Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Beyond 2025" with Futurist Dr Ben Hamer

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"Beyond 2025" with Futurist Dr Ben Hamer · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. I hope you had a lovely
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Christmas or Hanukkah, whatever you were doing. And I'm looking forward to a fabulous new
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year. Here's a dangerous idea that blew my mind. When we pass over into 2025, I literally
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almost said 2015. That's like how out of date my brain is. When we pass over into 2025,
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this week, we will be passing from the first quarter of the 21st century into the second
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quarter of the 21st century. So cast your mind back to New Year's Eve that took us into this
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millennium. Do you remember that? Do you remember January 1st of the year 2000 and how futuristic
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the 21st century sounded? The end of the 20th century felt? Well, we're already a quarter of the
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way through the 21st century. And come Wednesday, the 1st of January, we will be closer to the final
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half of the 21st century, 2050, than we are to the 20th century itself. We are about to go from
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being closer to the 20th century, to being closer to the second half of the 21st century.
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I wanted to look forward to not just the next year, but the next quarter century and beyond and
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try to wrestle with some of the things that we might expect to come down the pack. So I called up
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the one only futurist, Dr. Ben Hamer, who turned out to be a lot more young and whimsical and fun
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than I thought a futurist was going to be. I was expecting somebody, oh, I thought you had to be
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an old sage to have insights into the future. But apparently not, you can be a preppy young person
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just like Dr. Ben. He's been a visiting scholar at Yale University. He's done projects at the
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World Economic Forum. He has a podcast called Thinker Tank, which you should check out. I hope
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you enjoy this. This is a lot more whimsical than I was expecting it to be. And we disagreed
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about a lot more than I was expecting us to have a wonderful new year, a very safe new year's eve.
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Here's to an incredible 2025. And thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me to have this
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podcast as be as successful as it is and as it has been in 2024. It's been an amazing year for
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me and I have you to thank. Please enjoy the one and only Dr. Ben Hamer. Happy new year.
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So here we are at the juncture point of like the second quarter of the 21st century,
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which is kind of crazy because I still remember the millennium new year's eve and then we can
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take the Y2K. I don't. Yeah. That might have passed me by a little bit. Oh really? I think so.
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Oh, for me, it was so real. It was a big deal, wasn't it? Yeah, like we're up in Perth and I think
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it's just like the only thing that was happening on the earth. Did you hear there's an asteroid
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coming and it's called Y2K? Yeah, like your computer's going to blow up. Explain to the youngers
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what Y2K was. Okay, so now you've just out of me as not being a young enough. Yeah, I was in
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primary school when that. Okay. Maybe that explains why you was so terrified. Yeah, well,
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it was this idea that like it was something to do with when the clock saw Tkova on computers,
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but then also like all of the systems that underpin like banking and like all of the digital
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platforms, they wouldn't be able to recognize going into the year 2000 and so they would just all
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crash and therefore the world would crash. Yes, there was a worry that because a lot of coding was
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done during the 20th century in the first half of the 20th century or like even in the 60s,
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no one was thinking about putting the letters 19 or 20 at the beginning of years. So a lot of
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things would have code that would just be zero. That would be 1967, 68, 69. You get up to 99,
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then it got a zero, zero. And the systems would think that it was like 1900 and that they weren't
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supposed to have been invented yet. Yeah. That doesn't exist. That doesn't exist. I don't exist
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anymore and explode. And then all the computers and planes would fall out of the sky. But apparently
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and correct me if I'm wrong on the tech people can correct me from wrong here. Apparently,
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this is one of those examples where there actually quite a lot of effort was put into resolving this
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and that's why it didn't. That's why nothing happened. Is that why I wasn't just like everyone's
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like, I was all just bullshit to begin with, but no, that people did things and then they fixed it
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and then it was okay. And now we're like, see, there was never anything to worry about. Yeah,
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because they fixed it. Yeah, see, we never got that part of the story in person. We just got
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there. Yeah. Everyone's panic. You'll get that in maybe 2050. That story will arrive. It will
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have come across the nullable planes. Well, let me see you now. Now I'm desert. Now I'm cultured.
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That's why you just found out. Yeah, it's all right. Because you know, I'm giving you pearls of
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wisdom here on these coasts. People who are older with that experience. That's correct.
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And Impada on us, youngins. You're welcome. So now we're going into like the second quarter.
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And it's amazing to to me to think that like now, okay, we're closer to the middle of the
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century than we are. We soon will be. Then we are to the beginning of the century.
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And if you think back on what it was like in the year 2000, in my brain, everything's basically
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the same. Like maybe my phone doesn't work quite as well. Yeah. But the fact that I didn't have
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a smartphone that I didn't have even an iPod, you know, there were no iPods. Yeah, at the
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turn of the century. Well, like the thing I find so bizarre, like when you think about something
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as basic as a smartphone today, right? Is the amount of products that no longer exist because
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it now gets done by a smartphone? Right. Can you think about like a calculator and alarm clock?
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A pornographic museum machine. Absolutely. I mean, like they probably still exist, but antiques.
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But like there's yes. I think there's something like 15 products no longer exist that did at the
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year 2000 because it can all be done by a smartphone. Or they exist in like a cute retro way,
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like an alarm clock. Oh, look, I'll go on Etsy and I'll buy like a cute little alarm clock.
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What a what an antiquated thing to need. Yeah. Or like it's yeah, it's one of those things like
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I think it was last year where there was this massive trend with nostalgia around CDs and
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a rise in CD sales. And people were like going into their parents and grandparents covered to get
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CD players out and stuff. And it's like, wow, that that's enough to age me. Yeah. Like that's now
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retro. Yeah, CD being retro. I mean, it makes sense. I haven't had a CD player.
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Yeah. I remember like when the adults made a comeback, right? Yeah. And like, you know,
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this is the equivalent of that. And yet in my mind, it was only yesterday that I was on lime wire
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illegally downloading music and CDs. Yeah. That's right. Who's torrenting anymore? I mean,
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you have to be really committed to torrent. Yeah. And who's torrenting things? It's too hard basket.
