Tag Archives: future

The next wave

Here is what I know:

1. The Delta variant is treating Canada like it is treating the rest of the world… as a country with many hosts to spread.

2. Countries like Israel have already started giving booster shots to double-vaccinated people to decrease the spread of Delta.

3. We are a week and a half from opening schools here and things are not likely to be ‘back to normal’.

4. The FDA is going to approve the Pfizer vaccine next week, and that will convince some reluctant, or rather hesitant, people to finally get vaccinated.

Here is what I believe:

1. The unmasked, “Don’t worry I’m double-vaccinated” masses are almost as much a threat as the unvaccinated when it comes to Delta. We need to keep masks and social distancing going.

2. Booster shots will be yet another place for people to argue, but they will be instrumental in moving past covid in the next year… rather than the pandemic creeping into 2023 or even ’24.

3. I said over a year ago that things will start to move towards normal by January 2022. This seems more hopeful than likely right now.

4. There is enough data being shared by enough smart people with legitimate credentials to debunk anti-vaxer arguments, but more facts won’t change most anti-vaxer minds.

Here is what I hope:

1. I hope that vaccine approval below the age of 12 comes soon. Delta seems to be more contagious and adverse at younger ages.

2. I hope booster shots become something we can do in Canada, but I also hope to see more shots being provided to developing countries where vaccination numbers are low, not by choice but by lack of availability.

3. I hope that January 2022 starts with good news, and that not only is this 4th wave small, but that it is the last wave to make news for a very long time.

4. I hope that not too many unvaccinated people die before unvaccinated families see the correlation between high hospitalization and death statistics of unvaccinated people in relationship to low statistics for vaccinated people. Death of family members is an awful way to learn from your mistakes.

Still a hopeful timeline

I’ve been saying since before Christmas 2020 that, “Things will start to return to normal by January 2022.”

With the Delta variant being very contagious, and new variants like B.1.621.1 showing up on the US east coast, I don’t think school is going to start in September anywhere near as normal as we might have thought it would in June. Going into a busy coffee shop this morning, I was the only one wearing a mask, including the employees. The only covid precautions I saw were hand sanitizer at the entrance and the barista using tongs to put a straw into a cold drink.

I think new variants are going to give us a bit of a spanking, then we’ll smarten up and re-tighten up our precautions enough to slowly move in the right direction.

Although it may have seemed a bit pessimistic at the time, I am now hopefully optimistic that my prediction can be met. Despite the evidence of a 4th wave, it could be smaller, less alarming, less dangerous (thanks to the vaccine), and better managed. The ‘better managed’ is the key. We move forward with caution, or we move backwards.

Even if you are double vaccinated, wear a mask in public indoor spaces. Let’s keep these variants away.

What the next year will bring

I’m not pretending that I have a crystal ball, and can see into the future, but here are some predictions on the year ahead:

1. Vaccines.

A) In the developed world: despite growing evidence that vaccines are saving lives, there are going to be too many people that choose not to get them and the Delta variant (or another yet to be named variant) will bring prolonged restrictions that the very people refusing to get the vaccine will be the most vocal about.

B) In the developing world: It will be another year from now before many countries have enough vaccines to distribute two shots to every person that wants one… but in some of these countries it will be mandated, and that will be a new front of contention and fear mongering in ‘more free’ countries.

C) Booster shots (a 3rd dose) will not be seriously considered for at least 6 months to a year, if at all… but watch for news as elites decide to get it anyway, and while this won’t influence anti-vaxers to get their shots, many with 2 shots will want the 3rd shot as a security blanket.

2. Conspiracy theories.

These will flourish for two reasons:

A) Social media is too easily exploited by clever use of targeted advertising dollars, and fake news/information travels faster than boring but true facts.

B) The news plays easily into the hands of controversy = clicks = advertising dollars. Example: Share the story of an articulate 22 year-old choosing not to be vaccinated. Let her express her concerns for a minute, give a 30 second response, let her get the last word in. The controversy is more important than the science, and the news cast plays like an anti-vaxer advertisement… for free, with a large audience.

3. American Politics: The next year will decide the 2024 election. It is comical to me that some people still think the last election will be overturned… it won’t. However, I think Trump will make a lot of waves in the next year. While I won’t make a prediction as to weather he rides the wave or sinks, I think contention around the last election will be the counterbalance to Trump’s legal woes, and both of these will play into keeping his name in the news, and on the minds of Americans. If in a year he is not in legal hot water, then be warned that he could be a legitimate candidate in 2024.

4. Climate Change: Freakish weather will make this a hot topic for the next year. That said, not much will change with respect to doing something meaningful about it. Newsworthy, but somehow not change worthy.

5. Cryptocurrency: Countries will begin to adopt their own digital currencies. Paper bills will not be produced by most countries in 5 years, and this will be evident by next summer. Developing countries with massive inflation issues will lead the way.

