I was just a seven year old boy when I watched Blade Runner for the very first time. I can still remember the feeling of wonder of myself as a kid in front of a future which looked so charming and so distant at the same time. I was finding it intriguing and fascinating. A few years later, as a teenager, I was moved by the parallel between the mortality of the replicants doomed by their four-year life cycle and our own one, which still was looking much much longer to my 14 year old self.
Nowadays I’m a forty year old adult. Recently my wife introduced me to the British TV series Humans, which I’m finding disturbing as a dissonating dream. Indeed there is no huge difference between the replicants of 1982 and the synths of 2015, but this “new future” looks far more familiar and upcoming. The parallel here goes to the late eighties paranoia cults, such as They Live from Carpenter or Society from Yuzna.
I’ve already started to rely on technology for a huge share of my needs. My best friend is probably my smartphone, and even if I try not to abuse, it’s always next to me for one reason or another. In the car I find myself switching on the GPS most of the times: why to focus and to think which road to take to go back home, when a machine can make the effort for me? The other night I went out for a hamburger with my wife (an event for which I’ve received the invitation on facebook), and I took a picture of her: on the background you can see two guys, supposedly two friends, their heads down catalyzed by their mobiles.
For the last thirty years we thought we were making a big deal and we all went to China. Now we are coming back, someone is calling it re-shoring, just to discover that… China is now here. They did leverage on our investments, and now they are expanding, buying our companies and starting to colonize us with restaurants, shops and massage centers. In the meanwhile, in their own country they are planning to jump directly from Industry 2.0 to 4.0.
Today trend is robotics and artificial intelligence. We need to invest in those companies which are producing those machines that will make obsolete the work of most of us. Competition makes-up speed, and speed requires performances which most probably will be soon out of reach for a human being.