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Yeah. Exactly. If something, if I can't get something streaming, then I'm not going to go on,
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you know, try to torrent it somehow. Do you know those people have like five different
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streaming subscriptions as well? Of course. Yeah. I pay $750 a week for streaming on average.
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I literally like went into my internet banking for something else the other day. And I was like,
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oh, do I stream Disney Plus? Sure. Yeah. Why not?
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I appeared there. Yeah. That's what that's a good one to stream. I've got a lot of stuff.
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Anyway, we're getting sidetracked. The point is if we think back to the year 2000, we go, all right,
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so we didn't have the Facebook. I wouldn't have the YouTube. We didn't have the certainly didn't
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have the TikTok and Twitter, not MSN Messenger. We had MSN Messenger. We had, or AOL as
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the American's most reliable call, ask jeez, ask jeez. Was that like a Google? Yeah. So I think Google
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year 2000, Google has been around for about two years. And so Yahoo, and asked jeez with the two,
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and ask Jesus like this, do you remember, he was like this but why? And you would go to ask jeez,
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but you didn't Google something. You had to explicitly like ask a question. It was horrendous.
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you are, you would say, hey, jeeves, how do I cook a turkey?
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Yeah.
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And jeeves would give you some mangled response
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so that it was able to reach you.
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Yeah, you would literally like, you'd be like a botlar
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in like a bow tie and thinning bolted hair
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and you would have like a platter on his hand sort of thing.
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As if like, here's your concierge, your botlar
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and you just ask him whatever you want.
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This particular icon branding has clearly branded
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into your absolute anile brain in a way
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that you're never going to forget.
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100%.
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So it was a world where if we were parachuted into it today
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would be completely unrecognizable,
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even though we remember ourselves in it
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as if we were normal human beings, which of course we were.
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And were you to like transport a person from the year 2002,
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2025, they would be completely gobsmacked by the fact
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that I just pick up my phone and I open chat GPT.
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And I say, you know, what a, you know,
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13 interesting in different ways of paraphrasing,
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I don't know, something or other.
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And then it'll talk to me in a perfectly realistic human voice
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without having to like translate or like read any copy
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that I've actually written for it.
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Yeah.
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When you parachute your brain another quarter century,
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is there an equally obvious like big thing that changes?
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Oh, look, I think there are a couple right?
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Like I think transport's going to be very different.
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Like we're hearing chat at the moment
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around high-speed rail and what that looks like,
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particularly sort of on the East Coast in Australia.
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So the idea that you could get from say,
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still need a new castle in 30 to 40 minutes
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and quicker than it would take now to commute to Cameltown.
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You know, you've got things like flying cars.
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So people think about that as being very like space age gimmicky.
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But you've got flying cars already, you know,
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in the world that exists today.
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So in the US in New Hampshire,
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they actually have a law called the Jetsons Law
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that they called it, which is the ability to like the framework
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for how you license and register a flying car there.
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And by 2030 they've said, or 2032,
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by the time they have the Brisbane Olympics,
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Brisbane City Council has said
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there will be driverless flying taxis in the skies
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varying people around.
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Well, they've said that.
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Well, the problem with predictions like this,
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because I could have spoken to sat down
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with a futurist in the 2000
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and they could have said in the year 2025,
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there'll be flying cars and there'll be high-speed rail.
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And there would have been no necessary technological impediment
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to that.
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I mean, we've had helicopters for a long time
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and we've had trains for a long time.
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The shinkansen is old like, you know, the TGV is old.
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It strikes me that the impediments to those things
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over the next quarter century will be not technological
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but regulatory and government.
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I mean, one has to have faith
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that the governments of the world,
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especially in places, dysfunctional places,
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like the United States and Australia,
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are ever actually going to invest in high-speed rail.
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You say, yay.
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I think that by 2050,
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there will at least be,
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we will have made in Rhodes,
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they will have started constructing high-speed rail.
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Yes.
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I think the biggest one there will be cost,
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like yes, regulation,
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but cost will, around the infrastructure will be massive.
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But when we think about population
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growth, housing density,
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where people are going to live like in Australia,
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we have such an obsession with lifestyle, right?
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And it's all about living along the coast.
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And so people aren't going to want to go
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and move inland and government funding
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isn't getting concentrated inland either,
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is all around growing the population along the coastline.
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And so how do we make people more connected?
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So there's something around that.
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Give them lots of curves.
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And then congestion and pollution and all of that.
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Yes, we'll have more EVs,
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but there's going to be so many people on the road
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and it's already pretty hectic, right?
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Well, well, aren't the skies going to get hectic
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with flying cars,
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people crashing into each other all over the planet?
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That's the next one.
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I'm like in Australia,
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where never the first mover on this kind of thing.
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So the fact that most of my audience
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is in America, is in Australia.
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So you don't have to take it to Australia.
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Gotcha.
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So then like if you've got like the US, right?
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Like they're making inroads around this.
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In France, they're already doing our pilots
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around it now as well.
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So they're called vertiports,
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which are the takeoff and landing spaces.
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They've got five that they're starting to do test runs.
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So we're going to start to see this happening more and more.
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And basically they're like,
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have you seen a flying car?
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What they look like?
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I've seen a helicopter.
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So it's an over-sized drone
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is what a flying car looks like.
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So it's it's it's a helicopter.
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Yeah, but with like your four propellers.
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Right, that's the thing.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And what about this idea of like cars?
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So the next obvious question is who's driving the thing
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and it are autonomous vehicles part of this picture?
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So autonomous vehicles, yes.
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I think that, you know,
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they're still very much seen as a gimmick
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and they're still very much a low level of trust.
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So like with the trials that they're doing,
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not even trials,
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they've got them operating in some parts in the US.
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Yeah, and then the cab and Phoenix.
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Yeah, so like how do you find it?
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Uh, gimmicky.
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I mean like, you know, I'm not an easily frightened person.
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So I was fine.
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I mean, if they say it's Google.
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So they, you know, I trust them.
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I don't trust them with my data,
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but I trust them not to get me into a horrible accident
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because that would be terrible PR.
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So I'm just sitting in the thing
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and it's creeping along quite slowly along the freeway
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at like 30 miles an hour or something
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and you know, it's very obedient.
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It's fine.
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It's weird.
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Yeah.
