The workplace of 2040: Mind control, holograms and biohacking are the future of business
The workplace of 2040: Mind control, holograms and
biohacking are the future of business
This story was published:
12 hours ago February 05, 2015 5:02PM
WHAT will the workplace look like in 2040? Imagine remote
working via hologram, commuting by jetpack, even controlling your office with
your mind.
MYOB has released its ‘Future of Business: Australia
2040’ report, which examines the possible impact of emerging technologies on
business and work over the next 25 years.
While all manner of business interactions will continue
to be “formalised, automated and digitised”, the biggest effect will be on what
we currently call ‘the workplace’, according to MYOB chief technology officer
Simon Raik-Allen.
Driven by the rising cost of energy and transport, the
focus of 2040 will be the ‘suburban village’. “You will live, work, eat and
learn primarily within walking distance of your house,” he writes.
Communities will pool their resources, people will trade
with neighbours and list skills on local noticeboards, drones will deliver
packages between communities or “even a coffee and a bagel to your current
location”.
Forget the traditional office or even the remote
workspace — localised centres based around suburbs or communities will emerge
as the home of business as a response to the growing expense of traditional
inner-city office buildings, Mr Raik-Allen says.
These giant warehouses, used by employees from many
different companies spread around the globe, will be home to the technology
that makes the interconnected workplace possible.
Within each will be rooms filled with giant wall-sized
screens allowing us to work in a fully virtual, telepresence model. Banks of 3D
printers would be continually churning out products ordered by the local
community.”
Here’s a little of what could be in store:
JETPACKS
Long a dream of science fiction, personal flight via
jetpacks is getting closer to reality than ever. The Martin Aircraft Company in
Christchurch has developed a jetpack capable of flying for more than 30 minutes
at altitudes of up to 800 feet.
For fans of science fiction from the ‘60s and ‘70s, a
number of flying cars have also been developed recently, though few have
reached further than the prototype stage,” he writes.
The Martin Aircraft version is currently designed as a
first-responder or unmanned transport vehicle, so those eager to go jetting
around the skies like Boba Fett may have to wait a few more years.
HOLOGRAMS
Mr Raik-Allen predicts that holographic projection
technology will bring about the biggest change to the workplace since email.
The seminars that became webinars in the ‘90s and noughties will soon become
‘holonars’.
You will sit in virtual auditoriums, next to
three-dimensional light-based images of your colleagues from around the globe
watching a hologram on the stage of someone giving a talk. And you will do this
just as easily as you gather in the office today.”
Launching a new business and hiring 500 people could be
done in minutes, he argues. “Your company could be just you and a couple of
project managers: the thinkers, controlling every aspect of the company through
new digital interfaces.”
NEW MONEY
By 2040, we’ll also start to see the emergence of a
broader, stronger set of internet-based currencies like today’s Bitcoin,
governed by independent bodies that manage an international network of
exchanges, he writes.
They will emerge as a way for businesses to work within
their closed networks, with major corporations able to create and manage their
own money, make internal payments such as payroll, and even trade with other companies.
Any business will be able to make its own cryptographic
currency — to buy and sell at values regulated by the market and at the
perceived value of the company. As this trend develops, exchanges of
currencies, much like we have today, will arise entirely independent of
national economics.”
MIND CONTROL
Here’s where it gets really crazy. If you thought
smartphones and wearables were the height of personal technology, wait until
you have chips implanted under your skin and downloadable apps for your brain.
Nanobots will swim through your blood, diagnosing illness
and clearing blood clots. Brain augmentations will heighten our senses or allow
us to control technology with our minds.
For example, implants in the retina could farm off the
raw data to miniature processors implanted in our bodies, analysing the images
to identify things that can’t be seen with the naked eye, and then feed that
back ‘into the stream’, effectively giving us augmented vision.
Imagine how that would add to virtual reality,” Mr
Raik-Allen says. “100 million nodes [in the retina] is not that many. In 25
years, the processing power of a single phone will probably be condensed to the
size of a single red blood cell.”
Already there are examples of rudimentary ‘bio-hacking’,
both of the brain and body. One experiment allowed a man to wiggle a rat’s tail
with his mind; another demonstrated brain-to-brain communication, allowing two
subjects to control each other’s movements.
These things are already being done invasively, with
epilepsy patients for example. We’re just beginning to understand how to
process brain information and feed it back in. Eventually you will have an app
store for the brain where you can download plugins — maybe to monitor various
organs, or sense infra-red.”
What about mind control in the other direction? Will
employers be able to bend recalcitrant employees to their will?
If you want to be sinister about it, that will certainly
be possible,” he says.
We could work out which brain pattern is associated with
looking at Facebook, for example, and which is looking at a spreadsheet. The
boss could have a dashboard to see who’s working and who’s not.”
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