COVID as a Turning Point
According to paleoanthropology the first humans appeared about five million years ago. Since then, there must have come many turning points on humanity’s journey in time and our ancestors must have timely chosen the right path and bravely navigated various twists & turns in the path of journey to make us arrive at the present level of development.
Sometimes a turning point occurs because of some small event that triggers a new way of thinking, for example — the falling apple for Sir Isaac Newton, the rising water level in the bath for Archimedes, and the boiling water in teakettle for James Watt… Sometimes, a turning point occurs when we are cornered and must do something new to find a way out; for example, maybe our ancestors lived under constant fear of predators, thus they were cornered by the predators, and some smart-one of them indulged in continuous thinks to find a way out and observed that predators feared fire — our ancestors too at that time feared fire but the smart-one perhaps accidentally learnt to tame fire when he dared to hold the non-burning end of a thin piece of wood to find that not only could he safely carry the fire this way but also protect himself and others from predators!
I feel that COVID-19 forced us into a corner. The suffering, loss & grief caused by it is unimaginable, but we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and future generation might view it in hindsight as a turning point for many aspects of human life. In the following I attempt to envision what they might be and how to navigate them.
Utilization of digital communication for pooling human brain power
Internet data transmission speed and coverage got a boost due to COVID. The world’s average download speed for fixed broadband, in 2020, was 46.12 Mbps, 26.4% faster than that of 2019. Upload speed increased 26.5% to 22.44 Mbps. Many telcos are deploying 5G and all others will soon follow suit. Elon Musk’s Starlink is launching thousands of satellites to cover the globe with high speed internet. As a higher quality digital network spreads worldwide it will enable synergizing the genius of the vast world through connectivity, thus bringing several billion brains in the worldwide brain pool. Imagine the possibilities when you can hire workers worldwide!
Majority of work will be done remotely (‘Work from Home’)
COVID forced the entire world to accept and adopt digital communication tools (‘Zoom’, etc) for working from home. For many types of jobs there is no reason to discontinue this approach and for them it is better to take advantage of time & energy saved in commuting and well-being created by humans spending more time with friends and family. As new technologies like robotics and Artificial Intelligence continue to automate tasks, even more types of jobs will become possible to do remotely. Lastly, we have a new generation of the COVID-19 youngsters who, we can say, opened their eyes to find digital tools and have become used to remote work. To the extent that I have interacted with these young men and women, boys and girls, I gathered the impression that they are desirous of changing the world. Companies taking advantage of these trends are most likely to become more successful than those that insist on old ways of working.
Obsolescence of the manner in which computers are used presently.
Ultimately and not in too distant a future computers may get freedom from remaining plugged and immobile for feeding on electricity, initially may be through use of fuel cells of sealed type, but in the long run the computers may no longer remain semiconductor based because all that is required for digital computing is capability of achieving binary states in a controlled manner. Therefore, computers in the long run may be non-semiconductor, although analog devices may continue to be semiconductor based.
Most probably — not too distant in future, computers may become totally of self-learning type, requiring no code writing, but sold after being sufficiently taught at production stage. Just as we get high level education of engineering, computer science, medicine, surgery, law, commerce and other subjects it may be possible to buy a computer which is graduate in commerce.
Much before switchover from plugged to unplugged computers and advent of non-semiconductor computers, the immediately apparent development is commercialisation of quantum computing, totally changing the way computers are used today and computers are soon likely to be equipped with a high level of artificial intelligence. A scenario looks feasible where a CEO would be able to query the Accounting Computer, “what is current P/E Ratio” and the Computer would nearly instantly answer “currently it’s seven percent”; best part being that the computer system would be engaging itself ceaselessly in statistical analysis based on world market to be capable of instantly giving answers of queries in real time to enable top management to take out of the box decisions.
Obsolescence of many a business
Passenger air travel might be the first to come to an end and airfreight the last. Others to become obsolete might include conventional banking, onshore and offshore crude-oil and natural gas related businesses, conventional medicine (as genome handling technology develops further), commercial airplane manufacture (fighter airplanes, missiles, rockets etc. and submarines may continue considerably longer), manufacture of conventional refrigeration and air conditioning (which are very likely to be replaced by vapor absorption cooling and/or thermo-electric cooling thus totally eliminating CFCs), financing services of the conventional type and many more … Some of these would be remodeled to match the ways things may shape up in future, paper manufacture except some recycled paper for certain unavoidable usage, manufacture of pens of all kinds, production of silk (cultivation of cotton is likely to continue since cotton seed oil is important edible fat and therefore cotton based fabric is most likely to continue). The above is not an exhaustive list, it just hints at shape of things that may come in future as humanity takes a turns in right direction.
Many humans would no longer need to ‘work’ at all
Worldwide adaptation of Basic Minimum Wages for all those who would be made jobless in the new era — in fact joblessness would not be a pitiable condition because bulk of the population may one day be jobless and there would be no ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.
The above is based on my limited understanding and imagination because I am a product of conventional education system — step by step teaching and learning, rather than packaged learning whereby a child is able to 3-D print something unimaginable, even without deep knowledge of mathematics, because of A.I. embedded in the 3-D printer.
Global collaboration to control climate change
Electricity generation
It has been demonstrated that electricity on commercial scale can be reliably generated by means of environment friendly methods such as geothermal, hydro-electric, wind turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, tidal power etc. instead of highly polluting fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) used today.
