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Featured Post
Hacking Health in Hamilton Ontario - Let's hear that pitch!
What compelled me to register for a weekend Health Hackathon? Anyway, I could soon be up to my ears in it. A pubmed search on Health Hack...
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Infoway - repost -Current and Potential Value of Canadians’ Secure Access to Their Health Information and Digital Health e-Services
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Survival at the front lines of the health-care quagmire
Very interesting article in the Hamilton Spectator on silos in electronic health records in Ontario:
https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8651966-survival-at-the-front-lines-of-the-health-care-quagmire/
https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8651966-survival-at-the-front-lines-of-the-health-care-quagmire/
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
eHealth forever or technology forever?
I have been writing this "ehealth enabled browser" blog on eHealth since after I graduated with a M.Sc. in eHealth in 2012. I will probably be spending a lot less time blogging here. I still enjoy following the various topics and points of interest that I have encountered in digital health. Recently one of the great health informatics bloggers, Dr. John Halamka - the Geek Doctor - has decided to wind down his blog. Looks like he is taking more to the twitter sphere. I highly recommend you check that out if you are interested in Health Informatics (or life in general).
A little while ago something I read inspired me to think about writing the ebook version of the "ehealth enabled browser" that I have run here on the earthspiritendless URL at blogspot.ca Turns out I may have received more inspiration than the perspiration necessary to do that. For the time being, I will settle for writing this post. This will try to encapsulate what I think I have learned by following digital health during this blog experience. To start off - let me try to explain the significance of the title of this post - eHealth forever or technology forever?
I saw a TED talk where I heard that essentially "technology lives forever" (Kevin Kelly - How Technology Evolves). To illustrate this point the presenter used the example of a steel plow, the kind our ancestors not so long ago pulled behind horses or oxen. A schematic or blueprint of this technology would allow anyone with the technology to replicate it - in essence, bringing it back to life. The technology will last many hundreds of years and would still exist in some less than functional form even after the warranty expires. When it is totally broken, you create another one. Maybe the most difficult thing is just preserving the knowledge and information to manufacture it. Well, biological beings might appear to be in the same category - cloning DNA - but let's face it, we break down more permanently than the technology we have created. Which leads me to the URL name for this blog - earthspiritendless. The final word is going to be that none of this matters and that only the Earth abides. Nothing lasts forever.
I can't remember why I named this blog URL earthspiritendless when it was supposed to be about digital health and the study of health informatics. The title of the blog - "an ehealth enabled browser" - suggests a blog about someone "browsing" or reading about ehealth. The URL name actually comes from the English translation for a Tibetan name a Tibetan Rinpoche (reincarnated Lama) gave me in Bodhgaya, India. It is not a riff on the sports wear company that makes earthspirit brand running shoes. I always did have some fear that the company would track me down and accuse me of infringing on their brand or something. The fact of the matter is that there is no connection between ehealth and the Tibetan "nom de religion".
Since eHealth has a computer science focus there is always going to be an attraction to future technologies - for as we know - technology evolves. If you want to try to follow where computer technology is going in the future, there would be no better futurologist to consult than Ray Kurzweil, currently Chief Engineer at Google. It was by reading his books and starting this blog that I began to see a convergence in the ideas of transhumanism, the singularity, and health informatics - a future where we need to learn how about the role of the health care system along with life extension concepts and technologies. I also read his weekly Accelerating Intelligence reports on new discoveries in science and technology, and have a link to it on the blog.
In the field of eHealth itself one of my overall impressions is the continual need for research and systematic reviews on the efficacy of eHealth for improving health and quality of life, as well as a return on investment. The latter just means an improvement in the quality of life. This is where the great service of such academic venues as the Journal of Medical Internet Research is focused. If I was to go back 7 years with a serious intent to study eHealth - toward a PhD for example - I would be busy reading, saving and studying journal articles. eHealth is a business, computer science, and health science interdisciplinary work, and it is always important to keep that in mind when reading and assessing journal articles.