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So like it, it's cool, right?
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Like it, and it's, it's interesting
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and it makes for a good TikTok post or whatever.
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But the thing about say autonomous vehicles
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is that, you know, on the one hand,
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there's still a low level of trust in terms of like,
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what happens if you hack into an autonomous vehicle
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and I say to you, pay me $100,000
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or I'm going to crash this car into that pole.
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And you know, like there are those questions
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and concerns that people still have,
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but also like there's the behaviour of change element
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that goes with it.
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If you take flying cars, it's the convenience
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if you don't have to actually travel on road.
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It solves a problem because of congestion,
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whatever else it might be.
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Driverless cars like it's, well productivity,
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I can work while I'm driving.
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So that's the sort of the main driver, I guess, behind it.
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But he's at it.
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But he's had enough in the waiting.
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I mean, we are apes and we're terrible drivers.
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I mean, we literally just kill tens of thousands
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of ourselves on the roads every single year.
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There's just, we're just awful, awful drivers.
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We're just, we're apes.
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We're smashing to things all the time.
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And computers are already better
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at almost all in almost all driving scenarios.
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But as you say, not only are we more cautious
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about computers, we're also more judgmental of computers.
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People are right today.
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How many humans are going to kill people on the road?
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So I mean, we're not going to read about it.
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But if one autonomous vehicle killed a person,
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it will be front page news.
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Tomorrow, we just don't like robots
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doing the same shit that we do.
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So it has to be a thousand times better.
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But it will be presumably,
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and presumably there'll be safety dividends
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and productivity dividends.
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And maybe also congestion dividends
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in the sense that if you have autonomous cars,
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maybe you don't need to own one.
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Maybe you just have fleet of ubers
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all over the place and they're constantly,
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and they can probably, there's less congestion
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because they're also better drivers
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at, you know, you could fly along a freeway
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at 120 or 140 kilometers an hour
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and they could be a foot away from each other.
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Because if one of them isn't going to slam on the brakes
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because they're all talking to each other
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and like they're into length,
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you know, there are all these visions of like net worked.
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They're almost come together like a train.
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Like I've seen this idea where on a highway,
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it would basically be like individual carriages
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of a train that each person would be sitting in.
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And then there'd be an off ramp
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and each one would peel off to wherever it wants to go.
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Is that right?
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As you funnel in like your autonomous vehicle
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would just slot in and like the next,
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and it would be communicating with the other person
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who's in the other one
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and they would just slow down by five kilometers an hour
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so that you could duck in and form the next link in the train.
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I want that one.
15:36
I want that before flying cars, please Ben,
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can you make that happen?
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Definitely not.
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But I think autonomous vehicles are like,
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yeah, they're really cool, right?
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I think it comes down to people have to want the technology
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and they have to want the change.
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And the thing that the question that I do that,
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well, that's the thing I'm not sure, like,
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no, do they want, do they need to?
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Did we want social media?
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Yeah, but for me what the question is is, you know,
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social media in isolation in and of itself
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because there wasn't as much tech and sort of evolution
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and sophistication being compounded at the same time.
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Whereas now when there is so, like, right now,
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if you think about where this is the slowest
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that will experience technological change
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in the rest of our lifetimes
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and it's pretty bloody fast right now
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and there's so much happening.
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And so I think it's going to get to a point around,
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you know, people will make trade-offs
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or at what point does it become too much?
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And so, you know, like if we think about flying cars
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plus, you know, autonomous vehicles,
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plus having, you know, AI agents and personal AI,
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plus holographic technology,
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plus biohacking, plus, plus, plus,
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like at what point do people go, you know,
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are we losing our humanity
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and there's just a little bit too much pet.
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Already, I mean, they're already, right?
16:53
I mean, when we look at these crudging assertions
16:56
too much now.
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All right, I'll bet you that in 2050
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we're not all driving around and flying cars.
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I don't think we're all driving around flying cars.
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I reckon there will be,
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there will be the ability for you and me
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to purchase and drive a flying car.
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I'll put that money on it.
17:09
Yeah, sure.
17:10
I don't think we're all going to be doing it.
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They're might already be.
17:13
I can probably go out.
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No, okay.
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But like maybe in the US, you technically can't,
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well, yeah, but they don't have the regulation around it.
17:21
I think that when I guess the question is,
17:23
is it going to be like a helicopter ride to the airport
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where, you know, for 99 bucks,
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if I'm flying into JFK, I can get a helicopter,
17:31
I can book a blade helicopter to take me into the,
17:33
I think into the thing in, yeah, Manhattan.
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That's fine, but nobody does it.
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I mean, yeah, they,
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enough people do it that like the company still exists
17:42
to ferry people across, but that is not.
17:44
You would not go from like to the year 2000 to 2025
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and go, you know what the defining thing of 2025 is?
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Passengers take helicopters from the airport
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to downtown.
17:54
Helly ads.
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I'm putting flying cars in that bucket.
17:58
Yeah, okay.
17:59
We can agree, disagree about that.
18:01
You mentioned biohacking.
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How is that going to unfold?
18:05
Well, thinking about what is it even?
18:07
How are we even defining it?
18:08
Biohacking is basically like how do we use technology
18:11
to live better healthier lives?
18:13
So when you think about the sort of well-being market
18:16
at the moment and when you extend that even
18:18
set it to 2050, like life extension technologies.
18:22
So, you know, they're saying they're already today
18:25
just because of, you know, general factors
18:27
where we find ourselves in 2024, 2025.
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The person who is going to live to 150
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has already been born somewhere in the world, right?
18:35
Which is pretty wild.
18:37
Insidney in Australia where he had the first person
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in 2024, he had cryogenically frozen.
18:41
Oh, yeah, sure that.
18:42
That's happened, right?
18:44
And then behind the eight ball on that,
18:45
all the Californians have been freezing themselves
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for decades.
18:49
Yeah, but then we still don't know what they're going to do
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at some point in time.
18:52
It's pretty clear that we saw the technology
18:54
that will bring people back.
18:55
Yeah.
18:56
And without them beginning soggy as well.
18:59
I think it's just rich people with a lot of money
19:01
who are like, well, I'm going to die.
