accept the inevitability that tech will be incorporated "into our bodies"; accepting the author's prediction that "yes, it's coming"... When will we stop believing that saying something enough times will make it so?
8
Of course we can develop powerful transformational Tech. It’s merely that no one has figured out how to make money doing it yet. And a few people are able and or willing to devote substantial time and energy to such a project in the absence of profit. But it will happen. Inevitably. And much for the good.
Opiates were not "designed" to hook you. They serve a valid purpose in pain relief. In many instances, opiates are the only painkiller that offer effective relief. The problem does not lie with opiates themselves, but with people who chose to abuse. You don't chose to get addicted but the choice to abuse (which leads to addiction) lies soley with the abuser. People with chronic or acute pain should not have to suffer for the bad choices of the few. Remember that there is no opiod crisis...there is an illicit Fentanyl crisis.
3
We’ve known that opium derivatives are addictive for millennia.
2
One word. Acupuncture.
1
Thank you so much for this article.
I've developed an extreme love/hate relationship with technology over the past decade for just the reasons that you outline here. It feels like an addiction, and the social media landscape often feels designed to maximize the most sensational (read: stressful) interactions rather than the most fulfilling.
I'm going to commit myself to help solve the problems created by new technologies in the coming decade. Thanks again for showing me that I'm not the only one thinking these things.
2
I hope you are right. It's nice to read something hopeful for a change. Apocalypse and hate are getting really old.
5
The cynic in me tells me that like forever, tech will be used for evil and hate before doing any good. For example China is perfecting facial recognition to control minorities and further their totalitarian state. I don't believe in one thing positive you have posted because I live in the real world, not some fantasy realm most humans live in.
4
Look at companies like sift and tell me that capitalism is different.
I don't understand how tech that "incorporates into our bodies" is a solution to "human downgrading". It reminds me of a scene in the 1967 film, "The President's Analyst", in which a cyborg describes the phone company's plan in implant chips in our brains to meke.dialing easier. This was seen as an absurd and dangerous idea then and I hope most people see it the same way now.
4
That was not the uplifting read I had hoped for. It feels like you are trying hard to be optimistic.
3
Quote: "And like the electrical grid we rely on daily, most tech will become invisible."
Yep. And as my husband can tell you he's sick of hearing me say, as I have been for years, four little words will change everything:
Chip in the brain.
Think it's nuts? So do I. But people will be lined up around the block to get it.
7
Tech offers an opportunity to rethink employment? By whom? Those who own the Capital?
Tech makes slavery more efficient while making it easier to eliminate dissent and the free thought necessary for innovation while reinforcing sexism, racism, etc.
When do workers get to rethink what employment means? Is democracy for capital only?
9
The internet could help the world be a better place by simultaneously doing two things; guaranteeing the privacy of people’s data and eliminating anonymity. Secure identification and authentication through technology like blockchain and quantum encryption would radically change the security of the internet. Imagine if all the trolls and evil govt agents couldn’t hide and were forced out into the public square to spew their hate and fake news with their real identity. Everyone has the freedom of speech, but it would advance society if you had to personally own it.
3
I have nothing against Greta, but stop saying or praying her that climate change investments are due to her as that’s not true whatsoever, she’s just a kid that’s quite angry at people that aren’t sharing hers opinion. I, however, do believe in climate change, but I’ll never agree to crying instead of doing. Just talking, writing or recording won’t save the planet. David Attenborough is one of the pillars that indeed done something in that regard.
Happy new year!
2
@Calin I find Greta to be an interesting assertion of the power of emotion over reason. Sort of the left-wing punch-back to Trump on his level. I too believe in climate change. I do not believe in Gretas.
Sure thing. And the Atlantic Ocean is filled with pink lemonade.
7
Predictions of the future are less about what will come as they are about the hopes and fears of today.
4
In the 1990s, when the internet exploded and optimism about technology covered the earth, there was no thought about one inherent aspect of having so much information available to everyone all of the time. The internet is a drug. It can be seen not as something you use but which uses you. A larger problem, on examination, has emerged.
Because people can get many volumes of true, false and spurious information, the internet gives people a feeling of power over information. The problem is that we are not trained to shift through the falsehoods to the truth. Studies have shown that people trust information from afar much more than that which comes from a close source. Furthermore, the internet allows people to put up fake, cheap sites that look real and seem authoritative.
These weaknesses were exploited to the hilt by the Russians in 2016. A vast portion of our population has eaten a rotted meal of untruth thinking it was fine dinning. And, having eaten that meal and feeling, now, that they are as good in sorting information as a Ph.D. or a well trained, veteran journalist, they think they KNOW exactly what the truth is and isn't, so long, that is, as the "truth" aligns with what they wanted to believe anyway.
We have gone into battle without armor, naked to propagandists, liars and schemers. It will take decades for more of us to get armed and to be prepared to reject the junk food being served up. Meanwhile, as a society and as a democracy, we are in big trouble.
12
Sounds like a lot of magical thinking Ms. Swisher. Trillionaires getting rich solving problems created by billionaires getting rich. What am I missing?
6
Obviously the writer is not a keen observer of the human being or even an amateur historian of humankind. The trends have been moving downwards and the Internet as we know it now looks nothing/behaves nothing like it did in the early 90s (as it was intended) when it came to our personal homes. Just ask Ed Snowden about that.
The online addiction trend continues to point downward regarding misinformation, propaganda, civility, hate, racism, and misogyny. We have stepped backwards to the 1920s, which is a juicy ironic situation, considering the Internet has plunged society back to those golden days of robber barons and racist WASPs.
Personally, I have been off all social media for a few years and the trade off for my piece of mind, quiet contemplation in the mornings, and quest for accurate information is this: all touch with friends and most family will be lost. All sharing of pictures or videos of possibly important events will stop.
If you are willing to lose that, then I recommend basically going back to emails. I use my phone for texting w/my immediate family, maps, and news from either the Times or AP/Reuters wires.
The INternet doesn't "scream" at me, but sadly neither does anyone else close to me, now that I've been off social networks. That's the price. If you are willing to pay it for peace of mind and a return to your inner human being, it's worth it. If not (and I assume 99% of people reading this comment will not), the plunge will continue.
4
I don’t share author’s optimism that we will disengage from tech when allowing our biological beings to be merged with technology. This will be the demise of what makes us humans. We’ll be more prone to be hackable and we’ll be even more brutal with whoever wasn’t “upgraded”. Swisher thinks that there won’t be a visible grid carrying internet and that most of it will be invisible.... sure! But the grid will have direct access to your brain (after becoming cyborgs)
2
Tech?
What does that mean?
Better ways of spying on each and every one of us?
Or better medical diagnostic equipment?
Giant corporations that need to be hit with massive anti-trust action, the need to legislate privacy and educate Internet users about infotheft?
Or equipment in new vehicles that radically increases safety by taking over for slow-reacting drivers?
Giant leaps in the ability to target propaganda?
Or make medical records instantly available to first responders?
The term is meaningless - opposition to “tech” is like oppression to “food”.
Improper handling of new technology is like improper handling of chopped meat or tuna salad - both can be deadly.
Proper application of new devices is like proper application of basic medical care - both save lives.
Let’s focus on defining individual problems and solving them - not declaring support for the mythical King Ludd.
4
"more intuitively created tech that surrounds us or that incorporates into our bodies (yes, that’s coming),"
That's supposed to be good news? You've really lost your way, Ms. Swisher. At least now we have the worst-case workaround of leaving our phones at home. In some circumstances at least.
1
Whats new is just a recycling of the old. Phones? Apps? What a joke... especially phones.
2
Ms. Swisher I suggest you read the Brooklyn Eagle's special section circa Jan. 1, 1900 on predictions.
The overwhelming number of them did not come true and the few that did were pretty much already under way.
My favorite was that the brown race would be eliminated from the earth and the white race would take over.
4
Oy.
Most of this is dancing around the edges of the current potential for tech.
Also, please separate your new predictions from those others predicted a while ago.
2
Environmental progress requires a redistribution of wealth and an elimination of the whole concept of being a billionaire--much less a nrillionaire. I shudder at the very notion of a nrillionaire. That individual--like the vast majority of present-day billionaires--would have to be some version of psychotic to not give away all but, say, twenty million dollars one would need to live in luxury for multiple lifetimes.
Seriously Kara--a nrillionaire?!
3
Billionaires become trillionaires and the nations debt keeps going higher than the present 25 trillion? Are those trillionaires going to pay down our national debt?? Before they get another tax break??
3
You left out possible advances in the one area I thought technology, the Internet, would have helped the most; newspapers.
Freed of the need to buy those giant rolls of paper, pay all those teenage paperboys/persons, downsize massive newsrooms and allow work-from-home reporters....I thought online papers would flourish- new, better, more, local news would develop. And with lower costs, prices would drop. What went wrong?
You mention a new business, advertising model, using less personal data. But how about expanding that ‘you only have 5 free articles left’ model of free newspaper access (Bloomberg for example), to ‘pay a reduced price for...5-10 articles a month. I may like to scan different papers every now and then, but the high prices required for full time reading- not worth it (NYTimes, one local paper, excepted).
And the disgusting ads....a whole different rant.
Where did tech fail the newspapers. And how can it revive them?
2
I really appreciate a little of naiveness and hopeless optimism during a holiday. We’ll go back to crude reality and disappointment with tech next Monday. I can wait till then.
2
How long before Huxley's Brave New World is in place?
We are seeing an endless march towards his 'scientific dictatorship' (backed up with Orwell's totalitarian boot).
Human reproduction may be impossible outside labs in the future. Sperm counts are dropping and female infertility is rising. Sex is being divorced from reproduction and promoted as a 'diversion' for the masses. We may not have government handing out SOMA but a good number of people are drugged out of a regular basis to escape harsh realities.
We are bombarded with controlled messages - psychologically conditioned to love and embrace our servitude. It has been determined that electronic frequencies can induce various emotions and actual 'voices' can be transmitted into people's heads. Meanwhile Orwell's future remains as a back-up. Look at China's control of its populace with social credit scores, surveillance and facial recognition and re-education camps. An on-line 'memory hole' is far easier to run than a paper based archive.
Privacy is dead. Populations will be easily controlled - psychologically or by force. Non lethal weapons can easily be deployed to prevent demonstrations against government. Dissent is not tolerated. Look at how 'Occupy' was treated.
EVERYBODY's life is tracked and stored. If you believe it is all to 'protect us' you are naive.
2
You're calling this list a series of predictions? I think Far-Out, Fantasy Wish List is more accurate.
2
@MB Ithaca regarding your reply to @The Owl
It’s true that this is an opinion piece, but I disagree that Swisher (or any opinion writer) gets a free pass regarding her personal biases. The NYT is supposed to be a paper of journalistic integrity, which includes an ethical responsibility by its editorial staff to uphold certain standards, including those in opinion pieces.
Furthermore, one of the reasons our national discourse and civility has deteriorated so rapidly is precisely because news has become entertainment, extreme and divisive and tribal entertainment. Everyone is a writer with an opinion now, expressing their personal biases with little to no credentials other than anger, wit or snarky craft. Writers who express their opinions — but who are not experts of note — should not shape discussions in the NYT. On Twitter, maybe, but not here.
1
I have long respected the way Kara has shrewdly self designated herself to be a tech power player.
However, the talk of minting trillionaires mixed into a hopeful cocktail of projecting a future of tech goodwill seems off-brand naive.
Leave the misguided "sociology in my own image" to the likes of David Brooks, or risk your platform being disrupted by a more savvy disruptor. File under: OK, boomer.
I want to believe your soft serve (or, let's say, scaleable scolding) premonitions, however it's really time for you to double down. We're going to need you to dig deep and try a little harder, it's too soon for victory laps.
2
As I've Observed for some time now, and as the majority of comments reflect (even some of the NYT Picks), we have become a nation of Victims, and all of Corporate America - not just Tech - is expertly leveraging the financial opportunities accordingly...
2
Can we all have some of what you are smoking?
It must be marvelous, righteous stuff to help you come up with such delusions. Either that, or you are one of the most optimistic and credulous people on the planet.
If anything, tech will become more embedded in people’s lives and far more insidious in the ways it works. The intrusion is likely be increasingly subtle. Key players like Google, Facebook and more are driven by ad revenue and their ability to connect sellers of anything to potential buyers of everything. This is not going to change.
2
As long as tech companies focus on $$$ without societal impacts, man-boys in charge, and an arrogant disregard for privacy and security concerns, nothing will change.
3
Nonsense.
Your naivete and attachment to the amoral nature of science and technology plus the immoral nature of capitalism, militarism and racism that Dr. King excoriated and exposed is on full cheer leading display.
The New York Times needs a far more critical informed look at high tech digital technology than you have offered.
I believe in trust and respect the intellectual giant Mary Shelley.
Her iconic ' Frankenstein' was a timeless warning about the dangers inherent our science and technology running well ahead of our educational, legal, moral, political and socioeconomic ability to weigh individual and society costs and benefits.
4
Use the internet - don't let it use you. It is that simple.
3
The technology of today is probably being built in our garages across America. From the inventors of years before us White brothers the first airplane at kitty hawk. From Thomas Edison the light bulb. Bell and his telephone and countless more inventors of the pass. But what happened to the inventors today where are they there here, do you remember. Apple computers Steve Jobs,Steve Wozniak from a garage. The next great invention will possibly come from a garage propulsion system light drive just sign fiction for now
Inventors have to have a passion to build things to improve the human race.
The next decade will bring about new gadgets from a garage to our living room.
Let’s not forget about USA multinationals continue to push for control of valuable natural resources. Unfortunately for those countries like Bolivia with the largest deposits of lithium are the biggest losers. We need lithium to power e-devices. The recent bloody ousting of Evo Morales from Bolivia... has the finger prints of the United States of America, and the power of multinationals to control natural resources in the name of “the future”
2
Love Ms. Swisher's close: "...There will be an internet in the future that stops screaming at us. Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too."
In the meantime, let's turn down the volume that screams and drop the Tweets that infuriate. Tell HAL that YOU are in charge.
Oh! Lest we forget: It's highly likely that Ms. Swisher will probably be gone too. Amen.
