Year 1948. Orwell writes his book “1984”, a science fiction novel. Today it is simply reality. Orwell’s “Big Brother” appeared, long before we imagined him or long before he made his appearance in our lives. Thought and knowledge were crimes punishable by death. Human existence was meaningless, just a number, a piece of statistics. How prophetic could a book written 70 years ago be, not only for the present but also for the imminent future?
Year 2040. You have just woken up in your future Internet of Things room that opens its electronic windows to let in the first rays of sunlight. While you are getting dressed, the AI domestic helper announces the day’s schedule and is ready to fulfill your every wish. You still start your day with caffeine, but it comes from your IoT refrigerator, which is tailored to your specific eating habits based on the chemical analysis it has done.
When it’s time to leave, a smart car is waiting for you outside the house to take you to work. The road, without delay with motorized vehicles moving with mathematical precision, gives you the confidence that you will arrive at your destination on time. During the journey, you may need to call a colleague who is on the other side of the world, and then a vivid image of you is projected somewhere in America and your colleagues see you as if you were right next to them.
Arriving at the office, you review the day’s data stored in the cloud. All the huge data elements you manage have been collected in real time, sorted and summarized daily by your AI secretary. Everything works like clockwork and you owe this to the sophisticated analytical predictive platform that does all the work for you and life goes on like this. Does it seem like science fiction to you?
Maybe the year 1984 is not much different from 2040. Orwell’s hero ends up realizing with tears of joy that he always loved “Big Brother”, perhaps because deep down life was more “convenient” when he didn’t have to think, just like our imminent future. Could it be that the future we choose to create is the past we have always avoided accepting? What role will man ultimately play in all this?
Inside info: 700 experts from the “Future Councils” at the World Economic Forum met a few days ago in Dubai to chart a path through new revolutionary, competitive and highly technological forces that will shape the future of humanity, showing that this is how the future can be and it will be here sooner than we think.