19:03
We'll get frozen and see what happens.
19:04
I heard a nice thought experiment about that,
19:06
which is like, it's supposed,
19:09
like you're taking quite a big gamble
19:10
when you freeze yourself,
19:12
because there are all kinds of futures
19:13
that could be a lot worse than the one that we're in,
19:15
but still technologically advanced enough
19:17
that they can fool you out.
19:20
Yeah.
19:20
Like, what if they're horrible?
19:22
What if there's, you know,
19:23
what if the only way to deal with the explosion
19:26
of technology is to have authoritarian states
19:28
controlling what everybody does
19:30
because you don't want some rogue individual
19:32
to use AI to create a bio weapon.
19:35
So we all end up in some brave new world,
19:38
like dystopia, and then they throw you out.
19:41
And you're like, oh, fuck, I'd rather have died.
19:45
I mean, I feel like if you're already close to dying
19:47
that you opt in to cry genetically freezing yourself,
19:50
that's like a future you problem.
19:52
Like, yeah, I'll worry about it when I wake up.
19:55
If I wake up, I'll worry about it.
19:56
Yeah, that's true.
19:57
What if they are using you as a slave
20:00
or a battery or something?
20:02
What if they want you to wake up
20:03
and then they can then keep you alive
20:04
to enslave the old people from the past?
20:06
Yeah, there are so many other ways you are
20:08
because they've taken over the world entirely possible.
20:10
I mean, no crazier than anything else
20:12
that might happen in a thousand years
20:13
when we figure out how to,
20:14
how to fool people out without making them soggy.
20:17
I say soggy because when you,
20:19
when you cry or freeze something,
20:23
doesn't the, I think when the water in the cells
20:26
expands into ice, it fractures the structure of the cell.
20:32
So I'm sure they figured out some whiz-bang solution here
20:35
to keep it really cold without actually freezing it.
20:37
But like trying to like picture
20:38
what does a soggy human look like?
20:40
Not good.
20:41
Yeah.
20:42
You know, like a chicken breast
20:44
that you've just taken out of a whole chicken
20:47
you've taken out of a freezer.
20:48
You've left it on the sunny kitchen bench.
20:51
Yeah.
20:52
Come back three days later.
20:53
Smells a bit manky too.
20:55
Papa's not happy with this.
20:57
And the chicken's the least happy.
20:59
Well, the chicken's already dead.
21:00
Yeah, but if you woke it back up again
21:02
and be like, just kill me now.
21:04
I'd be like, where are my feathers?
21:05
Where are my feathers?
21:06
Why am I hot?
21:07
What is this puddle of pink liquid underneath me?
21:09
Yeah.
21:11
Okay, now I can't get that image out of my head.
21:13
How, how will the kind of biohacking longevity thing unfold?
21:18
We look talking about Elon Musk plugging something
21:20
into our brains so that we can enhance our RAM or...
21:25
Yeah.
21:26
So we can talk about BCI's brain computer interfaces,
21:29
which is basically that.
21:30
But I think the main thing is that
21:33
just generally with lifestyle, diet, access to medicine,
21:37
like we're going to be living longer as it is.
21:39
So that's why we're seeing things like
21:41
a lot of people talking about an aging population
21:43
at the moment we're in a baby recession
21:45
in many parts of the world, including Australia and the US.
21:48
Japan, South Korea, very, very low fertility rates.
21:52
To the point where Japan, I think, is now transitioning
21:54
towards a four day work week
21:56
so that people have an extra day of recreation,
21:59
which is essentially so they can have sex and make babies.
22:02
So that's their response to declining fertility rates.
22:04
But what all of that means is that
22:07
people are going to be working much longer into their careers.
22:10
So by 2050, the idea that you'd retire at 60
22:12
will just be laughable.
22:13
I mean, it already is laughable.
22:15
Well, cost of living.
22:16
Start working on all people.
22:17
But I mean, it is laughable in the sense
22:18
that the retirement age was set
22:20
when I think life expectancy was almost 20 years less than it is.
22:24
And it's gone up by three years or five years
22:26
or something over that period of time.
22:27
There's nowhere near keeping pace.
22:28
Like your retirement was supposed to be like
22:31
maybe 10% of your life at the end of your life.
22:33
It's now like a third of your life.
22:35
Yeah, totally.
22:36
Like I think in Australia, at least the average person
22:39
has about 25 years of retirement
22:41
based on retirement age now today.
22:43
In my dystopia, when I had the robots are running things,
22:46
you get like a good, nice final 10 years of your life.
22:50
You do you.
22:51
Until then, you're working for them in.
22:53
Yeah, like 10 years might even be a luxury, right?
22:55
Because people will be having little mini-retirements
22:58
and career breaks along the way
23:00
based on the idea that they're going to be working
23:01
a hell of a lot longer.
23:03
And also because like a lot of the up until now,
23:06
like retirement was also based on the fact
23:09
that people were in manual labor professions
23:10
and they physically just couldn't work any longer.
23:13
Whereas that's completely shifting now as well.
23:15
So yeah, we're going to be working a lot longer
23:18
also because the government needs more people to pay taxes
23:21
to actually fund stuff like age care for older people.
23:24
So yeah, I think with life extension
23:27
sort of as a concept in terms of just lifestyle,
23:31
but then also the therapies, the drugs, the technology,
23:34
that will mean that we'll be able to live a hell
23:37
of a lot longer as well.
23:38
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you increase the retirement age
23:42
because the people who vote, the people who want
23:45
to keep getting the pension at the same age
23:48
that they were expecting to and not keep working.
23:52
Well, I mean, it's already been going up from 65 to,
23:55
I think, 67 and a half, 68.
23:57
And then it'll just keep bumping up.
23:59
Well, in Australia, yes, there are incremental changes
24:01
that don't keep pace with longevity,
24:03
but in a lot of countries, I mean,
24:04
I think in like Southern European countries like Greece,
24:06
it's like still 58 or 60 or something, you know,
24:09
people have their economy going.
24:10
Yeah, well, exactly, that's my point.
24:12
I mean, whoever wants to be the politician
24:14
who takes the candy away from all people, good luck.
24:19
I'll see you at the next election.
