hello and welcome to world the part the more things change the more they stay the same this pronouncement by and 19th century french journalist has long become an international truism but it doesn't stop companies and people from paying sometimes big bucks to get a sneak peek into the future and hopefully a happy start in handling it is it worth it well to discuss that i'm now joined by u.k. based futurist and off their retreat watson mr watson it's good to talk to you thank you very much for making the time thank you for having me on now being a futurist these a very trendy pre-occupation it's also an increasingly competitive lucrative filled but how is it different from being a philosopher a historian or any kind of analyst for that matter well from my perspective it's

not it's not very different i mean i acquired this and i still think slightly ludicrous job title but since having written a book about 11 years ago about what i thought would happen in the in the future and i've always used the future as an excuse to engage with people about what they're doing right now and what they might like to do next so i'm somewhat cynical about a lot of the stuff that surrounds the so-called industry but i think it is quite a useful thing to do i know that you believe that the next 50 years of human history will be determined by our relationship with the machines and i think this is a very popular notion nowadays but it strikes me as a little bit. isn't human history always altima to the determined by our relationship with ourselves rather than the tools we use well it's everything i think one of the mistakes a lot of technology. making is to purely look at technology in

a very linear fashion and you have to consider the entire system the psychology the history everything everything that within that there's a great quote i use in my book from wilson who's an american evolutionary biologist which is that we have fucking number we have the brains of the page the institutions of the medieval and the technology of the gods and he wasn't being terribly complementary i mean technology is accelerating extremely fast in certain areas computing and genetics primarily we still essentially have the same brains that we crawled out of caves with and there is a problem emerging that we either have to merge with the machines or reject or restrain some of this technology but the previous industrial revolutions also happened very quickly in a matter of day kids and to some extent they were far more dramatic in terms of changing people's lifestyles and their values i agree technology is advancing very quickly but so is our i have taishan to it aren't we overdramatizing the fact of

the digitalisation the internet and other phenomena brought on by the 4th industrial revolution well well we don't really know i mean it's a bit like things like demographics where you've got rapidly aging societies we're not entirely sure what's going to happen because it's never happened before and yes people point to the industrial level revolution saying it's all happened before particularly in the context of losing jobs and other jobs being created but it does seem slightly different this time i mean it's more than just ways of making things ways of living it's a bit broader than that potentially this time and i think we need to be quite careful about things and the thing i'm very disappointed at the moment is possibly get more into the so philosophical ethical area is there's very little discussion about what all of this technology is ultimately for it seems to be an end in itself a lot of the time now i've seen you write recently that the future has essentially been stolen by a tiny slice of society essentially man in that twenty's thirty's and for. these

pushing certain forms of communication and certain channels of communication on toss are they really so much different from the big food the big tobacco pharma companies who are trying that bass to get consumers hoped in order to sell their products would you have a point i mean i think a lot of products have been designed by sort of western white middle class people in the past the difference this time is that it was easy not to buy their products there was a limit to how impactful that products where whereas this time the digital products in particular are being designed by terribly tiny slice slice of society and if it is white middle class young men in a certain part of california and they are designing things that they truly believe in and i think that works for them quite a lot of them quite frankly are on the autistic spectrum and they have issues relating to other human beings now that technology works for them it doesn't necessarily work for other people and we've had a lot of discussion about products being designed by men that terribly well for

women but it's also young men designing products terribly well for older people and even the discussion about ethics at the moment is a complicated one because the american view of ethical behavior is quite different to a chinese view of ethical behavior the american view is centered on the primacy of the individual the chinese view as i understand there's more about group home and i don't know how you put those 2 things together i disagree with the notion that you know previously it was easy to say no to certain products take the big food industry you can't say no to food and as a result of it you know all over 80 percent of the american population are metabolically sick so to some extent we had the same issues with any major industry in the same africa questions were pondered i'm coming back to the question i asked previously is the tax sector really so much different from all the other industries because those industries. also run by

a very special group of people some some i've seen some site is that suggest that the percentage of psychopath is much higher among business executives so i think it's always been that way hasn't it i'm not quite sure i don't i mean that there is definitely some truth in what you say again i just question the sheer dominance the ubiquity of some of these tools and technologies that are now emerging i mean there is some difference i mean you know there are certain regional differences now the chinese about their own version of american products and services but i think my point is the shia ubiquity of it and. we are having less and less choice in a sense i think you know yes you got to eat food but you always have to choose a choice in what you age but it's become increasingly difficult to disengage with certain technologies a moment well i'm not sure he you have a choice when it comes to food especially in western societies because there are about 12 big companies that are running foot protection and production there around

