The Future Needs Better Marketing

The future needs better marketing these days.

While objective statistics like child mortality, literacy rates, deaths from Malaria etc have almost across the board improved many people are not excited about the future anymore or actually anxious.

Some want to hence step back into a past but some also want to constructively work on making the future better.

I think AI will obviously be the next step function in human productivity that will make our lives healthier, longer and without a lot of the boring repetitive types of work.

I am incredibly excited not just about making work more interesting and productive but also getting a much better grasp on science. Physics. Chemistry. Biology. When AI could connect to a more and more realistic simulation of eg a cell it can solve so many fundamental problems and make scientific fields into engineering disciplines. We really could build many ideas we've read about in science fiction.

Just one idea that has stuck with me: Carbon nanotubes with infused iron molecules and coated with proteins that only bind to brain cancer cells. They can lead to cell-level mechanical, nano surgery. So much more to come in this field in the coming years!

So incredibly exciting advances are coming. And generally when technology takes over a field or industry it means that access gets more equitable over time. Billionaires and middle class teenagers use the same phones! To think about the immediate future we can often look at wealthy people and then imagine how to enable anybody to have access to similar opportunities. Your own personal assistant. Personalized Healthcare teams. Personal tutors for your kids. Stem cell therapies. Helicopters/e-vtols, etc.

Now if there is indeed more and more abundance, automation of boring work and overall comfort coming there will also be a void or vacuum of meaning. Most people derive that meaning from their jobs and spend a lot of time on them.

Many have dropped religion, but haven't yet replaced it with another structured pursuit of wisdom, togetherness, belonging, grounding, meaning or purpose.

[This is a short welcome speech I gave at a recent Unconference we hosted here in the bay area.]

I'm excited about what this incredibly talented, intelligent, global and driven community will discuss today. I hope we get to learn from each other. Listen. Debate. And come out a little wiser at the end and then bring those lessons into the world.