Today was the first day of the program for us, and it started on an interesting foot. Snow started last night, and it snowed all night through, leaving us with about 4 inches of snow, and many places in DC closed... Including CSIS. The wonderful presenters that we had, however, decided to come in on a snow day and speak with us anyway. That is incredibly thoughtful, and I can't believe how interesting everything ended up being.
We started a little later, at 10 instead of 9, and had an introduction to the program from Scott Aughenbaugh, a fellow with the International Security Program for CSIS.
His introduction was a more in depth description of the 7
revolutions that we are studying for this seminar. The seven revolutions he spoke of are Population, Resource Management, Technology, Information and Data,
Economics, Security, and Governance. I took a large amount of information from his presentation, so I will highlight some of the notes I took on each of the
revolutions.
In regards to population, we were presented an interesting viewpoint regarding the ever-growing numbers that are headed our way. In 1804,
the Earth's population was 1 billion. In 2014, it is 7.3 billion. In 2020, it is estimated to be at 9.7 billion, and by 2050, 9.4 billion. It has also been estimated that the population will stabilize at about 11 billion somewhere near
the year 2085. This leads into the next revolution, resources.
If our population is going to nearly double in the next 80 years, how on earth are we going to have enough resources to support this vastly growing population? It is said that the U.S. now creates 5.4x more food with only 1.4x more resources, but how much more efficient can our food production become? It is also said that in 2035, it is expected for 592 million people to be living with diabetes, while 660 million people go hungry. That could be seen as an improvement from today's world, where there are currently 842 million people going hungry as we speak, but how do we learn to make a balance?
Is technology the answer to some of those questions? With innovations such as robots and bioprinters, can we help ourselves by furthering technology? An interesting fact he presented was that there are 7.3 billion people on the planet right now, but there are 7.4 billion cell phones. Technology and the next revolution, Information, tend to go hand in hand.
Information is a never ending journey. Online alone, in 2010, there were 1.8 zetabytes of information. Now in 2014, that number has increased to 6.0 zetabytes. That number is almost incomprehendable to me. With the amounts of information that are available, it is ending the age of privacy. As Mr. Aughenbaugh said, technology is years ahead of policy.
The next revolution, Economics, I didn't get many notes on, but an interesting fact I heard was that the US has a 74% debt to GPP ratio. Also, there was mention of the BRIC, or as better emphasized, the BIC, which is a group of rapidly growing economic powers (Brazil,Russa, India and China... even though it was expressed that Russia should not be included in this list). These countries are expected to become major economic players due to production and consumption.
The security revolution is a quickly evolving subject. It has been said that this period of time is being referred to as the "muddling through" era. It was further explained that we have 20th century problems with 21st century technology. In the words of Moises Naim, "Power isn't just shifting, power is decaying." It is hard to imagine the number of offensive space capabilities that could come, quite literally, crashing down on our heads at any time. There are unmanned arial vehicles in 75 countries at this time.
The last revolution we spoke about was the Governance revolution. With all of the other revolutions creating such a large change in the world, how can we be sure that we are headed to a generation of promise and opportunity? Is it more likely that we are travelling towards a time of peril and instability? In the words of Antoine de Saint Exupéry , "Your task is not to foresee the future, but rather to enable it."
The presentation by Mr. Aughenbaugh was incredibly informative, and it was a wonderful eye-opener to the types of information we would be taking in during the rest of this trip. I decided to dedicate an entire post to his presentation solely because it sparked my curiosity for the entire trip.
We started a little later, at 10 instead of 9, and had an introduction to the program from Scott Aughenbaugh, a fellow with the International Security Program for CSIS.
His introduction was a more in depth description of the 7
revolutions that we are studying for this seminar. The seven revolutions he spoke of are Population, Resource Management, Technology, Information and Data,
Economics, Security, and Governance. I took a large amount of information from his presentation, so I will highlight some of the notes I took on each of the
revolutions.
In regards to population, we were presented an interesting viewpoint regarding the ever-growing numbers that are headed our way. In 1804,
the Earth's population was 1 billion. In 2014, it is 7.3 billion. In 2020, it is estimated to be at 9.7 billion, and by 2050, 9.4 billion. It has also been estimated that the population will stabilize at about 11 billion somewhere near
the year 2085. This leads into the next revolution, resources.
If our population is going to nearly double in the next 80 years, how on earth are we going to have enough resources to support this vastly growing population? It is said that the U.S. now creates 5.4x more food with only 1.4x more resources, but how much more efficient can our food production become? It is also said that in 2035, it is expected for 592 million people to be living with diabetes, while 660 million people go hungry. That could be seen as an improvement from today's world, where there are currently 842 million people going hungry as we speak, but how do we learn to make a balance?
Is technology the answer to some of those questions? With innovations such as robots and bioprinters, can we help ourselves by furthering technology? An interesting fact he presented was that there are 7.3 billion people on the planet right now, but there are 7.4 billion cell phones. Technology and the next revolution, Information, tend to go hand in hand.
Information is a never ending journey. Online alone, in 2010, there were 1.8 zetabytes of information. Now in 2014, that number has increased to 6.0 zetabytes. That number is almost incomprehendable to me. With the amounts of information that are available, it is ending the age of privacy. As Mr. Aughenbaugh said, technology is years ahead of policy.
The next revolution, Economics, I didn't get many notes on, but an interesting fact I heard was that the US has a 74% debt to GPP ratio. Also, there was mention of the BRIC, or as better emphasized, the BIC, which is a group of rapidly growing economic powers (Brazil,Russa, India and China... even though it was expressed that Russia should not be included in this list). These countries are expected to become major economic players due to production and consumption.
The security revolution is a quickly evolving subject. It has been said that this period of time is being referred to as the "muddling through" era. It was further explained that we have 20th century problems with 21st century technology. In the words of Moises Naim, "Power isn't just shifting, power is decaying." It is hard to imagine the number of offensive space capabilities that could come, quite literally, crashing down on our heads at any time. There are unmanned arial vehicles in 75 countries at this time.
The last revolution we spoke about was the Governance revolution. With all of the other revolutions creating such a large change in the world, how can we be sure that we are headed to a generation of promise and opportunity? Is it more likely that we are travelling towards a time of peril and instability? In the words of Antoine de Saint Exupéry , "Your task is not to foresee the future, but rather to enable it."
The presentation by Mr. Aughenbaugh was incredibly informative, and it was a wonderful eye-opener to the types of information we would be taking in during the rest of this trip. I decided to dedicate an entire post to his presentation solely because it sparked my curiosity for the entire trip.