Agenda

We have some serious work to do. Far too many people lead miserable lives because they lack the most basic necessities to deal with hunger, thirst, shelter, disease, or disability. In addition, the prosperity currently enjoyed by many of us may not be taken for granted in the future. The experts in this book have identified a range of breakthroughs that are urgently required if we are to improve the fate of humanity in the decades ahead and look to the future with greater confidence. There will be some hard choices, and some lines of research will probably need to be pursued at the expense of others. Industry should change and adopt new strategies. And we as a society should accept and foster that change. The evolution of technology, industry, and society is a complex process full of feedback mechanisms and surprises. It’s vital that we understand the most promising ways to facilitate the necessary changes of direction. The technologies proposed in this book aren’t straightforward; otherwise, they would have been identified much sooner. The days when you could produce a brilliant invention in your garden shed have largely gone. Anyone wishing to improve the current state of technology needs a solid pedigree and will need to labor long and hard with a group of dedicated colleagues, in many cases relying on extremely expensive equipment. Breakthroughs demand the stamina, laborious testing, and inspiration of countless scientists and engineers. Hundreds of thousands of design hours can go into a new microchip, car, or power-generation technique. Developing new technology is a complex process. That complexity is exemplified by the development of the laser. Einstein predicted the principle of stimulated emission on which lasers are based long before World War II. But it was many more decades before working lasers were created and longer still before they were put to practical use. Once we had them, however, we found we could use them in new scientific instruments that opened up fresh areas of research.

Reliable Finance

As we were drafting our first version of this chapter, the world was abruptly seized by the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Having just written about the impact that instability, the bonus culture, and the bursting of financial bubbles might have on our collective future, it was disconcerting to see those ideas leap from the page and run amok in the global economy. Rather than tempt fate any further, we put our text on hold and went back to Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, the financial expert with whom we had discussed the potential for precisely this kind of ominous development a few months earlier. Bouchaud knows just how fast money can move. He has set up his computer systems in three separate continents, as close to the major financial centers as possible, because communication between the continents can lag by a few milliseconds—a costly delay he simply can’t afford. “The speed of hot money is close to the speed of light,” he jokes. “It’s relativistic finance.” As a physicist, Bouchaud is well aware of the constraints that the theory of relativity imposes on our actions. But that’s not the only inspiration he has drawn from the laws of nature. Bouchaud’s focus is on the most refined physics, which uses the behavior of individual atoms to explain how collective phenomena such as electrical conductivity and magnetism arise. Nowadays, he’s professor at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris, but he has been applying his knowledge of collective phenomena to financial market prices for many years now. Together with Jean-Pierre Aguilar and Marc Potters, Bouchaud is the cofounder of Capital Fund Management, which rapidly grew into France’s largest and most successful hedge fund. What makes the fund so successful is, perhaps, that Bouchaud’s ideas differ fundamentally from the standard approach that economists have developed over the years. A huge amount of research was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s to identify patterns in financial markets. This gave rise to the “quantitative” economic theories that banks and financial institutions now use routinely.

Disaster Scenarios

A hurricane striking the Chinese coast is ten times as lethal as one hitting the United States. The number of U.S. victims is limited because of better precautions, warning systems, and evacuation methods. More effective observation and communication can save lives. A century ago, hurricanes killed around 7,000 Americans every year, whereas nowadays there are only very few hurricanes of the lethality of Katrina. That progress has yet to reach every corner of Earth, says Guus Berkhout regretfully. This Dutch geophysicist has immersed himself in the mechanisms of disasters and disaster prevention since the beginning of his scientific career—first as professor of seismic imaging and later as professor of innovation at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. We talked to him at the university campus that lies 3 meters below sea level. At his laboratory, Berkhout analyzes the early warning systems and contingency plans that will be needed to protect both his lab and his compatriots. “We can’t stop earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, or tidal waves from happening,” he stresses. “And we may never be able to predict hurricanes or earthquakes with sufficient accuracy. Nor can we hope to prevent people from living in dangerous places. They are simply too attractive.” Human beings indeed seem addicted to living on the edge of catastrophe. The World Bank has calculated that a fifth of all countries are under permanent threat of natural disaster, with some 3.4 billion people—roughly half the world’s population—at heightened risk of being killed by one. Yet unsafe regions are often exceptionally popular places to live and work, one reason being that floodplains and the slopes of volcanoes are highly fertile. The climate is milder along the coast, the soil better, and transport more efficient than farther inland. Even the likelihood of earthquakes isn’t enough to persuade people to live elsewhere, as witnessed by some of the most densely populated areas of California and Japan. Current migration trends—moving to where the action is—suggest that the proportion of people living in unsafe areas will only increase.