24:21
I mean, then the question becomes,
24:25
if all of the medical procedures that you need
24:28
to get you to live longer also cost money,
24:31
yeah, then who pays for the money?
24:35
Yeah, so there's this whole idea about then like
24:38
the wealth divide that will grow
24:40
because a lot of that sort of,
24:42
the technologies around life extension
24:44
will be available to the rich.
24:46
It's not going to be something that's necessarily
24:47
government funded.
24:48
It'll be if I can afford it,
24:49
like cryogenic phrasing right now,
24:51
like it's only like Uber wealthy people
24:53
that are doing it.
24:54
Yeah.
24:55
And so, what dummies?
24:56
Yeah.
24:57
And so what does that mean around a society
24:59
where only rich people can afford that kind of stuff?
25:02
It's like a very real concern, I think, for 2050.
25:07
I mean, I suppose the capitalist counter argument
25:11
would be that everything starts off being just for the rich,
25:13
but if it's good, then it ends up reaching scale
25:16
and it gets cheaper and it ends up being for everybody,
25:19
heart transplants, cancer treatments,
25:22
we'll all end up benefiting from them eventually.
25:24
And like I think we'll see more of like 3D printing,
25:27
like at the moment you can 3D print human organs.
25:30
So there's a company organobo that does this
25:33
and you can buy a print using someone's tissue
25:36
and you are surgically attached to them
25:38
and they're people walking around
25:39
with 3D printed years today.
25:40
And they 3D print organs for medical research purposes
25:43
at the moment, but in the future,
25:45
it'll be a 3D printed heart.
25:47
I mean, next year, you know,
25:49
I think they've already done it in the US
25:51
with titanium hearts.
25:53
They had the first successful trials in 2024
25:55
and Australian design to...
25:56
Wait, titanium is a metal and your art is a pliable muscle.
26:01
Yeah.
26:02
How does a titanium, how does the titanium,
26:04
it sounds kind of badass, doesn't it?
26:06
Sounds like iron, man.
26:08
Yeah, it's like a titanium.
26:10
It's not an engineer who's just like,
26:12
yeah, I've got an idea and it worked.
26:13
And then there's a list of people in Australia
26:16
that are lining up in 2025 to get it done to them.
26:18
But yeah, the evolution will be actual 3D printed hearts.
26:22
Yeah.
26:23
Look, feel, operate like a normal heart.
26:25
You might not even be able to tell the difference.
26:27
Meanwhile, we're going to be able to produce all kinds
26:30
of synthetic kinds of flesh, not just for people,
26:33
but also animal flesh.
26:35
Are you bullish on this idea that we're going to be eating
26:37
like steaks that come from stem cells growing in all lab
26:42
that don't come from a cow that was ever sentient?
26:46
Yeah, so you've already got in the US
26:49
in Singapore 3D printed meat that you can legally sell
26:53
by a consume.
26:55
I think in Australia 2025, 2026 is when it's slated
26:59
to be on the market.
27:01
So yeah, I think this idea, particularly at the moment,
27:04
well, there's this massive push
27:06
around ethical consumerism.
27:08
Like it goes back to what is the need for this
27:10
and our people going to adopt it.
27:11
I think the need is there at the moment
27:13
in terms of the drive for sustainability,
27:16
for, as I said, that ethical consumer piece
27:19
of animals were harmed in creating this steak
27:23
or whatever it is that you're eating.
27:25
And I was actually watching a YouTube video
27:27
on it where people did a blind taste test with chicken.
27:31
And they actually couldn't tell the difference
27:32
between a chicken doesn't taste of anything.
27:35
Well, but a steak is probably harder.
27:37
But you can imagine, I mean, sometimes people say,
27:39
oh, I would never eat a steak or a chop
27:42
that is growing in a lab.
27:45
But if you then take it to like a chicken nugget
27:47
or a sausage or something like that,
27:49
it's an easier sell.
27:50
Yeah, and then people have a weird gut response
27:54
to this I find, which is a lot of people find it icky.
27:59
But if you think about like a perfectly clean sterile lab
28:04
versus the murder house that is a modern industrial factory
28:08
farm and an abattoir, like it's a lot icky
28:13
actually if you were present to how your steak was
28:17
currently created, then imagining a bunch of people
28:19
in white lab coats.
28:20
Yeah, people are like, I assume like, you know, I eat meat,
28:22
but I absolutely don't want to see how that steak
28:25
goes from farm to plate, right?
28:27
But like I would be pretty keen to try lab growing me.
28:31
And as long as it tasted the same or similar enough,
28:34
I'd be all on board with it.
28:36
How about like democracy, governance, countries,
28:40
peace, war, do you think about the unfolding
28:43
of the next couple of decades in those kinds of terms?
28:46
Like it's been, if you talk to someone in 2000,
28:49
the probably actually the biggest thing
28:52
apart from technology or maybe even the biggest thing,
28:54
putting technology would be to tell them the peace dividend
29:00
of the Cold War is about to go away completely.
29:03
And the next quarter century is going to be full
29:06
of global strife, including a massive attack
29:09
on the United States, just next year
29:12
that is going to lead to interminable wars
29:15
across civilization and the Middle East.
29:18
I mean, that was the reality, right?
29:20
And you know, Israel is going to have an existential moment,
29:25
the Palestinian still aren't going to have a state
29:28
in a quarter of a century's time.
29:31
That would be shocking because coming out of the 90s,
29:35
everyone was like, we did it, we won,
29:37
we figured out liberal democracy and world peace.
29:40
That's it, stick a fork in it.
29:42
This baby is cooked from here on, it's smooth sailing.
29:46
Yeah, I mean, like I think the thing that I'm really keen
29:50
to see in 2050, not even 2050, like 2030,
29:54
do we look back and say where we are today,
29:57
like we were already in the middle of World War III?
30:00
Like I think that's like when you think about
30:03
sort of what's happening in Ukraine and Russia,
30:04
with Israel and sort of all the different parties
30:07
that are involved there, the, you know, Syria,
30:10
like civil wars breaking out in Sudan,
30:12
but you've got, you know, other countries that are,
30:15
have their own stake in it as well
30:17
and that are involved in some capacity.