1
Sadly, I think Ms Swisher is wrong, at least until we have a Congress that values people more than corporations. If anyone thinks zuckie is going to stop facilitating Russian hacking, hiding child pornographers, or selling our most intimate secrets to build his new cash vault they are truly pollyannas.
2
I am fascinated by the point of eliminating anonymity. I would assume it will enhance accountability, and possibly eliminate the terrible noise of social media. But it will also reduce the diversity of opinions, which I would think some still value.
3
A goal of "strictly enforcing behavior standards and eliminating anonymity" sounds great, but may have become impossible to achieve a half-century ago when computers lost their unique identities.
1
The myth that the next generation of labor-saving devices will benefit humanity, as spun from Adam Smith's metaphor of the "invisible hand," does not hold up to historical scrutiny.
The principal motivation of labor-saving devices has always been to lower the cost of labor. This means replacing human beings with machines. By definition, labor-saving devices will never create more jobs than they destroy because the motivation is the opposite.
In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when Mercantilist values were in play, the Industrial Revolution did create a lot of low paying jobs in countries like England, the United States, and Japan, but for every job they created, they destroyed ten times as many other jobs in places like the Middle East, India, Africa, Latin America, and China, as artisans of the world were put out of work.
When the workers in industrialized countries organized to bargain for a share of the benefits of labor saving devices and created a new "middle class", the corporate leaders responded by moving these same jobs to the places that had been most damaged by the Industrial Revolution in the previous century.
Now the jobs in transportation and retail are being threatened by machines. The purpose of this new technology will once again be to fire workers and enrich the investors...creating a Neo-Feudalistic society.
The market will never share the benefits of labor saving devices unless the workers make them.
9
Thank you. We should be celebrating technology that could free humans of drudgery. We can't because capitalists are using it to eliminate jobs. And anyone, including Ms Swisher, who blithely talks about how automation creates new, different jobs, and imagines that's enough to keep everyone housed and fed, is wearing blinders. There simply aren't going to be enough jobs to go around. There won't be enough consumers left who can buy anything. We need a universal basic income.
2
On the other hand, in some neighborhoods they have already started cutting down trees because they block the signals from the new 5G wave frequencies.
4
“In some neighborhoods” where, exactly? That’s a pretty broad claim to make without proof.
1
I believe it will be 'SO passe' to stare at your phone out while walking and yes, even while riding the subway, and that it would be an obvious faux pax (and perhaps even antisocial) to answer or look at one's phone in a social situation unless is is evident to the social circle that the call or screen time warrants it.
I have been already there on these two points for a couple of years now.
1
I appreciate your optimism. I even worked ( now retired) in tech ( with a practical "green" goal). But, I think none of your predictions will come to fruition.
The "markets" will decide everything. The internet blew up because of people. Don't blame the "tools."
I don't own a smartphone. "Phones" are for calls. E-mail is useful only to the degree that it speeds up the process of writing a letter to one another,..... or "the editor." These are personal decisions.
I am not part of the mainstream. The money that is made relies on the larger market. It decides.
One day, after the catastrophic effects of today's world of tech hurts millions more people, we will wake up and learn that life is a contact sport.
It will be refreshing to go back in time in order to move forward.
3
My prediction is more bleak. We will not be able to escape the current death spiral we are in. Our nearly eight billion and still growing population is absolutely dependent on environmentally destructive technology and industry to survive. We will not be able to transition away from our dependence on this technology and industry quickly enough to avert the coming environmental catastrophe. The transition is simply too disruptive for us to accept willingly. But when the environment fails, the disruption we can't make ourselves choose willingly will be imposed on us without choice. Wars, pestilence, and famine will dominate the coming decades as our technological-industrial economy collapses into chaos.
The agricultural and industrial experiment of the past 10,000 years may very well be coming to an end. If we survive the impending catastrophe (by no means certain), our future may well be our prehistoric past: we will live once again just as we lived for tens of thousands of years before agricultural and industrial civilization—as small bands of hunter-gatherers.
The future of technology is flint.
10
@617to416
Joseph Tainter couldn't have said it better.
Corporations will continue to enforce addiction, this is there life blood, worse than can be imagined. They will control neurotransmitters in our brains. The human downgrading which is already well established will get exponentially worse with artificial intelligence. Humans will be reduced to cost centers with little useful value. Humans will be searching for things to keep their minds busy. Drugs and crime will be more prevalent. Privacy is already gone. Sorry to sound so fatalistic, but this is exactly where we are at. No one seems willing to change course in any meaningful way.
3
My prediction is more bleak. We will not be able to escape the current death spiral we are in. Our nearly eight billion and still growing population is absolutely dependent on environmentally destructive technology and industry to survive. We will not be able to transition away from our dependence on this technology and industry quickly enough to avert the coming environmental catastrophe. The transition is simply too disruptive for us to accept it willingly. But when the environment fails, the disruption we make ourselves choose willingly will be imposed on us without choice. Wars, pestilence, and famine will dominate the coming decades as our technological-industrial economy collapses into chaos.
The agricultural and industrial experiment of the past 10,000 years may very well be coming to an end. If we survive the impending catastrophe (by no means certain), our future may well be our prehistoric past: we will live once again just as we lived for tens of thousands of years before agricultural and industrial civilization—as small bands of hunter-gatherers.
The future of technology is flint.
3
And to add to that the incredible industrialization of food production with overuse of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer along with waste from meat production is going to destroy the worlds ecosystem.
There is no ecosystem without insects, birds and ocean animals, etc.
6
@East Coast
Yes! And while the increase of carbon in our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels is the most publicized environmental problem today, I am equally concerned about the proliferation of toxic and bioactive chemicals in our environment, the accumulation of huge quantities of non-biodegradable waste, the overall destruction natural habitats, life-forms, and ecosystems, and the deterioration in the quality of our air, water, and soil. Climate change is only one manifestation of a much larger and more pervasive problem.
2
Kara, I am surprised that in assessing the volume of investments in green technology all your research could muster were the names of two entrepreneurs. A bit of digging and you would have seen that billions upon billions are being invested by the world’s largest pension plans and institutional investors in green technology funds and initiatives. As a reminder, and happily for us all, including these two gentlemen, the world does not begin and end with Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
3
Dear Ms Swisher, The past decade in sociology/tech has been miserable, and I usually don’t even keep my phone with me on errands. I’m 63 and you make me want to live ‘til 2030. Thanks, and Happy New Year! Tom
2
Two technological revolutions occurred in the Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries that have changed the way we live.
First, the industrial revolution in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century brought us trains, planes, autos and most other non-microchip based household products.
Second, the Information Age of the last 50 years brought us computers, cell phones and the internet. Massive amounts of information can be instantly accessed all over the world.
In between, the so called space age and nuclear age brought us space exploration, satellites, trips to the moon, and nuclear weapons and power. These advances were impressive but did not live up to their hype. They have not significantly changed how we live - except for how communication satellites have enabled information technology.
Also, there have been advances in medicine and robotics, but these advances have been painfully slow as compared with cell phones and the internet.
Most exciting to me is the ability to map and maybe alter cell genomes, with the possible applications of predicting and treating some of our mostly deadly diseases, such as cancer.
So for what predictions are worth (frankly not a whole lot) here’s hoping that the next 50 years brings us the medical revolution - maybe it’s already begun!
3
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." --Bill Gates
2
Karl Marx thought that the elimination of private property would eliminate inequality and suffering resulting from the inequities of capitalism. An interesting idea, rooted in the desire for a better world but ...
The growth of technology was going to give us shorter work weeks, better ways to feed the world, clean water where there wasn’t, etc. Noble aspirations, rooted in the desire for a better world but...
Instead, phone zombies walk the streets, the planet we live on is morphing in ways that literally threaten survival, our freedoms are threatened by data collection and manipulation (Cambridge Analytica?) but all is good with the world because Kylie Jenner just got another couple of hundred thousand likes. For the umpteenth time, yes I have claimed my Google listing!
I left technology 20 years ago, after 18 years in. My IPad is an amazing piece of design, but I don’t see the rosy future this article suggests.
12
@Ikebana62 Phone Zombies indeed! Thanks for that it will come in handy the rest of my life as I have to address the Zombies and get them in the moment for their own safety and well being
2
Delightfully written article. As we know all human endeavors and inventions don't get it right before we get it wrong several times. Imagine the learning curves on things like fire and the wheel and the harm and destruction they caused before we started getting close to harnessing these essential parts of humanity. I can see a few of our ancient ancestors being burned, shelters destroyed when we started playing with fire and how to get a stable break on the wheel wrought some destruction and harm as well. We are babies in the Tech world and though we have that human arrogance we can master things immediately we'll learn once again and harness this incredible invention and make it as close to right as Humans can.
1
All good ideas
Tech will be embodied, literally
I hope we spread out a bit in our big 'free' land
Soon there will be no reason to live in huge cities and suburbs
I already left the big show
Real nice in many places
2
@Lost In America We have the luxury to very mobile so there's no such thing unless self imposed of being isolated in fly over country or a city. I grew up in fly over Ville, lived in cities, raised a family in the sticks and spend a lot of time enjoy the virtues of both geographies
"Human downgrading" makes me sad. And it's what ails our world. Whether you attribute it to greed or the excesses of capitalism in this ever more connected world, the individual human being is dismissed in favor of the bottom line. Cutting humanitarian regulations that get in the way as in fossil fuels, nuclear (yes, nuclear,) chemicals, pharmaceuticals and big tech is enabling business to make decisions harming us and our grandchildren without our consent.
Brave New World and 1984 have dawned as predicted. Will we fight back to regain our humanity?
7
There is a certain logic to the argument that the worse things get, the more potential there is for improvement. Alas, there is another kind of logic in which addictive and exploitative technologies are desirable. The rosy scenario will be possible only with a reordering of the priorities of capitalism.
4
I predict that virtually all of Ms. Swisher's predictions will prove wrong. With humanity, the path of least resistance always wins.
9
I fall into the techno-pessimist camp. I hope you are right. I also feel that you leave out the terrible vulnerabilities of our networks to hackers and, in the case of the electrical grid and other technological infrastructure, age-based failures.
But, yes, I want you to be right.
4
If tech could solve the climate crisis on its own, it would have happened already. There is no shortage of tech that can eliminate fossil fuel use - nothing new needs to be invented. The problem is a lack of political will. Ordinary citizens need to demand that governments set the right national policies to make it happen.
9
Hope you are right in many of your predictions. I'm thinking they are rather rosy, though.
4
From the perspective of day-to-day tech usage, the world is a mess.
At ant point of the day I can get, often simultaneously:
• Text Message
• WhatsApp Message
• Email to work account
• Email to personal account
• Phone Call to cell
• Phone Call to landline
• Multiple Social Media alerts
With the exception of social media alerts, all of the above are a normal part of the modern working day.
We have not sufficiently evolved to deal with this level of mental stimulation and it’s no surprise that mental health issues and anxiety are on the rise.
Unless we make changes soon we risk damaging the health of an entire generation.
9
I'm not so sure about the climate change thing. Technology can certainly help businesses reduce carbon. However, technology has a carbon foot print problem of its own. Tech's ICT rating in the UK is about the same as the aviation industry.
Technology intensive businesses are part of the climate change problem. Using quantum computing to model business operations qualifies as intensive. At best, I think technology will present a mixed bag on climate change.
Putting down the phone? I certainly hope so. However, I'm not sure integrating technology into our lives more seamlessly is really a positive solution. I think moving in the opposite direction would actually better help our own worst impulses.
Remember the humble desktop? Like radios in the 1920s, a decent desktop station forces you to compartmentalize your online time versus your offline time. You sit down in a certain place in order to work or play on a computer. You're not always connected.
As an added bonus, desktops are more adaptable to changing technology. You can replace or reuse certain components rather than abandoning entire machines. This helps reduce our technology waste problem.
For everything else, I think we still suffer a problem of incentives. Until there's a good reason for young white male tech executives to build anything other than a boy-toy that sells, they won't. Tech needs some parental guidance. They've been running wild for far too long.
10
The real story for the next 10 years:
• Green energy dominates the marketplace, except in countries like the US where misguided politicians tried to prop up outdated technologies that are overpriced.
• Turns out that automation was not the cause of job loss, it was governments giving tax preference to companies that don’t produce physical products.
And globalism, which gave large profits to middlemen instead of local, automated production.
• Lack of diversity was found to be caused by mass markets where the largest demographic wins - turns out that with local production and services both workers and customers are diverse.
11
Maybe for the sanity sake of everyone, 2020 could be the year when people 'turn off, tune out and learn to be present'. Just put down their devices, turn them off and listen to their breath, listen to the wind, listen to the quiet. Liberating ourselves from the Internet, from reality-TV, from vapid celebrity worship and learn to slow down, could be the biggest benefit, we could all give ourselves, by relearning how to live and appreciate life.
8
@kladinvt
Pardon my tremendous cynicism:
dream on.
But I urge people, every chance I get, to do just what you state. Call me (us) Cassandra.
I loved visiting Disney's 'Tomorrowland' to see what they thought the future would look like. I remember using a phone booth there.
2
"year" and "decade" are human artifacts. There's no reason not to believe that the trajectory of the past 20 years won't continue for the next 20. Overpopulation, mass migration, environmental degradation, ethnocentrism, tribalism. Oh, there might be the odd do-dad and development to entertain us, occupy our minds temporarily, fill up our landfills. But the future isn't a place that's going to be kind, to humans and non-humans alike.
5
Here are my prediction for the tech sector:
Our politicians will allow 5G to go forward despite the numerous studies warning about the health impact of this higher level of radiation.
But what's a few million brain cancers and deformed children when there so much money on the table?
My second prediction coincides with Ms. Swisher. Artificial Intelligence will replace many jobs, but not just the "menial" ones. The McKinsey Consultants are predicting that 30% of current jobs could be replaced in the next ten years.
That's about 45 million workers. They range from all types of teller jobs, to real estate sale persons and insurance agents.
And what plans do or political elites have for such a massive social upheaval? So far, nothing. No changes in education. No plans to expand our junior colleges, no plans to reduce costs (With the exception of Sanders and Warren)
And no idea of who will purchase these new hi tech goods and services when you are demoted into the gig economy.
