New Ways to Reach Human Goals
Saving the environment, satisfying people's everyday needs, and making
everybody safer are key human goals, and they are within reach, thanks to new technologies
and inventive ways of deploying them.
With the accelerating powers of networked intelligent objects in our
environment, we could soon see something approaching automatic law enforcement, says Dutch
futurist Marcel Bullinga. He sees the possibility of laws and regulations being
imposed, updated, and enforced automatically by our cars, buildings, and personal digital
assistants. Crimes just won't happen. Elevators won't work if they haven't been inspected
on time, your car won't exceed the speed limit, and your taxes will be collected
automatically. (See "Intelligent Government: Invisible, Automatic, and
Everywhere," page 32 in the print edition.)
One key element of this more-intelligent and secure environment will be
for us to finally make the transition to a cashless society, argues David Warwick.
He notes that resistance to cashlessness comes from people's fear of losing their privacy,
since cash is anonymous and electronic cash payments leave a paper trail. But this very
traceability of electronic cash is what's needed to help rid society of the scourge of
crime, maintains Warwick. (See "Toward the Cashless Society," page 38.)
Battelle thought leader Stephen Millett points out that saving
the environment and making life easier for people could be a double benefit of switching
from centralized distribution of fossil-fuel based energy to personalized energy based on
alternative fuels such as hydrogen. (See "Personalized Energy: The Next Energy
Paradigm," page 44.)
Meanwhile, Medard Gabel, author of Global Inc., says the
world's capitalists are missing out on a huge market--poor people. By focusing on big
customers and clients, they're missing out on billions of underserved customers. (See
"Where to Find 4 Billion New Customers: Expanding the World's Marketplace," page
28.)
