Man in the world of the future: how was the ReForum about business and technology

At the X international online forum, futurologists, visionaries and business speakers discussed what our future will be like, what technologies will bring it closer and how we can all prepare for a new reality

Man of the future: what is he?

Stanislav Drobyshevsky, an anthropologist and popularizer of science, thought about what will be the man of the future.

It takes 20 to 50 years for evolutionally significant changes to take place in our body. Therefore, in the coming centuries, we are unlikely to change.

However, we can change the environment and the level of intelligence through global social shifts. And those, in turn, will provoke biological shifts: for example, changes in the structure and volume of the brain. This is due to neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to change under the influence of new experience, as well as to restore neural connections lost due to damage.

Examples of global shifts in the past are the use of composite stone tools and the transition from plant foods to meat eating. They entailed a change in the way of life of ancient people, from where bipedalism arose, a change in the gastrointestinal tract and the volume of the brain.

Now we are on the verge of a reverse transition: instead of natural meat, we offer an alternative, plant-based. This can make a real revolution, but only if we get an energy source comparable in nutrients to animal meat. Otherwise, our brain will not cope with the increasing load.

In order for social changes to lead to evolutionary ones, the first must be truly global – that is, cover all of humanity.

What will be our future and how to prepare for it

Futurologist John Sweeney and futures scientists Olga Bochkareva and Andrey Potapov told what the near future will be like and how to find yourself in a new reality.

To see the future, you need to perceive it objectively, abstracting from cognitive distortions and internal attitudes. For a business that wants to be at the forefront of innovation, an important goal is to learn to perceive the future with all the senses, and not just understand with the brain.

Qualities required for this:

• Curiosity: unquenchable thirst for new knowledge.
• Learning and learning: constant filtering of acquired knowledge and getting rid of unnecessary or obsolete ones.

It took Heinz 20 years to figure out that a ketchup bottle should look like this:

This is a vivid example of how a corporation managed to overcome conservatism and stereotypes under the influence of the new needs of society.

• Craving for experimentation: Don’t be afraid to try new things and make mistakes.

• Foresight: the ability to crack internal stereotypes and take a fresh look at what is happening.
• Reflection: Am I going in the right direction?

You can reformat yourself and create an image of the future with your own hands. To do this, you need to love uncertainty: accept that you cannot control and 100% predict what will happen next. But you can ride this wave of chaos.

Is the postnormal our new reality?

The postnormal is a new reality at the intersection of chaos, contradictions and complexity. To move from it to the future, you need to go through a funnel of three main components:

A familiar future consists of images of pop culture and the events that have already happened to us. When planning it, it is better to rely on a horizon of 20-30 years. At the same time, you should not fantasize. It is necessary to build forecasts based on statistical data: at what point do the most likely scenarios intersect? How will this affect my life?

It should also be taken into account that there is also an unfamiliar future that we do not even know about. The classic example is the “black swans” that no one could predict. Even behind seemingly unambiguous forecasts, many unknowns can be hidden. For example, the forecast that we will all come to immortality does not take into account when this will happen, who will be affected and what is needed for this.

Is the XNUMXst century a turning point in human history?

Artur Shafirov, video blogger and popularizer of science, dismantled the popular thesis of philosophers and futurologists that the XNUMXst century is a kind of “hinge of history”.

The hinge hypothesis was put forward in 2011 by British philosopher Derek Parfit in his book On What Matters. In it, in particular, we are talking about turning points in the development of mankind, after which irreversible changes occur. These include the events that led to the First World War or the Age of Enlightenment.

What does it mean that we are at this point right now? The fact is that today we have a lot of technologies in our hands that are developing too quickly, and we do not always control it. For example, we are experiencing a turning point in the development of AI: it is getting stronger and is about to get out of hand.