Here's a thought for a new high tech program. Each of our congressional reps will wear a device that records their opinions in all committees, all their meetings with funders and lobbyists and AI sends them to your browser.
Why not use tech to make democracy, not just products better? Imagine opening your social media page only to discover that your elected officials are hiding cancer studies and taking money from the industry that's affecting our health?
That's the hi-tech I'm looking forward to.
8
One thing that didn't make the list, but I think should: privacy laws and practices. Social media platforms are really advertising companies, and they collect and resell personal data and advertising exposure. I think we need to build on privacy laws, e.g., GDPR and the CCPA, with a Federal law to protect the rights of individuals to control how information about them is collected and used.
I also think the Federal government should start enforcing truth-in-advertising laws again, including false advertising on social media.
9
Swisher writes, "You can debate how talent is discovered and developed all you want, but the bottom line is that a more diverse work force results in more innovative products." So, Apple under Steve Jobs and Microsoft under Bill Gates would have been more innovative if those companies had had more diverse work forces. I think we all agree with that, but it would have been helpful to include some examples on which her statement is based. And I don't know if she means "more innovative products" in terms of quantity of products or degree of innovation, or both.
2
"...an internet that stops screaming at us." I share your opinion Kara and hope this happens. As far as automation, robotics, and AI, I think the future is less bright. I'm a professor who prepares students as professionals for an industry that is being changed by tech. Honestly, I don't know what to tell them except take some programming classes. It can't hurt.
2
Yes and yes. This is why I’m voting for Andrew Yang. Because he’s the only candidate that has a grip on these coming changes. From the onslaught of AI, to working with tech companies to modify algorithms to be more compassionate and human centred. Less dopamine propelled! Younger people in office who speak the language of tech that this pieces articulates is the way FORWARD. 20th century solutions for 21st century problems are, simply put, out of date.
1
The most profitable tech businesses are those that attach themselves to the human limbic system just as nicotine and heroin do. Our lurch toward society-destroying tech is driven by exactly the same instincts as our “lurch toward environmental suicide,” as the author puts it. These instincts are 1000 times more powerful than the intellectual observations that they are “bad.”
Human instinct can be controlled and effectively channeled, and in fact this has been happening throughout history, but effective regulation is required. We stopped doing that in this country when the deregulation frenzy began in the 1970s with the airline industry. The fact that the internet is completely unregulated will haunt us, perhaps to extinction. We should have by now built massive, powerful regulatory structures to manage its development and usage.
The author points to several desirable solutions to the tech problem but, as is the case with the environment, we are running as fast as we can in the opposite direction. Why? Because no amount of intellect can overcome the action of an instinct; only the action of a more powerful instinct (usually fear) can do so. Without effective regulation, there is no consequence to anti-social behavior, and hence no fear. Game over.
5
The field I work in (music) has been almost demolished financially for all but a few by the expectation of most people these days of acquiring content (art that has taken someone much time and effort to make) for free. The other arts have suffered as well, but the music business really took the hit due initially to illegal file sharing (Napster) that morphed into more legit but still unprofitable digital distribution methods such as streaming. The overwhelming majority of musicians, including some who are well known, cannot make a living or even break even in music anymore. I do not see the page being turned back in this case. People expect free art, especially music, and it will be very difficult to get them to pay again. No matter how less addicted to their phones people may become, getting them to compensate musicians for their work seems close to impossible now or in the future.
19
Even wide-eyed optimism usually concdes the conditions of reality enough to gesture toward the idea of evidence, or argument. It's true none of this predictions violate what we call the laws of nature, but that's about the only assumption that makes these predictions any more likely than a wish list.
3
I would like to see a thoughtful and data-driven analysis on whether smartphones have been a net positive or negative to human creativity, productivity, and happiness. My hunch is that it they haven’t merely been negative but *overwhelmingly* so as hopelessly addicted people spend years of their lives staring at a few square inches of illuminated screen. It would be fascinating to compare a photograph of Times Square in 2007 (when the iPhone was first introduced) with one taken in 2020. I imagine the contrast would be unsettling.
9
Unfortunately the author fails to acknowledge that in order to incentivize green tech, we need a price on carbon - a government action if there ever was one (go Greta!)
11
Alright, grumpy yet hopeful, a good call for the first day of the year. Very engaging post, thanks for a good read. As someone who has lived long enough to have experienced rotary phones and remote-less TV, spent 10 years in Silicon Valley in the 90's as a tech support engineer, I can say the current pace of change is daunting. That old proverbial two-edged sword has always cut both ways with science and technology, but we are outpacing our ability to manage and cope with it, IMHO. People can only adapt to so much change at a certain pace. I'm not as optimistic as you are about the market driving people to do the right thing, but I like your ideas. Thanks again.
5
Digital technology is our age's equivalent of the industrial revolution for better or for worse. My thought is that technology leans heavily in favor of good. Innovation or change is sometimes difficult to adapt. For example this newspaper's subscribers are mostly digital, so no longer technically a newspaper. Technology enables communications, productivity, social interaction, marketing tools and entertainment. It leads us into the wild west of technology's unlimited capabilities and there will be many who will be hurt by it's potential efficiency, as a disruptor of entire industries and exploiting our data privacy/identity.
1
My brother Michael has told me that while in his AA meeting the watches young people check their phones every single minute. As I walked the streets of Boston filled with young college men and women they literally walk with their phones in front of their face. It's as if it's their seeing-eye dog. One cannot get on the T
without seeing all the young faces scrolling through their phones.
Being a meditator the first principle is to be aware about thoughts, by not being the participant, but the observer. as our friend who just passed away Rum Das wrote" Be Here Now".
I have such entity for these young scared youth of America.
They had become the ostrich that sticks his head in the whole, so as not to be seen...........
3
Young people at as meetings are often following along AA literature they upload on their phones. Rarely do they carry stacks of heavy books like older members.
Even if they are checking messages at least they are at a meeting. If it doesn't disturb others it's really none of your brother's business.
Your brother would do well to stop judging.
1
"And rather than accept that poor pay and poor protections for gig workers are inevitable and that the pressures of a global work force are too hard to push back, tech companies should figure out how to creatively and humanely deploy talent across the world to show that they are interested in dealing with the consequences of their inventions."
Seriously?
Ms. Swisher, it is not the tech companies that are going to solve labor problems, it is society. Poor pay and poor protections are not technical problems, they are social problems.
32
The phone will be replaced by AR glasses that interact with the world around us, showing us all types of wanted and unwanted info plus bombarded with advertising from any direction. VR will also continue to grow and reduce the work commute by working remotely from home. That and many things should improve our lives in 2030 while our sea levels rise and we slowly cook ourselves in the summer. Who knows, maybe we will be living underground or indoors a 100% of the time by then with a chance to visit our VR Oasis and look at a fake ideal world to feel a little less miserable. Naaa it will probably look 99% as close to today with better gadgets and more pollution.
Here's my prediction... the US will continue fading away as the centre of tech innovation, whether it be in the internet realm, or automation and clean energy. the nexus of development will continue moving eastward, toward Asia, and the rising economies in the middle east and Africa. it's simply a question of economic and population growth. The 2020's will be the story of the rise and rise of China and emerging economies. Smart cities and the next epoch of human development is coming, but not in America.
4
The NYT comment section is a good example of relative anonymity working, where civility and discourse generally are the (moderated) rule. Twitter is pretty much the not example of identification disclosure solving civility and truth issues, via the glaring example of the Trump.
And it's hard to argue that "we" are assessing our digital humanity in the broad view of phone-world - look around.
1
The social popularity of the idea that one is available 24/7/365 seems to me to have endured a setback in recent years. The notion of personal privacy as freedom from fake news, fake robo-calls, and unlimited external demands on one's attention seems to be making a comback.
The idea that high tech can be made unobtrusive by converting it into an implanted or worn device sounds like a bait-n-switch marketing pitch.
2
Kara, you're still doing what a lot of people do, and that is view all of our problems and solutions thru the prism of tech. As if tech is the sole resource and solution to everything that ails us.
Don't get me wrong, tech is a powerful component. I'm only suggesting that some of our more...human...problems can only be addressed with more human-centric solutions.
For a lack of a more cogent way to say this the problems of Soul that we have in our civilization cannot be solved with more properly applied tech. This tends to be the underlying hubris of all "fanboy" admirers of it. Perhaps a better application, and inculcation, in some of the Philosophies might better assist?
But regardless, onward we go! Here's to a better 20's than the Teen's proved to be.
John~
American Net'Zen
6
It strikes me that Ms. Swisher makes the same kind of mistake that many technologists have for many years, namely, pie-in-the-sky predictions and goals that have little basis in reality.
New technology will give and take away. It has been doing that ever since the invention of the stone axe. And society will have to adapt.
"The smartest minds in tech should be thinking about reformulating and recalibrating the workplace and the structure of businesses."
Oy.
No, the smartest minds should be designing new technology, while managers, typically not the smartest minds in technology, should be thinking about running their businesses efficiently and, I vainly hope, morally.
This column is just out of touch with reality.
5
Agreed
I think we will see a continuation of our growing mistrust of bigness--Big Tech, Big Business, Big Government, Big Media and the like. This will result in more localism in all aspects of our lives, meaning more focus on personal relationships (as opposed to online "friendships" and "connections"), supporting local business and running for local government, where real change and impact can be implemented and seen. Due to its unrelenting focus on money, power and growth at the expense of ethics and basic humanity, Bigness will continue to be seen with suspicion and eventually will find itself starved for human capital and grass roots support.
Mark Zuckerberg is neither liked nor trusted by anyone other than his wife. Jeff Bezos can't even say that, given recent events. Adam Neumann? Jack Dorsey? Private equity and hedge fund titans? Who is going to follow any of these people over any hill? Bigness is on the decline.
3
My solution to the problem is the "off" button - when I can find it. Tech will only intrude on our individual lives it if we let it.
9
The addiction does not come from the things, it comes from human nature. I was disappointed not to see any mention of Tik Tok, an absolutely short attention span entertaining medium that features interesting - and often amusing - people form all over the world. A great escape from politics, and it amazes me how young people have managed top pack so much entertainment into so short time a time frame.
1
Why is the effort to maintain a habitable planet dependent on Elon Musk, Bill Gates or any of the 1% or of Silicon Valley hoping to become the first green trillionaire? Why isn't the country engaged in a society wide effort like the Apollo program or defense? A libertarian solution, leading to further consolidation of wealth will only lead to further disenchantment and disengagement of the majority of the populace. This enterprise should be engaged by society at large through the agency of our representative democracy.
53
"... governments may never agree on how to properly address our lurch toward environmental suicide."
As if the environment and we were two different things:
"...how to properly address our lurch toward suicide."
2
I would argue that the problem in the statement lies with the word “suicide”. Is it “suicide” if you are working hard to prevent it when lack of effort by others results in all going down together? Perhaps “death by failure of too many to account for the effects of our actions on the environment” would be more accurate, but a much more clumsy wording, than “environmental suicide”. Is it “suicide” when five of six people in a leaky rowboat refuse to bail out the water because they mistakenly believe they can still get to shore?
Me thinks it's a little overly optimistic, to the point of childish, to imagine that the most pressing problems in the world today--global warming, runaway consumerism, environmental degradation, economic inequity, homelessness, among others--can somehow be positioned as business opportunities, even if those businesses are more equitable led by women. Self-interest created these problems; to presume it will now magically solve them is a bit much to swallow. Simple game theory tells us otherwise. Hence, sorry to burst your bubble, Ms. Swisher, but I'm afraid Greta Thunberg is right. There will have to be an oversight of the market led by a greater interest if the planet is to be saved. Regardless of magical thinking, it turns out you really can't have your cake and eat it too.
74
In the past decade, Amazon and Facebook have radically changed this country and how we do almost everything.
Bezos - worlds wealthiest person.
Zuckerberg - his personal fortune increased this year by $27 billion.
Some clever person will emerge eventually with yet another one of these world-upending technologies.
It will happen because that's where the money is.
4
@fast/furious
Seems worth noting that those world-beating companies often pay very little in taxes on all that money.
Carrying around a device in our hands and staring at it constantly will be gone by 2030?
Only because some new device will arrive to replace it.
We aren't going back to the way it used to be when we weren't connected 24/7.
Those days are over.
2
@fast/furious.....connection and accessibility are not the same.
It’s bad enough that there are so many multi-millionaires and billionaires controlling such a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth, without Ms. Swisher raising the specter of future “trillionaires,”- green or not.
14
“The most important challenge is finding a way to keep carbon in the ground” looks like a
statement after the fact of:
(1) burning more fossils fuels until
(2) greentech takes over market share, and
(3) oil and coal countries lose huge value.
If that’s the challenge, then the real trick is about repurposing so that the demand shifts to non-combustion uses.
1
Wordsworth said it best:
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..."
12
@R Mandl Thank you. While most people (appropriately) allude to Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” I find myself thinking about “The world is too much with us.” More people need to read his poem.
1
I don’t see a viable substitute for political will to effectively address climate change in the few years that scientists warn us is our last window of opportunity. Tech now and in the future will certainly provide tools that can help but we must act quickly. Don’t count on technology and innovation and the marketplace to come to our rescue, we need governments around the world ( especially ours) to unite in bold and swift action and even still it will not be painless or pretty.
Of course, I could be wrong but I don’t share your faith in technology to address the ills of society. They are great at some things for sure but in the whole threaten humanity, democracy and the planet.
10
The false dichotomy that Grea Thunberg is only trying to influence governments is nonsensical. Greta's has managed to message to for-profits, non-profits, individuals and institutions, as well as governments. And the idea that there's technology on the one hand, and government on the other, is also antiquated thinking. The only way we'll solve global problems is for all global institutions - private and public alike - to work together.
4
My phone will still be in my hands as long as it still has a Kindle reader.
1
"This is the state of the internet as the decade comes to a close. Confusion reigns, for good reason, about the many tech inventions that have been heaped upon us over the past 10 years..."
Just a minor quibble -- but how we frame this discussion is important:
Most of what this article is about isn't new technology. It's about monetization. The internet has been around for decades; this past decade's parade of faddish messaging apps, taxi services, etc. (piggybacked on the net), are parasitic, spying money-grabs built on existing technology.
