Looking Elsewhere for a Dependable Future

For most of recorded history not many things were dependable.  Crops were not dependable. Communications were not dependable.  Transportation was not dependable.  Logistics were not dependable.  Income was not dependable. Health was not dependable.  We had yet to domesticate the gods of science and nature to serve our ends.

Today, we can routinely move through complex environments with dependable transportation systems that involve millions of moving parts without so much as spilling our coffee, looking up from a game of Wordle, or being late to a meeting.   This amazing accomplishment, and others like it, have freed up our brains and provided us with the luxury of focusing our attention elsewhere - and elsewhere is an important place.  It's where the future is made.

Our mental "elsewhere" can be a place of hope, joy, compassion, peace, beauty, love, generosity, community, creativity, innovation, trust and exploration.  It can also, depending on our circumstances, be a place of darkness filled with grievances, misery, hopelessness, conspiracies, anger, bitterness and resentment.  Since elsewhere is where we go to think about and design our future, it is critical that it be a healthy place both mentally and emotionally.  All of our building blocks of the future will be biased by the mental and emotional states we are in at the time of development.  They will also be biased by our perceived reality.

The challenge we all face as humans is effectively guiding our thoughts and emotions to ensure we plan our futures from the "elsewhere" where we can dependably appeal to "the better angels of our nature," to quote Abraham Lincoln.   The future is one very important reason we should be focused on the mental and emotional health of ourselves and the communities around us.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How Humans Learned to See the Future

If you have never read a book by or listened to a presentation by Futurist Byron Reese you have missed out.  He is a popular speaker and holds several technology patents, he has started and sold multiple companies, including two NASDAQ IPOs.  He has authored 4 books: Infinite Progress, The Fourth Age, Wasted, and his newest book that will be available in August of 2022 - Stories, Dice and Rocks that Think, and he has another in development.  

I love the work Byron does.  He is bold, deeply insightful, humble, immensely creative and shares his contagious sense of humor with all of us on the program today. Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future--and Shape It Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Dice-Rocks-Think-Future/dp/1637741340/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PODGJKLWX8FT&keywords=byron+reese&qid=1654809999&s=books&sprefix=byron+reese%2Cstripbooks%2C189&sr=1-1

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Our Future, Finding Joy and Industry Captains with Author Steve Hamm

In this episode of my podcast, former IBM Chief Storyteller, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, and Documentary Filmmaker Steve Hamm joins us to share his experiences collaborating with scientists, technology leaders, governments, and captains of industry to save the planet.  In fact, he wrote a book about it, The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action.  Steve also shares his experiences meeting with and interviewing technology leaders including Marc Benioff, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the Dalai Lama, and more.  We also talk about his career transition from focusing on emerging technologies to investing in saving our children's future.  Join us! I think you will like it!

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Transforming Healthcare with TCS Experts Stuart Gilchrist and Smriti Kirubanandan

We are excited to release the first episode in our new HLTH FORWARD series hosted by myself and healthcare expert Smriti Kirubanandan.  Our guest for our first program is healthcare expert Stuart Gilchrist.  He brings with him 37 years of experience working on all aspects of healthcare.  He shares his journey and how the healthcare industry has evolved over his career, what it means to be an industry leader today, and where healthcare is going in the future.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Leadership and Social Responsibility

In this interview, we take a deep dive into the role of the Chief Social Responsibility Officer with TCS's CSRO, Balaji Ganapathy.  We then explore how large multinational companies discover and define their purpose, and how they communicate it to their dispersed workforce.  We also discuss how large and global companies respond to controversial topics, politics, and global disasters.  We then dig deep into the strategies, tactics, and methodologies for implementing purpose, creating the right culture, and being a socially responsible organization.

