Survey question 1: Feel free to make a single prediction or multiple predictions about the best and most beneficial changes in digital life that are likely to take place by 2035. We are particularly interested in your thoughts about how developments might improve…
Human-centered development of digital tools and systems – safely advancing human progress in these systems
Human connections, governance and institutions – improving social and political interactions
Human rights – abetting good outcomes for citizens.
Human knowledge – verifying, updating, safely archiving and elevating the best of it
Human health and well-being – helping people be safer, healthier, happier
Other – you are welcome to write about an area that does not fit in the categories listed above

A. Humanity-Centered development of digital tools and systems: Predicting a shift from human-centered design to humanity-centered design for a safer and better world. Increasingly necessary perspective shift as people born of the physical realm push deeper into the digital real guided in part by ideas and ideals from the mathematical/philosophical/spiritual realms. Note the shift from “human-centered” to “humanity-centered” is an important shift that is required per Don Norman’s new 2023 book on design for a better world [1]. Safely advancing technologies increasingly requires a transdisciplinary systems perspective as well as awareness of harms, not just benefits that some stakeholders might enjoy at the expense of harms to under-served populations. The service research community which studies interaction and change processed has been emphasizing benefits of digital tools (value cocreation), but is now increasingly aware of harms to under-service populations (value codestruction) – so a broadening of the discussion to focus on harms and benefits, as well as under-served and well-served populations of stakeholders [2]. The work of Ray Fisk and the ServCollab team are also relevant regarding this change to service system design, engineering, management, and governance [3].

[1] Don Norman book – humanity-centered design: BiblioN2023 Norman DA (2023) Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered URL: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Better-World-Meaningful-Sustainable/dp/0262047950 Quotes: “Human behavior brought our world to the brink, human behavior can save us. The world is a mess.”;
[2] Service research on social robots – harms and benefits: BiblioC2018 Caic, M, Odekerken-Schroder G, Mahr D (2018) Service robots: value co-creation and co-destruction in elderly care networks. Journal of Service Management. Vol. 29 No. 2, 2018. pp. 178-205 Emerald Publishing. DOI 10.1108/JOSM-07-2017-0179 URL: Quotes: “Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential roles for service robots (i.e. socially assistive robots) in value networks of elderly care.”;
[2] Ray Fisk ServCollab – service action research – under-served populations: BiblioF2022 Fisk PR, Gallan AS, Joubert AM, Beekhuyzen J, Cheung L, Russell-Bennett R (2022) Healing the Digital Divide With Digital Inclusion: Enabling Human Capabilities. Journal of Service Research. URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/109467052211401 Quotes: “Abstract: The “digital divide” refers to societal-level inequalities of digital access, capabilities, and outcomes. To explore how the digital divide affects customers experiencing vulnerability, service interactions in essential service settings (health care, education, and social services) were empirically investigated and practices service system members might adopt to address vulnerability were identified.”;

B. Human connections, governance and institutions: Predicting greater emphasize on how human connections via social media can be used to change conflict into deeper understanding reducing polarization [4]. Predicting institutions and governance wise enough to eliminate poverty traps, and adopt “Buy2Invest” policy to reduce poverty in coming decades, ensuring that customers who buy are investing in their retirement account which is an index fund [5].

[4] Social media used to change conflict into understanding: BiblioO2022 Overgaard, CSB, Wooley S (2022) How social media platforms can reduce polarization. Brookings Institute. December 21, 2022. Tech Stream – tomorrow’s tech policy conversations today. URL: URL: https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-social-media-platforms-can-reduce-polarization/ Quotes: “Polarization is widely recognized as one of the most pressing issues now facing the United States. Stories about how the country has fractured along partisan lines, and how the internet and social media exacerbate those cleavages, are frequently in the news.”;

[5] Governance wise enough to eliminate a big poverty trap. BiblioS2021 Spohrer (2021) A service innovation whose time has come? Service-science.info blog post. URL: https://service-science.info/archives/5823 Quotes: “Automatic retirement investing is the key to making everyone a bit wealthier. For example, national central banks with a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) could put in place retirement accounts for every person to facilitate a “buy2invest” program.”;

C. Human rights – abetting good outcomes for citizens: Predicting responsible actors learn to invest more systematically and wisely in protecting human rights, enforcing human responsibilities, via digital twins technologies that allow predicting harms and benefits for under-served and well-served populations. Service providers will not be replaced by AI, but service providers who do not use AI (and have a digital twin of themselves) will be replaced by those who do use AI [6]. Human rights and responsibilities, harms and benefits are responsible actors (e.g., people, businesses, universities, cities, nations, etc.) that give and get service (AKA service system entities). The world simulator will include digital twins of all responsible actors, allowing better use of complexity economics in understanding interaction and change processes better [7]. Note that large companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are building digital twins of their users/customers to better predict behavior patterns and create offers of mutual value/interest. Responsible actors will build and use AI digital twins of themselves increasingly [8],[9].