I suppose if I was to generalize about what I have reviewed in digital health into categories of most interest to me and this blog, I could come up with something like this:
A spiritual master was once asked what is man's greatest need and the answer was "having work to do". Sorry I don't have a reference for that or even if I have reworded that correctly, but it really means that we find no real meaning in life unless we do work. Health Informatics as an educational program is an applied field where internships are developed, so it is career oriented from the beginning. One reason I studied it was the possibility of making a career change into what I perceived was an exciting field that had many new developments on the horizon. This blog was never going to provide me with an income from the google ads ( I made enough to buy a few cups of coffee so thanks for those clicks!). I once thought of extending it as a possible business and I secured an URL called ehealthenabled.ca with the intent of developing a site/service for ways of empowering people to use ehealth technology.
That ehealthenabled.ca site didn't run for longer than a year, and I used it mostly to explore again web development in the suite of web hosting software one finds in Control Panel. I learned that WordPress is better than blogspot for creating content. My problem was that I didn't really know what kind of content to bring to market. I had a vague sort of idea that what we need for public and preventative health were ehealth technology "garages" in every neighbourhood. When cars were mechanically breaking down all the time, every neighbourhood had a repair garage - all gone now as pumping stations have consolidated and cars no longer break down as frequently. These self-service or consultant oriented ehealth stations would also have exercise equipment and all kinds of mobile ehealth technology available, including DIY ultrasound, tDCS etc - after working through the health, safety and privacy concerns of course. We know now how important exercise is for health and having access to resistance training equipment -and/or health coaches - is a fundamental health technology.
The other and perhaps most interesting aspect about an eHealth career is the current potential for entrepeneurship, start-ups, and innovation. eHealth is an applied field, an application of ideas and technologies to solve ever changing and challenging problems in healthcare. I have participated in several Health Hackathons and it would have been great to get involved in some of these types of activities a lot earlier. I would also like to turn the clock back a few more years so I wouldn't miss the mobile app programming bus! Knew that one was coming - did nothing much about it.
Ethics of Technology
Since I work professionally in an ethics related career ( university research ethics) I naturally have had an interest in technology and ethics. For many years I was more interested in bioethics generally and have some courses and conferences under my belt (including a conference presentation on RFID privacy and security concerns in Healthcare). In the past several years there has been a strong shift towards just focusing on the ethics of new technologies and I trace this back when Demi Hassabis sold his DeepMind artificial intelligence gaming software company to Google. Forming an ethics technology committee was a condition of the sale to Google. There is relevance to eHealth a lot here because at Google, Deep Mind went on to develop Alpha-Go the AI that defeated the best Go players in the world. Alpha-Go is also being used in Healthcare, much like IBM's Watson.
There is a really comprehensive research group that also has an open source journal called the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies - https://ieet.org/. It is interesting to follow this group. I once tried to interest them in publishing an essay I wrote about Steve Mann but I ended up posting it on my Linkedin page - a version of it at least.
Life Extension
I think I only seriously became interested in how life extension related to eHealth by reading Ray Kurzweil. Medicine is more and more becoming an information science apparently. I think the corner was turned on that once medical reference libraries went digital. Living forever is a serious science fiction theme but if Ray is right and exponential changes is happening in computer power, discoveries in science are going to accelerate. The idea that we should be trying to stay healthy to live longer is not new, but the idea that we should seriously try to stay healthy in order to possibly benefit by new life extension technologies that will be available after the singularity - in 2030? - certainly is a new deck of cards. The movie Elysium, one of probably a thousand or so that explore life extension ideas in science fiction had a credible healthcare technology that could cure any disease.
Is this something I personally want and help strive to attain? Something like this is a foundational and massively transformational (thank you Peter Diamandis for that concept) movement and revolution in healthcare where the ethics of maintaining quality of life is so vital. What if we as individuals don't have a choice for how long we are going to live if even the dictates of healthcare ethics say we have to be preserved in some form of silicon based artificial intelligence while our biological DNA is being reprogrammed for cellular regeneration. Maybe it will just come down to a duty to care?
Another spiritual master was asked what was the secret to his longevity and health and he replied "Living off the interest of my investments". Sorry - no reference for that anywhere on the Internet at the moment. Maybe I heard that before the internet.
