R.S. Amblee's Blog
April 30, 2013
Here is an easy way to look at the future.
It may feel that technology is driving us, in reality we are driving the
technology!
For instance, when automobiles came into the market, every one embraced it. It became an instant success and drove the world. This auto evolution looks as though technology took hold of us. But in reality it is the customers who decided to go for it. What if people in those days were just happy with horses and bullock carts? What if they didn’t want this change in their lifestyle. Automobiles would have vanished into thin air. Instead we bought them
because they improved our lives immeasurably. It is our desire to lead a better life that led to the success of this technology and same argument holds good for any technology for that matter. Humans always wants to lead a life
better than yesterday. This desire for a better life is a motivation factor for
researchers to do research and come up with better technologies and in turn are
responsible for technological evolution.
Although, the human desire is the fundamental force that is responsible for the technological evolution, we are adapting a very innovative way to achieve this. We innovate and improve technology to lead a better life by moving away from human or eco dependency or from old out-dated technology itself. I would like to call this strategy as “DEPENDENCY SHIFT.”
For instance, if you look at our own past history of agriculture, we see this strategy. We moved out of rain based agriculture to reservoir based irrigation systems to move away from rain dependency. "Drip irrigation" is yet another effort to reduce dependency on rain. Recent research and usage of genetic modifications is pulling us much further away from eco dependency, be it tissue based agriculture or tissue based meat growth.
What about the industrial revolution that we all witnessed during last century? It is nothing but our continuous effort to move away from manual labor to machine world. Every human being embraced it by being part of either production or consumption. It catapulted our living standards to newer heights. It never stopped there. In fact industrial revolution was the beginning of an accelerated dependency shift. We used this strategy in every facet our lives.
What about recent development in NANO technology that helps us filter water instantly? This is a great leap forward away from eco dependency.
How many of us think that the rain water that falls on our head is the same water that we threw in the bathroom? Our dependency on our eco system is enormous. The movement we wash our hands, the dirty water begins its long journey from drainage to river to ocean and evaporates and come back as rain. This whole journey is fully dependent on eco system. This whole dependency will eventually go away as dependency shift advances.
The “dependency shift” strategy is not very obvious unless we make a conscientious effort to identify it. Identifying and understanding this strategy is the first step towards envisioning the future.
This dependency shift is what is making our desires come true. In the process we are becoming more dependent on technology.
technology!
For instance, when automobiles came into the market, every one embraced it. It became an instant success and drove the world. This auto evolution looks as though technology took hold of us. But in reality it is the customers who decided to go for it. What if people in those days were just happy with horses and bullock carts? What if they didn’t want this change in their lifestyle. Automobiles would have vanished into thin air. Instead we bought them
because they improved our lives immeasurably. It is our desire to lead a better life that led to the success of this technology and same argument holds good for any technology for that matter. Humans always wants to lead a life
better than yesterday. This desire for a better life is a motivation factor for
researchers to do research and come up with better technologies and in turn are
responsible for technological evolution.
Although, the human desire is the fundamental force that is responsible for the technological evolution, we are adapting a very innovative way to achieve this. We innovate and improve technology to lead a better life by moving away from human or eco dependency or from old out-dated technology itself. I would like to call this strategy as “DEPENDENCY SHIFT.”
For instance, if you look at our own past history of agriculture, we see this strategy. We moved out of rain based agriculture to reservoir based irrigation systems to move away from rain dependency. "Drip irrigation" is yet another effort to reduce dependency on rain. Recent research and usage of genetic modifications is pulling us much further away from eco dependency, be it tissue based agriculture or tissue based meat growth.
What about the industrial revolution that we all witnessed during last century? It is nothing but our continuous effort to move away from manual labor to machine world. Every human being embraced it by being part of either production or consumption. It catapulted our living standards to newer heights. It never stopped there. In fact industrial revolution was the beginning of an accelerated dependency shift. We used this strategy in every facet our lives.
What about recent development in NANO technology that helps us filter water instantly? This is a great leap forward away from eco dependency.
How many of us think that the rain water that falls on our head is the same water that we threw in the bathroom? Our dependency on our eco system is enormous. The movement we wash our hands, the dirty water begins its long journey from drainage to river to ocean and evaporates and come back as rain. This whole journey is fully dependent on eco system. This whole dependency will eventually go away as dependency shift advances.
The “dependency shift” strategy is not very obvious unless we make a conscientious effort to identify it. Identifying and understanding this strategy is the first step towards envisioning the future.
This dependency shift is what is making our desires come true. In the process we are becoming more dependent on technology.
January 19, 2013
Climate change: Can we survive?
Climate change, the more we try to learn about it the more puzzling it gets. Our current weather forecasting models are so primitive that we cannot accurately predict weather patterns more than ten days in advance, let alone predict the effects of global warming years into the future. As our climate becomes more uncertain and deviates from historically predictable weather patterns, it will certainly become even more challenging to forecast in the future.
Many have predicted that our changing climate will wreak havoc on our ecosystem. Assuming that those predictions are true, lets make some educated guesses and see what our survival options are.
In the future, as climate gets disrupted, there will be no more distinct seasons to look forward to. Summer, winter, autumn and spring will slowly begin to overlap. This is mostly fine for urban populations as they hardly depend on the outside weather. Most buildings are fitted with air conditioners and central heating systems to keep indoor temperatures constant. The predominantly indoor lives of city dwellers will not be as drastically affected as their less-urban counterparts.
When seasons overlap, it will affect flora, fauna, and the natural ecosystems that are fully dependent on timely rain and shine. When they are affected, there will be serious threat to our food supply. The economy that is dependent on these changes will begin to bite our pockets. Food will become very expensive as the output decreases. The impact will be so high our food eating habits will change. The food sold in super markets will begin to look different as they will have to use available ingredients to match our buying capacity.
The restaurant’s menu would change a lot too. You have eat what is available in that distorted season and not what we like. Whenever the weather is good, grow as much as possible and store. This becomes the norm. How do you think the economy will react if basic food becomes very expensive? If a loaf of bread that cost couple of dollars becomes twenty dollars or more, how do you think the economy will brace up to face the challenges? The food cost will not change from two dollars to twenty dollars over night. It will take years, but the increase is gradual and will be felt by all. As food cost increases, all our expenses will be toward buying food and other things become secondary. This will start affected the entire economy. Global economy may go into serious depression. This is the situation that we have to avoid at all costs.
Now lets look at how the economy will react to this. The growers will not be quietly watching the climate change. They will be looking for ways to move away from this dependency on the nature. This is where research organizations who are currently working on agriculture technology will jump in with their own inventions. Broadly we can expect two kinds of approaches this problem.
First and immediate approach is to use existing buildings to grow food. Water will be recirculated and reused moving us away from rain water dependency. Further into the future, we may expect huge greenhouses being built in cornfields and paddy fields. All the agricultural fields will eventually be filled with green houses. We will begin to see similar projects that would move us away from dependency on rain water.
The second approach that we may expect is the introduction of artificial food into the market. In the laboratory researchers are already growing food from plant and animal tissue. This tissue based food industry will gain strength as more research is done and the food becomes acceptable to society as a regular food. This kind of food will be relatively cheap compared the food grown in green houses. This would definitely be our future food as climate begin to get wilder and even the green houses will become hard to maintain. Hurricanes, tornadoes, high speed winds will start threatening the very existence of cities.
By this time our technological evolution should have, hopefully, reached or come close to the age of automation where we will build homes with robots. If we have reached this stage well in time, we will continue to survive and flourish. We will build much more robust homes and have robots manage the cities. If we can reach the age of automation before global warming get to us, we can consider ourselves modern survivors. We will continue to survive in the ensuing ice age. This is a race between our technological evolution and global warming.
