Raphael Thys
Hi again to part two of my recap of the 2bahead future congress. This post focuses on the second day of the event. After part 1 covered the topics metaverse, quantum computing, genetics, politics, and fusion power, the second day of the event was about the future of retail, sport entertainment, climate change, food, health and German politics. Again, the following is just my interpretation of topics.
After a very inspiring first event day it was hard to believe that the second day keeps up with the quality of topics from day one but yes, it continued to deliver food for thought on a very high-quality level.
The start was a talk about the future of retail. The first full autonomous stores grow up all over the world. With currently just a few dozens of them (including Amazon go stores) for convenience goods, it is just a matter of time till this concept conquers the world. You just walk in, grab what you need and walk out again. You pay by credit card or, if you are already registered, payment will be handled via your user account. All this works with hundreds of cameras and sensors at the ceiling combined with artificial intelligence. And no, this is not a phenomenon of the US but already present in European countries like France, Poland and Germany. The upsides: This store can run 24/7, there are higher throughput rates of customers and better customer experience. It also saves a lot of money as no more personal is needed. This may be perceived as downside but considering that till 2025 there will be a shortage of approx. 3 Mio. employees in Germany, this seems a logical improvement.
The future of sport entertainment reminded me of the metaverse discussion a day ago where it was about mixing virtual elements with the real world. In the future, watching sport events remotely is a 3D experience backed up by virtual reality and augmented reality. You can watch a game from whatever perspective you want, including from the eyes of a e.g., soccer player. You can bring a game onto your kitchen table. Referees are obsolete and replaced by artificial intelligence. The same will happen to the trainer of sport teams. Everyone can create his own unique sports entertainment experience.
For the discussion about climate, the good news went first: With a consequent rollout of a few technologies, it should be possible to reduce carbon dioxide production by 90% till 2035. The main technologies refer to energy, mobility, and food production and have been part of most other talks within the future congress. Yes, especially here in Europe, people are very skeptical when it comes to adoption of new technology. Especially when it is about topics like genetics or cultivated / 3D printed meat. But at the end there are not that much options: Either reducing the luxury of our current lifestyle by 50%, life with masses of refugees combined with conflicts and wars, or adapting technology that by the way solves other problems like world hunger. Shouldn’t be that hard to decide…
The talk about future of food connects to the previous topic, also covering the question of how to feed 10 billion people on this earth? The answer is again technology. It is already predicted that till the year 2040 only 40% of meat eaten will be natural “grown”. 35% will be cultured meat from bioreactors and 25% directly form plant proteins brought into shape by e.g., 3D printing. The same trend applies for other types of food. One cool technology presented is the ability to turn on and off certain genes from grain. Due to global warming, 60% of current land won’t be capable of growing food anymore due to drought. Grain already has a gene which lets itself survive such droughts. But it is not activated and therefore useless. A new technology let you activate these gene by just spraying an “activator” over the it. The effect lasts for 1,5 weeks and then the gene will deactivate itself again. Sounds crazy, but is a way to grow grain even in places where it is soon not possible anymore.
The future of health was kind of surreal. Did you know that by influencing the electrical field between cells, you are able to influence nearly everything happening in your body? As said, this is about influencing the electrical field and is not about genetics! Here are some examples: You can program your body to recreate damaged organs, spinal cord injuries, fingers you have been cut off and so on. It just “regrows”. You activate your body to repair itself. You even can deactivate aging and or activate getting younger again. What really surprised me: This technology will be in a tested state already in the next 3–5 years and will reach the masses between 2035 and 2040.
The last topic was a kind of back to reality and a discussion about the German’s coalition contract which was presented at the same day. How future oriented is this contract? In sum, it looks like there is a strong drive to accept technologies like genetics or biotechnology, adapt measures to support innovation and bring Germany back to a leading nation of innovation. There is a progressive spin and innovation in technology is top of the agenda. All in all, everything sounded good but as always in politics, trust need to be earned by successfully implementing these plans.
Also the second day was just one “wow” after another. It really looks like technology can solve most big problems humanity is currently facing — while politics has opted out from future decisions long ago. If only half of promised technology goes live, there is only one answer to this blog post´s question: Yes, the future will definitely bright.