New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine–even an entirely new economic system. Here are 10 new ways we can start transforming the world for the better this year.
It will be easy to feel better about humanity when you read these 10 ideas. They’re all examples of how advances in science, technology, or simply a different kind of thinking can address the litany of challenges facing our societies today.
The ideas we have chosen to highlight aren’t about flying cars and food replicators, though we wish anyone who is working on those the best of luck. Many are about providing basic empathy and living conditions for everyone from office workers to slum dwellers in the developing world. We need these kinds of world changing ideas because the world still needs a lot of changing.
We need these kinds of world changing ideas because the world still needs a lot of changing.
It’s notable that most of the solutions are also solving problems of our own making. We need to revolutionize how to engineer plants because we’ve destroyed the environment so they won’t grow. We need to discover new antibiotics from the ocean because we’ve polluted our farms and bodies with too much medicine. We have to find new ways to take care of our office workers because we’ve made work a dreadful, never-ending grind. We need to create a new kind of business, because businesses have spent centuries being extractive, abusive entities.
People have been told we’re living in the future, but few people are actually seeing the future around them. Instead, most people on this planet are living in worlds that remain aggressively similar to the way they’ve always been, give or take the ability to check something on Wikipedia. We’re told that the technological innovations and brain power we currently employ have reshaped the world and improved people’s lives. Is it better to be living now than 50 years ago? Yes, but that’s surely cold comfort when you can’t pay a medical bill or the bank takes your house or you can’t buy food for your kids–or you simply weren’t lucky enough to be born in a rich country.
At some point, people are going to need to feel that this era of technological revolution is lifting them up, not just distracting them from the real problems they face day to day. One world changing idea you can read below is about creating a new economy powered by the automation and free knowledge that the information revolution has created. Let’s make sure we get there–and then we can focus on the more fun problems.
For all the talk of the meaning and purpose of our jobs, most people see them merely as a means to an end. Only 29% of employees in North America say they’re engaged (worldwide, the number is 13%). And the reality is that a lot of work will soon be done by computer. Forty-seven percent of jobs are at risk over the next 20 years, one study showed.
Companies are recognizing that our work culture is incredibly damaging to employees’ mental health. Now they need to fix it for real–not just plaster over it with gimmicks.
In five years, there might be a little CRISPR-edited corn in your breakfast cereal or CRISPR-edited wheat in your pasta. CRISPR’d tomatoes and CRISPR’d pork might follow. There’s already a little CRISPR in your yogurt.
What Happens When We Become A Cashless Society?
Imagine a future where everything is seamlessly paid for via your phone. It’s a beautiful vision–with some dangerous unintended consequences.
The blockchain is coming–and it’s going to create huge benefits for the world’s poorest people, from financial access to property rights to controlling their identities.
According to many smart and knowledgeable people, the underlying system of bitcoin, known as the blockchain, is an idea of historical importance, with the potential to solve big social problems. In fact, it could be what makes the Internet what it was supposed to be before it was overrun by Facebook, the NSA, and countless scam-artists. If blockchain believers are right, the technology will enable an era of radical transparency, frictionless commerce, and genuine economic abundance.
What If We Paid People To Vote?
Low turnout drastically skews who is elected to lead our government. The best way to increase turnout might be cold, hard cash.