Who wins this race is anybody’s guess.
To win this race we need to begin preparing now. This preparation must start in our own homes. This must be discussed across the nation and across the globe. Politicians and policy makers must consider ways to increase the pace of technological evolution.
Human survival as always is in their own hands.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
Many have predicted that our changing climate will wreak havoc on our ecosystem. Assuming that those predictions are true, lets make some educated guesses and see what our survival options are.
In the future, as climate gets disrupted, there will be no more distinct seasons to look forward to. Summer, winter, autumn and spring will slowly begin to overlap. This is mostly fine for urban populations as they hardly depend on the outside weather. Most buildings are fitted with air conditioners and central heating systems to keep indoor temperatures constant. The predominantly indoor lives of city dwellers will not be as drastically affected as their less-urban counterparts.
When seasons overlap, it will affect flora, fauna, and the natural ecosystems that are fully dependent on timely rain and shine. When they are affected, there will be serious threat to our food supply. The economy that is dependent on these changes will begin to bite our pockets. Food will become very expensive as the output decreases. The impact will be so high our food eating habits will change. The food sold in super markets will begin to look different as they will have to use available ingredients to match our buying capacity.
The restaurant’s menu would change a lot too. You have eat what is available in that distorted season and not what we like. Whenever the weather is good, grow as much as possible and store. This becomes the norm. How do you think the economy will react if basic food becomes very expensive? If a loaf of bread that cost couple of dollars becomes twenty dollars or more, how do you think the economy will brace up to face the challenges? The food cost will not change from two dollars to twenty dollars over night. It will take years, but the increase is gradual and will be felt by all. As food cost increases, all our expenses will be toward buying food and other things become secondary. This will start affected the entire economy. Global economy may go into serious depression. This is the situation that we have to avoid at all costs.
Now lets look at how the economy will react to this. The growers will not be quietly watching the climate change. They will be looking for ways to move away from this dependency on the nature. This is where research organizations who are currently working on agriculture technology will jump in with their own inventions. Broadly we can expect two kinds of approaches this problem.
First and immediate approach is to use existing buildings to grow food. Water will be recirculated and reused moving us away from rain water dependency. Further into the future, we may expect huge greenhouses being built in cornfields and paddy fields. All the agricultural fields will eventually be filled with green houses. We will begin to see similar projects that would move us away from dependency on rain water.
The second approach that we may expect is the introduction of artificial food into the market. In the laboratory researchers are already growing food from plant and animal tissue. This tissue based food industry will gain strength as more research is done and the food becomes acceptable to society as a regular food. This kind of food will be relatively cheap compared the food grown in green houses. This would definitely be our future food as climate begin to get wilder and even the green houses will become hard to maintain. Hurricanes, tornadoes, high speed winds will start threatening the very existence of cities.
By this time our technological evolution should have, hopefully, reached or come close to the age of automation where we will build homes with robots. If we have reached this stage well in time, we will continue to survive and flourish. We will build much more robust homes and have robots manage the cities. If we can reach the age of automation before global warming get to us, we can consider ourselves modern survivors. We will continue to survive in the ensuing ice age. This is a race between our technological evolution and global warming.
Who wins this race is anybody’s guess.
To win this race we need to begin preparing now. This preparation must start in our own homes. This must be discussed across the nation and across the globe. Politicians and policy makers must consider ways to increase the pace of technological evolution.
Human survival as always is in their own hands.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
January 10, 2013
Climate change: What we don't know
Global warming should not have been called global warming at all.This misnomer has confused many, and has added to its development as such a controversial subject in the world today.
"If global warming exists, why is it so darn cold outside?"
You may have heard these kind of retorts quite often. Globally, the Earth has warmed about 2 degrees Celsius. This number is really not very big,and should not raise our eyebrows. What we should really be talking about is the climactic effect this raise in temperature has rather than the warming itself. Many of us do not know how delicately our atmosphere is balanced. Wind speeds and rain patterns are heavily dependent on the global temperature gradient. Our easterly and westerly winds are so well set that we have a very well defined climate geography. Even if there is a slight change in the global temperature gradient, be it half a degree, it will affect global wind patterns which in turn affects rain patterns. This is why many places that used to receive regular rainfall are now suffering from drought, and many formerly dead-dry places are flooded. Colder regions are becoming milder and some hot regions are getting surprise snowfalls. It is hard to comprehend that all this abnormal weather behavior is because of a 2 degree temperature hike.
Global warming is not heating up our neighborhood. The localrise in temperature is because the disturbed wind pattern, which actually is caused by the 2 degree rise in global temperature, circulates warm air from hotter regions to colder regions and vice-versa where it did not used to before. To make it moreclear, if you see an unusual rise of 20 degrees in the winter, it is the side effect of disturbed weather patterns because of the 2 degree global temperature rise.
The orientation of forests and grass lands are fully dependent on global rain patterns. It is the stability of this system that keeps our ecosystems consistent, which is something that we all depend on. Anychange in rain patterns will have disastrous effects.
We are very dependent on mother nature, and this dependency will be heavily challenged in the days to come. Whether we believe in global warming or not, the underlying issue is that we should not be living under the mercy of a delicately balanced ecosystem. Throughout man's history, Mother Nature has provided for us, and we had no other alternative but todepend on her. But now with all our technological developments, we have the tools necessary to break our umbilical cord with Mother Nature. However, it is not happening fast enough, and the reason for this is pureand simple - money. Anything that Mother Nature gives us is free (e.g.food, water,air,light).This has made us develop environmentally dependent technologies (irrigation, fresh water utilization) and stuck to this system. Now as the same ecosystem is changing, it is throwing us a challenge. Rain is not dependable any more. Fresh water supply is changing. The economics of food supply is being rewritten. Floods, hurricanes, and twisters are happening more frequently and are causing billions of dollars in damages. These challenge from global climate change are forcing us to move away from our dependency on the ecosystem and control our own world.
Even without man-made global warming, climate change would have been inevitable as our atmosphere is delicately balanced. The world climate has historically gone through a cyclic pattern of climate shifts and ice ages. It is a great relief that climate change is happening in this current age, when we are ready with technology. Surviving thru the ice age and preserving the human race is something our ancestors have proved is possible, but if it had happened just two hundred years ago, we would have lost all the marvels of human civilization and survived with only with the bare necessities. But now the scenario is different. It is just a matter of time before we integrate robotics and automation in our lives and evolve towards an advanced future. We have the technology to protect us,and free us from our dependency on nature.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
"If global warming exists, why is it so darn cold outside?"
You may have heard these kind of retorts quite often. Globally, the Earth has warmed about 2 degrees Celsius. This number is really not very big,and should not raise our eyebrows. What we should really be talking about is the climactic effect this raise in temperature has rather than the warming itself. Many of us do not know how delicately our atmosphere is balanced. Wind speeds and rain patterns are heavily dependent on the global temperature gradient. Our easterly and westerly winds are so well set that we have a very well defined climate geography. Even if there is a slight change in the global temperature gradient, be it half a degree, it will affect global wind patterns which in turn affects rain patterns. This is why many places that used to receive regular rainfall are now suffering from drought, and many formerly dead-dry places are flooded. Colder regions are becoming milder and some hot regions are getting surprise snowfalls. It is hard to comprehend that all this abnormal weather behavior is because of a 2 degree temperature hike.
Global warming is not heating up our neighborhood. The localrise in temperature is because the disturbed wind pattern, which actually is caused by the 2 degree rise in global temperature, circulates warm air from hotter regions to colder regions and vice-versa where it did not used to before. To make it moreclear, if you see an unusual rise of 20 degrees in the winter, it is the side effect of disturbed weather patterns because of the 2 degree global temperature rise.
