The New West with Will Hearst: Paul Saffo Video Lecture | Shaping the Future: The New Western World - Personal Skills

welcome hi I'm will Hurst and my guest
today is Paul Sappho who is an old
friend and who has made a career of
being a brilliant forecaster of trends
and events and and across a very wide
swath of both technology and culture and
politics and paula's has a firm in
Silicon Valley where he rents his genius
to other people but he's also a teacher
at Stanford and he's also a fabulous
person to spend some time with please
join me in welcoming Paul Sappho great
to be here will and i will pay you for
that introduction after the cameras off
it's always intrigued me that a person
could be and make a business out of
being a futurist so how does that work
the truth is I haven't done the futurist
thing for a couple years I know but
you're so all the answers so usually
when someone wants to look into the
future they're in an industry the teaser
poised for fundamental change or just
gone through a fundamental change and
everybody what the heck is going on so
it's that moment in time when people
realize that the uncertainty is a whole
lot greater than they realized and so
what I do and when I come in is I help
them understand uncertainty I don't
predict you know yeah I know you I heard
you say that but well same or if you can
about Yogi Berra trainer Yogi Berra put
it right when he said predictions really
difficult especially one is about the
future prediction is logically
impossible as long as you believe we're
in a world where our actions in the
present affect outcomes in the future so
the way I think about looking into the
future is that you're looking at into a
cone of uncertainty you're basically
mapping a cone of uncertainty and say
how broad is the cone what's inside it
what are the signposts to look for that
a particular future is coming to past
and and in that sense the trick is if
you draw that cone too narrowly you're
going to miss things you're going to be
surprised and that's generally not a
good thing right if you draw it too
broadly you're going to end up wasting
your time doesn't mean much looking at
stuff it's boiling though should get a
cup of sight so the artist to get it
just right and then figure out the
granularity you need to to look out and
this is your eyes should ask you what is
your new how does your new from
different sure why our new friend its
official Institute of the future yeah so
I i left the think tank World in 2006
and right after the market crashed I I n
three others co-founded their current
company discern analytics that's doing
long-range financial analytics big data
algo spur while
really yeah and it's a mixture that our
model is we take top analysts we turn
them into data curators we look for
stranded data and we connect that
together and what we found is that you
know in this whole big data algo world
right that's all essential but not
sufficient you still need human judgment
government is organizational you can
really summarize the modern condition
with all the networks in the web is that
governments or stovepipes their
hierarchies yes and their competition
our networks al-qaeda's and network
terrorists or networks the public is a
network and so you have a hierarchy
trying to serve a network and also in
competition with other now that's an
interesting idea that these sort of
higher hierarchically organized
institutions are colliding with non
hierarchical you know our greatest
national security threat today are in
fact I think it's the greatest
civilizational threat is not bad guys
with bowling ball bombs and and
terrorists it's networked crime since
we've come so close to this topic let me
draw you out on so because is the Edward
Snowden phenomenon what's your what's
your sense how do you parse that as in
any way that you will my top level trunk
or the tail or the year you know my
first of all what was the government
thinking you know we you know we learned
in the age of photocopiers that there's
no such thing as a permanent secret
right so what did they what were they
possibly thinking this wouldn't get out
beyond that my initial reaction was a
little bit like Henry Kissinger's quip
in the first few days of the
arab-israeli seven day war someone said
dr. Kissinger who would you like to see
when any pause and he said it would be
nice of both sides lost and pity the
boat can yes but you know it's at
moments you look at the NSA and you
think you know the NSA has to be a mole
for al-qaeda that's the only explanation
here because the economic damage that
their mass collection of information
cause you know a lawyer would say this
is strict liability you caught you
collected a dangerous thing that escaped
this is no different than putting a damn
on your property and impounding water
and the dam fails and it floods out your
neighbor down the rooms a way it's just
water it's like no no you're strictly
liable right that's very I never heard
that metaphor that's really interest the
mistake was collecting the information
to begin with and you know national
security cost of that the economic
damage to the United States you know the
very real loss of value of American
technology companies who can't get
customers abroad and now the pressure to
create separate intranets and the like
yeah its sensors have come on and that
was that was back in 95 yes long time so
that's about right 20 years the more
important part of the observation is not
the sensor part it's the texture of
change because it it points to what's
after sensors and my argument was that
the 80s were shaped everybody talked
about personal computers in the 1980s
but really what the 80s were about were
cheap processors yeah the advent of
cheap processors in the late 70s gave us
a processing revolution and PCs were the
poster child right then in the late 80s
along comes the laser diode and that set
us up for a communications access
revolution right for a bandwidth
explained with so this is fiber optics
it's remember cd-roms yeah and the shift
was we went from the pc symbolized
processing decade of the microprocessor
and in about nineteen eighty-seven i
said the next decade is not about
processing it's going to be about access
i don't know what it looks like but the
machines that will matter most will not
be defined by what they process for us
but by what they connect us to yeah yeah
and then in the early 90s when MEMS
arrived 10 of course the next thing you
know we we created our machines we
connected them together they're living
in cyberspace with no sense of the