Contribute and learn more about TCS' Ukraine Humanitarian Response:

° UNICEF: https://on.tcs.com/UNICEF

° FEBA: https://on.tcs.com/FOODBANK 

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Future of Work with Expert Dr. Paul J. Bailo

In this episode, we speak with Professor Paul J. Bailo, about the future of work.  Dr. Bailo teaches executives and students in many highly respected universities, and shares what he is hearing and learning as he moves back and forth between teaching, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Q1: Talk to us about some of your first jobs... A1: 1:32 Q2: Are people going back to work? Do you think there will be more long-term hybrid modes? A2: 9:47 Q3: In this new world you’re envisioning, should that impact the way we educate our kids? A3: 11:18 Q4: What is your take on the Digital Assistant? A4: 16:07 Q5: What is your take on automation creating unemployment? A4: 21:20 Q6: How do you see the interest in relocalizing work affecting the jobs of the future? A6: 27:03 Q7: What advice do you give your students about what they should do to prepare for a career? A7: 30:42

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Transferring Human Vulnerabilities to Artificial Intelligence

I have written a series of articles about the future of information, truth and influence.  These articles explore the human vulnerabilities that are exploited in social media, and in combination with other traditional forms of media. I also explore the concept of social engineering and information operations where professional marketers, military and political strategist use the way our brain works to influence us.  In this article we explore how our brains and their instinctual and learned biases can cause us problems when combined with artificial intelligence and automation.

In the revealing new book, The Loop, by NBC News technology correspondent, Jacob Ward, he shares how we can cause ourselves harm by letting our unconscious, evolutionary instincts and biases shape our automated future.  He warns that the real danger of artificial intelligence is that it is informed by and learns from how our human brains work, and our human brains are constantly making instant and unthinking decisions using instinctual and learned biases, short-cuts and hidden processes.  These decision-making tendencies protected humans from predators, marauding hordes and other dangers throughout history, but today we are often incorporating these same instincts into the automated systems that are increasingly making decisions for us today.  The results are leading us to some unintended consequences.

The Future of the Home with Futurist Alex Whittington

In this episode of the Future of Business, futurist Alex Whittington and I share our pandemic experiences living and working at home with our families for the past 2-years.  We then explore her research into the future of homes, and ponder how our pandemic experiences might change the way homes are designed in the future.

You can jump to specific questions and answers below.

Q1: In the vortex of this pandemic, tell me how your personal life changed. A1: 1:19 Q2: Did you do anything to accommodate moving your work all online? A2: 3:10 Q3: What do you think are some of those lasting influences on society that we’re going to leave this pandemic with? A3: 4:55 Q4: How do you think houses themselves, going forward, will change? A4: 11:21 Q5: How might our idea of entertainment and life with a family in a home change? A5: 16:07 Q6: If we start with a brand new home, how do you think that will change given our pandemic experiences? A6: 21:21 Q7: You were talking about unschooling, as a philosophy or concept, share that with us... A7: 24:45 Q8: You also write about co-living and co-working spaces, what have you learned about that? A8: 27:52 Q9: Let’s say you were buying an older home, what are some of the things that you would change to accommodate what we have learned during the pandemic years? A9: 31:47

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Watching Information Operations in Real-Time

This week Microsoft published a paper called Special Report: Ukraine.  In it, they reveal Russia's cyberattacks on the Ukraine and detail the strategies Russia is employing, and what they have been doing to combat it.  I can't imagine that the team of coffee drinking, rain soaked programmers in Seattle expected to find themselves in the middle of a war.  Heroes and nerds come in all different sizes and sometimes they are one and the same.

At the beginning of the report, Microsoft shares how Russians view information warfare, “Confrontation in the information space with the goal of causing damage to critical information systems, undermining political, economic, and social systems, psychologically manipulating the public to destabilize the state and coerce the state to make decisions to benefit the adversary party”, according to public Defense Ministry documents.  Additional comments by Russian officials suggest they view information operations as a means to degrade troop morale, discredit the leadership, and undermine the military and economic potential of the enemy via information [operations], which can at times be more effective than traditional weapons. 

Imposing from Afar: Information Operations

I reference the late American military strategist, John Boyd, often in my articles.  He had such a unique perspective and understanding of conflict, decision-making and strategy.  One of the most insightful points he taught, and I have shared often, is that the ultimate objective of a military force is not to kill more enemy on the battlefield, but rather to impose mental and emotional chaos on the enemy that results in poor decision-making and a "loss of will" to continue the fight.