The invention of the printing press, and the advent of universal postal service were innovations. Junk mail is not (and never was) "tech."
14
It's funny how the media seems to think that the only technology that counts is software or internet based companies. There is a big world of much more sophisticated technology built on deeper scientific investigation in other fields. Examples in the biomedical area include immunotherapy of cancer, CRISPR gene editing, genetic analysis for precisions medicine etc. These things are far more advanced and likely to be more impactful than ride hailing apps on your phone.
92
@Larry Figdill
You can advertise on Facebook; you can't advertise on a mass spectrometer.
2
We can dream about a future in which full employment will mean one job/one person, working at a job with benefits and paid a living wage. No more lying with rosy statistics.
6
A wish list is not a trend list.
Behind “tech” are the same ilk of shareholders looking to monetize whatever is more or less tolerated as legal. There is no silver lining or growing of a conscience.
They need to be regulated.
27
Well said.
The belief that tech will solve the problems that tech creates is pointless.
The NYT recently featured a story of a Stanford scientist running a lab to create better helmets for football to reduce the trauma associated with two large men banging their heads together as hard as possible.
That's tech's answer to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Stamford need not pay millions to fund "tech" like this, when the answer is not to bang heads at full speed for sport or entertainment.
In the year 2020 we should be aware of the real threats that face us, and have the opportunity to avoid them through technology or the understanding of history, but sadly I don't think the next ten years is going to be a tech redemption.
7
I doubt any of these will come true. People will remain people and money always rules. Big money rules bigger.
10
This is a most welcome article by a journalist, working under tough deadlines, who has nonetheless taken the leisure and time to think in a wide-ranging way. Her very moderate short-term view of the symbiosis between people and technology is uplifting, even optimistic! We are in desperate need at the moment for remedies both to slapdash, superficial thinking and to the rampant anti-intellectualism driving much of what we hear in the political arena. Looking forward to future dispatches from Ms. Swisher.
2
Why not preach about lack of diversity in society, classrooms and tech clubs, before pointing out the lack of at the end result in the executive ranks? In my son's robotics club it's entirely all geeky young men, not for lack of want - they would one and all give their HP calculator to have girls share their interest and join them, but alas they don't.
5
I know this might be a little off topic, but the 2010's were possibly the most uninteresting decade ever in music. That's not to say there weren't any successful musicians. I'm just saying that there weren't any really memorable bands or musicians to come out of this decade. The music that is popular these days all sounds the same. It's heavily electronic and the singer can be anyone with reasonably good tone with a generic pop sound who can be cleaned up in the studio. I hope something interesting comes out of the music scene in this new decade, because I'm really disappointed with the lack of creativity.
9
@Mark you definitely preaching to the choir. In fact, I would even take it further and say nothing even came out of the 2000s either. The last truly shape-shifting artist to emerge Was Nirvana or potentially opeth.
1
@Mark I had a similar thought watching New Years Eve performances on both English and Spanish language television. The same bland tunes, forgettable lyrics, dance moves and costumes—dreck. I think kids are being fed a steady diet of thesame over social media and the smart money will always be on giving them what they want. Artists and artistry reside somewhere else. Social media is destroying our souls. I find nothing to be optimistic about when it comes to social media. It’s a cancer, really.
Most predictions about the future tend to miss the most important events, whether they be technological or social change.
40 years ago no one saw that LGBT would be accepted by a majority of the US population, the internet speed will be such that people can chose to watch different movies at home without saturating communication channels, that phones would have easy access to enormous amounts of information via an internet, etc. And certainly no one would have predicted that a grotesque caricature of a human being would be elected US President.
My own flawed prediction is that phones will become even more ubiquitous in daily life, used like remotes for accessing appliances, TV's, entertainment, any type of information, etc.Big TV screens will be replace by eyeglasses projecting films so anyone at home can watch movies independently while sitting next to each other. I do not see phone addiction decreasing given that new generations will see them as a natural part of their environment.
4
I think if the "first trillionaire" comes from green tech, we still have a problem on our hands. The idea that all our problems can be solved by single individuals, who deserve to be made obscenely wealthy for their contributions to society, is part of the problem of the last decade. Motivated and intelligent people surely deserve to be made wealthy for their contributions to society, but they shouldn't be so rich that we are forced to look solely to them to solve our problems. Better to have billionaires or millionaires who pay their workers a living wage than a green tech trillionaire who saves the world, then makes it miserable for 99.9% of us to live in it.
40
@Oats
Very well said.
I advise you (and everyone reading this) to check out David Ehrenfeld's classic The Arrogance of Humanism. The idea that all problems will be solved sooner or later, usually by some lone genius (the cowboy or knight on a white horse myth alive and well in the 21st c), is a major reason for the mess we're in.
I don't mean to be rude, but the piece reads like somebody had too much to drink at New Year's. Do you really think that Surveillance technologies will fade away, and that we'll all give up our social media bubbles? On what basis do you make those predictions?
55
Spare the predictions and just quietly revel in the gains of the past decade or two. US homicide rates are down over the past decade. Annual patent applications have doubled since 2000. Cancer mortality has fallen 25% since the 1990’s. US carbon emissions are down without Paris or Kyoto forcing them that way. The US is energy secure despite the previous administration’s assurances that we would never achieve it. Most of these gains are attributable to the private sector. Celebrate the individual; abhor the bureaucrats.
8
@Once From Rome
"US homicide rates are down over the past decade" -- The biggest decline is from 1990-2000 largely due to reduction in lead exposure due to government regulation -- the rest is hardly distinguishable from random variation.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/
Number of patents does not equal innovation. The increase in the US has stalled, and likewise is not a symptom of decreased innovation. BTW, China, an authoritarian state, has the greatest increase in patents.
Cancer mortality has fallen -- Largely due to the decrease in smoking (government bureaucrats strike again!) and early detection and treatment (for which government funded scientific research was critical).
"US carbon emissions are down" --But we have exported a lot of our energy intensive manufacturing to China. Renewable energy and energy efficiency standards and regulation by states such as California had a lot to do with this). But, yeah, the natural gas/fracking boom allowed this to happen as well. So a mixed verdict here.
"The US is energy secure despite the previous administration’s assurances that we would never achieve it." Well, that is just another Trumpian lie. The energy boom happened under Obama (and Bush before him) like it or not.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/energy/securing-american-energy
6
@Once From Rome Actually, carbon emissions in the US have gone up since trump took office. He got rid of those pesky regulations.
@Once From Rome
And inequality is back to levels not seen since the middle ages, as is hatred of the "other".
The shadow I can't help but see falling across Swisher's appealing optimism is that she ignores an unsettling truth about the explosion and ubiquity of tech in our lives: how it has all but obliterated our sensitivity to slower, artful, contemplative states of mind--the kind we get from reading poetry, listening to subtle music, or standing in wonder before a masterful painting. These experiences are dying out while we rush to download the next app that promises to "improve" our lives. Yes, our lives have been improved in some ways by the tech explosion, but something has been lost. We all feel it. I don't know if, in a generation or two, we will be able to understand the difference between the mysterious, sad, and urgent hunger for life into which art plunges for meaning... and the mediated, stimulated exercise in efficiency that life becomes when technology is so completely both its servant and its master.
13
The older I get, the more I wish for simplicity. I think that will be my wish for the future, tech or no tech.
Happy new year!
7
we are all free to imagine-- and also to support-- the kind of future we wish to. It won't ever be exactly what anyone says.
When this subject comes up, I like to revert to that 1950s "Mechanics Illustrated" future, will all of us zooming around with our individual jetpacks. That was a fun future.
4
Sorry but unless we insist via our pocketbooks that tech serve the public it will continue to serve the pocketbooks of its sponsors. The odds are long.
5
The missing link in renewable energy is storage. The answer is not batteries of the traditional type, or at least the full answer is not in better batteries. What is needed is better storage of a new type.
I have been fascinated by super conductivity since I first read about in college, where I was a history major. (Conflict? Who cares.) It is the technology by which electricity can travel through wires without losing energy in the process. So, if it can be made practical, it would be possible to store electrical energy while it travels endlessly in a circle until needed.
The big problem is that the substance through which it would travel would need to be cooled to near absolute zero to achieve superconductivity properties. For the last 40 years or so, scientists have been trying to achieve that state without having to place the wires in liquid nitrogen or some similar coolant for higher temperature superconductivity.
It is now estimated that one would need 1 million miles of superconductivity wires to store significant amounts of electrical energy. 40 times the circumference of earth. Not inconceivable.
I have also been doing some conceptualizing and work toward a non-chemical form of energy storage. If it represents the breakthrough I think it could be, non-polluting lights, heat and cars could occur around the world in the next five years.
3
Ms. Swisher's predictions rely too much on, at the very least, the assumption of benign intentions by corporations, entrepreneurs, and venture capital over the next 10 years, when there is no reason to believe they would allow technology to be less harmful than it already is.
If we are to have a better decade in our growing entanglement with technology, it will come from increased regulation to identify the proper boundaries between the rights of humans, and the control of corporate/governmental entities over data (and therefore freedoms) of citizens across the globe.
Finally, given humanity's current relationship with the smartphone, I see little reason to be optimistic about technology that is more embedded within the human body. Ms Swisher's optimism should be tempered by even a cursory look at the growing economic and political inequalities that are forming worldwide.
5
There's absolutely no proof that a more diverse workforce results in more innovative products. None. But it's unlikely to happen no matter what. This is 3rd-grade math. The percentage of women graduates in computer science, is about 18%, in engineering 19%, physics 39%. For minorities, it's even less. So that means it's mathematically impossible for the Tech corporate workforce to reflect our population's diversity. No one is stopping women or minorities from pursuing these degrees. But you can't take someone who majored in Gender Studies & have them code. Women & minorities have made a rational choice to not go into these fields. But it's not Silicon Valley's problem it's an educational establishment problem. Place the blame where it needs to be. Coding should be taught beginning in the 1st grade not college. It's outrageous to ask Silicon Valley to fix a problem they didn't create. The left's obsession that every industry must reflect America's gender & ethnic diversity is insane. Many diversity advocates have stated tech hiring doesn't reflect our population because of unconscious bias. This is a lie. Recently researchers including one of the founders of the IAT ...the “Implicit Association Test” from analyzed the results of hundreds of studies of the test involving almost 81,000 participants. The researchers found that the correlation between implicit bias & discriminatory behavior is very weak. The real issue is forced diversity fair? No, it isn't. We all know that.
7
@Bill Brown Millions of well educated women and minorities are out there every day innovating and being part of constant improvements in technology and information. Yes, more girls and minorities need to be nurtured and pointed towards tech fields (And I use tech very broadly here, but high quality jobs) and those fields need to be welcoming to all, not just the tech bros acting like frat boys.
I am sorry if taking a few seconds to evaluate how you are treating people who are not exactly like you, who are of course of some superior male persuasion.
No I am absolutely not sorry.
Everybody will be better off if platforms like Facebook reflect the population at-large. The companies cannot divorce themselves from society by stating that their only responsibility lie to shareholders. Just like a drug company, these platforms have a profound impact extending beyond finance.
Given the predicted future shortage in technical workers, it also is imperative to broaden the workforce. This includes women, older people, minorities, and residents in smaller cities and in the countryside - essentially everybody. If we don’t include across the spectrum, we can expect social instability as the future becomes more technology oriented and more people feel excluded. Neither social status nor biology should be destiny.
1
@Innovator I don't deny that millions of well-educated women and minorities are out there every day innovating and being part of constant improvements in technology and information. But the problem there's not enough of them. If the percentage of women graduates in computer science is 18%, then in a perfect scenario 82% of the hire are going to be men. The reality is of course much different. Women, as well as men, are competing against the world. The best of the best computer science majors from India, China, the Philippines, and other countries are coming to America in very large numbers. Most of these people...the overwhelming majority of them are men. This isn't the fault of the Silicon Valley. There's nothing THEY can do to change this now or for the immediate future. The Tech industry is a meritocracy. They are going to hire the best of the best. Period. End of story. There's nothing WE can do to change this either now or for the immediate future. Let's stop the hypocrisy and lay our cards on the table. What progressives want and have always wanted is hard hiring quotas. They try to dress it up as goals. time tables, and the like. But that's ridiculous. At the end of the day, they want quotas....mandated by law. At least be honest enough to admit that. Guess what. It's never going to happen. Nor should we want it to happen. Because that's not how the rest of the world operates. Should we be crazy enough to go in this direction then we are going to fall behind.
2
Ms. Swiisher's column has more to do with the social uses and implications of technology than prognostication about the technology itself.
Even tho' we may be amazed at what engineers have wrought in the last decade, as someone old enough to be steeped in the innovative thinking of the late 60s -- yes, the 60s -- I'm bored.
Example: The telephone? Really? Sure, we've raised the telephone to high art, but it's still a phone and a computer glued together.
So, where is the next breakthrough innovation? Trust me, it won't come from people who are mired in the past. We need free, open funding that turns young minds loose -- 60s ARPA minus the weapons.
From the tech side, we need to ditch the dinosaurs in the White House who are killing science and innovation. Light bulbs, toilet flushes and buggy whips -- my foot!
-- From a computer scientist who has been around the loop.
3
Amen to the end of the "Smartphone" [sic]
See
https://www.salon.com/2013/11/02/smartphones_are_killing_us_and_destroying_public_life/ (Will you put down that phone? )
And this was seven years ago!
1
Nice positivity, but this disregards the basic inhumane preferences of “big” technology companies and the likelihood that the fascist wing of the Trump GOP would like to employ for their own propaganda.
1
“President Trump’s tweets ...thing of the past …“
Watch out what you wish for my dear!
Kara, I think AI will siphon off a lot of brain power that could be applied to global warming. Robots will be taking over a lot of the heavy thinking that goes into the functioning of our very complex community. But that's where new ideas , innovations, and a deep understanding of proceed come from. Who ever heard of an assembly line robot welder tapping the foreman on the shoulder to suggest a better welding technique.