The orientation of forests and grass lands are fully dependent on global rain patterns. It is the stability of this system that keeps our ecosystems consistent, which is something that we all depend on. Anychange in rain patterns will have disastrous effects.
We are very dependent on mother nature, and this dependency will be heavily challenged in the days to come. Whether we believe in global warming or not, the underlying issue is that we should not be living under the mercy of a delicately balanced ecosystem. Throughout man's history, Mother Nature has provided for us, and we had no other alternative but todepend on her. But now with all our technological developments, we have the tools necessary to break our umbilical cord with Mother Nature. However, it is not happening fast enough, and the reason for this is pureand simple - money. Anything that Mother Nature gives us is free (e.g.food, water,air,light).This has made us develop environmentally dependent technologies (irrigation, fresh water utilization) and stuck to this system. Now as the same ecosystem is changing, it is throwing us a challenge. Rain is not dependable any more. Fresh water supply is changing. The economics of food supply is being rewritten. Floods, hurricanes, and twisters are happening more frequently and are causing billions of dollars in damages. These challenge from global climate change are forcing us to move away from our dependency on the ecosystem and control our own world.
Even without man-made global warming, climate change would have been inevitable as our atmosphere is delicately balanced. The world climate has historically gone through a cyclic pattern of climate shifts and ice ages. It is a great relief that climate change is happening in this current age, when we are ready with technology. Surviving thru the ice age and preserving the human race is something our ancestors have proved is possible, but if it had happened just two hundred years ago, we would have lost all the marvels of human civilization and survived with only with the bare necessities. But now the scenario is different. It is just a matter of time before we integrate robotics and automation in our lives and evolve towards an advanced future. We have the technology to protect us,and free us from our dependency on nature.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
November 20, 2012
Future of Outsourcing
Outsourcing has become a most controversial issue and highly debated
subject in the world today. In this article we will look at outsourcing
from evolutionary angle and analyze if this is really taking us in the
right direction.
Two major categories of jobs that are getting outsourced are bluecollar
and white-collar jobs. The outsourced blue-collar jobs include
all manufacturing jobs. The outsourced white-collar jobs include all
skilled jobs related to Information Technology, telecommunication,
biotechnology research, financial analysts, architectural drafters,
telemarketers, accountants, medical billing, medical transcriptions,
claims adjusters, home loan processors and so on. The list of jobs keeps
changing as the factors responsible for outsourcing changes.
There are three factors responsible for outsourcing – labor Cost,
skill Availability and the Speed of Information Technology (CAS
for short). Each one of these CAS factors will boost the pace of
outsourcing and also continually transform the outsourcing market.
If a country offers skilled, low cost labor and Information Technology
is sophisticated enough for fast communication, then outsourcing
happens seamlessly.
Let us discuss both blue and while-collar categories and examine their
affect on our economy.
Effect of Blue-Collar Outs ourcing:
Blue-collar outsourcing has both positive and negative effects on our
economy. Let us look at an example and see how it affects the local
businesses. Say a private company manufacturing shoes with local
workers sells a shoe for $50. If that company outsourced its jobs to
another country, the cost of a shoe might be cut to $20 or less.
The negative impact is partial or complete layoffs depending on the
extent of the outsourcing. The price reduction will put pressure on
other shoe manufacturers to outsource their jobs as well, increasing the
number of layoffs. The employees who lost their jobs will need to be
retrained to be able to join the work force, either in the same company
at a different level or in a different company altogether. They will have
an opportunity to change their career, if they were able to adapt. If the
laid off employees were older, then the transition will be more difficult.
The positive impact of outsourcing is the increased market size because
of the price reduction. Even poor people will be able to afford shoes at
this price level. More sales mean more economic activity.
This impact is from just one product. As more and more low cost
products come into the market, the market size will expand, and the
transportation industry will become busier. The international shipping
industry will become busy and the domestic transportation system will
improve. These expanded industries will hire more workers. Increased
sales will bring more shopping malls and expand existing malls, offering
construction and maintenance jobs to many workers. The expanded
shopping complexes will hire sales employees and support other services
like food courts, creating a ripple effect in other business sectors.
Increased sales will affect the credit card industry as well, with more
transactions and as a result, more revenue. This industry will hire
more people as their operations expanded. Banks will open more ATM
machines, as the need for cash to make purchases increases. Banks will
hire employees for various operations.
This seemingly small act of reducing the price of goods and services will
have endless ramifications for every other tentacle of the marketplace.
So simply to say, “No,” to outsourcing is to blindly stem the tide of
industry growth. A few jobs lost in one sector might lead to more—
and better—jobs in another sector.
Every other industry will benefit to some extent by a reduction in
prices and increased sales. Price reductions help poor people, too, as
even they begin to shop as a result of their improved standard of living.
Reduction in price does not mean people will buy more, but it means
more people will be able to afford those products and services. We
would see a bigger crowd in the shopping malls.
Regular buyers may not spend more but may buy more for the same
price. For the same weekly or monthly fixed budget, they will take
home more products than before. However, what we should notice
is the market size will be much greater than when prices were high
which means the revenue earned by the companies will be substantially
higher. Governments will collect more tax revenue and be able to offer
a better infrastructure to its citizens.
Lower prices substantially increase the living standard of people. For
example, shoppers who used to buy two pair of shoes for $100 will
now buy five pairs or more on the same $100 budget. For arguments
sake, instead of buying one hundred products for $1,000, shoppers
will be able to buy three hundred to four hundred products for the
same amount. This increases their standard of living substantially.
Again, it is not just products but also an entire ripple effect that will
branch out across multiple industries and income streams. In fact,
this is equivalent to seeing three hundred to four hundred shops open
in place of one hundred shops, leading to more activity in all other
services discussed above. We may lose some jobs during outsourcing,
however, once prices fall, every other local industry will expand and
hire more employees. In effect, outsourcing produces more jobs locally
than otherwise.
This is just one side of the coin. When market size increases, global
businesses have to produce more. Higher mass production leads to
further reduction in price. The price falls until it reaches the lowest
the outsourced country can afford to offer. The competition to capture
a bigger market by price reduction forces businesses to look for low
cost labor in other countries as well. The search for low cost labor is an
ongoing battle critical to the success of business. Every time the prices
fall, the local economy grows that much bigger. The local market
benefits from these outsourcing efforts.
When underdeveloped countries are transformed into developing
countries, they in turn became customers in the global market.
Their increased standard of living and market size affects many other
countries around the world, increasing the global market’s overall
size.
Imagine the impact of more countries developing. What will be the
size of that global economy? Global industries will be very busy to
cater to such a demand. Looking beyond outsourcing and into future
effects of outsourcing, we see amazing growth and a world full of
opportunities.
Today, outsourcing has become so common new companies consider
outsourcing from day one. Part of their organizational blueprint
includes the costs – and savings – of outsourcing key positions,
particularly blue-collar labor. Businesses may not even open their
fabrication units in developed countries. The good news is nearly
70 percent of the jobs are hard to outsource and they fall under “local
service jobs” category. Only 30 percent of the jobs have the potential
to get outsourced.
Effect of White -Collar Job Outsourcing:
Over the past few years, skilled labor has also been outsourced.
Some research skills, which require PhD degrees, are so rare even
in developed countries it is necessary to outsource them to other
developing countries for faster research and development.
Other skills, including Information Technology that does not need
doctoral degrees, are outsourced for both skill and cost reasons. These
jobs are moving from country to country depending on low cost and
skill availability.
