Kjell Nordstrom: Digitalization and urbanization is the future of humanity

Almost a month ago, the Synergy Global Forum was held in Moscow. This is a business forum where the strongest experts of the world spoke. It is logical that experts directly connected with the economy, entrepreneurship and finance spoke at the business forum.

The speeches of all participants can be called interesting and informative. But we, Madrobots , would like to single out one of the speakers. This is Kjell Nordstrom - a Swedish economist who makes interesting predictions about our future. These predictions, which is the most interesting, come true. So, he spoke last at the forum, and the topic of his speech is the formation of our future, in relation to urbanization, high technologies and much more. For some reason this performance passed by attention of Geektimes, and we decided to correct this defect. So what is Nordstrom predicting?

Beginning of the era of urbanization

Singapore is a modern city state
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Why start? Nordstrom believes that in a few decades, there will be only 600 major cities in the world. And people will think in terms of megacities, not countries. Of course, one can argue with that, but the Swedish economist says that some small countries will disappear, instead of them there will be megacities as a socio-economic unit. Metropolitan areas will account for more than 95% of economic activity.

Conventionally, each country will be perceived as a combination of several megalopolises. In Russia, for example, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok. And for fifty years the city will expand significantly, so that some large settlements simply merge into one big metropolis.

It is possible that we will get a historical cycle, and city-states will return to us from antiquity. We see something similar now, when, for example, London, which has concentrated a third of the UK economy, once declared that it wants to stay in the European Union, while the United Kingdom is leaving it.

The beginning of the era of digitalization

Already, in many countries they are digitizing everything that is possible. Medical data, education, government databases, information of educational institutions. Everything translates into a figure and in 50 years we will have solid streams of digital data, be it the police, the hospital or the university.

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google are directly involved in the digitalization process. These companies are like monopolists in the digital world. Their influence over time will only increase. There is no way to fight this. It may well be that after 10 years, companies will not hire those people who do not have their own profile in the social network.

The five companies mentioned above will constitute, by convention, the monopoly of FAANG, with the rules of which all will have to be put up.

People become “more stupid” (actually, no)

No, it's not about the population getting dull, as shown in the film "Idiocracy." The root of the problem is that the overall knowledge base is constantly growing. Every day there are more and more new data in any of the fields - science, medicine, business. To master all this is beyond the power of anyone. Therefore, it can be said that every day every specialist loses his qualifications, be it an architect, a dentist, a teacher or a photographer.

Roughly speaking, in 10-20 years, the leadership of any company will not have the choice to hire a person with or without knowledge of English. The choice will be different: to take a person with good knowledge of English or with very good. We are talking about education inflation - this is the correct term.

Their children can be said that higher education is necessary, but it is not a guarantee of success. Now we need something more than just education to ensure a decent life. Human qualities come to the first place, such as assiduity, quick thinking, willingness to work, etc. These qualities cannot be copied or automated.

A large amount of scientific knowledge is now at the junction of various areas of science, "pure knowledge" is already rare. Therefore, it is necessary to cooperate at all levels, both local and international. No scientist or company can now do anything on their own, almost always talking about cooperation.

While the company is carefully working on its mobile phone development plan, technologies are changing. And the plan becomes outdated before it is written.

Plans don't mean anything.

Well, almost nothing. Many of us believe that a good plan is half the battle. The right strategy can help to realize the idea as needed. But the problem is that we live in a very dynamic world, where every day everything changes like the weather forecast changes.

Planning still matters, but much less than just a few decades ago. Now it is best to act by empirical methods, by trial and error. We do something and monitor the result. If the result is positive, repeat the process.

Now the trial and error method is more popular than ever, it is used not only by scientists, but also by representatives of business or government.

The modern world is a world of mental monopolies.

In most countries, there are antitrust committees that closely monitor the activities of corporations, not allowing the formation of a monopoly. But in reality, now it’s not necessary to create a monopoly in reality. Many companies create mental monopolies in people's heads. For example, this is Apple, Ikea and other companies. If you say that "I hate Ikea, so I will go to ...", nothing, very few people will be able to substitute the name of any other company instead of the ellipsis. The same applies to Apple - it has created a mental monopoly in the minds of many users, and is now reaping decent results in the form of super-profits.

The final conclusion of Nordstrom - evolution can not be stopped. We need to think, develop and act. Of course, with all the above, you can agree or not, but the thoughts expressed by the Swedish economist are definitely worth it to think about where we are going. At Madrobots, we believe that technical singularity is inevitable. And you?

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