6. Cancel culture: I’ll end on this, and in all honesty, I think this is a wish more than a prediction. I hope that there is some rebalancing around people being cancelled for poor indiscretions. What I mean by this is that someone saying something stupid can’t be treated as equally vile as someone who commits an evil crime. Human beings make mistakes. Two things matter when those mistakes are made. First, how much harm was caused? Second, what is the response/consequence?

I don’t think public/social media spaces are spaces where restitution and resolutions happen. Instead these sites become cesspools of anger, hate, rage, and an attack on people which prevents conversation and learning. Some of these attacks are worse than the indiscretion, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I would like to see people provided a chance for redemption, rather than vilification and cancelation. We need to allow for learning and growth.

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That’s 5 predictions and a wish. I’ll set a calendar date for a year from now and see how I did.

Not in our lifetime

We have an inherent bias that we believe things will happen in our lifetime, and conspiracy theorists are far more biased in this area than others. The next big event will bring the end of the world as we know it.

From the Bay of Pigs all the way to the Reagan era, World War III was inevitable. Y2K was going to send us back to the Middle Ages. Meteors, super volcanos, earthquakes, super floods, and yes, viruses, are all threats to humanity that will be the end of civilization as we know it…. apocalyptic threats to the human race that will happen any day now.

But the weird part is that somehow these are inevitable to happen in ‘our’ lifetime. We will bare witness. We will be the last generation to know what normal was.

Normal.

What is that? Normal as in a life of traveling by horse and buggy? Normal as in women can’t vote? Normal as in smoking in restaurants? Normal as in life before indoor plumbing, or before social media?

Our world advances in extremely fast and innovative ways, but somehow the human race will find its demise in our lifetime… or so conspiracy theorists believe. People will prepare for the end days, but they won’t live in the now.

“If I hold up this sign that says, ‘The world will end tomorrow’ long enough, one day I will be right.”

…that’s assuming the end will happen in your lifetime… but it probably won’t. We will see so many changes in our lifetime, but so will our grandkids… and maybe they will see the end times, but the simple reality is that it’s unlikely to happen in ours.

Humans, the earth, or the universe probably need a few more generations to really screw things up for us, for our planet, and odds are that this will happen after everyone living today is long dead. The end might be near, but it’s farther away than our short lives.

Early warning systems

I received word last night that a retired colleague and friend died yesterday. Cancer sucks. I know there will be a time in the future when we will be able to beat cancer consistently. Even before that, I think we will develop very early methods of detecting it. We might prick our fingers once a month and hundreds of health concerns might be detected early on, or maybe we just go to the bathroom and the toilet itself will detect concerns by doing a daily water test of our waste.

Essentially, early detection will help us detect the cancer early and we can knock it out before it kicks the hell out of us. This will likely happen before we actually beat cancer altogether… we just become really good at detecting it early. “Kill a snake when it is small,” my grandfather used to say.

My wife has an Apple Watch. In a decade or so, most of us will have a device like this that will monitor our health and do daily diagnostics for us. It will monitor our heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, sleep patterns, and a whole series of other biometrics that will create a baseline for us, and let us know when things aren’t at homeostasis. We will get medical feedback that will become an early warning system for us when our readings are off.

Imagine getting a little warning from a wearable device that tells us that our heart is doing something that has been detected in thousands of people a month or so before they got a heart attack, and suggesting you go for a checkup… and sharing this data with your doctor. Imagine learning that you have the flu before feeling the symptoms, and this device tells you to stay home and not spread your contagion.

We aren’t there yet, but I look forward to the day when we can count on an early detection device saving our lives, and extending the lives of those we love and care for.

5 weeks

It’s hard to believe that we are just 5 weeks away from the end of the school year. I usually get pangs this time of year as I question what was accomplished versus what I’d hoped for. This year, I think more about just getting to the end safely, and ending the year on a positive note. In December of last year I started saying to myself, in connection to the Coronavirus pandemic, ‘Things will start to get better in January 2022′. I wrote off this entire year with respect to normalcy.

Yes, the vaccine rollout is gaining traction, and now 12 year olds and up can get their first shot, but the percentage of Canadians who have had their second shot is shockingly low. Yet, it looks like my projection might have been pessimistic, and perhaps we might start to see normalcy return in the new school year, but we can’t control who chooses not to be vaccinated and what new variants might start to spread in our communities… I’d rather stick with my projection of next January and be pleasantly surprised that things normalize sooner, rather than be sorrily disappointed if they don’t.

The end of the school year will arrive very quickly. Time will fly by with all the crazy ‘to do’s that must get done to finish off the year. Then I’ll have a couple weeks to tidy up everything and build some excitement for September 2021, a school year of unknowns: A year for optimism blended with caution, hope blended with hesitancy. But right now, the only focus is the next 5 weeks.