None of these skilled jobs has any national borders. In this digital age,
the employee can be in any country and join the work force. With such
global availability of labor and easy access via computer networks, it is
relatively easy to set up a global organization. The headquarters can be
in one country and its branches spread to several other countries. This
kind of organizational structure brings in the best available skill at a
low cost and helps grow the global market even larger.
We get a much better understanding of these white-collar jobs looking
at the outsourcing from the evolutionary point of view. Consider the
example of Information Technology (IT) outsourcing. It appears to
threaten local job markets in developed countries. However, the reality
is much different.
When IT jobs are outsourced, the company’s capability increases. It
can produce more and better software for the same investment. For
instance, in place of one video game, the company now can produce
three or four games for the same cost. This is because, the company
can hire as many as four to five employees for the salary of one that is
paid in a developed country like the United States or Europe. Instead
of one version of software produced every two years, the outsourcing
company may produce a new version every three months. A GPS may
get updated maps every month instead of once every year or two.
More products fetch more revenue for the company and as costs come
down, market size increases. To satisfy bigger markets, production has
to go up making the company hire more employees overseas. More
employees are also needed locally to manage the outsourced projects.
This is how the positive feedback loop begins to take effect in all
outsourced businesses.
Other competing companies outsource, too, and their capability
increases. Because of increased market size, many new companies
emerge and we see more employment opportunities both in overseas
and local markets. A company producing ten software products a
year with ten employees before outsourcing, could now produce fifty
software products or more with the capabilities of outsourcing. As the
market size increases, they now need more than ten employees locally
and several hundred people overseas. This positive feedback loop keeps
creating more jobs both locally and overseas. The number of jobs
created locally will soon exceed the jobs lost. While this is just one side
of the effect, there could be ripple effects on other industries.
With more jobs outsourced, there will be a tremendous need for
infrastructure and networking in outsourced countries. With millions
of people needing access via the network, the telecommunication
and networking industries in developed countries will get a boost
as they expand their capacity and hire local people to expand the
telecommunication networks.
What is the impact on international shipping and travel? The ships and
airlines will get their share as more goods are transported and more
people travel all over the world for business meetings, demonstrations,
contract jobs and so on. We see job opportunities here too. What is the
impact on international banking? With so many transactions going
on in the world, the banks will need more people. Growth of just one
industry will have a substantial effect on other dependent industries. It is
sad we are not able to relate these developments to outsourcing.
If we look back and see how we evolved all these centuries, these kinds
of developments take time. However, with outsourcing, the pace is so
high that we are seeing all these effects in our lifetime.
In the future, a underdeveloped countries advance, it will be hard to say which country is outsourcing to which. The skill level being outsourced eventually will become “mutual outsourcing” spread all over the world.
World keep growing continuously and the demand for skilled labor never
slow down until we feel that the 6.5 billion people are not big enough
and we need more people! When we look at the outsourcing crisis from
evolutionary eyes, we see the future world with abundant job opportunities, however, most of them are skilled jobs, with skill level increasing as time progresses. Technological sophistication and skill level are inter-related. What kind of jobs can we expect in the future? Can we say "skilled jobs and nothing but skilled jobs?" Outsourcing is just the beginning of that massive development.
- R.S. Amblee
Author The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution
subject in the world today. In this article we will look at outsourcing
from evolutionary angle and analyze if this is really taking us in the
right direction.
Two major categories of jobs that are getting outsourced are bluecollar
and white-collar jobs. The outsourced blue-collar jobs include
all manufacturing jobs. The outsourced white-collar jobs include all
skilled jobs related to Information Technology, telecommunication,
biotechnology research, financial analysts, architectural drafters,
telemarketers, accountants, medical billing, medical transcriptions,
claims adjusters, home loan processors and so on. The list of jobs keeps
changing as the factors responsible for outsourcing changes.
There are three factors responsible for outsourcing – labor Cost,
skill Availability and the Speed of Information Technology (CAS
for short). Each one of these CAS factors will boost the pace of
outsourcing and also continually transform the outsourcing market.
If a country offers skilled, low cost labor and Information Technology
is sophisticated enough for fast communication, then outsourcing
happens seamlessly.
Let us discuss both blue and while-collar categories and examine their
affect on our economy.
Effect of Blue-Collar Outs ourcing:
Blue-collar outsourcing has both positive and negative effects on our
economy. Let us look at an example and see how it affects the local
businesses. Say a private company manufacturing shoes with local
workers sells a shoe for $50. If that company outsourced its jobs to
another country, the cost of a shoe might be cut to $20 or less.
The negative impact is partial or complete layoffs depending on the
extent of the outsourcing. The price reduction will put pressure on
other shoe manufacturers to outsource their jobs as well, increasing the
number of layoffs. The employees who lost their jobs will need to be
retrained to be able to join the work force, either in the same company
at a different level or in a different company altogether. They will have
an opportunity to change their career, if they were able to adapt. If the
laid off employees were older, then the transition will be more difficult.
The positive impact of outsourcing is the increased market size because
of the price reduction. Even poor people will be able to afford shoes at
this price level. More sales mean more economic activity.
This impact is from just one product. As more and more low cost
products come into the market, the market size will expand, and the
transportation industry will become busier. The international shipping
industry will become busy and the domestic transportation system will
improve. These expanded industries will hire more workers. Increased
sales will bring more shopping malls and expand existing malls, offering
construction and maintenance jobs to many workers. The expanded
shopping complexes will hire sales employees and support other services
like food courts, creating a ripple effect in other business sectors.
Increased sales will affect the credit card industry as well, with more
transactions and as a result, more revenue. This industry will hire
more people as their operations expanded. Banks will open more ATM
machines, as the need for cash to make purchases increases. Banks will
hire employees for various operations.
This seemingly small act of reducing the price of goods and services will
have endless ramifications for every other tentacle of the marketplace.
So simply to say, “No,” to outsourcing is to blindly stem the tide of
industry growth. A few jobs lost in one sector might lead to more—
and better—jobs in another sector.
Every other industry will benefit to some extent by a reduction in
prices and increased sales. Price reductions help poor people, too, as
even they begin to shop as a result of their improved standard of living.
Reduction in price does not mean people will buy more, but it means
more people will be able to afford those products and services. We
would see a bigger crowd in the shopping malls.
Regular buyers may not spend more but may buy more for the same
price. For the same weekly or monthly fixed budget, they will take
home more products than before. However, what we should notice
is the market size will be much greater than when prices were high
which means the revenue earned by the companies will be substantially
higher. Governments will collect more tax revenue and be able to offer
a better infrastructure to its citizens.
Lower prices substantially increase the living standard of people. For
example, shoppers who used to buy two pair of shoes for $100 will
now buy five pairs or more on the same $100 budget. For arguments
sake, instead of buying one hundred products for $1,000, shoppers
will be able to buy three hundred to four hundred products for the
same amount. This increases their standard of living substantially.
Again, it is not just products but also an entire ripple effect that will
branch out across multiple industries and income streams. In fact,
this is equivalent to seeing three hundred to four hundred shops open
in place of one hundred shops, leading to more activity in all other
services discussed above. We may lose some jobs during outsourcing,
however, once prices fall, every other local industry will expand and
hire more employees. In effect, outsourcing produces more jobs locally
than otherwise.
This is just one side of the coin. When market size increases, global
businesses have to produce more. Higher mass production leads to
further reduction in price. The price falls until it reaches the lowest
the outsourced country can afford to offer. The competition to capture
a bigger market by price reduction forces businesses to look for low
cost labor in other countries as well. The search for low cost labor is an
ongoing battle critical to the success of business. Every time the prices
fall, the local economy grows that much bigger. The local market
benefits from these outsourcing efforts.