the world but coming back to technology i know that you personally are very cognizant that about how much technology you personally in into your own life what's your regiment or one thing i do like. retrospective reading i mean i find it very difficult there is so much going on and it's so volatile it's confusing ambiguous that i'm trying to restrain the amount of information that reaches my head one of the tools i personally use that works quite well for me is this idea of retrospective reading so i i don't look at newspapers during the week i find them full of pointless speculation and the mindset is it creates is quite anxious so i like buying a couple of quality newspapers that weekend i particularly like the financial times in the new york times they must be built on paper. and being the weekend edition's people have got more time to reflect on things and more analytical but i don't read them there and then i read them a week 2 weeks a month later. and then you know certain things have happened so it's it's very

quick to scan through the paper my mindset is calm and critically i'm able to see connections that i don't necessarily see if i'm frantically trying to through today's newspaper and as far as i know you know you're also try to keep away from all the social media you're not on twitter you're not on instagram no i just fragments my mind and it's constant confusion i don't pick up email on the go if i'm not in the office i will not look at e-mail my phone doesn't pick up e-mail i have periods where i turn my phone off i like to think i like to reflect on things and if it's just constant i think your your thinking is very reactive very superficial i think we've been very alike if you actually being able to get hold of you both i heard people to you describe these kind of lifestyle as informational fasting and i personally find this matter for a very abacus abstaining from anything is the bast way i know of reining in the

impulses that most of the industries are trying to you exploit don't you find if they beat contradictory though that you're you're consulting for corporations that ultimately want to exploit them milk our paleolithic emotions and our paleolithic brains and your own various sadek informationally ascetic lifestyle well i there are certain companies i will not work for there are other companies i may work for it it depends but certain certain ones are completely off. it's not just about abstaining though i think it's about balance it's not saying i will not do something it's saying i will use it in a certain way to go back to your food example it's a really bad idea to constantly stuff your face with with food well it's i think it's a very bad idea to constantly stuff your mind with things on social media it's about restraining things and it's about finding the balance it's about you know when is a good time to use it when is a bad time is also to do with tools and education is is very relevant here and it's not it's not sort of binary you come. say

a screen is bad paper is good or vice versa they are both paper and screens are both very clever technologies that are suitable for certain things they're very good at certain things they're very bad at certain things so you have to think well what am i trying to do and what is the best tool to help me do that now by the way you know wilson whom you mentioned earlier was also very much concerned about humanity drowning in information and he believed that the world in the future would be run by synthesisers people who can discern the right information the important information quickly who can process it critically and make wise decisions but when i look around modern day politics by the way it's in the u.k. in the united states or even in russia it doesn't seem to be the case do you think wilson was wrong on that do you think these synthesizes really stand a chance in governance or in politics these days well that used to be the role of the media right the media was there to edit and they were trusted sources the trouble is that hierarchy of trust the collapse somewhat not only do we have too

much information moment we have we have too much opinion and not enough filtering the trust has has largely collapsed and that's deeply problematic so i don't necessarily agree with i mean one book to think about in the context of 29000 from the office future shock which is 50 years old next year and most people remember a future shock saying the perception of too much change over to short a period of time would create a form of mental instability which i would argue is true now in many regions but he was one of the very early people to talk about information overload and i think we suffer from that right now as well and we still have this mindset of the more information we can get our hands on the better decisions will make which used to be true 100 or 200 years ago i no longer think that is true now and i think less is more and on many levels when it comes to the media now speaking about mental instability and politics i know that some point you jokingly consider i don't know try. as

a global game changer 3 years into his presidency hasn't he proved to be won not only in terms of his approach to governance but also with regards to the geopolitical changes that are happening well under his watch he represents you can take trump away but you'll get a sort of similar version of him it's a bit like brett sit there indicative of things the default. i mean i don't know on one level i completely despair about trump it's like living through an episode of south park he certainly disruptive i mean if you like disruption you're going to have to love donald trump because he does turn things upside down you know some of his opinions i think a fine i mean the draining the swamp thing isn't entirely bad idea other times he's completely nuts i mean i'm i'm more relaxed with him now than i was a year or 2 ago but i still frankly despair well mr watson to have one more question about donald trump but i will ask it after a short break don't go away we'll be back in just a few moments. and

we're going to fulfill repeated promises apologise to the people i promise you know we've all but the truth. pretty. tough now you want to. know.