Digital currency

In five to ten years a crisp, mint condition 50 or 100 dollar bill from the ‘late 1900’s’ will be a collector’s item. No one will be paying for anything with paper bills or coins. No one. It’s not just that we will be using credit cards and bank cards instead of cash, there won’t be any form of money that won’t be digital.

The Canadian and American dollar, and currencies from all over the world, will be digital cryptocurrencies. They won’t be like Bitcoin where every account address is public. When you pay, no one will be able to look into your account, but the money will be verified as real at the point of transaction. You will be able to instantly change currencies from one country’s currency to another, without a bank. You will also be able switch to another cryptocurrency or Visa, or MasterCard, or some form of smart contract IOU, that is staked against something you own (at a pre-determined interest rate).

Paper money will be nothing more than collectables like Magic the Gathering or Pokémon cards that are no longer printed.

It might seem crazy to think this will happen as soon as 5 years from now, but North America won’t be first. There are countries with incredible inflation that need to print larger and larger bills, making smaller bills useless. In countries like this, the cost of printing the money is hardly worth the effort. Imagine having to carry around seven to ten $50,000 bills to buy a loaf of bread! These economies will move to digital first.

But then the transition will grow exponentially. Within 10 years every nation will have a digital currency and paper money will be a thing of the past. Have any mint condition bills and coins? Keep them, they will be worth a lot more than face value for your grandchildren.

Different worlds

We all live on the same planet, but we live in vastly different worlds.

Imagine living in India right now, and being in an over-crowded hospital, hoping to get help for a severe case of Covid-19. With cases peaking at over 350,000 cases in one day, just two days ago, India will surpass Canada’s total cases since the pandemic started in just 3 days. The scale is unimaginable to compare, and so is the life lived by many of the citizens in these two countries.

And then there is Bill Gates: “Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end pandemic“. He lives in a completely different world where he can make ‘$7.5 Billion During The Pandemic‘ and use quality control as an excuse to withhold lifesaving vaccines from the neediest people.

We share the same planet, we do not live in each other’s worlds. At some point these inequalities will need to change. If they don’t, this shared world of ours won’t be worth sharing much longer.

Two decades

I’m current listening to a book set in the late 1800’s. The protagonist is a 17 year older girl in a poor neighbourhood in London. Life was tough, dirty, and inconvenient. It made me think of how much things have change since then.

After pondering this for a while I got to thinking about a time much closer to now, 2001. Just two decades ago, back when I had a computer in the back of my classroom, but the tracker ball was missing from the mouse. iTunes began, but no one was using it until the iPod came out later in the year. 2001 was three years before Facebook; Four years before YouTube; 5 years before Twitter; Six years before the iPhone. Paper maps were still the most convenient way to find your way around when driving, and my wife and I shared a cell phone.

This all seems prehistoric now. With changes that have major impacts on our lives happening so quickly, just imagine how different our lives could be two decades from now!

Power to the artist

I shared some background on NFT’s – Non Fungible Tokens – in a recent post, ‘Digital, collectable assets‘. Since then I’ve thought about them a bit more. One of the things I think is most exciting about these tokens is how they are being used by artists not just to share and profit from their digital art and music, but also how they are providing opportunities for fans to share experiences with them.

See this article: AS 3LAU MAKES $11.6M FROM NFT SALES, HIS MANAGEMENT COMPANY EYES MORE AUCTIONS FOR MORE ARTISTS

“The top NFT sold during this particular auction, which included an opportunity for the buyer to record a song with Blau, fetched $3.6m…

“At a time when artist income has been severely impacted due to the loss of touring income and other factors during the COVID-19 pandemic, NFT auctions offer an exciting opportunity to monetize new aspects of creative output and Justin [Blau] demonstrated that in a historic way this past weekend.”

But probably the most exciting thing about the sale of NFT’s is that there is a digital trail of the sale of these, and many platforms that share them give 10% of the resale value to the artist. First, if a piece of digital art sells for $1,000, the artist will get almost $850 (far more than they would normally get if they sold art in a gallery). But then here is the really exciting thing, let’s say the NFT that originally sold for $1,000 then re-sells for $5,000. The artist gets 10% of that follow up sale, or $500. This is amazing! Often, art collectors make 100% of the resale value, but now artist can share in the success of their works being resold.

These two things: selling experiences as part of the sale of a digital item, and artist profiting from the resale of their work, are empowering artists in ways that were not available to them before. We could see artists that used to struggle creating niches that allow them to move from ‘starving artist’ to career artists that make a decent living sharing their art and passion for creativity. And in doing so, artist rather than producers, agents, and galleries, will see more revenue from the works they create. This could be a new renaissance period for artists.