Our futures

For me one of the greatest technological statements was made by Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, when he said, "The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past." The potential of technology and all its possibilities is mind blowing to me. There are future advances that no one has thought of as yet. We have an infinite number of futures. Which one do we choose? Who gets to choose our future? 

We need to be informed about the advances in technology and keep the decision makers accountable. The more we know about the potential benefits and risks of new technologies, the better equipped we will be to make informed decisions about how they are developed and used. We have to get involved in public policy discussions about technology. We have to support organizations that are working to promote responsible and ethical technology development. We can use our purchasing power to decide our future of technology.

Tech visionaries can play a vital role in shaping our futures. They can help us to understand the potential of new technologies and to think about how we can use them to create a better world. They can also help us to identify and mitigate the potential risks of new technologies. I have seen several techies ask, "Technology is the answer. What is the question?" In my opinion the question is, what will have the greatest impact on mankind's future. Ray Kurzweil, futurist and inventor, has been vocal about the profound impact technology will have on our future.

Kurzweil has made some bold predictions like technology becoming smarter than humans by 2045. This is something known as singularity. He also thinks we would achieve a level of immortality by 2030 when we would be able to copy our consciousness to machines. This might be in my lifetime and to be honest these two things scare me, even with my normally optimistic self. What scares me the most is the timeframe he specifies. I think if we move too quickly with these types of things then we have less time to react to the potential negatives. Our futures are full of unknowns and these can be scary. The future is a canvas on which we can paint our dreams, but only if we have the courage to embrace the possibilities, balanced with the unknowns.

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