Personal Health Records - Toward the Quantified Self
The ehealth enabled blog explored a lot studies about personal health records. An aspect tangential to that is a concept called the "quantified self". Will collecting a lot of health data in a "do it yourself" sort of way help save us? I found it interesting to read about experiences with fitbit heart rate data, facebook posts on personal health issues, and other such patient lead data collecting activities, that have resulted in some life saving measures.
The really protracted issues that never seem to go away are the problems with data interoperability. It is hard to join an HL7 committee and help advance the work of interoperability (tried that). Not everyone is cut out to help write standards. New standards then emerge - FHIR for example. Now there is talk about how the blockchain will be used for the "provenance" of information. Who owns my health data, me, my doctor, or the data miners?
My own conclusion here is mostly about usability. Collecting our own personal health data should be like an ongoing construction or renovation project where the tools are easily accessible. Are we not building the virtual self? Log ins to health records are cumbersome - so is typing up the data. Just let the healthcare system do it? We have to be able to better track and record our ongoing health concerns - with or without the healthcare system. I also think we need artificial intelligence in the health record in our social media to tell us when to do things, based on our profiles and our precision medicine disposition. Out of nowhere, we should get a suggestion to get a shingles vaccination!
Spiritual Machines
Meditation to me is a form of health technology, and my teachers were like physicians who prescribed the daily practices for my own benefit, and the benefit of all sentient beings. Experimenting with the Muse EEG headband which is designed to induce or teach one how to enter a meditative state was a highlight not only of my blog posting, but of my own meditation experiences. Though I learned meditation in a long, hard, and traditional kind of way, I truly value the potential for technologies like the Muse. Talking AI or virtual doctors aside, exploring our own calm states of mind is going to make us better people in the long run. For then, we will know what we know, and what we don't know.
A little while ago something I read inspired me to think about writing the ebook version of the "ehealth enabled browser" that I have run here on the earthspiritendless URL at blogspot.ca Turns out I may have received more inspiration than the perspiration necessary to do that. For the time being, I will settle for writing this post. This will try to encapsulate what I think I have learned by following digital health during this blog experience. To start off - let me try to explain the significance of the title of this post - eHealth forever or technology forever?
I saw a TED talk where I heard that essentially "technology lives forever" (Kevin Kelly - How Technology Evolves). To illustrate this point the presenter used the example of a steel plow, the kind our ancestors not so long ago pulled behind horses or oxen. A schematic or blueprint of this technology would allow anyone with the technology to replicate it - in essence, bringing it back to life. The technology will last many hundreds of years and would still exist in some less than functional form even after the warranty expires. When it is totally broken, you create another one. Maybe the most difficult thing is just preserving the knowledge and information to manufacture it. Well, biological beings might appear to be in the same category - cloning DNA - but let's face it, we break down more permanently than the technology we have created. Which leads me to the URL name for this blog - earthspiritendless. The final word is going to be that none of this matters and that only the Earth abides. Nothing lasts forever.
I can't remember why I named this blog URL earthspiritendless when it was supposed to be about digital health and the study of health informatics. The title of the blog - "an ehealth enabled browser" - suggests a blog about someone "browsing" or reading about ehealth. The URL name actually comes from the English translation for a Tibetan name a Tibetan Rinpoche (reincarnated Lama) gave me in Bodhgaya, India. It is not a riff on the sports wear company that makes earthspirit brand running shoes. I always did have some fear that the company would track me down and accuse me of infringing on their brand or something. The fact of the matter is that there is no connection between ehealth and the Tibetan "nom de religion".
Since eHealth has a computer science focus there is always going to be an attraction to future technologies - for as we know - technology evolves. If you want to try to follow where computer technology is going in the future, there would be no better futurologist to consult than Ray Kurzweil, currently Chief Engineer at Google. It was by reading his books and starting this blog that I began to see a convergence in the ideas of transhumanism, the singularity, and health informatics - a future where we need to learn how about the role of the health care system along with life extension concepts and technologies. I also read his weekly Accelerating Intelligence reports on new discoveries in science and technology, and have a link to it on the blog.