The Nursery of Life

Human beings are much more complex than any technology we could devise today. How many machines are good for 80 or 90 years of service? Our immune system—set up at birth—is able to repel diseases that don’t even exist yet. Most viruses that proliferate 50 years after we were born can be defeated just as easily as maladies that have been dogging humans for generations. Effective health care means that—in most regions of the planet—we are living longer and longer. All the same, human beings are not perfect: We get sick and we wear out over time. In the wealthier regions, we spend a great deal of money trying to get as close as possible to a 100-year span. Our greatest task is to bring a long and healthy life within the reach of as many people as possible. New technology is required to hold down the cost of health care, to nip outbreaks of disease in the bud, and to ease discomfort in our old age. Scientists believe that substantial benefits can be gained by identifying abnormalities earlier. A cancerous growth measuring just a few millimeters is still relatively harmless, and an infection caught in its early stages won’t leave any scars. Although techniques for accurately diagnosing incipient abnormalities can often be very expensive, prompt diagnosis generally means that treatment will be easier, cheaper, and more likely to succeed. Thus, we can end up saving money despite the need for expensive equipment. To adequately fight the outbreak of diseases in the future, our technology must be able to respond more rapidly. This could pose a particular challenge because there is also a trend at present toward superspecialization, which is fragmenting medical knowledge and slowing down responses. Take the science of ophthalmology in which the various specializations focus on extremely specific parts of the eye. This is fine once a precise diagnosis has been made, but it could be a significant problem if the patient consults the wrong doctor at the outset. The way we currently approach diagnosis needs to change.

Robust Logistics

Our lives seem to revolve around schedules. If we don’t honor them with second-to-second precision, we miss our trains and our workplace rosters fall apart. We’re reliant on one another, and we constantly have to coordinate our schedules with those of others. Planning is crucial to our industry, too. If you unexpectedly run out of nuts and bolts, you can’t make any more cars, and the entire production process grinds to a halt. No manufacturer can afford that, so industrial companies employ large teams of specialists whose job is to ensure there are never any shortages of key parts. A worldwide logistic network has become our industry’s lifeblood. The central issue facing logistics is that of reliability. How do you keep your supply network intact? And how do you limit the consequences if it fails? These are questions that go far beyond the supply of nuts and bolts for new cars. Reliable logistics touches equally on the web of interactions that determine food production and the optimization of the Internet. It also extends to power supply, telecommunications, and workforce. Reliable networks make our society tick. But they face uncertainties of various kinds. That lends a broader significance to insights gained from industrial logistics, which offer us tools we can use to optimize networks and account for uncertainties in other areas as well. The reliability of a supply network is intimately bound up with the inventories you need to maintain. Businesses hold millions of dollars’ worth of supplies in their warehouses to make absolutely certain they never cease production due to a failure in the supply chain. So the key question is how large a stock do you need to hold of each component? Smart planning to hold down inventory levels in your warehouse generates immediate savings. On the other hand, you need enough stock to ensure continuity should anything go wrong. Optimizing storage is a common problem in supply networks. There is always a trade-off between the reliability of the network and the need for it to be profitable in an economic sense.