Before the age of the internet and the advent of social media, messaging, podcast and media platforms, the most efficient way to impose mental and emotional chaos on an enemy was to enlist the church to oppose and curse an adversary, and then to march or sail to their land and attack, pillage, destroy, enslave and conquer.  Today, with digital transformation and digital platforms, there are more cost-effective alternatives.  These alternatives offer improved efficiencies, and the ability to impose your will without the economic costs, discomforts and inconveniences of the battlefield.  

Weaponized Personal Data

Wars have a way of bringing out the best and worst qualities in humans.  Courage, selflessness, loyalty, discipline, perseverance are all virtues that stand out.  Likewise, the sins of man are on full display whenever there are wars, and are likely the cause of them.  One of the things that makes the war in Ukraine so uniquely horrible is the amount of participants' personal data being captured, analyzed against social media sites, and then shared with family members and the public.  Artificial intelligence, trained on billions of social media posts, can identify just about anyone and any military personnel today.  Once identified, personal information can be associated with them and stories told - true or not.

Jack McDonald, a senior lecturer in war studies at King’s College London, was quoted by Wired as saying, "Openly publishing lists of your opponent[s], particularly at the scale that digital operations appear to allow, seems very new.” What kind of information is being shared with the public? Names, birthdays, passport numbers, job titles and photos of them in death.

Information as a Weapon

There are many important subjects and debates worth considering today including the merits of globalization, economic systems, freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism, human rights, politics, morality, peace and our future.  All of these important discussions are informed by information.  As such, how to find, capture, validate, weigh and authenticate information is critical to our societies' futures.

Just today, I read how TikTok has stopped information from outside of Russia from being viewed by Russian users.  That means Russian users get only a one-sided, Russian view of the war in Ukraine.  A biased, one-sided view does not support rational, balanced perspectives and objective decision-making.  The same challenge arises if any of us limit our news and information to only one perspective.

My wife insists on reading news from a wide variety of sources, even sources she most often disagrees with.  I hear her grumbling when she reads, but she adamantly defends the need to include a plethora of viewpoints in order to gain perspective.  She is a wise lady.

The Battle for the Future of Information Logistics

It is well known today that psychographic profiling of us humans, combined with social engineering strategies are effective at influencing our thinking.  Our brains are vulnerable to all kinds of external and internal influences.  Given this knowledge today, there is a keen sense of urgency to monitor and control information logistics, the movement of information around the world, and the massive quantity of influential information that can be targeted at each one of us.  

Let's quickly review the history of psychographic profiling and its partnering with social engineering strategies before continuing our discussion of information logistics.  In the 1960s psychographic researchers began studying how to understand consumers and their behaviors at a deeper level based on personality traits, emotional triggers, interests, needs, values and attitudes, etc.  A few decades later these findings were dusted off and combined with neuromarketing (the measurement of physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers' motivations, preferences, and decision) to study how various advertisements and political messages impacted people with different psychological or psychographic profiles.  

The Humanity in Killer Robots

Us humans are strange creatures.  Drones, which are like robots with wings that fly above a war zone waiting to pounce on an enemy like a hawk seem to be clever to us, but not if they walk upon the ground.  If they walk - that crosses some kind of line in the sand that we find intolerable.  Why is one clever, and the other unacceptable?  

I wish for only peace and happiness, but understanding how humans interact with machines is going to be an increasingly important area of study.

The following video clip is a parody of robots being trained by humans to be killer robots.  Look for the humanity in this clip.

Thoughts?

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Past, Present and Future of the Digital Workplace with Expert Ashok Krish

Our guest in this episode is digital workplace expert Ashok Krish, Global Head of the Digital Workplace at TCS.  He shares his pandemic experiences and those of other large companies.  We learn what best practices look like today, and where they are heading in the future.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Future of Alternate Realities

Do you live in an alternate reality?  That's a hard question to answer, because often people that do - don't know it.  This is, however, a question worth asking.  There are growing numbers of sophisticated social engineering campaigns that are being directed at our brains by all kinds of different organizations.  These aren't your grandparents' marketing campaigns, these are highly targeted to influence your way of thinking about reality.

In addition to social engineering campaigns, there are now technologies being developed for the next generation of the internet, web 3.0, that can deliver intense and immersive 3D experiences that will potentially offer up a wide range of different realities for us to consume - some nefarious and some innocent.  We must all educate ourselves on these and be aware.  The more senses that are exposed to nefarious influencers, the more power they have to alter our reality and belief systems.