In the field of eHealth itself one of my overall impressions is the continual need for research and systematic reviews on the efficacy of eHealth for improving health and quality of life, as well as a return on investment. The latter just means an improvement in the quality of life. This is where the great service of such academic venues as the Journal of Medical Internet Research is focused. If I was to go back 7 years with a serious intent to study eHealth - toward a PhD for example - I would be busy reading, saving and studying journal articles. eHealth is a business, computer science, and health science interdisciplinary work, and it is always important to keep that in mind when reading and assessing journal articles.
I suppose if I was to generalize about what I have reviewed in digital health into categories of most interest to me and this blog, I could come up with something like this:
- Careers
- Ethics of Technology
- Life Extension
- Personal Health Records - Toward the Quantified Self
- Spiritual machines
A spiritual master was once asked what is man's greatest need and the answer was "having work to do". Sorry I don't have a reference for that or even if I have reworded that correctly, but it really means that we find no real meaning in life unless we do work. Health Informatics as an educational program is an applied field where internships are developed, so it is career oriented from the beginning. One reason I studied it was the possibility of making a career change into what I perceived was an exciting field that had many new developments on the horizon. This blog was never going to provide me with an income from the google ads ( I made enough to buy a few cups of coffee so thanks for those clicks!). I once thought of extending it as a possible business and I secured an URL called ehealthenabled.ca with the intent of developing a site/service for ways of empowering people to use ehealth technology.
That ehealthenabled.ca site didn't run for longer than a year, and I used it mostly to explore again web development in the suite of web hosting software one finds in Control Panel. I learned that WordPress is better than blogspot for creating content. My problem was that I didn't really know what kind of content to bring to market. I had a vague sort of idea that what we need for public and preventative health were ehealth technology "garages" in every neighbourhood. When cars were mechanically breaking down all the time, every neighbourhood had a repair garage - all gone now as pumping stations have consolidated and cars no longer break down as frequently. These self-service or consultant oriented ehealth stations would also have exercise equipment and all kinds of mobile ehealth technology available, including DIY ultrasound, tDCS etc - after working through the health, safety and privacy concerns of course. We know now how important exercise is for health and having access to resistance training equipment -and/or health coaches - is a fundamental health technology.
The other and perhaps most interesting aspect about an eHealth career is the current potential for entrepeneurship, start-ups, and innovation. eHealth is an applied field, an application of ideas and technologies to solve ever changing and challenging problems in healthcare. I have participated in several Health Hackathons and it would have been great to get involved in some of these types of activities a lot earlier. I would also like to turn the clock back a few more years so I wouldn't miss the mobile app programming bus! Knew that one was coming - did nothing much about it.
Ethics of Technology
Since I work professionally in an ethics related career ( university research ethics) I naturally have had an interest in technology and ethics. For many years I was more interested in bioethics generally and have some courses and conferences under my belt (including a conference presentation on RFID privacy and security concerns in Healthcare). In the past several years there has been a strong shift towards just focusing on the ethics of new technologies and I trace this back when Demi Hassabis sold his DeepMind artificial intelligence gaming software company to Google. Forming an ethics technology committee was a condition of the sale to Google. There is relevance to eHealth a lot here because at Google, Deep Mind went on to develop Alpha-Go the AI that defeated the best Go players in the world. Alpha-Go is also being used in Healthcare, much like IBM's Watson.
There is a really comprehensive research group that also has an open source journal called the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies - https://ieet.org/. It is interesting to follow this group. I once tried to interest them in publishing an essay I wrote about Steve Mann but I ended up posting it on my Linkedin page - a version of it at least.
Life Extension
I think I only seriously became interested in how life extension related to eHealth by reading Ray Kurzweil. Medicine is more and more becoming an information science apparently. I think the corner was turned on that once medical reference libraries went digital. Living forever is a serious science fiction theme but if Ray is right and exponential changes is happening in computer power, discoveries in science are going to accelerate. The idea that we should be trying to stay healthy to live longer is not new, but the idea that we should seriously try to stay healthy in order to possibly benefit by new life extension technologies that will be available after the singularity - in 2030? - certainly is a new deck of cards. The movie Elysium, one of probably a thousand or so that explore life extension ideas in science fiction had a credible healthcare technology that could cure any disease.