The techopreneures will be working heavily on that problem, coming up with new algorithms for Artificial incite, A..Cleverness, A... doggedness, and on the human resources side A.. Empathy, A.. stinginess. A.. deceptiveness, A.."sorry about that" etc etc
@sherm Idea is that rather than performing dangerous and physically demanding tasks like welding, you can have people look at processes that robots are doing and figure out better ways to do it.
The bad news is you might need more academic training, but I believe that people have a lot more potential than they think. Better education for all, not just in certain school districts.
“…President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too…
Wouldn’t get your hopes up just yet…
My understanding is the Trump org has bought the now-unused stage set for “American Idiot” and optioned the décor for “Dear Evan Hansen”…
And plan to convert the former NYT building into the biggest Presidential Library ever, using those sets as exhibits…
And, as soon as MB and his open-office crew clear out, they’re going to devote the entire eighth floor to dioramas of “The Biggest Most Beautiful Walls” – and an ancillary Los Tacos eatery…
Yeah – Jared doesn’t own it…
Yet…
They said that about Greenland, too…
Speaking of green, you’re right that the first trillionaire will be a green-techie…
Bill will re-invent himself one more time – and spend the next 45 years making the nuclear reactor personal again…
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/yourmoney/can-this-man-reprogram-microsoft.html
Yes, he’ll be 110 by then – and Ray Kurzweil will be 117…
So what’s your point…
Go have lunch with either or both of them, and note carefully what they eat…
Armed with that insight, getting to 103 would be cakewalk…
And you’d get to report – and wale – on the most transformative industry on earth, all over again…
Out with the old; In with the new! The number of young of the voting age will decide when we're out of the Trumplocked cage.
Thanks for the laughs.
Tech solving climate change won’t happen until someone decides to pay for it, which won’t happen until failing to meet environmental regulations is less expensive than fixing it.
Also expecting a company to examine a universal basic income as a result of unemployment due to automation is totally naive.
I also like internet anonymity because it’s extremely probable that my political views (which are pretty much socialist) would impact my status as an employee of a healthcare company intent on making as much money as possible, patient safety be damned.
Yes, I will admit that I’m extremely cynical. I would be less cynical if the world stopped worshipping mammon and started caring about people.
11
In the Australian fires, cell phones have helped people stay connected, receive emergency instructions, and let people across the globe see through the eyes of people who are living the climate crisis and not just talking about it.
Also, dog videos.
The practical, everyday uses of cell phones and social media far outweigh the problems that generate the most column inches. More people are interested in exchanging Instant Pot recipes and grandkid videos than overthrowing governments.
2
Nice that Mr Musk is working on amazing new inventions. But every rocket he sends up, or will send up, probably uses more energy than I & my family have used in our lives, and creates more pollution than we have. And what does that get us?
Assuming that this actually gets us a passage to other planets, do we really think we want to live there? Subfreezing cold, day/night cycles unlike anything we're adapted or evolved for, an outdoor environment we don't dare go out and walk in, etc., etc.
3
More and more, I am considered some kind of Luddite. I don't own a car, just a bike and one pair of sneakers. I am not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Tik Tok.
My phone is always off. If I leave it on it rings all day with the Mariott Hotel and their Mandarin robocalls. I never take the phone when I leave the house because its no one's business what floor of a building I am on. I use it as a timer for baking. I will probably get rid of the phone in the next couple of months and use that money for monthly kayak storage. Everyone who knows me knows that I don't text because it is too slow compared to a full keyboard so they don't bother. If you want to get hold of me, knock on my door, send an email, or a letter.
The future? In a few years self-driving cars will be the norm and anyone driving for a living (Uber, Grubfleet, UPS, Amazon, truck drivers, etc) will be out of work. My mailman will be replaced with a robot. There will be no more retail workers since the robots will stock the stores and Amazon has already figured out how to charge your account with products that you take out the front door. Teachers? Replace them with robots. Farming? Robots. State patrol? Robots in self-driving cars.
And best of all, those self-driving cars will require some kind of Android software and you will have to pay a monthly fee to the software company just like your phone bill. I could go on for another 5,000 characters.
1
Had to chuckle at your comments. Agree on the full keyboard (iPad here)- texting on those tiny phone letters- a nightmare. Mostly I use my phone to listen to audio books- love ‘em! And I figure any phone hackers, trackers...can listen in all they want to my westerns, trashy novels, history choices. I recall all the dire warnings about too much TV watching back in the fifties. Keeping up with the times...but using them selectively. Works for me.
Let's, for the sake of discussion, divide the world of "innovation" into two areas... science/technology and social/political. In stark terms, science/technology have been able to buy time for the social/political leaders to solve the underlying problems but, and here's the issue, they have failed more often than not. Often via refusing to even admit there is an underlying problem. Fortunately, we've been able to buy time with science/technology but that may have reached a point of diminishing returns although no one knows, for sure. In some ways the social/political solutions, if there are any, are more difficult to find and implement. We may have run into some fundamental limits in the science/technology arena this time... how to feed 16 billion people for instance, maybe not? Another doubling or two... 32 Billion or 64 Billion??? So, this time maybe the social/political leaders can take the time that's left and get to work...?
3
Also, I have been using the Internet since the late 1980s. I've never had it scream at me and that's because I turn off ALL notifications on ALL devices. Even my phone doesn't ring - if people want to talk to me, they can leave me a voicemail (gets converted to text) or a text message (I consider the phone to be a highly intrusive device). Emails, etc. don't make noises on my desktop. And I prefer an email to phone call or face to face meeting which is reserved only for the most important things (I am highly protective of my time).
I am on the Internet 24/7 almost since I work from home a lot but whatever I do on it, it is largely by choice. I'm not saying this is better than passive usage but I'm saying the perception of something pulling you doesn't exist.
Since I've been doing this for a while and seen the Web rise up and take over the world, I would say that developing practices that protect your time, space, and sanity is what matter. Technology is just a tool. We have to grow along with it to use it wisely.
514
Hmmm. And alcohol and opiates aren’t addictive either.
8
All I hear and read is someone and others who have disconnected themselves from the world. People who would rather text then take the time to have a conversation and hear a voice. Technology has created a social order that even at dinner people are texting or data searching on their phones. The art of conversation is no longer.
68
@Lauren Giber I apologise for giving that impression, from only stating from my e-habits. I have an active hobby-based and social life outside of my time on the Internet. My point was that I prefer either F2F meetings or texts, but not phone calls. Because of my emphasis on F2F meetings, I have to use my time wisely.
That said, some of my best friendships that have last over 30 years were begun online by exchanging emails/chatting and then have moved to the real world and these people with whom I've travelled all over the world, etc. I see young people use the Internet in this manner and I think it's fine. Though I met my first girlfriend over the Internet in the early 1990s when I was 18 (it was considered radical then) and we lasted two years, and many of my later relationships were initiated over the Internet, my wife of 20+ years I met IRL.
@Jim Winters There's probably a good argument to be made for it. But I have a good understanding of real addiction and I have to say it's like saying I'm addicted to water or oxygen or food. The Internet (not the Web or social media) is part of my professional and personal life. However, unlike with real addictions, when I do go out in the middle of nowhere without any signal I don't miss it. If it is an addiction, it's a good one for me.
44
Unfortunately, I do not share Kara Swisher's optimism.
Unless Congress breaks up these tech monopolies, I see endless technological abuses that will continue to shred America's social safety net.
On that note, Happy New Year to us all!
392
@WS What does Silicon Valley value more diversity or merit? You can either hire for diversity or you can hire for merit, but to the horror of SJW everywhere you can't have both. SCOTUS has never held that all workplaces must be racially or gender-balanced. The Court will never embrace the presumption that the profiles of a particular workplace should reflect the composition of the broader population. This presumption makes no sense unless people from all groups are equally qualified for positions at all levels only then will every group be represented in each occupation exactly in proportion to its share of the broader population. If members of one group are more qualified for particular positions than others, they will be hired in disproportionately greater numbers; persons from a less qualified group will be under-represented in those jobs. Right now underrepresented communities have chosen not to study computer engineering & coding in college. That's why they're under-represented. The problem for diversity & equality advocates is that critics of quotas have framed the debate in a way that sets up an irreconcilable tension between the principle of merit & the goal of diversity. When the rubber hits the road diversity will lose, merit will win. Tech companies are run like sports teams. They try to hire the best people they can find. SJW be damned. Right now there's not enough proof that hiring members of an underrepresented community adds any bottom-line value to a company.
9
@Bill Brown Ultimately the value in diversity is due to diversity of thought and abilities and it's primary benefit is innovation (which could be innovation in marketing). We can use things like race and gender as proxies for this diversity but diversity in thought what matters and what leads to excellence.
Historically, the problem with lack of diversity is group think. We tend to support those who think like us but for true radical innovation we have to actually encourage diverse thinking. Companies aren't really in the business of innovation but they do have to be reasonably innovative: diversity helps in many ways. There is well controlled research you can find from Google Scholar.
I don't consider places like Google or Amazon or Microsoft (many of students have gone to work there) to be that innovative relative to places like Stanford or MIT or in general the R1 universities in the US and equivalent ones around the world. The bleeding edge innovation happens in academia and generally diversity helps a lot in thinking out of the box.
22
@Bill Brown We have never even attempted to provide decent education to urban and rural poor and you are not going to be an engineer or a computer scientist if you do not start taking serious math as early as 4th grade, like the top schools provide. Which implies you will learn basic arithmetic in grades 1-3.
Merit is also relative. At some point in your career, it is pretty common to notice that big talkers, often male, can convince their managers that they are special and then hog all the good management and high level technical jobs.
Why is diversity on your list of things not to fix in the 2020s ?
Also, it is somewhat mythical that women and minorities are being favored or why exactly aren't more of them in management and the C-suite ? Lots of mediocre men rise to pretty high levels ..
31
I don't see any reason for this kind of optimism. I think humans will continue to make a mess of technology - we're still in a strong exponential growth phase and we're still ethically and morally immature so it's going to be a lot of high tech high velocity stumbling around.
448
@RamS I think you missed the point of the article, which was to role model and encourage this optimistic and world-caring direction.
9
@Joanne
I would think the last few years should have disabused you of such fantasies. Humanity's greatest weakness, is it's ability to follow and believe in it's most evil leaders.
7
There is a sure-fire method for removing screen addiction and promote awareness, and that is to remove all the manhole covers. Eventually, the somnambulistic addicts will either be swallowed by the earth, or forced back into being aware of their present location in time and space.
792
@stan continople
Despite 1,000's of people dying each year for the sin of not being situationally aware in a very fast moving world, I don't fear that I will fall into a manhole while checking on my twitter feed.
I fear the person who may t-bone my car, or run the train i'm on off the rails because they needed to check an inane app.
We all suffer for tech use that would have been frowned upon throughout all of history until around 2000.
When a congressman watches golf during an impeachment hearing, a prison guard is shopping online while the highest profile criminal is under their supervision, or when the commander in chief "tweets", we have problems all around that put us in danger from tech.
179
@stan continople But can manhole removal outpace the sale of new smart phones?!!
14
@mediapizza
If you are one of the accursed, who happen to be situationally aware, you are now forced be even more so. When walking down the street, you can no longer assume that anyone is alert to your presence, so you must now do the navigational calculations of two or three people instead of just one. When at crosswalk, you must now assume that a driver is staring at their phone instead of the stoplights. I've seen drivers make hard rights at a corner, with one hand, while the other's cradling their phone.
36
This column seems to be all about hope over experience.
This is just more fanboy ( fangirl/fanwoman) belief in more Tech as the way forward.
Looking for a magical "Tech" solution to climate change that will remove the need for hard choices.
Companies acting responsibly round the gig economy. Google, Facebook and the rest are built on "independant contractors" and outsourcing and are actively fighting any unionization.
More utopian Automation for Good. Yeah, continuing that trend has worked out great so far. But this time will be different. Yeah.
Utopian ideas against polarization when their whole business model is about polarization.
People who know they have been addicted for years are now going to decide to ditch their phones.
Woulda', coulda', should've. But won't without real political change. Corporate Democrats and Republicans will unite to protect the money machine.
There is no sign that phone addicts are quitting or seeking treatments.
Just another Tech entrepreneur telling us how more tech is the answer.
This is just whistling and thinking happy thoughts as we walk past the graveyard or our humanity.
557
@JMC unfortunately I think you’re right.
34
@JMC Wait til the time comes when we start running out of finite resources (e.g., rare metals) necessary to keep an advanced civilization and one (we hope) largely weaned from fossil fuels going. Look out.
I have never seen the NYT take a look at what it considers an ideal world in 50 years or some other non-immediate time horizon and what it physically will take to implement that world, not socially.
60
@JMC
"There is no sign that phone addicts are quitting or seeking treatments."
Going without a cellphone entirely is seeming more and more of a pipe dream.
But there are signs that more people are unhappy because they're addicted to their phones, and there seem to be more professionals, real and bogus, who are offering treatments.
Addiction to one's smartphone or to the Internet is a "thing" now.
14
The 'consumers' of tech are actually its products - the harvesting of data (at least for google) is necessary to refine search algorithms. Yes, they do sell our information without our consent, but nothing comes for free. At this point, we are past the point of return.
1
Yeats?
You mean a million men will die in Belgium?
I hope not.
1
Bummer.
I was hoping for a tech prediction that irons and folds my laundry.
2
Heartless as usual... and all about making money.. ?? How much money has to be made? Is "breaking even " ever good enough?
Keeping carbon in the ground. Huh? /Coal? Diamonds? How about not producing more human beings..- there new technology -vert effective birth control could be very useful... and do I believe in free choice... well does anyone really. I would like inventions that make people visible at nite-- those black coats don't (wear white for heaven's sake!!), allow protection while driving, monitor ones medications?? and help people be happy. (Take out the garbage, clean the house, filter the air - humidify...
But does everything have to be a business opportunity or a tax deduction? SPARE ME. Can people just do the right thing because it is just that...?? Less work for lawyers and politicians and lost business opps but kinder and gentler... so yesterdat.
1
President Trump's Tweets will never go away. He has every intention of Tweeting from beyond the grave.
1
@richard wiesner
I prefer to think about him tweeting from prison.
Chamber of Commerce speech about blue sky while across the street the city is in flames.