30:20
Like there's enough activity going on
30:22
that suggests we actually could be in the middle
30:24
of World War III and we just haven't actually declared it
30:26
or know it yet.
30:27
I think the thing that this year was pretty telling
30:31
and that could play out to 2050 is what you're kind
30:34
of alluding to around the US and sort of Western
30:37
versus anti-Western alliances.
30:39
So have you had the Bricks Alliance before?
30:41
Yeah.
30:42
So you've got what?
30:43
Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
30:47
So five countries, which,
30:49
I mean, they're not on the Alliance.
30:51
They're a good thing, they're a good thing.
30:53
They're an economic, like an economic, you know,
30:56
it's not like I have a defense page or anything.
30:58
Yeah.
30:59
So no, not for defense purposes.
31:00
I think I don't know why they actually,
31:01
they did call themselves on the Alliance,
31:03
but they're not like you're right.
31:04
It's not a, there's no sort of defense kind of capability
31:07
to it, but you know, they meet to discuss
31:11
and talk around sort of, you know, trade, the economy.
31:14
But then also it's been, they've, they've,
31:17
they came together over this idea around
31:19
how do we counter US dominated alliances?
31:22
Again, from an economic perspective,
31:24
but you see what's playing out now
31:26
and Russia's got North Korean troops coming over
31:29
to help fight in their war.
31:31
This year they admitted Iran, Saudi Arabia,
31:34
and others into the grouping as well.
31:36
And this whole idea of West versus anti-West
31:40
just keeps kind of playing out.
31:41
Every month or so, something else comes up in the news
31:44
where I just kind of go, yeah, like this is what gives me concern.
31:48
Yeah.
31:49
And of course says, when we think to 2050,
31:50
that's new clear as well.
31:52
Yeah.
31:53
And the bricks this year launched some money thing,
31:55
some confusing currency thing that I wanted to do
31:57
a podcast episode on, but I never got around to where,
32:00
which was going to be some, like people were saying,
32:03
like this is the first time there's been a serious counter
32:05
with counter wage to the Western dominance
32:07
of the monetary system or something.
32:09
They're cooking shit up.
32:10
Yeah, they're cooking shit up.
32:12
And I trust them as far as I can throw them.
32:14
What about crypto and global finance and all that sort of stuff?
32:17
Are we still going to be using money money?
32:19
Um, I mean, I think, do you know what I think the sobers are?
32:22
I like came across a Facebook group the other day,
32:25
has like over 200,000 followers.
32:27
And it's like, let's make sure that cash
32:30
doesn't get phased out in the sky.
32:31
Yeah, I've seen that.
32:32
Yeah.
32:33
Like there are people who can't reach people.
32:34
And like they would literally be like,
32:36
oh, guys, just saw this sign at worse in random country town
32:40
that, or worse being a supermarket, random country town,
32:43
that they said, you know, systems are down,
32:46
can only use cash.
32:47
Ha ha to everyone who like is only with cards.
32:50
I was like, wow, I didn't realize this was like such a like movement
32:53
that's going on in the background.
32:55
But there will always be physical cash.
32:58
I think, you know, again, there's too much concern
33:02
around what happens with cyber security
33:05
and, you know, malicious actors if, you know,
33:08
we rely solely on digital currency and she hits the fan.
33:12
And so how much physical cash do you have on you?
33:15
I have $100 that is in, I'll just take you by car.
33:20
I'm like, no one's listening right now
33:22
to break into my car.
33:23
Um, so I was like, what are those folks?
33:26
So I'm like, do I say this?
33:28
Chrome Street, repeat.
33:29
Chrome Street.
33:30
Yeah, like I gave 100, but that's literally only
33:32
for when I go to the dry clean.
33:33
It's my dry cleaner only accept cash.
33:35
Of course, because they're cheating on their taxes,
33:36
like all bad Korean presumably dry cleaners are.
33:39
Now that's not a racist comment.
33:41
That's just a recognition of the facts.
33:43
I think that there should be a law
33:44
which says that you have to be able to,
33:45
so you have to accept cards.
33:47
Because those people who you're talking about
33:48
who are the crazies who are saying like, oh, you know,
33:50
we'll be there with, ha ha, we need to go back to cash only society.
33:54
They want to pass a law that says that you have to accept cash.
34:00
Because you know, there'll be a lot of places you'll be in a,
34:02
you know, small places would be, you know, tap only,
34:06
card only, you don't deal with cash anymore.
34:09
They get very outraged by this and say it should be a law
34:11
that it's legal tender.
34:13
Everyone should accept legal tender.
34:15
I'd like to do the reverse and make it a law
34:18
that everywhere, it's 2025 now, almost.
34:21
Everywhere has to accept cards.
34:24
You can't get away with this.
34:25
Oh, I'm sorry, we just haven't updated our system.
34:28
So my little dry cleaner only accepts cash.
34:30
We know what you're doing.
34:32
You don't want a paper trail because you lie to the tax office.
34:36
There is no other reason.
34:37
So if you, but if you're saying you only want,
34:39
like it's mandatory to have cards.
34:41
Yeah, you have to, it means 25 people to have cash
34:43
or it's mandatory to also have cash.
34:45
Optional of cash.
34:46
So then what about people who don't have smart phones,
34:48
homeless people like all that?
34:51
They have a card, they have a bankier,
34:52
they have some way of accessing assets or they don't have assets.
34:55
Yeah, okay.
34:56
Yeah, I think I would say there would be less than one percent
35:03
of Australians.
35:04
I mean, it might be different in the United States
35:05
where there are parts of the country
35:07
that are still more backward.
35:09
We can say that in Australia, you can get a,
35:12
I mean, if you really think it's a problem
35:14
as cash becomes more and more scarce,
35:16
then there are things like the post office
35:19
can issue like little plastic free money order type things,
35:24
which you can exchange for cash if you want to.
35:25
There are all kinds of technological solutions
35:27
that you could deploy.
35:28
But most accounts for people who have a concession card
35:31
because they're really poor, are free and fee free.
35:34
So they can take their $3.30 into a bank branch
35:37
and they can hand it over and get a card and return.
35:40
It sounds like a very first world.