The Power of Experience with Expert Bruce Temkin

In this episode, I have the joy of talking to the brilliant experience management expert, Bruce Temkin.  He is the Head of Qualtric's XM institute, and shares his latest thoughts on how experience management is evolving.  We also take a deep dive into the impact of the pandemic on remote workforces, explore the six universal laws of experience management, and the future of remote work.  

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Bombing Your Own Business and Values Statements

Most businesses of significance today publish a values statement.  The French department store Leroy Merlin, as one would expect from a company with 22,000 employees, published their latest on January 15, 2020.  Their value statement follows, "We share six values ​​that we embody on a daily basis: trust, respect, autonomy, commitment, proximity and audacity.  More than words...they define who we are."

Leroy Merlin After Missile Attack

I would suggest that actions, rather than words are what truly defines an organization.  I read on Forbes.com today that Leroy Merlin "became the first company in the world to finance the bombing of its own stores [in Ukraine]." How?  They had refused to stop operating in Russia even when their competitors withdrew in protest against the invasion of the Ukraine.  It seems Leroy Merlin see the war and international sanctions as a growth and money making opportunity for themselves in Russia. Their strategy now helps fund Russia's unconscionable war against the Ukraine. Hoping not to lose any money making opportunities, Leroy Merlin also continues to operate in the Ukraine.  They've got both sides covered. 

Food Equity, the Pandemic, and the Future of Public Health with expert Smriti Kirubanandan

My guest in this episode is Smriti Kirubanandan, a multi-talented computer scientist, robotics and public health expert, and a Certified Raw Vegan Chef and Nutritionist.  We take a deep dive into public health issues, the impact of disinformation, and the role of food equity.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Business Isn't Always about Business

We live and die in a transparent and networked world.  A world that is one invasion and/or viral video away from completely changing the market and business climate for a company.  In 2020 I wrote an article titled, Swarming and the Need for a Chief Values Officer, where I stated,  "The key to winning in a network of swarming consumers is to strategically be swarmed for good reasons.  It’s about being recognized for the societal good your organization is doing as demonstrated by purpose-driven advocacy and practiced values."  Today, under the dark clouds of war and senseless violence, it is all the more important to be recognized for your "practiced values."

In just the first two weeks of Russia's unconscionable invasion and continuing attack on Ukraine, over 300 large multinational companies announced they were restricting business and pulling out of Russia.  The companies that are still doing business with Russia will increasingly be shamed by their customers, employees, shareholders and history. 

Will Force Win Wills?

Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before - or to self-destruct. ~ Future of Life Institute 

As Russian military forces invaded the Ukraine in an unconscionable act of violence and devastation, their armies of social media operators joined in and were deployed to the internet to digitally influence the opinions and will of the world watching in horror.  The goal of these operators was to influence their own people to support their aggressions through disinformation, while demoralizing their adversaries, and confusing a worldwide audience with disinformation to prevent them from acting or interfering.

Kyle Chayka recently wrote in the New Yorker, “the invasion of Ukraine is by no means the first conflict to play out over social media, but it is perhaps the first war to be mediated primarily by content creators and live-streamers rather than by traditional news organizations.”  Because social media operators are now the major source of news for many if not most, this has become a hugely important and strategic digital battlefield.   

Tectonic Shifts Leading Us to Tomorrow with Futurist David Espindola

Our guest today, futurist and strategy expert David Espindola, wrote a provocative article a few weeks ago with the title, "Tectonic Shifts, Ten Transformations that Will Profoundly Impact Humanity." In this interview, we ask him to defend both his views on the future and his recommended paths to get there.

Article Link: https://davidespindola.com/tectonic-shifts-ten-transformations-that-will-profoundly-impact-humanity/   

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Wordle, French Toast and Hyper-Connected Ecosystems with Expert Dev Mukherjee

In this episode, ecosystem strategies expert Dev Mukherjee shares his insights and knowledge about hyperconnected ecosystems, leadership strategies, garage door openers, french toast and Wordle. 