[6] Digital twins for all responsible actors upskilling with AI – Service in the AI Era (pages 45-54): BiblioS2022 Spohrer J, Maglio PP, Vargo SL, Warg M (2022) Service in the AI Era: Science, Logic, and Architecture Perspectives. Business Expert Press. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Service-AI-Era-Architecture-Perspectives/dp/1637423039/ Quotes: “Are you prepared for the coming AI era? AI advances will profoundly change your daily service interactions, so this book provides readers with a necessary understanding of service, the application of resources (e.g., knowledge) for the benefit of another.”;

[7] Complexity economics: BiblioA2019 Arthur WB (2019) Foundations of Complexity Economics. Nature Review Physics. URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-020-00273-3 Quotes: “Abstract | Conventional, neoclassical economics assumes perfectly rational agents (firms, consumers, investors) who face well-defined problems and arrive at optimal behaviour consistent with — in equilibrium with — the overall outcome caused by this behaviour. This rational, equilibrium system produces an elegant economics, but is restrictive and often unrealistic. Complexity economics relaxes these assumptions. It assumes that agents differ, that they have imperfect information about other agents and must, therefore, try to make sense of the situation they face. Agents explore, react and constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create. The resulting outcome may not be in equilibrium and may display patterns and emergent phenomena not visible to equilibrium analysis.”;

[8] Your own digital twin is coming: BiblioW2022 Wakefield J (2022) Why you may have a thinking digital twin within a decade. BBC News Online. URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61742884 Quotes: “We are living in an age where everything that exists in the real world is being replicated digitally – our cities, our cars, our homes, and even ourselves.”;

[9] Toy Jensen is a digital twin of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: BiblioH2022 Huang J (2022) GTC 2022 Keynote with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. [online at YouTube] URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39ubNuxnrK8 Quotes: “Note: Digital twin of Earth climate more accurate and faster than physics based models with respect to atmospheric rivers that cause flooding.”; “Toy Jensen is an interactive early stage digital twin or digital clone of a person.”;

D. Human knowledge – verifying, updating, safely archiving and elevating the best of it: Predicting increased emphasis on the democratization of open replicable science, including rapidly rebuilding knowledge from scratch – and allowing the masses to understand and replicate important experiments [10]. In the AI era, the future of expertise depends on people’s ability to rebuild knowledge from scratch [11]. The world needs better AI models [11]. To get the benefits of service in the AI era, responsible actors need to invest in better models of the world (science), better models in people’s heads guiding interactions (logics), better models of organizations guiding change (architecture), and better models of technological capabilities and limitations shaping intelligence augmentation (AI) [6].

[10] Rapidly rebuild knowlege/technology from scratch: BiblioS2012 Spohrer J (2012) A New Engineering-Challenge Discipline: Rapidly Rebuilding Societal Infrastructure. Blog service-science.info. URL: https://service-science.info/archives/2189 Quotes: “How quickly can an individual engineering student or team of students rebuild from scratch the advanced technology infrastructure of society? From raw materials to simple tools, from simple tools and steam engines to more advanced energy systems (force multipliers), from metals and glass lenses to photography and sensors (perception multipliers), from energy systems and sensors to more precise measurement and control systems (precise production scale-up), from lithography and printing and computers and software to self-replicating machines as envisioned by John von Neumann as a real-world follow-on to the symbolic-world’s Universal Turing machines.”:

[11] Future of expertise: BiblioS2022 Spohrer J, Griffith T, ISSIP (2022) Future of Expertise. ISSIP Learning Center Publication. URL: https://service-science.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-of-Expertise-20220708-v1.pdf Quotes: “In this whitepaper, 112 position statements and views on the future of expertise are distilled to 10 predictions that are rank-ordered. Civilization depends on the growth and sharing of expertise. Expertise can be described as legitimized competence. Expertise is most often shared in the form of service, the application of resources (e.g., knowledge) for the benefit of another.
Ten Predictions, by 2032…”;

[12] Better AI models – ChatGPT: BiblioS2022 Spohrer J (2022) ChatGPT. Service-scienve.info blog post. URL: https://service-science.info/archives/6309 Quotes: “I am really enjoying using it – even though it is imperfect – it is a useful cognitive tool that makes a lot of mistakes, but it will get better over time. I have to spend a lot of time checking assertions to determine if they are actually true or not (see addendum below). That is one of its biggest weaknesses. However, it will get better over time.”;

E. Human health and well-being – helping people be safer, healthier, happier: Predicting that we are entering a golden age of service, that will improve human well-being via confronting harms done to under-served populations, and thanks to AI’s advancing technological capabilities [13] [6].

[13] Golden age of service: BiblioS2022 Spohrer J (2022) The Dawn of a Golden Age of Service URL: https://www.servsig.org/wordpress/2021/11/jimspohrer/ Quotes: “The pandemic has changed our daily service experiences. COVID has taken its toll on all of us. All types of service systems – individuals, families, businesses, universities, cities, and nations – have had to adapt. However, perhaps one silver lining is the accelerated digital transformation of business and society. More of us are working from home, regularly using same day and overnight deliveries, participating in online classes, having online doctor’s visits, being aware of personal actions that slow the spread when we are out and about, and many more behavioral changes, large and small. Accelerated digital transformation and a focus on our daily interactions could foreshadow “the Dawn of a Golden Age of Service.” “;

F. Other – you are welcome to write about an area that does not fit in the categories listed above: Predicting the return of local energy infrastructure via decarbonized, geothermal drilling breakthrough innovations [14]. Universities are increasingly adding AI data centers on campus [15]. Universities are increasingly experimenting with geothermal [16]. Predicting that increased importance of the top university in each city as an example of decarbonized local energy infrastructure powering AI systems.