Managing Failures

Computers are the engines that drive our society. We get paid via computer, and we use them to vote in elections; computers decide whether to deploy the airbags in our car; and doctors use them to help identify a patient’s injuries. Computers are embedded in all sorts of processes nowadays, and that can make us vulnerable. Because of a single computer glitch, large payment systems can grind to a halt. When computers malfunction, we risk losing our power supply, our railway links, and our communications. Worst of all, we habitually shift responsibility to computers and blindly follow their advice. This is why patients occasionally receive ridiculously high doses of a powerful drug or a car driver who blindly follows his satnav may end up in a ditch. Ubiquitous computer use can cause otherwise responsible people to leave their common sense at home. We’re all too familiar with poorly designed software, computer errors, or—worse still—programs that flatly refuse to function properly no matter what we do. It is hardly surprising then that computer failures cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In the United States alone, failed computer projects are believed to waste $55 billion annually. And the media only report the tip of the iceberg— the foul-ups that cost millions or result in fatalities. For instance, in the 1980s, several cancer patients were killed by a programming error that caused the Therac 25 radiotherapy unit to deliver excessive doses of radiation. In 1996, Europe’s first Ariane 5 rocket had to be blown up a mere 37 seconds after launch in what might be the costliest software failure in history. In 2007, six F-22 aircraft experienced multiple computer crashes as they crossed the date line, disabling all navigation and communication systems. The list can be extended endlessly, and there are many more failures that we never hear about. Only about a third of all computer projects can be described as successful, and even these are hardly error-free. Why can’t we prevent programming mistakes? Could we improve computers and their software to protect society from the “moods”’ of its digital machines?

More Communication

Things were very different 20 years ago. There was no Internet and no e-mail. The first text message had yet to be sent. Many European countries were still opening enormous transmission towers to put the finishing touches to their national television networks. Go back another 20 years, just as the first push-button phones were hitting the market, and a single computer would have taken up an entire living room should anyone have ever considered installing one. International phone calls were so expensive that people often timed them with stopwatches. The world has shrunk considerably since those days. E-mailing a research report or chatting online has become second nature. We can collaborate with someone on the other side of the world almost as easily as we can with a person two streets away. Companies use the Internet to outsource their accounts to India. Photographers sell their work all over the world. And if we want to, we can listen to Japanese radio in our European offices. Much of this book was written far away from the experts we interviewed. Yet in all the hundreds of phone calls, e-mails, and video sessions that went into its production, nobody paid the slightest thought to the physical distances separating us. As the world shrinks, the way we use our communication networks intensifies. The volume of data we send is doubling every year, and the capacity of computer networks and telephone cables inexorably increases, too. Communication technology continues to improve at a rapid rate. And with each doubling of capacity, the price of transporting information halves. Things will no doubt look very different again 20 years from now. By that time, for instance, regions that currently lack Internet access will have been connected. The first signs of these changes are already apparent. Africans are playing an important part in computer projects set up around the world by volunteers. They are involved, for instance, in developing Linux—the open-source alternative to the Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Projects like this give programmers the chance to take part in global technological developments.

Water for Life

Over a billion people don’t have access to a safe water supply. And a third of the world’s population lacks basic sanitation with the result that more than 2 billion human beings are afflicted with infections that result in diarrhea and other diseases. Tens of millions of them die every year. Improving this state of affairs poses a massive challenge. Take sanitation: What if we could provide basic facilities for all those people over the next 20 years? You’d have to hook them up to the sewer system at the rate of half a million a day. We know how to install individual toilets and sewage pipes, but a project on that kind of scale is way beyond our capabilities. It would not only require new technology but a huge amount of money and political will, too. The challenges for providing all humanity with access to clean water are similarly gigantic. It’s not a matter of scarcity. There is enough drinking water for everyone on Earth even as its population continues to grow. According to the United Nations, a human being needs 20 liters of drinking water a day to live healthily. Every year, 100,000 cubic kilometers of rain fall on the earth, which translates into 40,000 liters per person per day. That would be plenty even if you only manage to tap a tiny fraction. Sufficient drinking water is available for all even in the driest regions of the earth. The problem is one of quality: People don’t die of thirst; they die from drinking water that’s not safe. The use of water for agriculture is another story. Roughly 70 percent of the human use of fresh water is for farming. People rarely realize just how much water agriculture requires. It takes 1,000 liters to grow the wheat for a single kilogram of fl our, for instance. Other products soak up even larger amounts of water. A kilogram of coffee needs 20,000 liters, and a liter of milk takes 3,000—mostly for the cattle feed and the grass consumed by the cow.