physical world right the obvious next
step is we put eyes ears and sensory
organs on them and ask them to observe
the world on our behalf and we're there
each new abundance creates an adjacent
scarcity so abundance and data creates a
scarcity and algorithms faster
algorithms creates a scaredy City and
process so you're just chasing that
circle but it also says you know are we
going to work this out before we hit the
next technology and of course we won't
and you know the next thing on the
horizon is already beginning to be here
and that's effectors because we you
observe the world yeah then you're
wanting a febrile world and you know in
the darkness example of this isn't is
going to be you know killer drones which
are the first there
effectors right so they're here now and
we already have you know you can't help
yourself Paul you're building these
models well it's what's very intensive
we're going to rush into the effector
part without sorting out the algorithm
part so you know the question is what
year is going to be the first person
killed by a robotic drone that acted on
its own authority now we had people
killed by accident there was a robotic
anti-aircraft drone or system as a
ground based system in South Africa back
in the 90s and they're all the pooh-bahs
there to watch the demo and thing goes
Dodson gospel takes out all the VIPs oh
my god and the first person killed by
drone was way back in 2002 but you know
it's there are two kinds of indicators
that thinks I look at go that's weird I
better pay attention to it the other one
is okay what's the one I'm looking for
that means something's coming to pass so
the first person killed by autonomous
robot without the robot asking a human
for permission first that will be a
watershed I think's coming fast
so you look at a company like Google you
know Microsoft was a good old-fashioned
monopoly Bill Gates with you know find
the enemy stare him down and kill her it
Google and so that it's kind of an
off-the-wall example that's like a New
York driver you know in traffic they
stare you down and intimidate you Boston
drivers intimidate you by pretending
you're not on the road what Google does
is it's hunter thompson used to say make
them think you're crazy make them think
you exactly so Google's strategy if
Microsoft played chess Google play's go
and they they succeed by creating profit
deserts you know they'll take somebody
else's things are trying to sell for
money and turn it into an externality
for the user that gives data to Google
yeah Google Maps build the mapping
business google search killed the
for-profit online service yeah and so in
a way Google is like you know am i silly
a layer of mushrooms that you know fairy
ring of mushrooms as it you know spreads
outwards and nothing's growing in the
middle because it took all of the
nutrient is very clever don't you think
I mean if I can bond an audience to me
which may or may not be an audience that
advertisers are interested in but I can
extract what you're calling I think an
externality I can extract data can
extract behavioral signals from you and
then I can monetize those somewhere in
the back room that's a very clever
business too clever model and here's
certainly not what traditional media
companies do well here's the social
hazard of that for you and me as
consumers are we unwittingly paying a
whole lot more than we yeah I've never
seen that analyze that I mean I haven't
really absorbed your idea entirely but I
think you're onto something that there
is a transaction there is a price you
are subscribed I'll tell you but you're
paying in a kind of weird bitcoin of
your behavioral means well but big pan
Bitcoin would be nice because you keep
some mountain emiti you know I don't do
anything illicit yes I still carry cash
and I don't join cash is useful for
anonymous tree and I don't have a
frequent shopper card at the low
market I just want my anonymity I don't
want you know there's a value that's a
place you're not willing to pay no to
just you
what what do you think of self-driving
cars I did an economist debate that no
Bravo that's that you know this is
before 2020 there on the highway and by
the way when we do have robotic cars
we're not going to buy them release them
they'd be you would subscribe to him
subscribe to the month you know it
doesn't make sense to have this vehicle
I mean some people well I like that
you're stepping out and telling car go
park yourself but it's happening fast
enough that you know as a Californian
where you know it was our birthright at
fifteen and a half to get our learners
are especially as guys well I remember
but you're just hold stick with me this
is what's really critical is what is the
recoup Asajj for teenage boys in
California when the cars drive
themselves we're gonna have to take an
old Air Force Base in the Mojave and get
some 1950s cars out there and just you
know sir like in Papua New Guinea when
they send the boys out into the winner's
that this will be how we take our
teenagers and give them the reetou
massages they have to drive an
old-fashioned car to pick where the
curve changes direction you have to
trace back to the start well you know
the first sort of semi-automatic things
were photocell bright light controls in
the 1950s and high-end cars and we're
getting better and better with automatic
braking and stuff and you start plotting
things along a line and it's like
listening to the Doppler whistle of an
approaching train that the frequency is
going up frequency of these things is
happening you can see the robotic stuff
having another face spaces and you say
it's got it you know there's there's an
inflection point around the corner yeah
there's an inflection point there was an
enormous expansion of capability in
aviation from not being able to fly to
your auto pilots over these what was
that my neck with Glenn Curtiss from the
Wright brothers to one trip was a huge
jump absolutely and then those points
where you know first autopilots the
invention of control surfaces are no
longer wing work right right that's one
to watch for in aviation what year is
the last plane made that has definable
control surfaces that it's now got
sensors and effectors in such density
that the wing is a shapeshifter
you don't have crazy flaps weight of the
reasons changing wing shapes is
difficult because it adds a lot of
complexity and you want simplicity is
your friend in aviation algorithms
processors cheaper and cheaper I'm not
going to fly a plane running Microsoft
Windows but eventually we'll get it
right very good