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Abundant Public Data Impacts Modern Warfare

My last article was about leadership decision-making processes - where the trifecta of achieving better understanding, making better decisions, and taking better actions leads to better outcomes.  The first part, "achieving better understandings," is evolving at a speed we have never before witnessed as a result of sensors, satellites, smartphones, GPS, social media platforms, AI, big data, analytics and more.  We will spotlight some of these that made the news this week in the tragic events in the Ukraine.

Russia's unconscionable invasion of Ukraine demonstrated in real-time how the widespread use of commercial satellite imagery and sensors and the reporting of massive volumes of public data can impact world events. As an example, Google Maps is likely to have shown the Russian invasion before it became public.  The Observer published this description of the event, "Google Maps’ live traffic data was believed to have indicated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before the news broke. On Thursday, Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, noticed an unusual “traffic jam” at 3:15 a.m.—way too early for rush hour—in Russia’s Belgorod city, near the Ukraine border."

Decision-Making, Complexity, Kill Chains and OODA

New Technologies are important, but not as important as new thinking. ~ Christian Brose

Today, it is more critical than ever for our leaders to understand how to make good decisions, fast. They must understand in a formal way what that takes. Leaders must have an optimized information logistics system that can help them gain an understanding of what is happening around them as fast as possible.  Any kind of friction that delays relevant information from being captured, transmitted, analyzed and reported hinders the ability to make decisions and act (decision-action loop).

The Physics of Business: The Speed Impact

When I talk with business leaders and hear their challenges, speed, and issues around speed, always comes up.  In this short animated-reading, I share the importance and impact of speed on businesses today.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Navigating to the Future

The problem with the future lies in its navigation system.  Let me explain.  In my Jeep’s navigation system, I put in my destination and it efficiently proposes routes (preferably over mountains and rivers. The future, however, uses different inputs.  It takes inputs from innovations in science and technology, and mixes them with developments in the societal, geopolitical and economic domains, adds fast changing consumer preferences and behaviors, VC investments, profit motivations, and then sprinkles in some additional earth-shaking catalysts like depressions, wars, pandemics, insurrections, and economic crisis.  Where will that navigation system take us?  Who knows!?  You can see why it’s a fool’s errand to make predictions about the future.

The future’s navigation system is either broken, or we just don’t know how to use it.  It seems to lack a key field – a destination field.  A field where we can specify a place we want to go where humans flourish, develop in healthy ways, in a favorable environment and that is filled with abundance and joy.  If we can find that input field, we should add that destination!

Many of us have given up on navigating to our desired future.  We’ve stopped trying and turned our attention to learning how to best react to whatever comes along on the road to nowhere.  As chaotic and complex as our world is, that still doesn’t seem to be our best option.  As stewards of our civilization and our children’s future, it seems having a desired destination where humans flourish, and choosing the most efficient, equitable and safe routes to get us there would still be in everyone’s best interest.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Optimistic Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Inevitable Minimization of Human Decision-Making

In the near future, many jobs that are accomplished today by humans will be done by sensors, software, and machines.  These include jobs where responsibilities involve inspections, measuring, monitoring, tracking, adjusting, analyzing, moving things and tactical decision-making.  Many of these jobs are tedious or dangerous and having machines take over will be a positive development.  For example, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense recently announced plans for an Amazon-style delivery service in combat zones that will be operated by autonomous robots with air and ground capabilities.  Future Force Development leader Maj. Matt McGarvey-Miles shared that, "Robotic and autonomous system capabilities will play an increasing role in delivering “deployed sustainment” [supplies to troops] in the near-future."  These frontline delivery robots won’t just know a soldier’s static address, but where they are located in real-time while moving in combat zones.  That capability requires sophisticated algorithms and secure real-time GPS-style navigation capabilities.

In addition to autonomous delivery services in combat environments, robots will increasingly be assigned to support soldiers in the most dangerous missions which are often found in complex urban combat environments.  Robots can be used to pick-up and transport the wounded, remove doors, provide access inside buildings, and be the first to enter and surveil a room in combat conditions.  Knowledge is power, and once the robot(s) inform troops about the dangers and resistance they might face, then humans can take the appropriate defensive and offensive countermeasures.