3
Speaking as a person who has worked in tech (with and for leading companies) for decades, this author is painfully naive. Tech will never save us from itself. She misunderstands the narrow greed and arrogance of the industry (or chooses to ignore it). Furthermore, the author's easy dismissal, perhaps from lack of familiarity, with key historical and political factors (see the concept of regularatory capture) cause this opinion (fangirl) piece to be sadly inadequate to our times. As my least favorite human being used tweet more frequently, I think, "sad."
9
I really like the last sentence of this column. So Kara Swisher, you think Donald Trump will be gone by the end of the decade. You are the eternal optimist.
2
“There will be an internet in the future that stops screaming at us.”
Only if we create it through regulation & law. Look at Amazon, at Facebook, at Google: ff anything is clear, it’s that no matter how much tech manipulates us, rips us off, spies on us, makes us buy & say things we regret, steals our elections & changes the society in ways we hate, we will keep using it—or rather offering ourselves up to be used by it.
2
There is a huge disconnect between the title of this piece and its content. I kept reading and waiting for some substantive information but all I got was speculation and unnecessary political jabs.
1
Kara needs to make up her mind about her role / position : is she focused on her ideas / projection of the future, or is she a journalist who 'reports' on how current information / trends indicate as to how the future will unfold ?
2
"tech that ... incorporates into our bodies (yes, that’s coming)"
As both an early adopter and an early deserter, it took me years to remove social media from my life, turn off my cell phone, and put it in a drawer except for emergencies.
The fatalistic tone with which this author tells us tech will be grafted onto our persons, seemingly whether we like it or not, makes me feel ill.
No thank you.
2
Research is needed to fight climate change but digital technology may not play that big a role. Although we already have technology to do the job to solve many problems in some areas we don't. These areas include finding alternative fuels for planes and ships, eliminating carbon emissions in making cement and steel, and preventing methane emissions from ruminants such as cows. Also, more research is needed on 4th generation nuclear power which may potentially have a role. However, one area where digital technology should play a big role is developing better computer climate models. Far better predictions may be possible for the consequence of increased emissions. One thing to keep in mind is digital technology requires a lot of energy. Everything about the internet requires energy from the servers in warehouses to the operation of computers. And transmission of video requires particularly a lot of energy and with the increase of streaming services this adds to emissions. Reducing emissions caused by operation of the internet is actually a problem that needs to be addressed. Until we have a grid with 100% renewable energy the more the internet is used the more emissions.
@Bob
Despite the right wing propoganda, our climate models (And weather forecasting) are pretty darn good.
I do agree that lots of solutions will require hardware.
But us engineers use simulations to design and optimize that hardware and also to design systems that are safe and efficient.
The internet is still in its childhood, really you don't have to stream movies real time. Also real data, like facts, are probably worth the costs to get it to a user, like us engineers ..
It is important for technology companies to show how they contribute to our society. If they would contribute technologies for preventing global warming, they could dramatically increase their confidence with users and ordinary people.
1
@Matsuda
Tech companies are beholden to financial shareholders. The 1%. The 1%. The 1%. The 1%. The 1%.
They are 25% richer this last year. The 1%. They pick our judges and our political reps. The fake Federalists now are not the federalists that designed this country when it was nascent.
2
@Matsuda
If tech companies wanted to contribute to our society, they could start by paying their non-tech workforce a living wage and create safety-conscious workplaces. They could start doing this tomorrow. It requires no advanced tech or AI interface; only a sense of social responsibility and respect for those who help them build their huge net profits.
The hope that technological innovation can solve the problem of climate change is essentially the position long taken by the "center-denial" camp: those who hold that, yes, climate change is occurring, but the realistic response is to develop ways of adapting to it. The version offered here emphasizes the retardation of change itself, but it's basically the same vision.
Certainly we've already reached the point where we must recognize a need for technological coping and not only consciousness-raising. Private-sector initiatives that go beyond consumer technology and address the problem at the most fundamental levels of industry can play a vital role. But it's hardly possible to take energy policy out of the hands of government, and that's a key piece of the puzzle.
We still need the efforts of Greta Thunberg and others like her if they can do more than popularize ocean voyages and stigmatize consumerism; if they can mobilize people to bring intense, unremitting political pressure on governments everywhere. In order for governments to manage their part, a middling consumer economy may actually be required.
1
I predict that the next decade will finally see climate change haunt the personal comfort of climate change activists.
For example, Jane Fonda has now taken on the issue of climate change. Yet, she also bragged about having enough money that she can live in her large energy guzzling place and not have to live in a skilled nursing facility. Instead, she can pay for her own personal nurses. So much for efforts to mitigate climate change when one's personal comfort takes priority.
Such hypocrisy will not be tolerated in the next decade, so climate change may not longer be the politically hip cause of Hollywood and other wealthy elites anymore.
3
@Dan - Add people like Mayor Bloomberg preaching about climate change while flying a private helicopter around NYC because he is too good for the subway. Or Bill Gates flying private everywhere to tell folks to wear a hoody indoors and ride a bike to work. Then, he jaunts back to his 24 bathroom home. You would think of all people, that Bill Gates would have heard of this thing called Skype or Portal where one can sit in their living room and talk to anyone, anywhere.
2
We need to prevent the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, and all forests, and plant as many trees as possible. This will help reverse climate change. Expecting billionaires like Bill Gates, and billionaires-to-be to solve this problem through "tech" strikes me at best, as rather naive and, at worst, an embrace of the very sort of exploitative ethic that got us into this climate crisis in the first place.
3
Whatever will be, will be...The future’s not ours to see. Remember that song? What a simpler time it was back in the mid-1900s.
It used to be fun to imagine what the future would be like. For me as a young girl at that time, I felt full of hope that technology would transform our lives in a positive way. In many ways it has, but it has also brought some very negative consequences.
As we move into a new decade, I can only hope that young kids can have that same optimistic outlook for the future and are inspired to invent the changes to make our world a better place.
3
@Vicki
It was never a simpler time. In the 50s we were terrified of the Communists and the atomic bomb. We had bomb drills and dreamed about fallout shelters and a radioactive world. Death for children from polio, measles and mumps was possible; no artificial joints, and no pills for Diabetes 2. Lots of antisemitism as well as racism..
Gearing up for that horrible war in Vietnam... ah yes, the perfect 50s- when we started to shift the jobs overseas... and get rid of pollution here.
1
@Auntie Mame
You’re right, Auntie Mame, nothing is simple, or perfect. I survived the measles and mumps, and my brother survived his stint in Vietnam. And we’re both still here.
Happy New Year to all!
2
Very intriguing. Of special interests and greater urgency is the green revolution in all its forms and formats: Energy, agriculture, population control which is the environment writ large. Hopefully it will come from Elon Musk types, not the Matt Zuckerberg crowd
3
@Ted get Musk to take his lit up satellites out of the sky and then we can respect him as a possible source of beneficial change.
Quantum Physics makes smartphones feasible and Einstein General Relativity Theory (GPS) makes you not lost traveling. Enlightened 2020.
2
I by-and-large find this piece refreshing to consider.
2
The diversity we all need is for some large entities and systems to be run by people who are not motivated by winning the competition to attract investors hoping for large returns. Such people are winnowed out from top leadership.
Social media is toxic because it is constructed to win a competition over other social media, and thus survive. Youtube used to be more nontoxic when its content was not competing to draw eyeballs to the advertisers, but rather just made itself available to anyone who happened to be interested. Youtube and Facebook as public services, funded like libraries or parks, would be much healthier places. The best creations are those done to be excellent (rather than to be first); sometimes they make money and sometimes they dont.
Creations founded on excellence keep their customers and users because they are excellent. Creations founded on winning keep their customers and users by being designed so that leaving is hard and expensive. If the number one system does not mesh well with the number two or four or seven system, this is a feature rather than a bug.
9
Tech solving climate change? Now that is some first rate comedy!
47
@Jonathan yep. And she does not know that there are numerous people who have explained the many ways to keep carbon in the ground, and technology is not the solution.
5
@Jonathan I disagree. For example, tech makes it possible to hold political nominating conventions and climate conferences without sending thousands of big shots off in their private or lobbyist paid for jest to far away cities in nice locations. Tech is how we know there is a global climate crisis. Tech can facilitate solutions such as truly pricing carbon emissions. Tech can be used to catch polluters and cheaters. Tech is just a tool. Just a tool. Humans need to understand that it can be used for whatever purpose we want.
2
Just one example; tech will bring us fake meat and massive hydroponic (and aquaponic) vertical farming- both of which will save countless acres of forests and natural water sources from being razed by traditional farming techniques.
1
This is the state of the internet as the decade comes to a close. Confusion reigns, for good reason....
Just, confusion reigns about "the" decade coming to a close.
Call me picky, but decades, centuries and millenniums start with numero 1 and end with a 0 and not the number 9.
4
Even a NY Times piece on tech trends for 2020 must veer into politics with a shot at President Trump in the first paragraph. Sad for a formerly great paper.
4
@Stephen Gianelli the more you hear about Tump's nefarious doings, the better off the USA will be.
2
@Stephen Gianelli
Unfortunately, the lesson of Mr. Trump has become one of those things that our public must not forget, post-impeachment, post-2020, post-the next decade, lest it should happen again.
1
@Stephen Gianelli Not sad at all.
1
I agree that the tech future looks bright. Smart devices and robots are taking off and the all the newer tech is way cooler than before. We may even see some needed changes and maturity in social media and privacy soon but we're not going to see much improvement in the human condition IMHO. We will continue to replace human interaction with the virtual as each of us crawl further into our personal shells. Also, we will continue to see the environment become more degraded and change in truly dangerous ways but it won't change the minds of voters who will continue to vote for greed and deny any reality that seems unpleasant to happily escape into a more controllable virtual world. In sum, I believe we are heading headlong into dystopia and crisis that may well outlast everyone alive today but that's not what you want to hear. Enjoy life as it is today. Happy New Year!
3
How about the tech that allows actual real people who used to work on programs designed to reduce emissions from coal fired power plants to find real employment again after the industry AND government decided this was no longer important? How about the tech to address workforce participation rates for scads of U-5 and U-6’s? How about the tech to get people in positions that make more sense for their education, knowledge, skills and abilities?
Apparently even a tech centric article isn't complete without making it about Trump.
My prediction ..
What’s coming will be a lot better than you expect: Trump's reelection. And it will be the most influential event of the new decade.
4
@Bhaskar
To all those who are predicting a Trump victory in 2020, I've said it before: dream on.
4
Statically, in this economy it is a near certainty — not a pipe dream.
3
@Stephen Gianelli the social climate is in crisis mode, and that trumps the economy illusion and will lead to Trump's ouster.
1
" I am going to predict that carrying around a device in our hand and staring at it will be a thing of the past by 2030."
I sure hope so but as I saw this story there were three little girls sitting at the counter of the pizzeria all watching a cacophony of different cartoons full blast simultaneously on their individual phones while their mother scrolled.
If they weren't so incredibly irritating and rude I might actually feel sorry for them.
9
I really, really wish you would have abandoned this Silicon Valley optimism - even for 5 minutes - about the future.
More Android smartphones - foldable or not - with more sophisticated tracking. Now with five cameras! Some new SSD's - faster! A new batch of iPhones in 2020 that are exactly like the ones from 2019, only more expensive.
Nobody will rein in Facebook, and the California Privacy Act will prove to be a toothless paper tiger.
And we'll continue to debate the role of social media in mass disinformation campaigns, and the right to privacy, but we won't do anything about either. Because endless, inconclusive and pointless debate is the only purpose of the debate.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Someone else said that, a long time ago. Today we call it "business as usual".
23
This is basically completely ridiculous. For instance:
"Many jobs will, in fact, be replaced by tech, especially ones that are rote and also many that are high paying in medicine, law and more. But this is also an opportunity to rethink the entire way we imagine employment and education."
Please. Sure - "rethinking the way we imagine employment and education" - that's what's going to happen as a result of further tech innovation.
20
Okay I work for a tech company (green tech, so I appreciate the support in this column) and yes I spend most of my waking hours on a phone or a laptop or an ipad or all three at once, God help me.
But I'm fortunate that since childhood, my family spent summers at a cabin in Montana that had no gizmos. Or phone service (unless you go down to the lake and hold your phone at just the right angle, at certain times of the day and the phase of the moon might factor in as well), or electricity or indoor plumbing for that matter.
When I go to that cabin for my skimpy one week vacation in the summer, it gets incredibly dark at night. And I sleep incredibly well. Not sure why: the fresh air, lack of stress, lack of any EM radiation from gizmos?
I'm getting closer to the day when I will no longer need a paycheck and can spend more time at that cabin, or in a tent, somewhere where there's no option to have a phone, at least not one capable of doing anything but sitting there innocuously...
Happy 2020 everyone!
139
@nerdrage Dark, quiet, and lack of worry! Light keeps us awake and the background noise we live with, even at night, is sufficient to cause the release of stress hormones. Ditto not having worry about problems at work and at home.
5
@nerdrage
'In wilderness is the salvation of the human soul' (or some such) a sage declared.
Unfortunately, with population growth, and politicians of CurrentOccupant ilk, such places are winking out of existence.
2
@nerdrage
You seem to be attributing the benefits of your experiences in Montana to your ability to get away from the internet. You would be marvelously enriched if you can also open your eyes to the birds, mammals, wildflowers, trees--in fact, the amazing and uplifting natural world that we are so fortunate to inhabit.
I admire your optimism even if I don't agree with it. If the last decade has shown us anything, it is that greed wins. Zuck will nevet let go, Brin and Page will never let go, Bezos will never let go.....they are already more powerful than the government that is supposed to be regulating them. As Prof. Galloway says, they are a tax most people are willing to pay to be a member of the society.
Sure, there are holdouts that are not a part of social media, e-commerce, and the like.....but, we are not the norm and the number of people that "hate" Facebook but use it everyday is in the hundred millions, same for Amazon and Google. Most people have willingly swapped their privacy for convenience. That isn't going to change.
We have the seen the enemy and it is us.
27
@Mary
C'mon, where's your optimism.
The Blue Wave in 2020 will result in trust-busting that will look Teddy Roosevelt look like an amateur.