[14] Geothermal – Top Ten Innovations of 2023 (Energy – Quaise:  BiblioT2022 Thompson D (2022) Breakthroughs of the Year: Pictures of the beginning of the universe, medicine that can (kind of) reverse death, and other leaps of human ingenuity. PBS. URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/technology-medicine-law-ai-10-breakthroughs-2022/672390/ Quotes: “New Toys for the Green-Energy Revolution: Smaller nuclear reactors and bigger geothermal breakthroughs”; “Then there’s geothermal energy, which means drilling deep into the ground to use the Earth’s heat for power. Geothermal is an ideal energy source—more consistent than wind or solar and with none of the waste concerns of nuclear. The problem is that, in some parts of the world, you have to go really, really deep to access geothermally heated water. And when we drill deep into the planet, we hit ancient rock—typically granite—that requires new technology to penetrate. The start-up Quaise is working on a drilling technology that can vaporize granite with a highly concentrated beam of radio-frequency power. If such a technology became widely available, deep drilling would be commonplace and geothermal energy would be accessible on just about any patch of land. It would be as though humankind conceived of a magic wand that, waved across the Earth, makes any square mile as energy-rich as an oil-gushing stretch of Texas or Saudi Arabia.”

[15] University AI Centers – Nvidia AI Center: BiblioO2022 Ommar H(2022) Industry-University Partnerships to Create AI Universities. Center fort Data Innovation. ITIF. URL:  https://itif.org/publications/2022/07/19/industry-university-partnerships-to-create-ai-universities/ Quotes: “Introduction – Universities aid in national artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and competitiveness in several ways. Most obviously, they are where much AI research and technological innovation gets done. Countless major AI discoveries have been the direct result of university research; in fact, the field of AI research itself was founded at a workshop held on the campus of Dartmouth College in 1956.”;

[16] Cornell Geothermal – BiblioH2022 Himmelstein S (2022) Video: University explores geothermal heating option. URL: https://insights.globalspec.com/article/19065/video-university-explores-geothermal-heating-option Quotes: “In alignment with the goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, Cornell University is exploring the potential of onsite geothermal resources to provide campus heating services. Drilling for the Cornell University Borehole Observatory (CUBO) is now underway and will be the site of tests to determine the temperature, permeability and other characteristics of the rock up to 10,000 ft below the surface.”;

Survey question 2: Feel free to make a single prediction or multiple predictions about the most harmful or menacing changes that are likely to take place by 2035. We are particularly interested in your thoughts about how developments in digital technology and humans’ uses of it are likely to be detrimental to…
Human-centered development of digital tools and systems – falling short of advocates’ goals
Human connections, governance and institutions – endangering social and political interactions
Human rights – harming the rights of citizens
Human knowledge – compromising or hindering progress.
Human health and well-being – threatening individuals’ safety, health and happiness
Other – you are welcome to write about an area that does not fit in the categories listed above

A. Human-centered development of digital tools and systems – falling short of advocates’ goals: Predicting that lack of accountability for criminals involved in cybersecurity breaches/scams slows digital transformation of adoption of digital twins for all responsible actors. For example, Google is unable to eliminate all the spam and phishing emails – even thought its AI does a good filtering job identifying spam and phishing emails. The criminals are not being held accountable. Predicting that the lack of “human-like dynamic, episodic memory” capabilities for AI systems slows the adoption of digital-twin ownership by individuals, and development of AI systems with commonsense reasoning capabilities.

B. Human connections, governance and institutions – endangering social and political interactions: Predicting that winner-take-all mindset, rather than balanced with collaboration to improve weakest-link mindset dominates in geo-politics of USA, Russia, China, India.

C. Human rights – harming the rights of citizens: Predicting that lack of embracing immigrants with accelerated pathways to productive citizenship is causing increasing tensions between regions, and wastes enormous amounts of human potential.

D. Human knowledge – compromising or hindering progress: Predicting that publishers will be slow to adopt open science disruptions.

E. Human health and well-being – threatening individuals’ safety, health and happiness: Predicting that mental illness exacerbated by loneliness will become the number one health challenge in all societies with elderly-dominant populations. Immigration with accelerated cultural and citizenship pathways could be one part of the solution.

F. Other – you are welcome to write about an area that does not fit in the categories listed above: Lack of focus on geothermal because of oil company interest in hydrogen economy will slow local energy independence.

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Quoted from Survey Organizers: If you know of other experts whose views who would contribute meaningful insights on these questions, please feel free to send them this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PewElonDigFuture

The Pew Research Center and Elon University will issue a report in the coming months covering the answers we collect.

With deepest appreciation,

Lee Rainie,
Director, Internet and Technology Research
Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C.

Janna Anderson,
Director, Imagining the Internet Center, Elon University, N.C.