The birth of the Homo Inutilis: the useless class, the unemployed, and the unemployable.

 It is very hard to predict the future as we don’t know what we don’t know. But future thinking is about thinking ahead. It is about developing “future back” what-if strategies in contrast to the “current forward” models. Thinking about what we know from the past and what we can see today to understand how we can make the world a better place and take the right actions to steer it in the right direction. But also we should train ourselves in thinking of a more desirable future, independent from what we know is possible, stretching ourselves to more ambitious goals and outcomes.

A future that is worth wanting.

 What do people see today?

• ‘We are witnessing a total political system failure in America’- Jennifer Lawrence, an American actrice, a Facebook video published by NowThis Politics
• ’The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say - we will never forgive you." - Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish environmental activist on climate change at the UN Climate Summit, NY, 23 September 2019 
•  ‘I fear Artificial Intelligence may replace humans altogether’ – by Stephen Hawking, the world-known English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author.
• 'About 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide due to coronavirus' - United Nations

 So is 2020 a system failure powered by the Brexit, populism, nationalism, extremism, pandemics, migration waves, identity crisis, ecological collapse, biotech and technological disruptions. Is the world a global operating system that needs a ctrl-alt-delete to future proof itself?

 What is going on?

One of the issues is that fear tends to dominate. How people react in uncertain moments is a good indicator of how they will react in the future. People want transparency and traceability. They want what they lost in the past and want to keep what they have today.

 The predictive sequence of life, which was learn (start), earn (middle), and return (end), is fundamentally changing, and this puts people in an uncomfortable position. We used to have long careers, mostly loyal to a few companies, where today we see a move towards a gig economy, with multiple short term careers as fixed-term contractors.

 The older people are, the more likely they are trying to hold on to this learn-earn-return sequence of life. We hear about changes for the worse in the three things that many people have come to take for granted in past centuries: the church, the banks, and politics. The church was always there for peace of mind, banks were there to take care of our savings and make our money work, and politics represented us, speaking for the people, and ensuring democracy. Most people trusted those three pillars of society. But now we have lost faith in the church and religion, with the acceleration of extremism, acknowledgment of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, and diminishing numbers of devout Catholics. We can no longer blindly bank on our financial institutions; they have been going bankrupt, there have been scandals, they are not too big to fall, as we saw during the financial crisis of 2008. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Governments are falling. Left and right-wing are fighting open battles and clashing in many parts of the world. Politicians feed fear to their constituents.

 What questions do we have? 

What world story do we need to convince people and avoid primitive reactions mainly coming from instincts such as fear and self-preservation? How do we ensure that AI is designed and used responsibly, without losing control of it? How do we establish ethical principles to protect people? How should we govern its use? And how will digital revolutions impact employment and the future of jobs?

 Moving forward towards an intelligent, more automated workforce will not just replace jobs but will transform jobs as we know them today. Parts of the job will get automated, jobs will disappear and new jobs will see the light of day. AI and other innovations are driving the automation and replacement of generic routine jobs. It will augment and amplify cognitive task driven jobs.

This is nothing new as innovations and automation of the workforce have been taking place during the past few industrial revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by automation, and so many more jobs will change as computers become more intelligent. We call them robots, our children and grandchildren might call them colleagues.

 Historically, technological innovation in previous revolutions has produced growing incomes and higher standards of living for many.

 Will this be the case with the digital revolution? 

A difference with the digital revolution is the speed at which it is happening, although it still might take decades before we see the full impact. Innovations are transforming the way companies, industries, government, societies operate, including us as individuals. Some people, parts and geographies will find it easy to adapt, while others will be challenged by the implications on the future of work, our way of living, standards of life, the equality gap and physical mobility.

 As in every economic development, people tend to move towards the cities when a country reaches a certain level of technological adoption. In Africa, there will be a huge change as people will cluster around cities. They’ll need electricity first, as there are still 1.3 billion people with no access to something that basic. Then they’ll install the internet – 4 billion have no access to the internet today – and migrate towards cities and other countries. This will impact existing jobs in many industries, create new jobs, and have huge implications in different geographies around the world.

