The World In 2050

So, how do you think this Covid pandemic gonna change the next 50 years of our life? History shows that past pandemics have reshaped societies in profound ways. Hundreds of millions of people have died. Empires have fallen. Governments have cracked. Generations have been affected. The past 20th century suffered a lot of pandemics but what someone remembers is the Spanish flu of 1918. But what made it so deadliest? It took over 50 million lives and infected more than 500 million people all around the globe.

 

Expertise from different fields agree that the world after the pandemic will be far more different from the current situation. Economy, Community, Civilization, Education will not be the same. No one has a clear idea about what the job market will look like in 2050. Robotics will almost change every line of work. However, there are contradictory views on the nature of the change. Few believe that in the next decade or two, billions of people will lose their job. Others maintain that too even in the long run automation will keep generating new jobs.

 

When we grow up, we might not have a job. By 2050, not just the idea for a job for a life’ but even the idea of a profession for life’ might seem non-existent. Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal, that thinks in stories rather than numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes, conflicts, climaxes, and happy endings.

 

Liberty as of today may not seem the same. For thousands of years, people believe that authority came from divine laws rather than from the human heart. Only in the last few centuries did the source of authority shift from celestial bodies to flesh-and-blood humans. Soon authority might shift again – from humans to algorithms. So the coming technological revolution might establish the authority of Big Data algorithms, while undermining the very ideas of INDIVIDUAL freedom.

 

In the last few decades, people all over the world were told that globalization will help us get to Equality sooner. The one who owns the data owns the future applies here. But the question is who owns the data? The race to obtain the data is already on, headed by Google, Facebook, and many more data giants. They capture our attention by providing us free information, entertainment, and then they sell our attention to advertisers. The true business isn’t to sell the advertisements. Rather, by capturing our attention they manage to accumulate a large amount of data about us, which is worth more. We aren’t their customers – we are the products.

 

We are repeatedly told these days that post-truth are all around us. Well, some fake news lasts only for 700 years. The difference between holy books and money, for example, is far smaller than it may seem at first sight. When most people see a rupee note, they forget that it is just a human convention. They hardly even remind of themselves ‘Actually, this is a worthless piece of paper, but because other people view it as valuable, I can make use of it.

 

The future is not the way we see in science fiction movies. Humans control the world so well because they believe in fiction. Have you any idea how many movies, novels, and poems you have consumed over the years, and how these collections have carved and sharpened your idea of love? Romantic comedies are to love as porn is to sex. And if you think you can press the delete button and wipe out all traces of Hollywood from your subconscious and your limbic system, you are fooling yourself.

 

What should we teach the baby that will help him or she survive in the world of 2050? What kind of skills will he need to get a job, understand what is happening around them, and navigate the maze of life? Unfortunately, since nobody knows how the world will look in 2050 – not to mention 2100 – we don’t know the answer to these questions. Of course, humans could never predict the future with accuracy.