Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

The future changed and we continued to act as if nothing had happened

One of the defense mechanisms enumerated and explained by Freud consists in simply denying that something that is happening or has happened has really happened. In this way, hiding behind that refusal to see reality, the affected person continues to act as if nothing had happened, thus avoiding assuming their own responsibility.

This defense mechanism arises and is also activated at a social level and, in fact, at a global level. The entire humanity seems to continue operating as if everything was as it always was, although the reality around us (if we dare to see it) indicates the opposite.

For example, there are already about 8 billion humans on earth today, four times more than a century ago and 20 times more than a millennium ago. How long can the planet continue to support our presence? How much longer will it take to acknowledge the big bind we're in and come clean about where we really are?

As if that were not enough to wake us up to our reality and stop denying it, a recent article indicates that there are already 36 people on the planet who have brain implants that allow them to connect directly with computers. And those people are just the initial experimental group.

Additionally, a new real-time study of the human brain from Texas A&M University indicates that the human brain works differently when people work alongside robots. Those changes make humans "trust robots more than they should." I wonder what will happen once our neural changes are irreversible.

And, although it sounds like science fiction (it is not), the artist robot Ai-Da recently appeared before the British parliament to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. According to Ai-Da, intelligent robots now "express themselves" through art and "reflect and explore" their relationship with technology and with humans.

According to a report of Ai-Da's speech to British parliamentarians published on the ArtNet site, lawmakers were "terrified" to hear "technology speaking for itself."

And speaking of science fiction that is no longer, Google recently announced that prototypes of three-dimensional holographic video call booths already exist. The so-called Starline Project will soon allow "conversing with holographic versions of your friends, family or co-workers."

These and many other examples (which we share daily in our Emerging Future Newspaper and in Futurizonte.com) indicate that the future is no longer a continuity of the past and that we can no longer deny that there is a gap between the present and the future. In other words, the only thing we can take from the present to the future is ourselves, because everything we know and have will be totally obsolete in the new future.

Yet, we are still selecting our future (careers, spouses, jobs, opportunities) based on the same criteria used by our parents or grandparents many decades ago.

Ignoring reality does not change it and, in fact, only increases frustrations, tensions, and negative emotions. Closing your eyes to reality (that is, acting like a child) only increases the problem.

Go Back