When underdeveloped countries are transformed into developing
countries, they in turn became customers in the global market.
Their increased standard of living and market size affects many other
countries around the world, increasing the global market’s overall
size.
Imagine the impact of more countries developing. What will be the
size of that global economy? Global industries will be very busy to
cater to such a demand. Looking beyond outsourcing and into future
effects of outsourcing, we see amazing growth and a world full of
opportunities.
Today, outsourcing has become so common new companies consider
outsourcing from day one. Part of their organizational blueprint
includes the costs – and savings – of outsourcing key positions,
particularly blue-collar labor. Businesses may not even open their
fabrication units in developed countries. The good news is nearly
70 percent of the jobs are hard to outsource and they fall under “local
service jobs” category. Only 30 percent of the jobs have the potential
to get outsourced.
Effect of White -Collar Job Outsourcing:
Over the past few years, skilled labor has also been outsourced.
Some research skills, which require PhD degrees, are so rare even
in developed countries it is necessary to outsource them to other
developing countries for faster research and development.
Other skills, including Information Technology that does not need
doctoral degrees, are outsourced for both skill and cost reasons. These
jobs are moving from country to country depending on low cost and
skill availability.
None of these skilled jobs has any national borders. In this digital age,
the employee can be in any country and join the work force. With such
global availability of labor and easy access via computer networks, it is
relatively easy to set up a global organization. The headquarters can be
in one country and its branches spread to several other countries. This
kind of organizational structure brings in the best available skill at a
low cost and helps grow the global market even larger.
We get a much better understanding of these white-collar jobs looking
at the outsourcing from the evolutionary point of view. Consider the
example of Information Technology (IT) outsourcing. It appears to
threaten local job markets in developed countries. However, the reality
is much different.
When IT jobs are outsourced, the company’s capability increases. It
can produce more and better software for the same investment. For
instance, in place of one video game, the company now can produce
three or four games for the same cost. This is because, the company
can hire as many as four to five employees for the salary of one that is
paid in a developed country like the United States or Europe. Instead
of one version of software produced every two years, the outsourcing
company may produce a new version every three months. A GPS may
get updated maps every month instead of once every year or two.
More products fetch more revenue for the company and as costs come
down, market size increases. To satisfy bigger markets, production has
to go up making the company hire more employees overseas. More
employees are also needed locally to manage the outsourced projects.
This is how the positive feedback loop begins to take effect in all
outsourced businesses.
Other competing companies outsource, too, and their capability
increases. Because of increased market size, many new companies
emerge and we see more employment opportunities both in overseas
and local markets. A company producing ten software products a
year with ten employees before outsourcing, could now produce fifty
software products or more with the capabilities of outsourcing. As the
market size increases, they now need more than ten employees locally
and several hundred people overseas. This positive feedback loop keeps
creating more jobs both locally and overseas. The number of jobs
created locally will soon exceed the jobs lost. While this is just one side
of the effect, there could be ripple effects on other industries.
With more jobs outsourced, there will be a tremendous need for
infrastructure and networking in outsourced countries. With millions
of people needing access via the network, the telecommunication
and networking industries in developed countries will get a boost
as they expand their capacity and hire local people to expand the
telecommunication networks.
What is the impact on international shipping and travel? The ships and
airlines will get their share as more goods are transported and more
people travel all over the world for business meetings, demonstrations,
contract jobs and so on. We see job opportunities here too. What is the
impact on international banking? With so many transactions going
on in the world, the banks will need more people. Growth of just one
industry will have a substantial effect on other dependent industries. It is
sad we are not able to relate these developments to outsourcing.
If we look back and see how we evolved all these centuries, these kinds
of developments take time. However, with outsourcing, the pace is so
high that we are seeing all these effects in our lifetime.
In the future, a underdeveloped countries advance, it will be hard to say which country is outsourcing to which. The skill level being outsourced eventually will become “mutual outsourcing” spread all over the world.
World keep growing continuously and the demand for skilled labor never
slow down until we feel that the 6.5 billion people are not big enough
and we need more people! When we look at the outsourcing crisis from
evolutionary eyes, we see the future world with abundant job opportunities, however, most of them are skilled jobs, with skill level increasing as time progresses. Technological sophistication and skill level are inter-related. What kind of jobs can we expect in the future? Can we say "skilled jobs and nothing but skilled jobs?" Outsourcing is just the beginning of that massive development.
- R.S. Amblee
Author The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution
November 14, 2012
Globalizing Obamacare
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly termed "Obamacare," is great news for healthcare in America, but is not so great for the insurance industry which has consistently denied coverage to risky patients in order to reduce premiums and stay profitable. The clause of Obamacare that mandates coverage of patients with pre-existing conditions especially puts the insurance industry at a financial risk since all the risky uninsured patients with serious or pre-existing health conditions have to be insured.
Whichever insurance company covers these "risky" people will have serious financial problems for doing so because if that company raises its premiums, it may or may not stay competitive in the market. Surely, this has already been anticipated by the insurance industry and they may already have an established understanding among themselves to raise premiums across the board. But even jacking up premiums will not keep them safe because newer, more efficient companies can crop up and challenge the established companies with lower premiums. Are lower premiums possible for newer companies? You bet. There is a lot of money to be saved by running a company efficiently. There are lot of old insurance companies that still follow outdated, inefficient protocol, and perform time-consuming manual monitoring and management. These companies have only maintained their profits up until now by eliminating risky patients and finding as many loopholes as possible to avoid payouts. Now the game is different. The organizations have to improve how they operate in order to stay competitive. Inefficient methodology must give way to new technology and automated management systems. It is a very difficult transition, and one that may be impossible for some of the old insurance giants. However, it will be much easier for new companies to start off with latest technologies and change their modes of operation as they do not have age-old, inefficient systems established in place or veteran employees and managers who are reluctant to adopt new changes.
In the near future, we may see some new insurance companies offering significantly lower premiums and competing with established ones. We will see the older companies either collapsing or reorganizing to form efficient and sleeker operations. We will see more mergers and acquisitions as their corporate strategy changes. Businesses will attempt to merge with companies that have complementary strengths in order to minimize their weaknesses. We will also see an increase in outsourced jobs as another strategy these companies will employ to reduce their overhead cost. This will be the immediate effect of the Obamacare when it goes live.
The second phase of this sea of changes will be the insurance companies pressuring hospitals to reduce their exorbitant healthcare costs by operating more efficiently and embracing automation. In hospitals, you will begin to see automation, in terms of integrated computer systems and robotic technology, being used to reduce the cost of treating inpatients, especially chronic patients. Currently, more than 75% of all healthcare costs in the US are devoted to treating chronic patients. We will begin to see more efficient uses for electronic medical records to maintain patient records, and computerized medicine with online checkups and diagnoses to reduce expensive doctor visits. You will also begin to see implementation of automated preventive care methods so that companies can reduce long-term costs.
This new online system helps healthcare industry in the United States by reducing the number of annual doctor visits, eliminating the wait for a doctor’s appointment, getting a diagnosis in a matter of minutes without leaving home, and substantially lowering healthcare costs. The implications for elderly patients, comprising a significant population in many countries, are obvious. Moreover patients can get several opinions at the same time. You have heard of getting a second opinion – how about getting a third, fourth, or fifth. In this case, using automated online diagnosis, patients from around the world can obtain another objective, qualified diagnosis.
In many cities, the scarcity of doctors forces patients to wait months for an appointment. With this system in place, patients benefit because they get immediate diagnosis and doctors benefit because they are not spending as much time on routine colds or cuts and scrapes.