 Futurist Thomas Frey predicts, ‘60% of the best jobs in the next 10 years haven’t been invented yet’.

 What does it mean for us, humans?

After the Homo Sapiens, the ‘Wise Human’ we will see the birth of new breeds like Homo Deus, Techno Sapiens and the Homo Inutilis.

Renowned historian and author Yuval Noah Harari suggest the future possibility of the replacement of humankind with a superhuman, or "Homo Deus", a human god. A future where advances in infotech and biotech might enable humans to create, design and manufacture life by hacking human life (Body, Brain, Mind). It may push humans to search for immortality, happiness, and power.

I believe there will also be what I would call Techno Sapiens, the ‘Augmented Human’, humans augmented by technology that leverage innovations to augment life and solve the big societal challenges without trying to act like or become ‘Gods’.

 Harari refers to a new useless class that will be fighting economic and political irrelevance. A class of people that might lack mental resilience or conditions to hit refresh, to unlearn and relearn the skills needed in the 21st century. Those who are unemployed and unemployable. We should therefore introduce a new kind of humans I would call Homo Inutilis, the ‘Useless Human’, from an economic and political standpoint.

 The way forward?

Whatever happens, whatever datapoints you believe or want to believe, we will need new skills, cultures and mindsets to make the most of the digital revolution.

This will require even more global cross border collaboration and a sense of shared responsibility of governments, companies, education, tech players, scientists and every person on this planet. Both developed countries and developing countries will have their own challenges but will need to collaborate to put society and industry to work for them to overcome the challenges in the digital age. We will need new ethical principles, new laws, new social and labor market reforms based on new levels of mutual trust and inclusiveness.

Business leaders will need to define what skills they want to bring in, and what skills need to be developed to create a competitive advantage. Instead of asking “What happens if we invest in developing our employees, and they leave?’ a CEO should ask “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”

 Professionals will need to determine if they are in a hot seat or need to learn new skills.

Parents will need to assess what is best for their children and what type of education is needed.

 The current and future workforce will need the 21st-century quality mix of foundational literacies (literacy, numeracy, STEM, finance, cultural and digital tooling), combined with 5 competencies (creativity, communication/storytelling, collaboration, complex problem solving & critical/design thinking) and the right attitude and character (adaptability, agility, playfulness or gamification, experimentation, curiosity, imagination, empathy, passion, value-driven, craziness, mental resilience and entrepreneurship).

One thing is sure: strong mental resilience and adaptability to hit refresh repeatedly will be core to survive and hopefully thrive.

 It will be those that embrace those evolutions that will prosper, not those that resist or delay adopting it. Those that embrace technology will see economic growth, new jobs, and find strength in its ability to solve big societal challenges in healthcare, climate, energy, agriculture, accessibility, mobility, poverty, ...

The pandemic Covid-19 has accelerated those evolutions for many but not for all.

 For all of these, constant learning will become the new norm. Instead of wringing our hands and blaming technology, we should be rolling up our sleeves to ensure that people who lose their jobs to technology are being retrained. This also requires patience. It will take time and effort before these workers can be re-employed in higher-skilled jobs. But it is a responsibility we must assume.

 If we don’t sign up, we risk leaving them behind and becoming ‘Homo Inutilis’.

This quest is redefining what it means to be human.

Olivier.

In September 2016 Olivier Van Duüren launched The Dualarity (www.thedualarity.com), a business and a book,  and this after 22 years working at Microsoft. Olivier is an international public speaker, trend sensemaker, executive whisperer, startup builder, transformer, innovator, active investor and author, Olivier advising companies to find balance between performing and transforming.

As part of The Dualarity Jixso partnership ‘the Visual Senseformers’ we help organisations to envision and visualise a future proof strategy and culture, ready for the digital age.