Webinar Recap | Peter Leyden: New Technologies & Future Trends

Summary

Recent events in the tech industry and beyond—including skill and talent gaps, massive layoffs, a bank collapse, and climate—have all added to the perpetual sense of “doom and gloom” that many consumers and companies alike have experienced.

However, according to Peter Leyden, noted futurist and former managing editor of WIRED, it can be easy to succumb to these “misplaced” negative sentiments and subsequently overlook potential avenues of optimism and hope for the future.

“I’m here to tell a different story,” Leyden explained at the start of AFCOM’s Multi-Chapter Special Event, held in early March 2023. “I’m here to provide a positive reframe on what I think is being missed by the general media.” The amount of progress we’ve seen, and the amount of progress we expect to see in the next 25 years, added Leyden, should easily dwarf any feelings of cynicism that people may be experiencing.

So what should we expect to see in terms of technological advancements and societal progress as we approach 2050? With the data we currently have, what trends can we predict to occur—and, ultimately, be able to fully capitalize on their potential? And, ultimately, what can we possibly achieve with enough initiative, perseverance, and collaboration?

According to Peter Leyden, there’s so much to be excited about—and, if we work together, so many current challenges that we can ultimately overcome.

Reinventing Our Future

Leyden began his talk by outlining the trends that dominated global society and politics for the past 40-50 years: across the world, for example, people tended to rely heavily on carbon for their energy sources; labor tended to be physical (i.e., commuting to an office, constructing a building, or anything else that required physical transportation or manual labor); economics tended to exist predominantly in the private sector; and one of the biggest “mega-challenges” that dominated media coverage and political thought was the fight against terrorism.

“However, this system of thought is essentially breaking down,” Leyden said. Instead, in order to get a better sense of the technologies, systems of economics and politics, and other facets of culture that are headed our way, we must first recognize what seems to be the new system that’s headed our way. The fight against terrorism has been replaced by the fight against climate change; our carbon-based energy sources are being replaced by “clean energy” (wind, solar, etc.) and our cars have increasingly become electric; economics have shifted their emphasis towards the public sector; and more and more opportunities for virtual work, as opposed to in-office jobs, are becoming available each and every day.

New Systems, New Technologies

With this new system or paradigm shift comes a host of new technologies that are aimed at pursuing its agendas and overcoming its challenges. As Leyden outlines, there are two upcoming “world-historic” technologies relevant to the data center industry that are poised to revolutionize global society as we know it: infotech and energy tech.

The key driver for progress in infotech is the revolutionary potential of AI, Leyden explained. The world’s data is doubling every two years, and we’re now entering the era of peta- and exa- and zettabytes; in short, this colossal amount of data will require advancements in automation, AI, and machine learning in order to properly collect, process, and analyze all of it. AI should also bring about moderate decreases to the overall cost of living we’ve experienced in recent years, Leyden claimed, due to the cost-cutting labor it can provide. Currently, it’s expected that Natural Language Processing, chatbots, and other customer-interfacing AI services will drive AI adoption across various industries, not only to drive revenue for companies but to also enhance things like language translation—further driving international collaboration and innovation as a result.

While clean energy has grown in acceptance and adoption over the past few decades—as Leyden stated, it’s grown from “almost nothing” to over 1000 gigawatts globally in the past two decades—it’s clear that much more must be done to offset the amount of carbon and CO2 emissions we’ve dispersed into the atmosphere. Fortunately, there’s hope: by 2040, electric vehicles are poised to “throttle out” internal combustion vehicles in terms of popularity, and recent breakthroughs in nuclear fusion have indicated that widespread usage of clean, renewable energy could very well be on the horizon.

Conclusion

While it’s hard not to be swept up in the oppressive, pervasive sense of “doom and gloom” regarding the future, Leyden’s talk provided data and analysis that served as a potent counterargument. It’s become clear that there’s so much work that still needs to be done if we’re going to overcome the challenges and consequences of our “old systems” (according to Leyden), but the constant rate of technological innovation and continual churn of societal progress means that hope for the future isn’t misplaced—in fact, there’s plenty of evidence to support it.

Be sure to check out the full recording of Peter Leyden’s talk—available exclusively to AFCOM members.

AFCOM has made a full recording of this webinar available to AFCOM members. To view it, simply click here.