Just to take our head out of the daily grind (aka I have spent seemingly countless days posting management responses to my properties.  It’s like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as I reply to all of them I have to start all over again)…..

Let’s talk about the future.  Let’s talk about where things like social communication technology, genetics, computer and network science are going to go.

So, without further ado, Ray Kurzweil:

 

 

Kurzweil’s new documentary “Transcendent Man”, “probes his breathtaking, possibly balmy, vision of the future.” You can read more about it in this Economist piece at this link *HERE*.  Time runs an amazing piece on him RIGHT HERE (thanks Katie Clapp!).

What’s more, Michio Kaku, our pragmatic, skeptical, modern day science magnate (or hero? or Sagan-esque lightning rod for science to light up the public’s minds?) who proffers forth a more conservative view of our immediately future into the years that lead us to the 22nd Century.  Internet enabled contact lenses that tag everything in site, telekinesis will be commonplace, but it’s not all just sci-fi.  The Economist covers this in their Futurology (2) article here.  His new book is called “Physics of the Future”.

Assuming you got here because of our industry, we travel and hospitality professionals forget we are dabbling in technologies that not only resolve significant problems for the human race, but which can also completely alter what it means to be human, to begin with.  We are in the first moments of a revolution – one who’s major accomplishments may not even be on the horizon of our life’s timeline.

Even at this point, superhuman technologies bolster our frail frames and help us to walk, to breathe, and much more.  Even now it would be difficult to gauge where a human ends, and biogenetic, biotech, or bionic extensions begin.  It’s interesting to think about…

…….to remain human, we may need to become more human than human.

 

Now back to work! =)

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