Is this something I personally want and help strive to attain? Something like this is a foundational and massively transformational (thank you Peter Diamandis for that concept) movement and revolution in healthcare where the ethics of maintaining quality of life is so vital. What if we as individuals don't have a choice for how long we are going to live if even the dictates of healthcare ethics say we have to be preserved in some form of silicon based artificial intelligence while our biological DNA is being reprogrammed for cellular regeneration. Maybe it will just come down to a duty to care?
Another spiritual master was asked what was the secret to his longevity and health and he replied "Living off the interest of my investments". Sorry - no reference for that anywhere on the Internet at the moment. Maybe I heard that before the internet.
Personal Health Records - Toward the Quantified Self
The ehealth enabled blog explored a lot studies about personal health records. An aspect tangential to that is a concept called the "quantified self". Will collecting a lot of health data in a "do it yourself" sort of way help save us? I found it interesting to read about experiences with fitbit heart rate data, facebook posts on personal health issues, and other such patient lead data collecting activities, that have resulted in some life saving measures.
The really protracted issues that never seem to go away are the problems with data interoperability. It is hard to join an HL7 committee and help advance the work of interoperability (tried that). Not everyone is cut out to help write standards. New standards then emerge - FHIR for example. Now there is talk about how the blockchain will be used for the "provenance" of information. Who owns my health data, me, my doctor, or the data miners?
My own conclusion here is mostly about usability. Collecting our own personal health data should be like an ongoing construction or renovation project where the tools are easily accessible. Are we not building the virtual self? Log ins to health records are cumbersome - so is typing up the data. Just let the healthcare system do it? We have to be able to better track and record our ongoing health concerns - with or without the healthcare system. I also think we need artificial intelligence in the health record in our social media to tell us when to do things, based on our profiles and our precision medicine disposition. Out of nowhere, we should get a suggestion to get a shingles vaccination!
Spiritual Machines
Meditation to me is a form of health technology, and my teachers were like physicians who prescribed the daily practices for my own benefit, and the benefit of all sentient beings. Experimenting with the Muse EEG headband which is designed to induce or teach one how to enter a meditative state was a highlight not only of my blog posting, but of my own meditation experiences. Though I learned meditation in a long, hard, and traditional kind of way, I truly value the potential for technologies like the Muse. Talking AI or virtual doctors aside, exploring our own calm states of mind is going to make us better people in the long run. For then, we will know what we know, and what we don't know.
Monday, May 28, 2018
MedRec - Blockchain and Healthcare
Is there a future for blockchain in Healthcare EHRs?
https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/onc_blockchainchallenge_mitwhitepaper_copyrightupdated.pdf
https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/onc_blockchainchallenge_mitwhitepaper_copyrightupdated.pdf
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Hamilton Health Hackathon 2018
The Hamilton Health Hackathon is coming up in early February 2018. Highly recommended for anyone interested in eHealth:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/hacking-health-hamilton-hackathon-2018-tickets-41130549581
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/hacking-health-hamilton-hackathon-2018-tickets-41130549581
Saturday, December 16, 2017
The Future of eHealth
The encounter is very humanistic in spite of the technology and involves a lot of artificial intelligence in the form of voice interaction. There is also plenty of newer user interfaces - transparent augmented reality medical records - and instant appointment and medical record searching.
Another article to read for that class is by Vannevar Bush called "As We May Think", written in July 1945. Dr. Bush was the Director of Scientific Research and Development for the United States Government. He writes about something he calls a "memex" which would be very much like the computers we are using today. At that time, there was an explosion of scientific knowledge around the world but there was no way to organize that knowledge or search on it. It is an interesting article to read if you try to imagine what someone writing the article today would have to say about technology or medicine 70 years from now, and actually coming to close to painting an accurate picture about it. If technology is changing exponentially, will that even be possible?
The explosion of knowledge has continued since then and we collect, distribute and analyze it daily as it arrives in our twitter and facebook feeds. A lot of the information that can be gleaned about the future of eHealth is thus kind of "grey literature" and not something that you can search and find on PubMed. These days I find viewing video stories on futurism.com the best ways I know to become excited about the future. "The pull of the future is greater than the push from the past" - I am still trying to find out which famous philosopher or scientist said that.