35:43
These are first world problems, yeah, I mean, yeah.
35:45
But the alternative is to say that everybody,
35:48
including people who can get their shit together,
35:49
has to be dragged down to the level of a person
35:52
who does not even participate in the most basic rudiments
35:55
of a technological society.
35:57
Yeah, but that's also how inclusive design works.
36:02
You don't design around cash.
36:03
Yeah, I'm not saying we should outlaw cash.
36:05
I'm not saying we should outlaw cash.
36:08
Yeah, absolutely.
36:10
Go and use your cash, Godspeed.
36:12
But not about if there's a place that says
36:14
we only accept card, we don't accept cash.
36:16
Well, that happens already.
36:18
What do those people do?
36:20
Yeah, exactly.
36:21
At this point, it's illegal.
36:24
It's not illegal.
36:25
It's not illegal to only to not accept cash.
36:27
You have to accept cash.
36:28
No, you don't.
36:30
No, the real kinds of places that don't accept cash.
36:32
Yeah, but the government, like this is in the news
36:36
like a couple of weeks ago.
36:37
Well, maybe the people that's succeeding,
36:38
maybe these cash people you're talking about
36:40
are succeeding.
36:41
Maybe they just have a little cash cost
36:42
in their life.
36:43
I mean, I was on a plane just the other day.
36:44
I didn't accept cash on the plane
36:45
to buy an inflight beverage.
36:47
There's no cash changing hands.
36:48
There are hateful places.
36:49
You go to a market, personal or anything.
36:51
Go down to, go down to, no, domestic flight.
36:53
You go down to glee markets
36:54
and there'll be people selling their little trinkets
36:56
and stuff like that.
36:57
Or there'll be a, you know, cabab shop
36:58
or Harry's cafe to wheels is selling at a burger
37:01
or something like that.
37:01
It'll be tap only.
37:02
Lots of cafes are tap only.
37:05
They don't handle money anymore.
37:07
You're gonna get with the program.
37:08
What was thinking about the future?
37:10
There are lots of places.
37:10
I mean, to be fair,
37:11
this is coming from someone I only tap
37:13
to the point where we went to New Zealand
37:14
a couple of months ago
37:15
and forgot to take my wallet with me
37:18
because I was so used to just tapping for everything
37:20
and I got there and I'm like,
37:21
you guys tap there?
37:22
Yeah, but you guys do it.
37:23
Yeah.
37:24
And they're like,
37:25
yeah, I'm like everywhere
37:27
because I actually don't have a physical card
37:29
or anything to me.
37:30
Yeah.
37:31
No, no, you should be fine.
37:31
Yeah, absolutely.
37:32
That's when I realized how dependent I actually am on it.
37:35
Totally, totally.
37:36
I mean, the only question is whether or not the thing
37:38
that you're tapping is gonna be always like a fiat currency
37:42
or whether it's actually,
37:43
we're actually gonna get an uptake
37:45
of other currencies like crypto and stuff like that.
37:47
Like I wouldn't want to be walking around
37:49
with only Ethereum,
37:51
like Ether in my phone.
37:52
Yeah, I think for 2050,
37:54
I think it's a pretty safe bet
37:56
that just still have your native currency.
37:58
Okay.
37:59
What about space travel?
38:00
What's going on there?
38:02
So space travel.
38:03
So, I mean,
38:04
we've already seen the first kind of flights
38:08
in what we would call space tourism.
38:09
So, you know,
38:10
the fact that you can get in a rocket
38:13
and go into space.
38:14
I think by 2050,
38:15
yes, it will be a thing
38:18
that, again, only afforded to the super rich,
38:20
it's gonna cost like hundreds of thousands of dollars
38:22
for a ticket.
38:23
And there won't really be an imperative
38:25
to actually bring that cost down.
38:29
But I think what will also be pretty interesting
38:31
is by 2050,
38:32
whether or not we're gonna be like what they call
38:34
an interplanetary species.
38:36
So, are we gonna be living beyond basically much?
38:39
Elon say, yay.
38:41
Elon wants it to happen in the 2030s.
38:44
So by 2050, if he gets his way,
38:46
if he's done with Trump's department of whatever,
38:49
then yeah, it could very well be a thing.
38:51
Like there was, I don't know if you saw it,
38:54
NASA had like humans do a 12 month simulation
38:57
at their base of what it would be like to live on Mars,
39:00
including, you know,
39:01
20 minute delays in communication and everything.
39:04
And these people were in this environment for 12 months
39:07
to prove that it could work
39:08
and all the lessons learned from that.
39:10
So I think the fact they're prototyping it
39:12
and doing all of that research now, yeah.
39:16
Like I think it could definitely happen by 2050.
39:18
Yeah. I reckon it'll be, he'll be 20 years behind, at least.
39:21
He's always behind on everything.
39:23
He's been saying that we're gonna have self-driving cars
39:25
for next year, like in the next two years,
39:27
for the past 15 years.
39:30
2030s might be a little bit optimistic,
39:32
but hey, Mars, like a bag in the Metabass.
39:35
Yeah, exactly, that's right.
39:36
Speaking of which,
39:37
that was gonna be my last set of questions
39:40
about virtual reality and technology
39:42
and the kind of tech interface between human beings.
39:45
Are we gonna be walking around in 2050
39:47
with a phone still,
39:49
or is all of that gonna be,
39:51
I don't know, in my glasses or in my skin,
39:54
or like, what are we talking about?
39:56
Yeah, I don't know exactly what it's gonna look like,
40:00
but like where my mind goes,
40:01
if we think where we were in the year 2000,
40:03
where we are today,
40:04
and then we take that jump in another 25 years,
40:08
like we probably won't have physical phones, right?
40:11
Like, so what kind of technology would replace it?
40:13
You kind of touched on a couple of things.
40:15
We sort of referred to BCIs earlier.
40:17
So those brain computer interfaces,
40:19
whereby you have a chip implanted in your brain,
40:22
and you can control screens with just your thoughts.
40:25
So at the moment, like it sounds super scary,
40:27
but it's being used for people who have been paralyzed.
