Finding my Theme, again. – Technology and Society

Finding my Theme, again. – Technology and Society

Your theme will take the form of a rant that begins with any of these four sentences.

  1. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt there is something exciting at the intersection of _______ and _______
  2. I deeply believe that the world needs _______
  3. Never in history has there been a better time for _______
  4. My whole life I’ve been fascinated by what happens when you mix _______ and _______
So I did this once before, it’s an exercise from the book “Entrepreneur Revolution” by Daniel Priestley . The idea is that you can use the four questions to try and find what your theme or passion is in your life.

Last year my business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID. Leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. While I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to try and find out where I want to be before starting off again.

So here is part 1 of 4, trying to answer the questions above and maybe from there I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business venture.

So I did this once before, it’s an exercise from the book “Entrepreneur Revolution” by Daniel Priestly. The idea is that you can use the four questions to try and find what your theme or passion is in your life. 

Last year by business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID. Leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. While I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to try and find out where I want to be before starting off again. 

So here are my answers to the 4 questions above and maybe from there I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business.  

1. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt there is something exciting at the intersection of technological progress and society.

The rate of change in technology is exponential, every day a new system, technology or breakthrough is opening the doors to a whole new potential place of innovation and growth.

Society and culture as a whole lag behind the rate of change. This is pretty standard for almost every form of tech, partly because it takes 20 to 30 years for a tech to really make it into mass usage.

Part of this is due to the problem of getting buy in from the majority which requires a typical a period of convincing (and collaborating with) Innovators and Early adopters. You can see this with cases of companies resisting moving to the Cloud or avoiding developing their sites for a mobile/tablet audience. 

The adoption of products graph

Of course while there are technical examples everywhere social change and legal fights follow similar trajectories. Battles for GLBTQ rights have been an ongoing struggle for years and are only starting to gain traction in what you might call the “early majority”.

But I really like seeing how technical change impacts society in a more tangible way. For example AI is in its nascent phase right now. But already it’s starting to make it’s impact felt in biotechnology whether it’s identifying cancer ((https://nypost.com/2020/01/02/google-ai-spots-breast-cancer-better-than-doctors-study-finds/)) or creating superior ways to understand the nature of our biology1

Automated cars and trucks will be (already are) driving the streets long before the lawmakers are ready. Deepfakes and faceswaps create horrendous personal rights and authenticity issues. Space travel while a slow start has gone from prices at $10k per Kg to LEO in 2006 to $970 per Kg in 20202. Which is allowing the emergence of global satellite internet constellations.  

While there are bad sides to every technology its transformative power is undeniable, we are liberating data, information and reducing labour at an unheard of rate. We, as a society, need to try and see where that impact will be in an active way rather than a passive reactive manner. 

Current interests in this domain

Space, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are set to revolutionise the world in the coming decades. Not just in what is possible but also in how it will impact our everyday lives. The confluence of high-speed, low latency, global broadband from satellite constellations combined with ever improving AI and the constant refinement and improving of robotics, will upend massive parts of our current labour, production and supply chain.

Thats a bit out of the scope of this blog post so I’ll leave you with Boston Dynamics New Years offering to wet your appetite. 

  1. https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery []
  2. https://www.futuretimeline.net/data-trends/6.htm []

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How should new members be found?

The community should encourage new membership broadly through its website, through associations at universities and word of mouth. Affiliations to existing institutions and the creation of educational material software should help spread the word to encourage new members. Public debates and interaction should not be seen as a recruitment drive any interaction with the public should if asked only respond; “The community is always happy to welcome new members” we should be clear we don’t have ulterior motives to any of our acts that help the community and the world, our motive is what we are, what we do and we want the world to improve for the present and subsequent generations.

In fact certain responses should be crafted that give a unified response to all questions that are regularly demanded so the community can speak with one coherent response.