for 5 the. coming coming coming. welcome back to worlds apart big u.k. based futurist and author richard watson mr watson just before the break we started talking about donald trump and when you just cast him you tend to do it in a somewhat snarky manner you make a lot of jokes about his intelligence and i understand how some people on the personal level may find he's pronouncements and his manner was poor and but i'm not

sure that intelligence wise he saw much inferior to for example barack obama who was well educated man well liked man but he's policy on let's say leave be a was. beyond stupid with far reaching implications. when you talk about classifying trumps election or reelection as one of the major global risks is that if you're a political bias or is it indeed analysis oh it's i think everything's my personal bias i think we all have lenses that we see the world through i mean i don't want to get too hung up on trying to trump i mean i think i referred to him as a global going change which could i'm not putting any sort of positive or negative spin on that you also discussed there as a potential risk well you know well it depends on how you view risk where you stand i suppose. i'm not sure how to respond to that question i don't want to get too

deep into that is on the next book american politics but he certainly has disrupted the system but he's not alone in doing that there are other people disrupting systems now a few years ago you came up with a map of megatrends and technology running all the way up to you 2050 and i hope you don't mind me saying that i think that map navigates the future from a decidedly western analytical perspective which. i'm sure you would agree with me by by no means universal do you believe that the western lifestyle the western thought the western way of doing things will continue being dominant for years to come well i mean 1st of all again we see it has a statistical assault on it and it's very difficult to avoid that it was also written as a time when i'd been involved in various workshops looking at certain things and they had influence that i mean in general terms the west in the western mindset is

in decline the us is in relative decline china reason is rising europe some people say it is rising other people see it is declining it's. likely that the sort of western mindset and western culture will decline relative to eastern culture that's that's probably what's going to happen although it's you can't say for certain i mean china has a lot of issues china may change direction you know africa is interesting but can change direction so if the end of the day we can only talk about what's probable and what's possible i think anyone that says that something will or won't happen. he's pushing it a bit well mr watson i actually agree with the i think the westernized they should know to while the with individual ism as it starting in central point is already slowing down in fact i see a reversal of it with eastern philosophies and a higher strasse all collective and shared rather than individual good gaining

ground 1st and foremost in the west itself do you think it's a passing fad or is it indeed a major trant of rebalancing our i think we are potentially on a major rebalancing away from being powered individual isn't which is where we are right now which is creating a lot of problems back towards the individual and again we talk about china you know the harmony of the group the collective goods also a shift away from this sort of material culture and we talk about happiness quite a lot in in the west and we tend to relate it to material acquisition you know some of the happiest people in the world have had very few possessions and i think we might see the emergence of some kind of new spiritual paradigm i think there's some interesting things going on generation where people are questioning the need to actually own things maybe they just need to certain things and they are being forced to live with less because they have less money means a big generational divide opening up and in terms of wealth but that's not

necessarily a bad thing i think having less is a very very good thing indeed the other thing is you know the world was made in its current form very much off the world war 2 by the u.s. and north western europe and most of the global institutions have been made in the name now if if the us north western europe are in or europe or in relative decline and the east and a shrimp particular are arising we may get a remaking of these institutions based on their values rather than u.s. or western values i slightly disagree with you here because i think the western world view over many centuries not just since the 2nd world. war but many centuries but before that has been geared towards progress and more and more development i would be the 1st to say that people in the west more of sort of human doers then human beings and that produce a lot of innovation but at that also came with a lot of environmental degradation including climate change speech you mention as

one of the mega trends given how acute this. challenge right now do you think that's trifle progress could ever be balanced against the costs well it's moving in that direction we're beginning to sort of account things in a more general sense what is the societal impact of a of a company beyond just carbon emissions or whatever waste or something in a much more holistic sense i mean one thing i think we might see going quite a long way out is that as develop some particularly general intelligence develops they start taking our jobs and become a threat to human beings that might show a very very strong spotlights almost human beings are actually for you know what are we actually good at what are the few things if anything that humans can do that and do and that will create this kind of ethical philosophical discussion about you know why we're here what we're for what we good at and so on and that is a long. discussion we are on the cusp i think also of having discussions

about where we want to go in the future i mean the problem with futurologists is. it's all about trying to predict what's going to happen trying to fool cos what's going to happen which is quite a sort of negative thing really is that the feature is out there and we've got to sort of work out how we're going to react or respond to it i think a much wiser thing that we should be doing is having collective discussions about where we want to go in the future and then trying to create that future and you know we can we do shape the future i mean what you and i decide to do today tomorrow and the day off the fundamentally show. it's what the future looks like it is not some sort of force that you can see or call kong can't deal with it absolutely is i think some ethical dimensions are absolutely critical to that and what's very clear to me is a sort of western model if you want to call it that is not sustainable with knowing 10000000000 people can discuss ethics indefinitely but i think consumers missed

still the main driver of both western and to a large extent the global economy and you know whatever conservationist efforts people may take they certainly do you know the sad the damage the cost of our daily lives and i suspect that many of the companies that are reading up your books wouldn't like that to change would they of course not they're going to have to though even the future belongs to ask how can we make them. change their minds well i think 1st of all we have to i mean we have potentially have to challenge this idea of growth you know how else can we creating come create jobs without necessarily this endless growth model we certainly need to take a much longer term view of how companies operate a more holistic view of what profit is and what what costs are. i don't think we're going to have any any choice ultimately. i'm personally very fascinated by this