Solar photovoltaic (SPV) panels have already been made efficient enough to compete with conventional electricity and people are now increasingly resorting to install SPV panels on their house roofs utilizing them in conjunction with city electricity supply. The solar photovoltaic electricity generation is also being adopted on commercial scale and solar photovoltaic power plants of capacity 500 MW+ are coming up in the areas of high solar insolation throughout the world. The problem with solar photovoltaic electricity generation is that the SPV panels produce direct current (dc) electricity whereas utilization of electricity all over the world is in the form of 3-phase (or 1-phase) alternating current (ac). Therefore the electricity generated by SPV is inverted and fed into the power grid system in the form of 3-phase ac and if the power grid system fails, for any reason, the SPV panels simultaneously become defunct.
Along with SPV power plants, wind powered power plants too are being installed in volume. Another candidate for nonconventional electricity generation is much greater utilization of tidal energy but cost to benefit ratio doesn’t always justify use of tidal energy at all locations. Hydro-electric power generation has since very long been a favorite where justifiable techno-economically.
However, solar and wind sources cannot generate electricity round the clock. Solar generation occurs only as long as the sun light is adequate, wind powered power plants too don’t generate round the clock and their behavior is rather unpredictable and erratic. Because of unfeasibility of nonstop electricity generation from the unconventional methods described above, currently the use of electricity generation from fossil fuels has to be continued per force at present. Along with generation from fossil fuels there is Nuclear Electricity Generation. Fossil fuel based generation is environment unfriendly but nuclear generation is highly risky and hazardous in other ways on very long term basis. The waste product from nuclear reactor is radioactive and lethal. Therefore, it is disposed deep underground or in the space or in other manners all of which are undesirable and are nothing but clandestine and highly undesirable manner of disposal of very dangerous substance such that it would pose long term hazard.
All this can be avoided if full solar electricity generation potential is utilized in conjunction with efficient storage of electricity such that electricity, much in excess of demand is generated while sun shines and the stored solar electricity is utilized when the sunshine is low or none. Substantial efforts are already in progress to make it possible, sooner than later, to store electricity in bulk and to utilize it as and when needed.
Best candidate for this purpose is Hydrogen which is generated by electrolysis of water thus in effect converting electricity in the form of Hydrogen. Electrical energy amounting to 140 MJ (38.8 kWh) is currently required to produce 1 kg of Hydrogen. In terms of efficiency of producing utility scale electricity from Hydrogen the best in class Hydrogen Fuel Cells can achieve 90% efficiency when operated on pure Hydrogen and 80% with commercial grade Hydrogen. These figures are based on current state of the art and proves that large scale use of this technology is already techno-economically feasible. That it is not yet commercialized adopted is altogether a different matter.
Transport
Railways are still substantially running Diesel-electric locomotives but since quite some time in the past efforts are being made to electrify the railway traction the world over. Once entire railway network all over the world is converted to electrical traction, in effect the railway trains would be running on energy that is totally free of fossil fuels.
Chargeable Battery based Electrical Automobiles (EVs) are gradually but quite firmly and fast gaining popularity. The only concern of those who want to switchover to EVs, from their presently Petrol (Gas) or Diesel Fuel based vehicles, appears to be significant time taken in recharging the EVs. This is true of small as well as large vehicles. To solve this problem battery changing stations are being envisaged apart from battery charging stations. However, in future it is very likely that there would be another switchover from battery based EVs to Hydrogen Fuel Cells based EVs; Aluminium–air batteries (not yet perfected) also being the contender as and when they become foolproof. There may emerge several more technologies that are yet not known, so that there may be no need to waste time on charging of batteries.
Air Travel at present is solely dependent on fossil fuel in the form of Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF). Truly comparable alternatives have not yet emerged, thus challenging the sharp brains to find the alternative by thinking out of the box. The very need for Air Travel has already been noticeably reduced owing to remote working forced by circumstances since modern efficient communication technology enables use of travel of data, ideas, knowledge etc. rather than persons. Nonetheless, sometimes it does become essential to take long-haul flights. Those who have brains of the type that are capable of tangential thinking appear to have said, ‘travel — by all means and for sure — but why through sky, why not sub-surface?’ and this out of the box thinking has already given birth to Hyperloop (the concept developed by Space X). Soon enough several Hyperloops would be functional, laying foundation for obsolescence of Air-travel and discontinuation of use of fossil fuel for travels of all kinds. For the present the planned Hyperloop route runs from Los Angeles, California to Las Vegas, Nevada in USA. Since its announcement by Elon Musk in 2013, regular reports appear on the proposed novel system for ground transportation “Hyperloop” — a system based on transport containers (“pods”) that are shot point-to-point at speeds above 1000 kph through a quasi-evacuated tube.
Conclusion
While nature is impartial to twists and turns, in human business a missed turn can results in irreversible loss. As an example, Eastman Kodak was at its zenith in the 1960s with sales exceeding $1 Billion for the first time in 1962. But it didn’t recognize the invention of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology in 1960s as an important turning point for photography. As a result, it didn’t lead the switchover from chemical based picture capture to the electronic image sensor and filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
Those who accept, adopt and accelerate change are likely to do better than those who stick to old ways.
My best wishes to all who are going to take charge of the new era.
