Greetings and welcome my radio listening audience and online article readers. On this 19th day of October 2012 we will of course be discussing future technology, future innovations, and futuristic concepts. Indeed, I surely hope the Mayan calendar was wrong, or perhaps those carving it merely ran out of stone simply, ran out of rock to chisel on, therefore the world will be saved from whatever it was that the Mayans thought might bring about a new age or renewal.
Okay so, I’d like to dive into our topics for today’s radio talk show and I’m sure by now you understand the format, basically, “I will do the talking for about 30 minutes minus commercials and your job is to listen carefully, come up with comments and questions, and then I’ll open up the phone how to find a phone number in iran lines to hear what you have to say.” As you also probably know I do not respond to online comments which are not intellectually based. That doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion, nor does it mean that it has to be the same as mine. In fact, if you do too much preaching to the choir, I will simply cut you off, perhaps agree with you, and go to the next caller.
Our job is to have an intellectual discussion, dialogue, debate and discourse. That’s why you’re here, and that’s my mission, and we will complete it. Now then, obviously there is a tremendous amount of talk about innovation, the need for innovators and entrepreneurs in our nation to keep us strong, vibrant, and on the leading edge of technology. You won’t get any disagreement here on that reality, nevertheless it seems as if the word “innovation” is perhaps one of the most overused words in the English language currently, perhaps other than “unsustainable” which by the way, some things which may appear to be unsustainable or dire problems we believe we face today, but may very well be solved with the technology of the future.
Einstein used to say that; “it takes a brilliant person to solve a problem, but it takes a creative genius to prevent the problem from ever happening first place,” and therefore, I would say that the creative geniuses don’t always get the credit for solving the problems, but the brilliant person will, even if their previous solutions turned into unintended consequences, and they are rehired to fix what they broke the first time after supposedly fixing something to save us all.
Okay so, here is where I’m going to start throwing out topics, with a little discussion attached to each one. They will run the gamut all across the board from science fiction topics to today’s latest and greatest technologies and what they might mean for our future. I will also throw out some personal original innovative concepts, as I come up with at least two new original concepts per day, and we can discuss those as well if you wish, or perhaps you will have a different topic for our dialogue here. Now then let’s begin with the first topic;
1.) Will Physical Money Survive the Next Three Decades – Hackers and Trade Questioned
In reality, money has little or no value – consider a dollar bill, it’s just a flimsy piece of paper, so how much is it really worth? We all believe it is worth whatever it says on the face of it whether it be one dollar, five dollars, $10, $20, $50, or even a C-note. Money only works because people have faith in its value, and what it can buy. Most of the money which is created these days never actually exists in a physical form, it only exists in the digital world. For instance, you might get paid from a Corporation, that money could be digitally transferred into your bank account. You might then use your ATM to buy something, or pay bills online, but you never had that money in your hot little hands. Things have changed a lot in the last three decades haven’t they?
So what will happen in another three decades I ask? Will we still have physical money, or will it all be digitized, and will you ever have any money in your wallet to buy something? There are some futurists that believe that money will go out the window, that is to say physical money, and everything will be digital in the future. But what if our society and civilization doesn’t trust digital money? What if they are worried that our banks are being hacked? Recently in the fall of 2012 we’ve noted that our banks have come under cyber-attacks from Iran at least Leon Panetta believes that’s where the attacks originated, but who is to say in the future if we have a war with another nation that cyber-attacks on our monetary system will not be included?
After all, economic warfare is becoming quite common, why just consider the sanctions, trade wars, and our attempts to stop the money flow from terrorists, drug dealers, money launderers, and human traffickers, along with the central banking computer systems of rogue nation-states and their money transfers for things like oil, natural resources, and military armament?
Then there is the issue currently where more and more people are making mobile payments on their mobile personal tech devices. Today they’re buying a cup of coffee, a hamburger, or various items at retail stores. In the future it might be much more, or if that becomes unreliable or those personal tech devices are being hacked, perhaps through downloaded apps with malware, or from users surfing websites with malware, then people will not trust mobile payments. Some have suggested that some personal tech devices may actually come with pre-loaded back-doors or software that could be used by hackers to steal data or commit identity theft crimes.
