where most of my family is from was
reeling from years of Soviet occupation
the economy was poor many of the cities
were in ruins and the one thing most
people struggled to find were landline
telephones each time my mother went back
to visit she learned how difficult it
was for people across the country to
communicate and now some people waited
as long as 10 years to receive their
landlines this didn’t last forever
after years of technological isolation
cellular technology eventually swept
across the country I had already done in
the US and in much of the Western world
within several years most people had
their own phones and a once broken
society was radically changed for the
better and all it took was the
introduction of a piece of technology
already available to most of the world
since the 1970s the world has changed so
much in so few years just look at all of
the new technology being rolled out each
and every day autonomous drones robot
companions human-like a I even snapchat
filters these are absolute technological
marvels compared to what was possible
even as little as ten years ago and
generally speaking these things are
great they improve our quality of life
and make our jobs as consumers easier I
think most of you could agree that I
could spend literally years on Amazon
and still be finding new things to buy
so because of these things it’s easy to
see how this era in which we were living
has already begun to distinguish itself
from the previous 50 or 60 years to you
and me 2017 might just be like any other
year but to the World Economic Forum
this is the beginning of a new
revolution the fourth Industrial
Revolution now in history class we all
learned that in the first Industrial
Revolution the steam engine allowed us
to replace human labor in many tasks in
the second electricity and mass
production to further improved our
productivity in the mid 20th century the
step the third Industrial Revolution
brought with it the Internet basic
automation and computerized processing
power now in the fourth we have the
opportunity not just to further replace
human labor but
intelligence with data machines now this
is an amazing thought in just a couple
of years I could have machines working
right alongside me aiding me in my daily
tasks so for this reason I think we can
be very excited and very positive about
what the future may hold but today I
want to be a bit of a pessimist because
I want to ask a couple of questions that
I think are being raised by this new
world in which we are living
hopefully these questions will get us
thinking about what kind of an economy
we might soon have on our hands as well
as what kind of opportunities as well as
responsibilities we and other students
will have in the future so here’s the
first question
how will the innovations of the near
future transform the global economy and
second probably more crucially how
individuals in the labor force have to
adapt this new and changing world now I
think we can speculate relatively
accurately on this first question if we
just look around at what has already
happened we can begin to derive some of
the economic trends of the future but
before we do this I want to make a quick
analogy and I want to do it using a
little bit of physics so one of the most
fundamental laws of the universe states
that the average entropy is constantly
increasing essentially we’re always
wasting energy in the form of friction
or heat and there’s not much we can
really do about that however if you
think about it the purpose of Technology
throughout history has generally been
been to pushes in the opposite direction
it makes our lives more frictionless and
more efficient this idea was first
introduced to me by a post on a
hungarian website called fun blog and it
promises that the global economy will
only continue to grow more rapidly
because in the same way that we
experience less friction in our lives it
also means that businesses experience
less friction or overhead which saves
them lots of money in the long run
consumers to also feel the benefit I can
have any item at my doorstep in a day or
pay for a fridge was just the swipe of
my phone so because of these things I
think we can be very confident in saying
that businesses will have the
opportunity to succeed in the future and
we know that consumers are already
benefiting so this just leaves employees
where they left in this picture well the
effect that the new industrial
revolution has already had on an
employee’s may not be exactly what you
expect surprisingly the demand for labor
in the US hasn’t decreased while the
proportion working
continues to rise at a very steady rate
there’s actually a really great TED talk
by a man named David Otter a professor
of economics at MIT in which he explains
this phenomenon in greater detail
essentially although it is true that
jobs that are repetitive or easily
programmable I’ve already begun to be
replaced by machines because of the
lower costs businesses can expand more
easily and therefore there’s a steady
supply of new jobs
the real problem does not line how many
jobs we have but what kind of jobs they
are many new jobs today either require a
ton of specialized education or very
little at all there is a polarization in
the job market this is bad because
disparities between the super rich and
the super poor may grow worse and women
across the globe have already suffered
disproportionately in addition we’re
seeing college graduates leaving after
graduation unable to find employment
apart from all of this technology is
really yet to have the expected positive
impact on the economy global GDP growth
essentially the amount of stuff we make
per year has slowed in large part due to
stagnation in productivity and no one is
really sure why so here’s the big
question how do we solve all of these
problems during previous periods of
economic transition the world has always
seemed to write itself
VHS became blu-ray Blockbuster became
Netflix people moved to different
industries and the labor pool adapted
adequately but we can’t take this for
granted things don’t just happen I
believe that the first steps will line
the way we educate ourselves because the
bottom line is that the people who will
succeed the best in the future are those
people who can capitalize on what
technology cannot do creativity empathy
problem-solving skills having the
ability to ask the proper question in
the proper way
these are innately human skills and
thankfully there are already things that
we are being taught here at handover
meaning we are uniquely positioned to be
prepared for what the future may hold
now at the end of the day my talk today
wasn’t meant to add stress to your lives
although it was a bit of a warning all I
really ask of you is that you turn a
critical eye to the trends that are
emerging around you to be aware that the
world is changing and it’s changing fast
not everyone has the privilege of an and
over education therefore we must ensure
that what we learned during our time
put to good use our schooling will allow
us to face challenges of the future
head-on because ultimately I believe
that our generation has been tasked with
navigating the trials of this new world
during previous industrial revolutions
entire swathes of the planet were left
in the dark isolated and frozen much the
same way that hungry was so now if we
choose to be aware that the world is
changing and we choose to say that yes
we’re willing to solve the problems that
we are already beating beginning to
identify then we must not allow this to
happen again instead we must ask
ourselves how best we can aid in the
global transition towards what could be
an unprecedented era of global
connectedness and prosperity and we must
do so in such a way that as we move
forward we do not leave a single person
or country far behind thank you [Applause]