These massive changes will give birth to a host of new innovative software and technologies that will help online diagnosis and automated inpatient care. You will begin to see insurance companies training patients to monitor their own health via physical devices and online tools. You will begin to see an influx of various innovative products in the market that will automatically monitor patients' health on a regular basis, and the insurance company will encourage and reward the use of these products as well.
The ultimate goal, and probably the best and only survival strategy for the insurance companies, is to use as little doctor/hospital resources as possible, and adopt automation and technology wherever they can to reduce cost. Robotic surgery and nanotechnology and other preventive care methods will get a boost in research funding. Any invention that will improve efficiency, reduce costs, and promote health will save insurance companies a lot of money and will flourish. A healthy community is a gold mine for them, and a healthy nation will earn them billions.
You may be wondering why the above discussed automations did not happen all these years. Well, automation is very sensitive to price. As investment in research and development to design and implement automation is huge, automation happens only if the savings are justifiable. The fact is, automation is an ongoing process, a part of our ongoing technological evolution. Automation has been happening in all areas of healthcare, but very slowly, as the increase in premium was moderate so far. Insurance companies kept the rise in premium as low as possible by denying care to the pre-existing conditions. Now, with this new change in policy, the jump in premium will be felt by all of us and that gives added incentive for the industry to embrace automation much more quickly to survive the competition.
Although automation in healthcare will happen quicker than ever before, there could be some time gap as industry prepares for it. During this period there could be some increased activity in “medical tourism” which is already expanding. Insurance companies may even support and encourage people to get expensive procedures done overseas. However, this is only a temporary phenomenon to fill the gap before automation kicks in. As automation begins to establish, medical tourism will slowly dwindle. Why travel to a far away country when you can get the same procedure done here with an automated machine which is much more reliable and secure than a human? Even the offshore hospitals could be using similar machines. There will be race between medical tourism and automation for a short period. It will be very interesting to see how these two will compete and influence each other. How quickly this race will start and end will depend on how quickly automation establishes in healthcare system.
This fundamental shift in the insurance industry's attitude from "denying coverage to risky patients" to "embracing automation to cover risky patients", will hit the food industry hard as well. If people are being monitored by insurance companies via automated devices, as invasive as it sounds, people will be penalized for eating unhealthy foods. Even restaurants will not be able to afford to feed their customers drastically unhealthy food any more. Slowly but surely, restaurant patrons and grocery shoppers will begin to demand "monitor-friendly" food to save on their premiums. "If you eat fat, your premiums will be fatter" will become the new mantra for insurance companies.
So ultimately, where is Obamacare leading us? To a healthier nation, of course. In the future, health will be encouraged and promoted through the use of sophisticated health technology; all in the name of ‘reducing healthcare cost’, a healthy nation will emerge and prosper.
What is the global impact of Obamacare?
Obamacare that would jump start automation in healthcare will have a profound global impact. Using automated online diagnosis, patients from around the world can obtain another objective, qualified diagnosis. This online diagnosis potentially caters to a population of several billion. The substantial revenue earned funds more research there by increasing the quality of healthcare.
The other great benefit of an online diagnosis is that once established it initiates mass-production of diagnostic tools. Later on, as the system spreads around the world, it adds more sophisticated diagnostics as they became economically viable. Establishing online diagnosis in the market creates demand for a multitude of businesses to produce the diagnostic tools.
The automation of the healthcare industry affects the flow of medical information. Hospitals around the world will have instant access to every new breakthrough, diagnosis, and treatment because healthcare will exist on a connected global network. The machines will instantly assimilate new information, as it is available, keeping the network automatically updated. If a new epidemic hits a region of the world, its symptoms and needed treatment become instantly available to the global healthcare system, so the whole world benefits from this instant flow of information.
As automation in the healthcare industry evolves further, all the money now spent on routine checkups and meaningless paper work goes into intellectual research, we will quickly attain a higher health standard in a short period. Letting machines take over more and more of our routine jobs frees us to stop working so hard and start working smarter – the only move assured to take us into that safer future.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
Whichever insurance company covers these "risky" people will have serious financial problems for doing so because if that company raises its premiums, it may or may not stay competitive in the market. Surely, this has already been anticipated by the insurance industry and they may already have an established understanding among themselves to raise premiums across the board. But even jacking up premiums will not keep them safe because newer, more efficient companies can crop up and challenge the established companies with lower premiums. Are lower premiums possible for newer companies? You bet. There is a lot of money to be saved by running a company efficiently. There are lot of old insurance companies that still follow outdated, inefficient protocol, and perform time-consuming manual monitoring and management. These companies have only maintained their profits up until now by eliminating risky patients and finding as many loopholes as possible to avoid payouts. Now the game is different. The organizations have to improve how they operate in order to stay competitive. Inefficient methodology must give way to new technology and automated management systems. It is a very difficult transition, and one that may be impossible for some of the old insurance giants. However, it will be much easier for new companies to start off with latest technologies and change their modes of operation as they do not have age-old, inefficient systems established in place or veteran employees and managers who are reluctant to adopt new changes.
In the near future, we may see some new insurance companies offering significantly lower premiums and competing with established ones. We will see the older companies either collapsing or reorganizing to form efficient and sleeker operations. We will see more mergers and acquisitions as their corporate strategy changes. Businesses will attempt to merge with companies that have complementary strengths in order to minimize their weaknesses. We will also see an increase in outsourced jobs as another strategy these companies will employ to reduce their overhead cost. This will be the immediate effect of the Obamacare when it goes live.
The second phase of this sea of changes will be the insurance companies pressuring hospitals to reduce their exorbitant healthcare costs by operating more efficiently and embracing automation. In hospitals, you will begin to see automation, in terms of integrated computer systems and robotic technology, being used to reduce the cost of treating inpatients, especially chronic patients. Currently, more than 75% of all healthcare costs in the US are devoted to treating chronic patients. We will begin to see more efficient uses for electronic medical records to maintain patient records, and computerized medicine with online checkups and diagnoses to reduce expensive doctor visits. You will also begin to see implementation of automated preventive care methods so that companies can reduce long-term costs.
This new online system helps healthcare industry in the United States by reducing the number of annual doctor visits, eliminating the wait for a doctor’s appointment, getting a diagnosis in a matter of minutes without leaving home, and substantially lowering healthcare costs. The implications for elderly patients, comprising a significant population in many countries, are obvious. Moreover patients can get several opinions at the same time. You have heard of getting a second opinion – how about getting a third, fourth, or fifth. In this case, using automated online diagnosis, patients from around the world can obtain another objective, qualified diagnosis.
In many cities, the scarcity of doctors forces patients to wait months for an appointment. With this system in place, patients benefit because they get immediate diagnosis and doctors benefit because they are not spending as much time on routine colds or cuts and scrapes.
These massive changes will give birth to a host of new innovative software and technologies that will help online diagnosis and automated inpatient care. You will begin to see insurance companies training patients to monitor their own health via physical devices and online tools. You will begin to see an influx of various innovative products in the market that will automatically monitor patients' health on a regular basis, and the insurance company will encourage and reward the use of these products as well.
The ultimate goal, and probably the best and only survival strategy for the insurance companies, is to use as little doctor/hospital resources as possible, and adopt automation and technology wherever they can to reduce cost. Robotic surgery and nanotechnology and other preventive care methods will get a boost in research funding. Any invention that will improve efficiency, reduce costs, and promote health will save insurance companies a lot of money and will flourish. A healthy community is a gold mine for them, and a healthy nation will earn them billions.
