Why the Future Will Almost Certainly Be Better than the Present

Before World War II things were pretty screwed up and they got better, at the expense of many lost lives. But my intention is not to convince you that things are going to get better because people will rebel and justice will be restored. I will try to convince you that technology will transform human consciousness in such a radical way that the rich won’t be able to keep hurting the poor without hurting themselves.

It’s all about communication.

Five hundred years ago there was no telephone. No telegraph, for that matter. There was only a postal system that took weeks to deliver a letter. Communication was only possible in any fluent manner between people living in the same neighborhood. And neighborhoods were smaller, too. There were no cars allowing us to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. So the world was a bunch of disjointed groups of individuals who evolved pretty much oblivious to what happened around them.

But things changed. First it was the telegraph, then it was the telephone. The plane. And the world got smaller. It was possible to exchange information with any being, almost anywhere on Earth, for a price. Of course, the phone had its limitations. It didn’t allow us to send images, for example. Or to communicate with others while taking a walk on the mountain.

I am not going to bore you with the rest. You know what happened because you’re living in it. First came the Internet, then the mobile Internet. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The possibility of being connected with everyone at all times, exchanging words, videos and pictures; it was almost like giving the rest of the world a piece of our brain.

By looking at the last ten years we can see that a lot of what seems essential in our lives right now didn’t even exist back then. It seems hard to believe. The pace and extent of these innovations outshines anything we have done so far. And why should it stop there? Yes, poor people are getting screwed. But innovation is not slowing down. If anything, the battle is growing more fierce: survival of the smartest, of the most adaptable. Only the companies who can reinvent themselves will be able to keep growing into the future. Look at Microsoft and how this once all-mighty empire is now basically crumbling in the dust. Look at Amazon, who went from selling books to gadgets do devices to ebooks to cloud computing services.

What will come next? People say it’s wearable devices. Your next phone will be the size of your watch, maybe with a flexible screen to get it to a decent size when you want to watch a movie. And then?

My personal bet is a merging of nanotechnology and neuroscience: devices will get smaller and smarter, so much so that they will be able to interface directly with your brain. Screens will be so yesterday. And what will happen then? The answer is simple. Instead of words and pictures we’ll be able to exchange thoughts. When we see a blog post with the thought of the day, it will be just that. We will be able to exchange feelings. No more explaining, but showing. This is how I felt. This is how much I liked this movie. Here, take a look at my childhood memories. The real ones.

This evolution is as unstoppable as all the ones that came before. And, when it happens, the last dividing line between persons will crumble. The overdose of feelings and images from other people will confound our sense of self. It will finally erase the fictional border between people and reveal the underlying truth: we are all the same person. One person who lives as multiple individuals because it is badly connected.

Of course, once there is only one person, it makes no more sense to speak of differences. We will all be in the same boat. We will all be the same boat. Callousness and greed towards others will make as much sense as your brain depriving your arm of food.

Some people may choose to isolate themselves from the rest. To cut themselves loose from the Net. But if they choose to do so, they will lose access to all the information and processing power that comes with it. They will inevitably fall behind. Because being  in the Net is not optional anymore. The new humans are of the net. The new humans will flourish in the Net.

And the next humans, they will be the Net.