40:30
So people who can't use any of their limbs,
40:33
there was this one dude I met last year who has a BCI,
40:37
and if this was in the States,
40:39
and he's able to make graphic art,
40:42
so like in Adobe Illustrator,
40:43
or whatever, sell it as NFTs on the internet,
40:45
and make around $60,000 a year.
40:48
So really cool sort of applications again,
40:51
it comes down to do we use the tech correctly,
40:54
but like that's one example of how it could work.
40:56
Like augmented reality glasses is another one.
41:00
I mean, you've got the,
41:01
I think it's the meta of Rayban sort of really stage example
41:05
that's on the market now,
41:06
but yeah, where people are able to kind of,
41:10
what sort of a version of Apple's vision
41:12
pro spatial computer, right?
41:14
Like you put on some kind of head gear by 2050,
41:17
it could even be contact lenses, right?
41:19
And it takes you into your computer,
41:22
a virtual world, whatever it might be.
41:25
Someone's calling, it comes on your retina,
41:28
or your sort of the glass on your glasses.
41:32
Like yeah, all of that's possible.
41:35
I don't, it sounds like it's 2050 might be too early
41:39
for that to be like normal and common,
41:41
but then it comes back to it.
41:42
Oh, I think we'll get there even faster
41:44
when you think about how fast do it?
41:46
Like I just heard the other month
41:49
that there's a product that they've hooked up
41:53
using the meta Raybens or a version thereof,
41:58
where you can walk around and using facial recognition
42:03
on a subway, they did this trial video
42:05
of this guy on the subway and he's looking around
42:09
and when he looks at somebody, back at eight,
42:11
it beams it back to HQ.
42:13
HQ searches like the internet using AI
42:16
to find that person's face
42:17
and he goes up to that person and says,
42:19
Melissa, right?
42:20
I think I met you at like and make some plausible story
42:23
about a place that she would have been
42:25
because he knows where she went to college
42:28
and knows who she is on the way.
42:29
So that's the sole reason why I need this technology.
42:32
Like I'm so good with faces, terrible with names.
42:35
Like literally met someone on the weekend
42:38
and I was like, I feel like we've met before
42:40
and he's like, happily.
42:41
And then I had to double down,
42:43
I don't want to look like a dick here.
42:45
So I was like, no, we've definitely met before it.
42:47
Like one of Matt's other events
42:49
and then he felt like the idiot.
42:50
Yeah, it's good to see you.
42:51
Yeah, I just had to double down on that one
42:53
but I was like, I don't know, maybe I've met him.
42:55
But I think that's the best thing right?
42:57
It can give you, you know,
42:59
scan someone's face.
43:00
This is who they are, I fear their details
43:02
or like this is what they do for work
43:03
or whatever because we're going to be online
43:05
and web three and all that stuff.
43:07
It would be basically like you were a politician
43:09
who had an offside, we're like in VEEP
43:11
where Tony Hale's character just walks around behind her
43:13
like whispering in her ear, who that person is.
43:15
Like that's the undersecretary of agriculture, you know.
43:18
You ask about her, you know, eight year old son
43:21
who has cerebral palsy or something like that
43:22
and you just go, oh, hey, you know, how's your kid doing?
43:25
But I guess like then, then what does that mean though
43:27
in a world where everyone has access to that same technology?
43:30
And then do we lose the ability to be curious, inquisitive
43:34
and all of that because as much as I'm doing that
43:37
you're doing it like that today.
43:39
Oh, yeah, I know.
43:40
I don't want a world in which everyone has this only
43:42
you and I have it.
43:43
Yeah, I think that's it.
43:43
Nobody else has it.
43:44
We're pretty powerful.
43:45
Fabulous.
43:46
I think that gives us a pretty good snapshot.
43:47
Is there anything any parting words
43:48
that you want to give to listeners as but on this new year?
43:51
What should they do?
43:52
How should we set ourselves up for success
43:55
either in the coming year or the coming quarter century?
43:58
Oh, look, I think a really big thing is just to be curious.
44:02
I think like, you know, for example,
44:03
let's look at, you know, the last couple of years
44:05
in AI and what's been happening there.
44:08
In Australia, we have really low adoption levels still.
44:13
And, you know, a lot of, you know,
44:15
similar countries do as well.
44:17
There are generally across the world still really low levels
44:20
of trust, people are like this idea of tech pessimism.
44:23
People think that the world's going to hell in a hand
44:25
basket, robots going to take our jobs, all of that.
44:27
But the people who are most pessimistic
44:29
are the ones that aren't actually leaning into it,
44:31
playing with it, trying it.
44:32
So I think that's the biggest thing
44:35
is actually give it a crack,
44:36
even just watch a YouTube video
44:38
if you don't know what something is, you know,
44:40
next year or 2025, you know,
44:43
you've got the UN declaring it as the year of quantum computing.
44:47
Now, if you don't know what quantum computing is,
44:49
like watch a five-term-minute video,
44:51
that's all it takes.
44:52
Just build that digital and tech literacy
44:54
because it makes such a difference
44:56
in terms of feeling a little more in control,
44:59
a little less overwhelmed and a little bit more,
45:02
I guess, optimistic around where things can go.
45:05
I think we still need to ask the hard questions
45:07
and, you know, you mentioned regulation before, yes,
45:10
let's absolutely push for better regulation.
45:13
But at the end of the day, I don't know,
45:16
I think there's so much negativity
45:17
around technology and around where the world's heading
45:19
that in my mind, you know, we default
45:22
to what if things go wrong.
45:23
I'd like us to ask what if things go right
45:25
and actually just see the opportunity
45:27
and the potential that exists
45:28
because there's enough shit going on in the world.
45:31
There's enough of the media and the news reporting
45:33
on all the bad examples of everything
45:34
and what goes wrong.
45:35
To your point around autonomous vehicles,
45:37
like you see one power crash and it's going to be
45:39
the end of the world.
45:40
Like, yes, let's, you know, push for better regulation,
45:43
but let's also kind of, I don't know,
45:44
build a little bit more glassful.
45:46
I like it.
45:47
I'm looking forward to my car train,
45:48
my automated intellectual.
45:49
No, no, no, I don't think I can look into that.
45:51
Ben, lovely to talk to you.
45:52
Thank you.
45:53
Thanks for having me.