Concerns

When we asked our colleagues to list what they consider the most pressing problems facing our planet today, they came back with a wide range of concerns, including atmospheric pollution, climate change, intensifying security threats, and the need to secure an adequate food supply for all the world’s people. Given that we concentrate in this book on the most crucial of these issues, it is dispiriting that we should still have to begin with the most basic of human needs. In the early twenty-first century, a lack of food, water, and shelter continues to rob tens of millions of people of their lives every year. More than half of all the world’s deaths are attributable to malnutrition. More people die of hunger every year than perished in the whole of World War II. What makes this problem especially distressing is that we know it isn’t necessary. That’s why we give particular prominence in this book to the question of what we should do about it. Once the basic necessities have been taken care of, the next biggest killers are cancer and infectious diseases. And as we grow older, we become increasingly concerned about our reliance on caregivers and the decline in our cognition. Breakthroughs in these fields would enable us to live longer and happier. So that’s the second category of challenges we discuss in this book. The continued existence of the human race is not, of course, guaranteed. The rapid pace of change on our planet requires us to adapt significantly and quickly. We discuss the issues arising from that recognition in a separate part of the book devoted to the sustainability of our Earth. The stability of our society isn’t guaranteed either. Financial crises, explosive urban growth, and armed conflict all have a detrimental effect on our well-being, making this the fourth category of the problems we consider. In our view, the most important issues human beings need to work on are: malnutrition, drought, cancer, infectious diseases, care of the elderly, cognitive deterioration, climate change, depletion of natural resources, natural disasters, educational deprivation, habitable cities, financial instability, war and terrorism, and the infringement on personal integrity.

Maintaining Identity

Baroness Susan Greenfield’s origins are humbler than her title might suggest. Her father was a machine operator in an industrial neighbour-hood of London. In Britain, unlike many other countries, it is possible to earn a peerage through your own merits rather than pure heredity. Lady Greenfield is a leading world authority on the human brain. She is concerned that technology has invaded our lives so profoundly that it has begun to affect the way our brains operate and hence our very personalities. “People are longing for experiences rather than searching for meaning,” she says. “They live more in the moment and have less of a sense of the narrative of their lives—of continuity. They lack a sense of having a beginning, a middle, and an end. They have less of a feeling that they are developing an identity throughout their life with a continuing story line from childhood, youth, parenthood, to grandparenthood. The emphasis is more on process than content. You now have people who are much more ‘sensitive’ rather than ‘cognitive.’ ” Susan Greenfield identifies one of the causes of this development as the impressions our brains receive from a very early age. Modern life, she argues, with its hectic rhythm of visual impressions is very different from the past, in which she includes her own childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s in our youth that our brains are shaped: They grow like mad during the first 2 years of life, developing a maze of connections. And in the years that follow, they remain extremely nimble, forming new connections rapidly and changing in response to our surroundings. It is very much the world around us during infancy, childhood, and early adolescence that determines the outcome of this stage of brain formation. The brain displays an immense degree of what Greenfield likes to call “plasticity” during this stage; connections are formed as and when they are needed. The foundations of Baroness Greenfield’s own personality were laid in a similar way during her youth.