By Yen To
Contributing Editor
A digitized beep emanating from the monitor
of my PC notifies me of an incoming call. I double-click to answer and
the image of a wrinkled face with sharp eyes fills the screen. "Greetings!
Frank Ogden here, can we meet to update data today?" He asks to meet at
beat 249 on Swatch time, a global clock system comprised of 1000 beats
per day and devoid of time zones. I agree, and hope he doesn't notice my
bed-head. I say my farewells and close the call. Clicking on the morning
Web news, the screen breaks into a multitude of moving icons. I select
four stations and watch the televised shows with disinterest. Downstairs,
my mate, the latest android companion model on the market, prepares my
breakfast. I remind myself to reprogram his emotional output, which has
verged on manic depressive due to the last Feelings software installed
in his system. After eating, I step into a business suit containing meridians
able to tap the body's natural electrical pulses, powering the suit's computer
and communicator.
I jump into my
vehicle and punch in my destination. When I arrive at the restaurant, Frank
is seated, thumbing a menu. I approach and he stands. "Business first,
let's exchange databases," he says. He takes my hand in a gesture that
could be mistaken as a handshake and we swap - the Internet information
I've collected, for his electronic payment. In a motion that only takes
two seconds, the transac-ttion is complete and both of us sit to enjoy
lunch. He begins the conversation. "Do you remember when you were a kid,
before you became a Web researcher, and you came to my houseboat to interview
me about the future?..."
____________________________________________
On a houseboat stationed at global position
049 degrees 17' 46" north latitude and 123 degrees 07' 55" west longitude
in Vancouver's Coal Harbour pre-Y2K, futurist Frank Ogden, universally
known as Dr. Tomorrow, sits in a tan leather chair. Ogden, a man of eighty
plus years, pontificates about the emerging new economy. "I think the most
controversial (technology) in the next decade is going to be Biotechnology
because it's going to be so revolutionary...! can see young ladies, their
hair is broccoli and they break off a piece of hair and eat it." He nonchalantly
leans back in his chair for impact. For those not in the know, Ogden is
a renowned global speaker, digital guru, and author. "We're now able to
mix genes. We've taken the gene that causes a glow in the firefly and put
it into a tobacco plant. You can now get tobacco leaves, plants, that glow
and you haven't even lit them." He continues to speak rapidly, eyes widening,
about the current capabilities of Biotechnology.
According to Ogden, scientists in the field
have extracted a gene from the Atlantic Flounder that allows the flat fish
to exist in below freezing temperatures and injected the gene into Rapeseed,
from which we derive Canola Oil. The plant, genetically equipped with the
anti-freeze agent, can continue to grow during winter, withstanding harsh
environmental conditions in northern lands deemed un-harvestable. With
the genetic addition, producers of Canola Oil have profited immensely by
harvesting a plant that is able to produce crops year round and investing
in inexpensive undesired agricultural land for $10 an acre instead of highly
priced Alberta farmland, selling for $300 per acre.
Although the private sector is experiencing
gfeat change, Ogden optimistically believes new industries will provide
infinite future employment opportunities to replace the obsolescent occupations.
"In North America alone, there's been 100,000 high paying Internet jobs
created here in the last year—that has to increase as the number of people
on the Internet goes from two per cent to three per cent of the global
population. And when we have ten per cent of the global population on the
Internet, that's six hundred million people, you have six hundred million
people in the world communicating with one another," he emphatically states,
his voice rising to a teetering thunder then dropping again to a conversational
tone. "It's more important today, in my opinion, to be computer literate
than it was to learn how to re.id and write in the Industrial Age—look
at all the millions of things that have happened in the last three years,
60 per cent of every thing connected with the computer industry today is
new, didn't exist three years ago...The jobs as we have known them are
obsolete already, they're going the way of slavery, child labour, and engendered
service. It's just that the world has changed...We're going from the Industrial
Age model where there was mass manufacturing, there was mass audiences,
and mass consumption. And we're going now into more of an individual lifestyle."
Ogden explains the recent economic unrest as
a natural transition period prompted by the collapse of the Industrial
Age and the installment of the Communications Age - an era defined by technological
advancement and the advent of the Net. Referring to a manufacturing phenomena
occurring throughout Asia, he uses this paradigm to flesh out his theory.