To use the turning point for good, you need to take the most responsible approach to planning your actions for decades to come. This is done by adherents of effective altruism – a social movement that explores all possible sources in order to make the world a better place. For example, it makes more sense for effective altruists within charitable organizations to spend more on organizational expenses than directly on charity. So in the future they will be able to raise much more funds and expand their activities. Taking this to a more global level, we should take care of the reserves of resources for the coming decades and pay attention to the regulation of AI.

Isn’t it time for us to move to other planets?

Lawrence Krauss, American astrophysicist and cosmologist believes that the colonization of Mars and Venus is still a premature and unsafe undertaking:

NASA is already developing a solar shield from interconnected satellites.

What skills and professions will be needed in the future?

Maxim Kuznetsov – Head of Recruitment and Brand Development at DiDi, Tatyana Smirnova – Head of the Netology Career Development Center and Valentina Vatrak – ex-Head of Corporate Development and HRM at MegaFon, discussed what skills will be most in demand in 2025.

The top 7 looks like this:

The topic was continued Ekaterina and Ilya Boginy from the group of companies “Insight”. At a time when the world is becoming unstable and unpredictable, meta-skills – fundamental, defining our personality and underlying hard and soft skills.

The most important meta-skills now:

Among professions of the future Irina Svyatitskaya, head of the hh.ru youth direction, singled out IT specialties – including data-science and AI – the development and control of drones. At the same time, young professionals are now most often hired as couriers, sales assistants, cashiers. All these professions will soon become a thing of the past, and after them – drivers, call-center employees, copywriters and even designers.

But knowledge of foreign languages ​​will remain relevant, with which neural networks are not yet coping very well. Another way to find yourself in the future is to become a “superstar” in your business and build a personal brand. If you are the perfect driver, teacher, or stylist with tons of social skills, then you have every chance of becoming the exclusive alternative to AI and robots.

The Future of Online Education

Patrick Brothers, CEO of education market research platform HolonIQ, shared the main trends in online education:

The future of content

Svetlana Belousova, creative producer and co-founder of Malivar, together with Aliona Paul, synthetic ambassador of Malivartold how digital influencers replace live bloggers and stars.

Digital people are virtual and synthetic characters, as well as voice and chat bots, robots that completely or partially replace real people. One of the most popular of these accounts is Lil Michela, a virtual Instagram blogger with 3 million followers:

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It’s worth explaining right away that virtual people are those that are created using 3D graphics, and synthetic ones are created using neural networks. The Malivar Io service allows you to create synthetic characters by generating new faces from photos in open sources. In total, with its help, you can create up to 20 billion new faces – 2,6 times more than the population of the Earth.

The main areas of application of such people:

• brand ambassador, which will not be outbid by competitors;
• character-story teller in social networks, which is not threatened by the attack of haters and invasion of privacy;
• models for online stores.

Digital people will not replace the living, but they can become a new convenient media tool. Compared to conventional bloggers, synthetic bloggers are inexpensive, do not require regular contributions, are available online 24/7 and do not threaten reputational risks. Also, companies will be able to create an influencer who will 100% embody the interests of their target audience.

Synthetic actors can replace real ones – living or dead – to act as models for digital clothes or storytellers. In the future, even the content for them will be able to compose a neural network.

Natalya Sindeeva, founder and CEO of Dozhd media holding and Timur Bekmambetov, director, producer, founder of Bazelevs, discussed how life online gives birth to new formats in cinema and beyond.

First of all, we are talking about screenlife, a new content format where the plot and the inner world of the characters are revealed with the help of a gadget that is happening on the screen. Films made this way include Unfriended (2015), The Search (2018) and The Host (2020).

Screenlife is unique in that it is the most honest cast of reality and what is happening to a person right now. We can talk at a meeting, and at this time sit on the phone and conduct secret correspondence. AI can collect all the data about our online activity and visualize it. Perhaps in the near future we will be able to artistically rethink how algorithms manage content on the Web, and we ourselves suffer from digital obesity.