You may be wondering why the above discussed automations did not happen all these years. Well, automation is very sensitive to price. As investment in research and development to design and implement automation is huge, automation happens only if the savings are justifiable. The fact is, automation is an ongoing process, a part of our ongoing technological evolution. Automation has been happening in all areas of healthcare, but very slowly, as the increase in premium was moderate so far. Insurance companies kept the rise in premium as low as possible by denying care to the pre-existing conditions. Now, with this new change in policy, the jump in premium will be felt by all of us and that gives added incentive for the industry to embrace automation much more quickly to survive the competition.
Although automation in healthcare will happen quicker than ever before, there could be some time gap as industry prepares for it. During this period there could be some increased activity in “medical tourism” which is already expanding. Insurance companies may even support and encourage people to get expensive procedures done overseas. However, this is only a temporary phenomenon to fill the gap before automation kicks in. As automation begins to establish, medical tourism will slowly dwindle. Why travel to a far away country when you can get the same procedure done here with an automated machine which is much more reliable and secure than a human? Even the offshore hospitals could be using similar machines. There will be race between medical tourism and automation for a short period. It will be very interesting to see how these two will compete and influence each other. How quickly this race will start and end will depend on how quickly automation establishes in healthcare system.
This fundamental shift in the insurance industry's attitude from "denying coverage to risky patients" to "embracing automation to cover risky patients", will hit the food industry hard as well. If people are being monitored by insurance companies via automated devices, as invasive as it sounds, people will be penalized for eating unhealthy foods. Even restaurants will not be able to afford to feed their customers drastically unhealthy food any more. Slowly but surely, restaurant patrons and grocery shoppers will begin to demand "monitor-friendly" food to save on their premiums. "If you eat fat, your premiums will be fatter" will become the new mantra for insurance companies.
So ultimately, where is Obamacare leading us? To a healthier nation, of course. In the future, health will be encouraged and promoted through the use of sophisticated health technology; all in the name of ‘reducing healthcare cost’, a healthy nation will emerge and prosper.
What is the global impact of Obamacare?
Obamacare that would jump start automation in healthcare will have a profound global impact. Using automated online diagnosis, patients from around the world can obtain another objective, qualified diagnosis. This online diagnosis potentially caters to a population of several billion. The substantial revenue earned funds more research there by increasing the quality of healthcare.
The other great benefit of an online diagnosis is that once established it initiates mass-production of diagnostic tools. Later on, as the system spreads around the world, it adds more sophisticated diagnostics as they became economically viable. Establishing online diagnosis in the market creates demand for a multitude of businesses to produce the diagnostic tools.
The automation of the healthcare industry affects the flow of medical information. Hospitals around the world will have instant access to every new breakthrough, diagnosis, and treatment because healthcare will exist on a connected global network. The machines will instantly assimilate new information, as it is available, keeping the network automatically updated. If a new epidemic hits a region of the world, its symptoms and needed treatment become instantly available to the global healthcare system, so the whole world benefits from this instant flow of information.
As automation in the healthcare industry evolves further, all the money now spent on routine checkups and meaningless paper work goes into intellectual research, we will quickly attain a higher health standard in a short period. Letting machines take over more and more of our routine jobs frees us to stop working so hard and start working smarter – the only move assured to take us into that safer future.
- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
September 19, 2012
A poverty-free society is certainly achievable
Poverty is not a lack of money, but rather the lack of opportunity to make money.
Money in hand gives one an immediate relief but not a long-term solution to poverty.
Hence, charity is not a self sustainable solution to poverty.
We all know money allows us to have food, clothing and shelter.
How would the world be if these three basic necessities were free?
Is it even possible to consider that such an idea, somewhere in the future, could be a reality?
If one simply analyzes our technological evolution from the bottom up, then fortunately, yes, it is a reachable reality.
Let’s take the simple example of buying a bag of apples in a grocery store.
We pay anywhere from $2-$4 per pound for these apples, when in reality, the apple is a natural product and is a free gift from mother nature.
However, we pay so much money for it because there are overhead costs in the manual labor that is required for growing, harvesting, transporting, warehousing, and shelving at the store, until it is finally purchased by the consumer.
We are not paying for the apple itself, but for all the manual effort that is involved in bringing it to us. Though the apple is a free natural creation, as a product it is not free. Every apple we buy has its own journey.
Now think of a scenario where these manual services are automated.
What if the food is grown by machines, transported by machines, and delivered by machines?
Well, someone has to pay to operate and maintain these machines though, right?
What if these machines are highly sophisticated and can take care of themselves?
Remember the less human labor is in the picture, the less we pay.
Now let’s investigate this matter further and discuss if such automation is even possible.
Can you name any one automated process in the natural world that is highly sophisticated and does not need any human intervention at all?
How about honey bees? They travel from flower to flower, collect nectar, create the honey, and we get honey for free. They are highly complex beings who reproduce, feed, clean, and live pretty much on their own and we reap the products. That is why honey is free.
How about the apple we just talked about? The apple tree absorbs the fertilizer, manure and all the nutrients, filters it molecule by molecule, and creates the apple cell by cell. It is a highly complex process that needs no human intervention at all, and that is why it is a free eco-food.
Plants work day and night for us and we pay nothing. What we pay for is the human labor to sow the seeds, work the ground, fertilize the plants, harvest the product, transport the product to retailers, and for the retailers who sell it to us. We don't pay a dime towards the actual, highly complex system that synthesizes our food cell by cell.
What about the fresh air and water we consume every day? Natural systems clean the air and water free for us. In fact if you look around almost all the natural processes happening around us are highly complex, self sustainable, and free.
What we can deduce from this argument is that, as the technology becomes complex and sophisticated, there will be less and less need for human labor and intervention, which will drive down the cost of producing the product or service. You can notice this trend in our own history. Poverty and mortality have decreased each decade as our technology (material and medical) has improved, and the cost of material goods has gone down and the standard of living has risen. This line of thinking will certainly help us to look into the future. A poverty-free society is certainly achievable, not by charity, but by technology. It is possible to eradicate world poverty with technology. Charity can carry us along for only so long, but is only needed to survive until we reach such technological sophistication.
This indicates that technology and poverty are inversely proportional – if one goes up, the other comes down. To achieve zero poverty, our technology has to be infinitely sophisticated to stand on its own. This is what has been achieved by our ecosystem, and is how it has survived these millions of years. Whether we humans live or not, the eco system will survive, sustain and continue to feed the flora and fauna. It is a fully matured, self-regulating and self-sustainable, highly sophisticated system on which we all can fully depend on.
Now human technology is still in its infancy stage, and that is why it is expensive. We have to pay humans for all the manual labor and efforts they undertake.
Undoubtedly, as our technology matures, goods will become cheaper and we will pay less than ever before to survive and poverty diminishes gradually until one day we reach that state of zero poverty.
The saying "Nothing comes for FREE" is a universally accepted adage, but this is only because we are living in a man-made age still and not a machine-made age. We have to still pay for our food, clothing and shelter, until the day our technology comes to our rescue and automates all of these processes. "Technological evolution" is all about creating self-sustaining, man-made technology on which we all can depend.
-R.S. Amblee
email: rsamblee@hotmail.com
Author of "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
Money in hand gives one an immediate relief but not a long-term solution to poverty.
Hence, charity is not a self sustainable solution to poverty.
We all know money allows us to have food, clothing and shelter.
How would the world be if these three basic necessities were free?
Is it even possible to consider that such an idea, somewhere in the future, could be a reality?
If one simply analyzes our technological evolution from the bottom up, then fortunately, yes, it is a reachable reality.
Let’s take the simple example of buying a bag of apples in a grocery store.
We pay anywhere from $2-$4 per pound for these apples, when in reality, the apple is a natural product and is a free gift from mother nature.