As of 2021:
Zuck will be doing life without parole for complicity in the murder of 100,000 Rohingyas.
AFAIK neither Page nor Brin are criminals. But Alphabet will be forced to divest:
Utube
Nest
Waze
Android
and by far most important:
Doubleclick.
Bezos will be forced to divest Amazon Cloud, and Amazon will be barred from selling products that compete with their customers, or be barred from selling anything but their own products.
Let's aim for things that are meaningful and achievable.
Dan Kravitz
3
@Mary yup, greed has always corrupted every institution, and the gov't cannot regulate what it does not understand.
@Dan Kravitz - And the Democrats will stop the war in Afghanistan and close Gitmo, yes???
It would have been illuminating to have someone with genuine expertise in IT (Jared Lanier, perhaps?), rather a journalist whose career consists of blathering about it, opine about how tech will develop over the next decade. The NYT, for example, employs a genuine economist (Paul Krugman) to write opinion about the economy and very occasionally genuine mathematicians (Manil Suri, Steven Strogatz) to write about mathematics. Why not have genuine tech innovators weigh in about tech?
7
@richard I think there would be far less happy talk if a real tech expert were writing this column. No mention of how driverless vehicles will destroy the livelihoods that employ millions of people, particularly men, in the trucking, taxi, delivery and Uber/Lift businesses?
3
@Richard Because tech "innovators," to use the most over-hyped word of the 21st century, are among the most self-serving of the self-serving capitalist class. Those are the last guys -- and I do mean "guys" -- you should want forecasting the future of their rapacious industry. Although she goes easier on the techmeisters than I do, I find Ms. Swisher both credible and knowledgeable. In any case, forecasting the future of anything is always a crapshoot, no matter who does it.
So lighten up a bit, and happy new year.
12
@Tony Long I agree with you if the term 'tech innovators' is construed to mean people in Silly-Con Valley. I meant people who had had actual ideas of some merit (copmputer scientists, electrical engineers, statisticians), not promoters rapacious, consumerist scams.
1
I like these predictions and I appreciate the author's happy determinism. To the future we go! Ahoy!
3
Kara, thanks for penning your piece. As always, it's thoughtful, but leaves enough room for ongoing debate regarding the true facts behind, or future of your prognosis. Tech has been a toy and a distraction for millions of Americans, and billions of human beings. Hopefully over the next decade they will learn how to improve their relationships with each other using these tools and not become more isolated. Hopefully we will learn how to identify people who are struggling with depression, substance abuse, or are merely being manipulated by nefarious con men. Hopefully individuals will also figure out a way to benefit their daily routine from the use of "big data" and not merely be manipulated themselves by big tech.
Whatever happens, I look forward to reading your take on it next year. I also hope that you and your family have a great new year.
5
Yeats-y is a truly horrid neologism. Let's either leave him out of it or read more than one of his poems.
8
@GP I read it as yeasty. Hmm not sure that's a good thing?
1
@nerdrage
I read it as Yates-y.
Maybe something about the next decade and Yates' age of anxiety, not a good thing either?
One simple possible solution to Phone Addiction. The model comes from cars, of all things.
I rent cars in Europe. When the car comes to a stop, the engine turns off.
In the immediate future, when I own a phone, unless it is in my hand, the power is automatically switched off. I, the actual human owner of that phone, have choices:
- The phone automatically turns on when I get a phone call, text or e-mail.
- Any or all or none of the above.
- It turns on and rings only if there is an incoming call from a member of my immediate family.
Any permutations of the above that I care to dictate to that phone.
Otherwise, the power turns on when I put the fiendish device in my grubby little hand, and not before.
Dan Kravitz
2
@Dan Kravitz
Not sure I get where you are coming from.
If the phone is on when it's in your hand or it turns on when you get a call or text then how does that stop you from using it?
That's kind of like saying I won't drink whiskey unless open the bottle and pour it in a glass. Or I won't smoke a cigarette unless i light it and put it in my mouth.
2
@Dan Kravitz I can't speak of the iPhone, but with Android you can configure the phone to this criteria.
@William
You can configure this new imaginary phone NOT to turn on when you get a call or text, or to turn on only if the call or text comes from specific people.
Dan Kravitz
I also have a slight aversion to tech, but often wonder if doing without would plunge me into the dark ages or at the very least, the Amish lifestyle. Where I disagree is regarding Trump's tweets, because those are going to be around for ever.
1
"... the bottom line is that a more diverse work force results in more innovative products. "
Not one shred of evidence exists to back up that statement. If it was true, then the most successful tech companies would be dominated by women and minorities.
18
@Mark: That would be if success equaled innovation. But there are plenty of cases where major success comes from taking someone else's innovation, and applying aggressive business skills.
3
@Mark What she's written might or might not be true in an ideal context. We simply cannot know. The evidence you've alluded to proves nothing other than that in the current environment, with a tremendous legacy of racism and sexism in our country, white men have taken full advantage of their privilege. The argument in favor of diversity of access and opportunity, not results, rests on a belief in fairness not in material advantage.
4
@Mark And that statement might grossly over-estimate how much "innovation" really factors into a business' success, vs say being ruthless about overworking and underpaying cadres of young male employees who don't have families to worry about; or depending on Washington lobbyists to help maintain a business advantage that does not at all come from being smarter or better than the other company.
1
Take the anonymity away and make people own up to their online opinions. I understand the privacy concerns, but the diminishment of online hate would be well worth it.
I also wish social media platforms would stop using “freedom of speech” as an excuse to publish lies, bigotry, and hate. The government must allow freedom of speech, but publishers, tech platforms, and other businesses can and should take responsibility for what they release into the world.
108
@Jo Kennedy
Either that or make people pay.
Or both.
I wouldn't have made this useless comment if it cost me a penny.
18
@Jo Kennedy What you're advocating is a very slippery slope. Who decides what's a lie, bigoted and hateful? Racist these days is thrown around so much it's completely lost its meaning. Many sites already do what you say and it's being used to shut down opinions others don't agree with. What would be more effective is to focus on where the hate comes from in the first place.
4
@GP Yeah well then everyone would run off to the new sites being launched that are free or should I say "free" because you know you're paying the bill one way or the other...because someone's getting your data to sell you junk via advertising. And then we all get ad blockers and the cycle repeats.
PS hey this is a paid site, aren't you paying for it? Sssh, don't tell em about the cache clearing trick...
2
By 2030 we won't have hand held phones because the tech will be a combination of wearable and plug-in -- glasses and a device inserted into the ear like a hearing aid (physically implanted tech being rejected due to the need for constant upgrades and the potential for health risks). Other than the fact that the user will have two free hands, the benefits and downside will remain more or less as they are with hand-held phones.
Software will enable us to work more remotely than we do now, and without the loss of interactivity, since the virtual meeting/convo tech will be so good. Less commuting will be a huge plus for multiple reasons.
Remote work plus super sophisticated online gaming and virtual sex will cause some to become more physically inactive and isolated than ever.
Others will combine virtual reality apps with actual physical exercise to become more active without ever leaving the house (your treadmill will put you in the Swiss Alps much more realistically). Your friends who have the same app will be able to join you, everyone talking freely while taking in the same scenery, each from their own home.
If we're smart, we'll work less, commute less, buy less, and play more. You never know. It might be a lot of fun.
1
@GH I'm guessing the in-the-ear phones will be less common, and we'll use nice high quality headphones, for comfort and better sound, just like nowadays. But, who knows?
@GH
why not just wifi into the processor in your brain which runs on electricity? Humans will be hardware free.
Start with an attack on Trump in the first paragraph and proceed to state how much one hopes for depolarization.
I would like to add something to the wish list. How about an AI backend app that alerts one to irony and self awareness fails. v2.0 would have 1-10 settings one could adjust based on the company one is in.
4
@no pretenses: Attack? I thought Trump's defenders were on his side in that matter. Was there something wrong with outing the whistle-blower? I mean, no-one says he didn't do it. Do they?
1
I'm only in my late 20s yet I hold zero optimism for the future. I wont't be satisfied until we have some "right to be forgotten" laws in the United States. Of course, that will *never* happen. The wealthy *always* get their way, and surveillance capitalism is just too good.
41
@Mikki The rich and powerful will benefit most from right to be forgotten laws. Wouldn't they love to be able to censor all their bad behavior from being propagated on the internet forever?
6
I found this article didn’t really say anything.
232
@James
Haha, thanks for being so succinct.
1
That’s what I concluded after reading.
Why do they print it? Maybe to discourage my using phone to read this verbiage.
1
No longer are the Trolls hiding beneath the bridge. They are on network news, endless blogs, all spouting "The Sky is Falling." And when we crane our necks we see a Geico, Progressive, Drug Company advertisement for an ailment that didn't exist 10 years ago. Pre-Diabetes??? Low T???
Our Liberty has been squashed like an ant beneath the Toes of Technology.
8
Yes, isn't it pretty to think so.
While you are at it, let's count on big tech to make Trump psychologically healthy, Americans less materialistic and self-focused, and establish world peace.
6
How is it that everyone from Shakespeare (16th-17th century) to Moliere (17th century) KNEW that politics and the priestcraft attracted some of the most shameless hucksters, hypocrites, and sex fiends -- and if that's too archaic, try Diderot -- but today, in 2019 on the brink of 2020, we are SHOCKED SHOCKED when the High Priests of Silicon Valley and Ultimate Spying turn out not to think they should have to respect any of society's rules, much less the hoi polloi, and to achieve that laudable level of "individual liberty" composes an elaborate ethics discourse?
Really?
REALLY?
What did you think they do?
BTW, if Bernie is not the nominee, I'll be working day and night for Trump in the hope of hastening the end of human life on Earth.
It is the fare we will deserve and it will give other species a better shot at surviving and evolving.
13
@Chris if memory serves me correctly, there was a presidential candidate in 2016 that was adamant only he could save America. Or the world. Or whatever. He convinces a lot of people of that. You are repeating the egomaniacal fantasy with Bernie? I don’t know if that makes me sad or angry.
8
“Eliminate anonymity”
This is my biggest complaint with the NYT tech columnists—they aren’t even internally consistent. If you eliminate anonymity, how does that protect privacy?
I look forward Ms. Swisher’s future column when she slams some social media company for taking steps to eliminate anonymity on their platform as a threat to privacy.
4
What I'd like to see is December 2024 being ... 'delete all useless data month'. Where everyone (including companies) ritualistically deletes all the pointless/bad/intrusive digital information data/pictures/etc. that has accumulated.
Make it a tradition every 5 years.
12
Would love to see Faith Popcorn's take here.
2
@Courtney
Too busy Cocooning. But worth looking back at her book Future Shock and seeing what trends panned out.
@Concerned Citizen
You’re correct. My bad.
Whatever happens, Kara, I loved your cameo in the “Silicon Valley” finale. It was a nice demonstration of your cynical sense of humor about tech...which is refreshing. Happy 2020 and beyond!
I like Kara Swisher's columns, and being a Bay Area resident I understand why she equates social media/mobile apps/online tech generally with "tech." But the truth is that "tech" happens in many fields, in many places, all over the world, in many dedicated communities. The bacteriologist in Taiwan is every bit as much a participant in "tech" as the applied physicist in Zurich, the civil engineer in Ghana, the coder in Bangalore, the autonomous vehicle researcher in Shenzhen, etc., etc. etc. Which is exactly why it is impossible to predict much of anything precisely. Having said that, one not-so-rosy prediction is this: if the "decoupling" between China and the US pervades research fields, there will be a lot of duplicated research, wasted opportunities, and pointless competition. Differing political systems and national security issues are always going to impact science cooperation. But we should not let this get out of hand. Especially in climate change, genetic research, new pharma products, the problems are too big to waste resources "reinventing the wheel" in two large research countries.
6
Periodically power off your phone and place it into a Faraday bag. Periodically conduct random searches and use exotic words texts. You’ll quickly find out who’s using you as an income source, like ye olde NYT. There’s so much out there already that you can only control what you add to the preexisting. If you do nothing else this year, begin to pay for your services! Pay for a VPN, pay for a password manager app, and pay for email like protonmail.
5
@PMD A good ad blocker or two also helps a lot. I'm sure a lot of fun ads are being shoved at me right now, let's see, 29 from this page alone, wow.
2
It seems like in every column Swisher writes she repeats how "mean" she's been to Tech, or how she's been a "strong critic" of it.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, even if it is rewriting history.
As for the predictions, they don't seem to be reality-based in any meaningful way, with the "Automation for good" section being particularly vacuous..."creatively and humanely deploying talent across the world" to replace the many millions of jobs for lawyers, radiologists, and truck-drivers that twenty-something "innovators" will become multi-millionaires and billionaires by destroying?
This is one of the most important issues facing developed and developing countries alike. Failure to address it may very well be the catalyst for chaos on a global scale. Accordingly, it deserves a much more thoughtful analysis.
20
An optimistic column that rings true. We’ve seen the downside after being told there wasn’t one. We’re hungry for an upside and tech will deliver or fail.
2
Kara is correct. Screens now are new and a novelty. Eventually they will become the norm and be just a fact of life.
it's hard to gather up the yarns of past weaving and try to make a new garment. but don't bother: we always stand in the same relation to technology -- overblown promises, unexpected consequences, and incremental encroachment.
what is technology for? i am going to opt for technology as profit generator, whether you call that better efficiency or lower labor costs or enhanced security surveillance or more accurate recordkeeping or improved insights or greater media enthrallment. my tech prediction is that technology will continue to be profitable, greatly.
profit generator means what? if you just say the words "infrastructure" and "consumer behavior" then you have 80% of the story, excluding porn of course.
friends and neighbors ask me, "why do we no longer have strong religions?" and i answer, "because infrastructure does all the guiding, shaping and controlling now. why have ten commandments? surveillance video works much better."
so my second tech prediction is that human will become, overall, more enthralled, enmeshed, ensorcelled and encumbered with convenience. because convenience is what we postmoderns call our sedan chair infrastructure and grandin chute future.
automate depolarization, productize climate remedy, fit education to machines? there you have, in sum, the brief for human thrall. we can no longer address existential crises or muster mundane decency out of our human and communal agency; these now must be solved with machines. they own us.