Here are just a few of the sources suggestive of the future of eHealth that I have been following with interest. The first is Ray Kurzweil and his Accelerating Intelligence website. Ray is a computer scientist and inventor who believes in transhumanism and indefinite life extension. His group is always following the latest scientific advances and inventions of all kinds, and not just ones related to health technology. For example, I just read today a story they posted about a new kind of RFID tag for patients. This tag:
The RFID tags measure internal body motion, such as a heart as it beats or blood as it pulses under skin. Powered remotely by electromagnetic energy supplied by a central reader, the tags use a new concept called “near-field coherent sensing.” Mechanical motions (heartbeat, etc.) in the body modulate (modify) radio waves that are bounced off the body and internal organs by passive (no battery required) RFID tags.
The modulated signals detected by the tag then bounce back to an electronic reader, located elsewhere in the room, that gathers the data. Each tag has a unique identification code that it transmits with its signal, allowing up to 200 people to be monitored simultaneously.
A recent news feed I have been following is the Medical Futurist, Dr. Bertalan Mesko. Recently Dr. Mesko has had some involvement consulting with the Government of Canada, as you may read in his article: "Canada Brings Automation to Healthcare: An Example for Governments to Follow". Really worth following on Twitter or Facebook.
Another group that is interesting, but they are more about the current state and the breaking trends of Medicine and eHealth, is the Exponential Medicine group lead by Dr. Daniel Kraft- a part of the Singularity University. Similarly, there is the ongoing work and research of Dr. Eric Topol. Most of the students in my eHealth class that I was facilitating hadn't even heard of Dr. Topol so I was a bit taken aback.
In short, if you are not interested in the future of eHealth, I don't think there is any way that one would appreciate the changes that are currently going on. In fact, the guest lecturer at the McMaster future of eHealth class, Dr. Ted Scott, Vice President Research & Chief Innovation Officer, did not talk about the future so much as he did about current innovations that are starting within the Hamilton Health Sciences. And this just made me think of something I learned when I was a student of anthropology many years ago, that yesterday's pseudo-science and magic is todays science.
Monday, November 6, 2017
3 dangerous ideas from Ray Kurzweil
File this email I received from a Peter Diamandis subscription list under the Future of eHealth?
Recently I interviewed my friend Ray Kurzweil
at the Googleplex for a 90-minute (live) webinar on disruptive and
dangerous ideas, a prelude to my fireside chat with Ray at Abundance 360
this January. (Watch the replay here.)
Ray is my
friend and the Co-founder and Chancellor of Singularity University. He
is also an XPRIZE Trustee, the Director of Engineering at Google, and
one of the best predictors of our exponential future.
It’s my pleasure to share with you 3 compelling ideas that came from our conversation.
1. The Nation-State Will Soon Be Irrelevant
Historically,
we humans don’t like change. We like waking up in the morning and
knowing that that the world is the same as the night before.
That’s one reason why government institutions exist: to stabilize society.
But how will
this change in 20 or 30 years? What role will stabilizing institutions
play in a world of continuous, accelerating change?
“Institutions
stick around, but they change their role in our lives,” Ray explained.
“They already have. The nation-state is not as profound as it was.
Religion used to direct every aspect of your life, minute to minute.
It’s still important in some ways, but it's much less important, much
less pervasive. [It] plays a much smaller role in most people's lives
than it did, and the same is true for governments.”
Ray
continues: “We are fantastically interconnected already. Nation-states
are not islands anymore. So we're already much more of a global
community. The generation growing up today really feels like world
citizens much more than ever before, because they're talking to people
all over the world and it's not a novelty.”
I’ve
previously shared my belief that national borders have become extremely
porous, with ideas, people, capital and technology rapidly flowing
between nations. In decades past, your cultural identity was tied to
your birthplace. In the decades ahead, your identify is more a function
of many other external factors. If you love space, you’ll be connected
with fellow space-cadets around the globe more than you’ll be tied to
someone born next door.
2. We’ll hit longevity escape velocity before we realize we’ve hit it.
Ray and I share a passion for extending the healthy human lifespan.