However, we pay so much money for it because there are overhead costs in the manual labor that is required for growing, harvesting, transporting, warehousing, and shelving at the store, until it is finally purchased by the consumer.
We are not paying for the apple itself, but for all the manual effort that is involved in bringing it to us. Though the apple is a free natural creation, as a product it is not free. Every apple we buy has its own journey.
Now think of a scenario where these manual services are automated.
What if the food is grown by machines, transported by machines, and delivered by machines?
Well, someone has to pay to operate and maintain these machines though, right?
What if these machines are highly sophisticated and can take care of themselves?
Remember the less human labor is in the picture, the less we pay.
Now let’s investigate this matter further and discuss if such automation is even possible.
Can you name any one automated process in the natural world that is highly sophisticated and does not need any human intervention at all?
How about honey bees? They travel from flower to flower, collect nectar, create the honey, and we get honey for free. They are highly complex beings who reproduce, feed, clean, and live pretty much on their own and we reap the products. That is why honey is free.
How about the apple we just talked about? The apple tree absorbs the fertilizer, manure and all the nutrients, filters it molecule by molecule, and creates the apple cell by cell. It is a highly complex process that needs no human intervention at all, and that is why it is a free eco-food.
Plants work day and night for us and we pay nothing. What we pay for is the human labor to sow the seeds, work the ground, fertilize the plants, harvest the product, transport the product to retailers, and for the retailers who sell it to us. We don't pay a dime towards the actual, highly complex system that synthesizes our food cell by cell.
What about the fresh air and water we consume every day? Natural systems clean the air and water free for us. In fact if you look around almost all the natural processes happening around us are highly complex, self sustainable, and free.
What we can deduce from this argument is that, as the technology becomes complex and sophisticated, there will be less and less need for human labor and intervention, which will drive down the cost of producing the product or service. You can notice this trend in our own history. Poverty and mortality have decreased each decade as our technology (material and medical) has improved, and the cost of material goods has gone down and the standard of living has risen. This line of thinking will certainly help us to look into the future. A poverty-free society is certainly achievable, not by charity, but by technology. It is possible to eradicate world poverty with technology. Charity can carry us along for only so long, but is only needed to survive until we reach such technological sophistication.
This indicates that technology and poverty are inversely proportional – if one goes up, the other comes down. To achieve zero poverty, our technology has to be infinitely sophisticated to stand on its own. This is what has been achieved by our ecosystem, and is how it has survived these millions of years. Whether we humans live or not, the eco system will survive, sustain and continue to feed the flora and fauna. It is a fully matured, self-regulating and self-sustainable, highly sophisticated system on which we all can fully depend on.
Now human technology is still in its infancy stage, and that is why it is expensive. We have to pay humans for all the manual labor and efforts they undertake.
Undoubtedly, as our technology matures, goods will become cheaper and we will pay less than ever before to survive and poverty diminishes gradually until one day we reach that state of zero poverty.
The saying "Nothing comes for FREE" is a universally accepted adage, but this is only because we are living in a man-made age still and not a machine-made age. We have to still pay for our food, clothing and shelter, until the day our technology comes to our rescue and automates all of these processes. "Technological evolution" is all about creating self-sustaining, man-made technology on which we all can depend.
-R.S. Amblee
email: rsamblee@hotmail.com
Author of "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
March 18, 2012
Consumerism, Not Necessity, Is the Mother of All Inventions
Consumerism is what makes inventions successful. If a great
innovation comes to the market but no one is interested in buying it, it
is worthless. We give credit to great inventors for improving our lives
immeasurably, but forget the end-users who created the demand for
the product in the first place. For example, Thomas Edison is widely
remembered as the inventor of the electric light bulb. What if no one
wanted to use electricity and we were all just as happy with candlesticks
and fireplaces? Without end-users to clamor for his brainstorm, like so
many before or since, that invention would have vanished into thin air,
along with Edison’s estimable legacy.
Instead, the light bulb became a big success because of the common
person’s desire to use that technology to achieve a higher standard of
living. Candles, matches, flames, and candleholders evolved to light
bulbs, fixtures, light switches, and remote controls. As long as this
desire to improve our lives continually exists, human technological
evolution simply cannot be stopped. Inventors’ innovative ideas are
absorbed by the commercial market as quickly as they appear, although
not all inventions are successful.
Even though intellectual efforts are important, the truth is, even if
those scientists were never born, someone else would have created
those inventions later. Human evolutionary activity is a collective effort
and does not bear adherence to any one individual. The technological
evolution is as natural as human life. Regardless of how consciously we
consider it (if at all), we are all part of this natural process.
Slow and Steady Wins the (Human) Race
If, on the other hand, an innovation were too futuristic for current
times, it would remain on the back burner until its day finally arrived.
Evolutionary changes have to be slow and steady to match the
absorption capacity of the market; it takes time for people to adapt to
these changes. For example, some of the inventions of Leonardo da
Vinci never saw the light of the day during his own lifetime or for
centuries later. They remained on paper all the time waiting, in effect,
for history to catch up with the great inventor. Now, after so many
centuries, scientists are able to analyze and understand what he was
trying to bring to life.
The same argument goes for many of Einstein’s theories, from the
theory of relativity to dark matter. Some theories are even too futuristic
for us to understand today, let alone consider using them in our
products. As human knowledge advances, however, those futuristic
concepts will be verified and eventually absorbed into the system.
Until then, sadly, they will remain on the evolutional back burner until
we as a species catch up to them.
-By RS Amblee
email: rsamblee@hotmail.com
Author of "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
innovation comes to the market but no one is interested in buying it, it
is worthless. We give credit to great inventors for improving our lives
immeasurably, but forget the end-users who created the demand for
the product in the first place. For example, Thomas Edison is widely
remembered as the inventor of the electric light bulb. What if no one
wanted to use electricity and we were all just as happy with candlesticks
and fireplaces? Without end-users to clamor for his brainstorm, like so
many before or since, that invention would have vanished into thin air,
along with Edison’s estimable legacy.
Instead, the light bulb became a big success because of the common
person’s desire to use that technology to achieve a higher standard of
living. Candles, matches, flames, and candleholders evolved to light
bulbs, fixtures, light switches, and remote controls. As long as this
desire to improve our lives continually exists, human technological
evolution simply cannot be stopped. Inventors’ innovative ideas are
absorbed by the commercial market as quickly as they appear, although
not all inventions are successful.
Even though intellectual efforts are important, the truth is, even if
those scientists were never born, someone else would have created
those inventions later. Human evolutionary activity is a collective effort
and does not bear adherence to any one individual. The technological
evolution is as natural as human life. Regardless of how consciously we
consider it (if at all), we are all part of this natural process.
Slow and Steady Wins the (Human) Race
If, on the other hand, an innovation were too futuristic for current
times, it would remain on the back burner until its day finally arrived.
Evolutionary changes have to be slow and steady to match the
absorption capacity of the market; it takes time for people to adapt to
these changes. For example, some of the inventions of Leonardo da
Vinci never saw the light of the day during his own lifetime or for
centuries later. They remained on paper all the time waiting, in effect,
for history to catch up with the great inventor. Now, after so many
centuries, scientists are able to analyze and understand what he was
trying to bring to life.
The same argument goes for many of Einstein’s theories, from the
theory of relativity to dark matter. Some theories are even too futuristic
for us to understand today, let alone consider using them in our
products. As human knowledge advances, however, those futuristic
concepts will be verified and eventually absorbed into the system.
Until then, sadly, they will remain on the evolutional back burner until
we as a species catch up to them.
-By RS Amblee
email: rsamblee@hotmail.com
Author of "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