whole issue of progress because many of the major breakthroughs we as humans have also had major darkseid for example the green revolution fad millions of people but it also resulted in a huge loss of biodiversity irreversible loss i mentioned the the issue of basic metabolic disease medicine has produced the cure for infectious diseases but as i said over 80 percent of americans are metabolically sick do you think the current definition of progress is really comprehensive more you can show how to define progress. that's a very long discussion what we actually mean by progress and i think in the west we have generally referred most people would think in terms of the cumulation of possessions it's quite a materialist consumerist definition although there are other definitions you know the things like longevity extreme poverty you know number of women in work in

education there are all these sort of broad definitions of progress but that fundamentally i think consumerist materialistic in the west now i mean the interesting thing to me is it's never been about it's a time to be alive than 2019 i think and if you if you just speak i just don't think you've been paying proper attention to what's been going on i mean i'm talking from a western context if. i don't most measures that may matter it's never been a better time to be alive yet somehow something's missing and i think it's that maybe there's been no progress spiritually maybe there's been no progress ethically i mean fairness is an interesting thing to dig into so i think we are going to read if we're going to have a discussion about what we mean by progress and probably redefine it in some sense now you mentioned the devotee and i think it's also a good example of how something could be both a blessing and curse because you don't just want people to leave longer you want them to leave productively you want them to be healthy and happy for as long as

they leave is not the case today do you think if the problem for the future to solve or is there something perhaps in the past that may offer us some solutions well i mean this is nicely into flossie's and because it would talk about what is a good life i mean if we go back to the sort of the silicon valley thing a bit here there is a sort of a very small group of people same people more or less intent on curing what they call the death problem this is human in the huntsman taking to the extreme so we're talking about doubling lifespans or even stopping people from dying altogether which i think is possibly the world's most dangerous idea at the moment you know in the west we have in the u.k. . i have a problem with the n.h.s. caused by people there's more people there living longer there's migration as well but fundamentally it's created by longevity yet there's almost no discussion about the quality of life and we have to keep people alive at all cost it's all about duration and surely it's about quality at some level and that is a discussion we're going to have to have in the future as well you know what do we

mean by a good life and so on and so forth and your beastie point is absolutely correct that it that is an enormous problem that we're largely ignoring them even aging where we're not really dealing with that in very in a very effective manner the world is physically designed for relatively young people and there's not that many of them anymore you know the world essentially is going to be full of all the people who was a great statistic in new scientist a while ago by fred pierce who said that of all of the people that have ever lived to the age of 65 throughout human history half of them are still alive now that raises a bunch of questions and concerns we've never had to talk about before now i think that chimes well with the point that you often make that people fundamentally don't change we have finite needs both physiological and psychological and that's not likely. to alter in the years to come i wonder if you think that instead of sort of wondering about the future and trying to decipher it people how much better off on

learning how to leave that alive to the best of the abilities speeches by reach i mean productively mindfully happily and healthily reach hopefully will produce the kind of future that you want to see it well this i think is something in that i mean you can try and change the world or you can just change your own life and that's kind of the best you can do on on some kind of level amazin interesting problem really because i mean if you think of extinction rebellion and climate change and so on if everyone fundamentally changed their behavior in the u.k. . at the end of the day it would make absolutely no difference if china doesn't change their behavior but that's not an excuse to not do something i think you have to do something and start somewhere going back to an earlier point i think when we talk about progress progress is usually defined in physical material i think we're going to enter a period where we're talking about mental progress now whether that spirituality or

mental wellbeing i don't know but we're going to be more interested in what you know hades than before well mr watson we have to leave it there thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us today thank you very much for having me our viewers can keep this conversation going in our social media pages that's for me and the team. same place same time on worlds apart. they put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to

be president and you. want. to go to the press it's like before 3 in the morning and people. interested in the waters in the. time of the time corporations repeat the same mantra sustainability very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport sustainability. a more equitable and sustainable. they claim their production is completely harmless. and. companies want us to feel good about buying their products while the damage is being done far away this is something this must be done to anyone and i mean look. you missed me didn't. seem

to me understood so when in. a rare. yellow best activists bring time oil to the streets of paris and the anti-government movement marks its 1st anniversary. at least 9 supporters of believe is ousted president a killed in a standoff with police amid widespread anger against the new leadership. and a former u.s. ambassador to ukraine testifies in the trump impeachment hearings and says there's no evidence the president engaged in criminal activity in the country. although the headlines and that's it for me.