"They have this thing that looks like an aquarium. And it's a factory in
a box, and there's automation and little robots in there. And you just
plug it into your wall socket and you put two rods into one side, that's
the metal, and a stack of crystals for the watches and out come Citizens
watches...The Citizens watch truck comes once or twice a week, delivers
the rods, the crystals for the watch and the straps in little cases. So
families make the watches, in this little aquarium. Out they come on a
velvet conveyor belt and the kids put on the straps, put the watches in
a little carton, package it...And the same guy that drops off the raw materials,
picks up the finished product. He doesn't take it to a warehouse, he takes
it directly to a shipping line and it goes to New York or to anywhere in
the world," Ogden moves his arms in large circular motions to pantomime
a sphere.
With this new invention, the building of factories
is eliminated. Manufacturers no longer need to invest in real-estate, means
of production or managing staff. The families acquire the devices at very
little cost and are paid $100,000 per year to manufacture 50,000 Citizens
watches for roughly $2 per watch. "You've got one little factory here and
one in every house, you don't need a big factory somewhere else and the
family is the one that earns the money...So that eliminates any unions
because there's not 5000 people you can unionize, you can't even unionize
one house." He says that, to the manufacturer, this method of household
production is far better than investing in one large factory. One advantage;
environmental disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes threaten to terminate
factory production indefinitely. This neo-manufacturing system enables
thousands of geographically dispersed households to contain the live-in
technology, thus the ratio of destruction is reduced.
The transition towards more technologically
efficient methods of production has created great economic insecurities
within the business sector. Ogden feels the fundamental change has already
occurred and surviving in the new era means adapting or perishing with
the crumbling, antiquated institutions
of yesterday.
"The one thing that is fatal, is to do nothing.
It's better to take the chance and lose than to do nothing. Because if
you lose, you can do it again. If you do nothing you're dead because the
whole world has passed you by...The jobs are going to be mainly those new
ones that the individual creates themselves. You've got to go out and market
yourself...whether you're an individual or working for a big corporation...Inside
that business, you've got to sell yourself to everybody, your co-workers,
your boss, and your customers, that in your field you're the best."
In the present, occupational preparation means
devoting years and investing thousands into post-secondary institutions.
Ogden believes that in this new market, academia will have no value. "
The schools have an implied contract, they have to educate the students
to graduate into the work environment at the time of graduation. And the
question is, have they done that? And the answer is, no. In a great many
cases, because the work environment has changed and they haven't kept up.
You go into a school today and look in a computer room and who's the teacher?
The kids know more about the computers than the teachers do." His voice
crescendos to a yell. "If they can't handle that, are they any longer critical
to the process? And I say, no...I think most of the courses in schools
today are irrelevant...Speak to people that have graduated...and ask them...What
did you learn in school that got you that job? Very few people can get
a job based on their education today." Tie impatiently taps his forefinger
on the surface of the chair.
"That's nonsense." Situated in her Ontario
, apartment, Nuala Beck, another self-proclaimed futurist, rebuts Ogden's
education claim. "To tell kids to drop out of school because you don't
know what's "'*' actually going to happen in the future is absurd." Beck's
credentials include: international business speaker, economic researcher,
and author of three books concerning future economic trends. "Education
is more important than ever...During the turn of the century, there was
a need for formal education. So, public schools were created by the government.
The need for a certain level of schooling happened because of the Industrial
Revolution. Now the education standard has been raised again because of
the new economy." She emphasizes that the occupational environment demands
higher degrees of post-secondary education, but to survive in the new economy
you must learn to adapt and apply your knowledge to an expanding economic
sector.
"Four new industries already exist and are
rapidly growing. The first is computer semi-conductors. This includes information
in technology, computer machinery, data processing, the Internet, all of
E-commerce. The second is in medical technology, miracle medicines...Third
is communications, especially telecommunications. Fourth is Instrumentation,
such as electronic scanning and other equipment," she speaks rapidly, without
natural pauses or breaths. Then continuing. Beck announces the dying industries,
naming the Steel, Copper, and Mining industries. "Oil is also collapsing
and giving way to natural gas...The future is going to be a dead ringer
of a surprise for students...The only thing is to love what you do and
learn how to use it in a new field."
____________________________________________
Returning to the houseboat shaped like a blue
peanut, Ogden shifts in his chair creating squish noises from the leather.
"Your trip to tomorrow or the future is like any trip. You really don't
know what the destination is 'til you get there...You'll see the day when
a robot will cry. . It will have built in emotions. You may marry a robot...Hey,
don't knock it until you've tried it."
e-mail this article to a friend