Last week the BBC documentary Vision of The Future on the box (http://preview.tinyurl.com/2pgdc5) suggested that people in their fifties or sixties today could live to be a healthy hundred and fifty. That’s Madonna sorted then.
The interesting question is to imagine a world where the technology was already in existence. What shape or form would that world take, if say Mary Whitehouse was still alive and healthy enough to continue playing her vitriolic role as a social and moral guardian. The mind boggles as there are so many greats and not so greats that have withered and declined as their organic faculties have struggled to keep pace. What kind of a world would it be a hundred years from now if Madonna was singing her swan song and would we still care? Would the rush of thought and culture, that is ushered in through the natural order of things, slow down as gridlock commences because the older generation are not ready to pass on the baton for a long time? After all power is only reluctantly passed on when the physically weakened are unable to keep in step with the times.
The other interesting thought is who will be given access to extend their life? In the current context there is the balance and pay off between time and money (in the richer world). If time was less finite than it is, would it replace money as the transaction vehicle for the future? So would an ageing population get access to the life extending technology in return for continuing to work till they were a hundred and twenty? That would be a fair trade off for economies in the West and China as they struggle to keep up with the more demographically youthful Latin American and South Asian market economies. How would the portfolio career withstand this change? Would we return to job for life and if so would that be a stultified existence or would there be enough opportunities for furnishing a portfolio career? The likely scenario is a stratification of working paths: both a job for life and the portfolio career would exist side by side and it would be a case of ‘horses for courses’; markets permitting.
Marketing wise, where would the ‘empty nester’; ‘silver surfer’ marketing opportunities disappear to? As we get healthier for longer and accrue more golden years how will we spend, live and eat and will we choose to have babies later in life? What will happen in the workplace, when we realise that we’re here to stay will we be less rushed in our approach to the career ladder? Most important of all what will happen to the youth and where will their place be in all of this? Will our present obsession with youth and beauty be replaced by a veneration of experience when youth and beauty become ubiquitous?
Answers in the comment box below please and if any one has mastered the space time continuum and spotted a peek at our parallel selves, pray do tell. Your secret will be safe with us.
This is quite frightening in many ways...and quite fertile material for novelists.
ReplyDeleteI think the answer most people would give is that they'd like to live as long as they could sustain physical and mental wellbeing. The problem is that economic wellbeing is also a factor.
The economic system is predicated on a level of growth that tends to have been based on an assumption, in the last 50 years at least, of demographic growth in the workforce.
Indeed it is scary but what if time replaces money in the economy? (buying and selling time credits that will give us life and health extending implants in exchange for work we do)
ReplyDeleteHow scary would that be when we are transacting in the curency that determines our finiteness!