I frequently
discuss Ray’s concept of “longevity escape velocity” — the point at
which, for every year that you’re alive, science is able to extend your
life for more than a year.
Scientists
are continually extending the human lifespan, helping us cure heart
disease, cancer, and eventually neurodegenerative disease. This will
keep accelerating as technology improves.
During my discussion with Ray, I asked him when he expects we’ll reach “escape velocity...”
His answer? “I predict it’s likely just another 10 to 12 years before the general public will hit longevity escape velocity.”
“At that
point, biotechnology is going to have taken over medicine,” Ray added.
“The next decade is going to be a profound revolution.”
From there,
Ray predicts that nanorobots will “basically finish the job of the
immune system,” with the ability to seek and destroy cancerous cells and
repair damaged organs.
As we head into this sci-fi-like future, your most important job for the next 15 years is to stay alive. “Wear your seatbelt until we get the self-driving cars going,” Ray jokes.
The
implications to society will be profound. While the scarcity-minded in
government will react saying, “Social Security will be destroyed,” the
more abundance-minded will realize that extending a person’s productive
earning lifespace from 65 to 75 or 85 years old would be a massive boom
to the GDP.
3. Technology will help us define and actualize human freedoms.
The third dangerous idea from my conversation with Ray is about how technology will enhance our humanity, not detract from it.
You may have heard critics complain that technology is making us less human, and increasingly disconnected.
Ray and I
share a slightly different viewpoint: that technology enables us to tap
into the very essence of what it means to be human.
“I don’t think humans even have to be biological,” explained Ray. “I think humans are the species that changes who we are.”
Ray argues
that this began when humans developed the earliest technologies -- fire
and stone tools. These tools gave people new capabilities, and became
extensions of our physical bodies.
At its base
level, technology is the means by which we change our environment, and
change ourselves. This will continue, even as the technologies
themselves evolve.
“People say,
‘Well, do I really want to become part machine?’ You're not even going
to notice it,” says Ray, “because it's going to be a sensible thing to
do at each point.”
Today, we
take medicine to fight disease and maintain good health, and would
likely consider it irresponsible if someone refused to take a proven,
life-saving medicine.
In the
future, this will still happen -- except the medicine might have
nanobots that can target disease, or will also improve your memory so
you can recall things more easily.
And
because this new medicine works so well for so many, public perception
will change. Eventually, it will become the norm… as ubiquitous as
penicillin and ibuprofen are today.
In this way,
ingesting nanorobots, uploading your brain to the cloud, and using
devices like smart contact lenses can help humans become, well, better
at being human.
Ray sums it
up: “We are the species that changes who we are to become smarter and
more profound, more beautiful, more creative, more musical, funnier,
sexier.”
Speaking of
sexuality and beauty, Ray also sees technology expanding these concepts.
“In virtual reality, you can be someone else. Right now, actually
changing your gender in real reality is a pretty significant, profound
process, but you could do it in virtual reality much more easily and you
can be someone else. A couple could become each other and discover
their relationship from the other's perspective.”
In the 2030s,
when Ray predicts sensor-laden nano robots will be able to go inside
the nervous system, virtual or augmented reality will become exceptionally realistic, enabling us to “be someone else and have other kinds of experiences.”
Why Dangerous Ideas Matter
Why is it so important to discuss dangerous ideas?
I often say that the day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
By consuming
and considering a steady diet of “crazy ideas,” you train yourself to
think bigger and bolder… a critical requirement for making impact.
As humans, we are linear and scarcity-minded.
As entrepreneurs, we must think exponentially and abundantly.
At the end of
the day, the formula for a true breakthrough is equal to “having a
crazy idea” you believe in, plus the passion to pursue that idea against
all naysayers and obstacles.
Join Me
1. A360 Executive Mastermind: This is the sort of conversation I explore at my Executive Mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective, for 360 abundance and exponentially minded CEOs (running $10M to $10B companies). If you’d like to be considered, apply here.
Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.
2. Abundance-Digital Online Community: I’ve also created a Digital/Online community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance-Digital.
Abundance-Digital is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level. Click here to learn more.
© PHD Ventures, 800 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, California, 90230, United States
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