4
"Save yourself and the planet: live simply, naturally, peacefully! There's actually no choice about this." - Murray Bolesta, Dec. 2019
4
Maybe we'll get lucky and that next earth shattering asteroid will score a bullseye. It would solve issues like climate change, Trump's tweets, and who will win the next season of Dancing With The Stars.
8
@Joe
I can't help but think that we are headed for just such an apocalypse. The elites have their underground bunkers provisioned and waiting while 99% of us are to be left to our fates.
How else can you explain the unwillingness of anyone to deal with the major issues facing humanity?
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS if we're facing a calamity we cannot prevent that will kill off most of humanity. Provisions have been made for a small number to survive but nothing more can be done. The financial system does not matter. Climate change does not matter. Pollution does not matter.
The sad thing is that those chosen for survival are those most likely to guarantee our extinction.
The best thing that could happen to tech is these tech companies abandon their business model of collecting personal data and then analyzing it and selling the results for targeted advertising. If they don't do that whatever else they do will be negative for society. An alternative is to sell their services which is basically what all other companies do that provide services. The would also have the positive effect of cutting down on internet addiction, going back to meals where everyone doesn't have their cellphones out, and numerous other benefits that would come with a world of more privacy and less tech on display.
4
My prediction is that general TV commercials will become a thing of the past, and be replaced by targeted ads (informed by the account owners data/cookie trail) in the manner of web-based ads.
1
This is as wise a forecast as one could possibly make. And we can bet that pretty much all of it will be wrong. The reason is simple -- all advances are treated as smooth and evolutionary. What really changes the use of technology are unexpected breakthroughs. The kinds that one cannot anticipate.
6
Ms. Swisher: While the title of your piece is "Tech Predictions for the Next Decade" when you discuss "automation for good" you don't actually make a prediction about how increased automation will be good but instead merely urge tech companies to "figure out how to creatively and humanely deploy talent across the world to show that they are interested in dealing with the consequences of their inventions." The only way to deal with uncontrolled automation that eliminates employment without creating other suitable employment is to ban it. Uncontrolled automation is a weapon of mass economic destruction and should be treated the way we treat other weapons of mass destruction.
18
@Jay Orchard
Another rosy trope about the "jobs of tomorrow", which none of the "experts" ever seem to be able to specify; they just "know" they're there. They also can't tell you what training you'll need. The only data-point they base this prediction on is the Industrial Revolution, which caused massive dislocation but did provide soul-crushing employment to millions. For a brief period after WWII, workers actually did reap the rewards of their toil, but that golden age has ended. If a machine can replace 100 workers, how can any one job possibly make up for the shortfall?
9
@stan continople
If Democrats had been able to solve this, we wouldn't have Trump. Needless to say, he can't solve it, either. If you press a technologist, a futurist, or a politician on this point they will eventually fall back on the the stock answer: "there will be winners and losers." An honest appraisal, at least.
2
Writers never seem to mention the high participation rate at all levels in elite tech by various Asian ethnicities. To NYT and many others, that doesn't count as diversity. I don't think even many professionals with non-tech backgrounds understand how difficult much technical engineering, research and development is to do. People who grow up in mediocre schools and in cultures that don't emphasize education have a huge chasm to cross in order to participate in high tech in an advanced way.
34
“Added bonus: President Trump’s tweets will probably be gone, too.” Here is a vote for this result.
35
No one makes you read them.
@Stephen Gianelli The problem is that JOURNALIST'S read them and then they wind up in our face anyway. We have Twitter users to thank for the rise of the moral degenerate now befouling the Oval Office.
1
I think the first tech trillionaire will be the person who figures out how to effectively and economically remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.
The world will continue to warm for a long time even if we stopped harmful emissions now. The damage is already done!
Some forms of engineering solution will have to be part of the reversal of the warming.
13
@James Rennie
Tech has been nothing more than a wonderful opportunity for white men in particular to get richer and pretend they are gods
Facebook has been spying on the population creating dark corners for the KKK to thrive and endanger the lives of American people.
Everyone who professes to be a tech leader should be working on climate change. All the money the tech companies have made should be setting up companies, working with state legislators to find ways to protect our cities. If the tech companies are not addressing climate change then they are not about saving the planet.
The rest of this spying ,tracking doesn't matter if our communities, homes, apt building are going to be swept away by weather changes that are so severe that people are in constant fear
I don't want to hear about Bill Gates all the money he has put into Africa the people are still starving and there is an increased shortage of water.
Why are people leaving their homelands, traveling across oceans leaving everything behind? because the weather is destroying their homeland.
If Tech wizards don't want to address this climate change then don't tell us about the latest stupid product that does nothing to cure cancer, help all people not the elites to improve meaningful daily life activities.
WE pay for products that don't achieve the constant marketing slogans. Some of us are tired of dealing with large tech companies who treat their paying customers as if they are fools.
2
"I think the world’s first trillionaire will be a green-tech entrepreneur."
I agree. This is a critically important point. Moving into a better future is not a loss or a burden to be borne. It is moving to better, to making a lot of money, to doing things better that make us happier.
Think of the vast amounts of money that were made on coal and then oil. A very great deal more than that will be made by whoever sells a lot more energy to a lot more people in an energy hungry world. It is a potential bonanza.
There is no reason to be dragging our feet and complaining all the way. Whoever rushes out ahead on this could get rich beyond the wildest imaginings of oil and coal barons.
5
'With all due respect to Greta Thunberg and the efforts of young people across the globe to bring attention to climate change, governments may never agree on how to properly address our lurch toward environmental suicide. Which is why it is critically important that tech turn its focus toward creating products that will save us.'
This is the lunacy we've come to expect from the tech quarter generally, this source particularly. Technology, 'products' of all things, ain't gonna save us, for Christ's sake. The clear message of the dilemma we've put ourselves in is clear: less hubris, more restraint.
277
@richard
Actually, you couldn't be much wronger, but that's typical of Times readers (and columnists!) when they discuss technology.
Virtually *all* of the reductions in greenhouse emissions have been the result of technology. Whether it's more efficient cars or LED lighbulbs or windmills, technology has slashed emissions beyond what they would otherwise be.
She is right in this. Governments will continue to do nothing until the situation becomes disastrous and they have to build seawalls. Technology is our main hope here, indeed, it could save us *if* governments only cared.
2
Hope that you're right that people' will stop staring
at their hands. Maybe this can be part of your first
point about climate change. Less screen-time, less
electricity consumption, bring it on!
5
I wish I could be this optimistic. I for one would be glad if tech reliance diminished rather than increased in the future.
41
Say "no" to spying apps. Leave your phone at home occasionally.
17
It wouldn't be the NY Times without the gratuitous dig at Donald Trump.
Thank you for confirming that bias is alive and thriving even in technology news.
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@The Owl
Actually, this is an opinion column, not a news article. The author is free to express her opinion. She doesn't have to be unbiased.
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This article isn’t “technology news,” it’s an opinion piece by a regular opinion contributor to the Opinion-Editorial (or “Op-Ed”) section. That you can’t (or refuse to) tell the difference doesn’t change that fact.
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@The Owl It's only because so many of us don't like him.
21
Wishful thinking on all fronts.
9
Btw I love your columns and podcasts. Just saying. :)
It seems as though all of your predictions require an intelligent filtering configuration that could be user-defined based off of AI-identified behaviors/content/timing. Is this what would be the crux of how most of your predictions would materialize?
Thank you.
1
I think I will pass on the tech incorporated in my body, the conveniences and applications obtained aren't worth big tech and government tracking me like a chipped german shepherd that bolts from the property when its owners turn their heads
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Boring read and nothing more than rehashed left wing talking points. Interesting seeing as you touch on depolarization.
8
I'm certain that tech implanted into human bodies is coming.
But I don't see how having everyone walking down the street with digital "visions" streaming directly into their brains will be better than everyone walking down the street with their face in their phone.
People will soon simply forget how to be alone with themselves and how to independently observe and interact with the world. That seems bad to me, but it's coming, because that is clearly what people want.
130
Agreed, we already have the research showing the profound impact the internet has had on our attention spans, memories, social interactions, and sense of self. The merger of human and machine has already started and will continue to progress forward. I see a future in which people become more and more engaged with the information cloud that now surrounds us all, and individuality further waning into a collective perception of reality that is more facsimile than real. A digital world in which even the illusion of free will is shattered as Facebook or Google make the choices for us. ‘Personalizing’ content into a homogenous digital culture.
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@Cary
I'm in the top 10% of being outraged (still) at how fixated people of all ages 6-75 (in my personal experience) are - principally on their phones, but earbuds and other tech clearly are in the mix.
Bad, I believe, for all the obvious reasons - and I suspect that your list and mine would have lots of overlap.
But many of the finest minds we have in our country and elsewhere DO recognize that you can often learn more from the person a few feet away from you than you can from anything you've ever seen or ever will see on your phone.
New Year's Eve SHOULD BE (imho) a time for at least a little optimism - ok, maybe Ms. Swisher crosses the line between predictions she would bet on and ones which get her word count up to where it had to be.
People used to smoke at - just a guess - 50% rates. Now, it's probably under 10% for college grads - again, a guess.
My hunch is that just as many parents enforce limited gadget pervasiveness in connection with under sixes they have brought into the world, increasing numbers will take control of their own dependency issues.
Just as drugs of all kinds have *mostly* taken "the least among us" - I know that's harsh and has millions of exceptions, but I stand by it. The victims mostly had the bad luck to be born poor or not very bright.
And since some of the finest minds are "hired guns" at Google, Apple, Amazon, FB, etc., it's a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. But when the damage is as obvious as with opioids, change will come!
5
It wouldn't surprise me if Trump's tweets will be here for all five of his terms (or however long he lives). I know what you're thinking, the 22nd Amendment forbids it. As if that mattered one whit to the current Republicans.
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@David Derbes-Wouldn't it be great if Twitter shut down Trump's account? Well. One can hope.
2
@Concerned Citizen It is not paranoid when the behavior exhibited by the R’s and by Trump is consistent with the trashing of governmental norms for the past 100 + years. You suggest that Trump too will die and not long past a (god forbid) second term; furthermore, eating all those cheeseburgers may hasten the end.
But what makes you think this democracy came with a guarantee, even without a Trump? It did not and governments of longer duration than ours have gone into the bin of history, especially when they refused to face the realities of their day, as ours is doing now.
3
"That’s too bad, since I think the world’s first trillionaire will be a green-tech entrepreneur."
There's something deeply disturbing about that sentence. Isn't part of our wariness of techies the drive for wealth above all other goals? Greed is largely responsible for our climate crisis.
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@nom de guerre Not greed...economics. Until tech can can make "green energy" solutions cost competitive with fossil fuels climate change will continue unabated.
FYI, it is offensive for someone in the first world to call someone in the third world "greedy" when all they are trying to do is have a decent job to put food on the table. China emits more green houses gases than the US and Europe combined. China's GDP per capita is $9700 while US GDP per capita is $62,900. Yep...those "greedy" Chinese are the cause of the climate problems.
5
@nom de guerre
Er, no, that isn't typical of "techies," but of some CEO's, and that is true of *every* business. And what does climate change have to do with tech? Contemporary tech, anyway. Technology gives us electric vehicles and LED lightbulbs; greed gives us Dickensian power plants that are fueled off coal.
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@C.G.
Your comment perplexes me, as I didn't specify any nationality.
FYI, alternative energy solutions are already competitive with fossil energy if one includes the corporate welfare and tax breaks given industries like gas and coal.
6
I predict that we can walk and chew gum at the same time about climate change - meaning that Greta Thunberg and the young people are correct that governments must (and hopefully will) work on climate change as their citizens demand it.
I also think that if governmental agencies make changes, it certainly doesn't preclude the tech world from moving forward on climate change, too.
On this New Year's Eve, let's hope that in the next decade we see progress on this issue. Unfortunately, if we don't, we will most likely have much, much worse climate problems by 2030.
36
@Shellie F.
Hope makes a good breakfast but a poor supper.
I’m happy to see the shoutout to Tristan Harris. Big thinkers like him need to stay a part of our conversation about the influence tech has on our lives (and I’m also guilty of over use). As a one-time fossil fuel evangelist, I’m also interested to see how quickly renewables can “keep it in the ground”. I talk to renewable entrepreneurs and they act like we are about 15 minutes away from a number of advances. I know that’s not true. And, they need to stop setting false expectations to try to raise a ton of VC money.
I didn’t see the past 10 years coming with such advances (I mean, it took us a long time to get from a stove in every home to a microwave oven in every home). Apple dropping a product off 2 hours after I order it? Wow.
Absolutely LOVE these predictions! It would be wonderful if even a couple of them came to pass in a mere 10 years.
And each is thought-provoking in a way that perhaps only the tech writer of the decade rapidly drawing to a close - Ms. Swisher - could possibly come up with.
But her #3 ("automation for good" - I prefer "a kinder and gentler automation") strikes me as having the same probability as "the 2nd coming" or Armageddon. I don't rule any of them out entirely, but I like predictions that go a little beyond "Let's all close our eyes and repeat after me...."
Amazon has had thousands of such opportunities every day - actually dozens of sizable ones with the number ballooning if one considers kinder alternatives - for at least 5 years and has said "Nah" to each and every one. That is, their corporate culture is rooted in zero-sum - anything that lets other people in their ecosystem net $1 more is perceived to be a kind of unintentional hard-to-count act of charity, and there simply is no place for that in the company as it exists.
I don't see that changing, and it's pretty easy to substitute 2-5 equally obvious names for "Amazon" in the above. When one thinks that their original business was books ... and they now sell more "counterfeit" (not-1-cent-to-the-author) books than they do genuine books, have known this for years and done absolutely nothing about it,... one realizes that they just turned Google's "do no evil" on its head with "it isn't evil if it makes money."
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I am going to predict that carrying around a device in our hand and staring at it will be a thing of the past by 2030.
Unless boomboxes come back - perish the thought.
17
Yeah. We will all have Google glasses.
3
@Leigh are you suggesting Apple implants?p
3
@Leigh Yeah, because the new "screen" will always be directly in front of, or implanted into, our eyes. Then being able to just put away a phone will seem quaint.
3