Futurists Gerd Leonhard And Anton Musgrave: The World By 2030 Episode 1

Greetings and hello. I'm Gerd Leonhardt, futurist. I'm here in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa with my good friend and fellow futurist, Anton Musgrave. And Anton and me have worked together for quite some time on helping clients to understand the future, to see the signals, to hear hear the signals and then to react, to rebuild their businesses, to do different things. That has been done with governments, with NGOs, with organizations, and we've been working on this roughly Anton for 32 years and me for 15 years. And recently we started thinking about what does the world look like by 2030 and how can we get our clients to think about at least the next seven years, right now being 2023. So we decided to do a series of things, conversations and hopefully we'll be sharing some real nuggets with you on the world by 2030. And that is the theme of our conversation. It's going to be a wide ranging conversation about all different topics, all different angles and probably carved up in 12 to 15 episodes. Now I would like to introduce Anton Musgrave. Please tell us who you are and what you do.

Thanks very much, Gerd folks, great to meet you virtually here. My name is Anton Musgrave. I'm a founder of FutureWorld International, which is a global business working with clients all around the world, helping them see and understand and capitalize on the future. I've worked across industries in all geographies, from governments right down to NGOs, from the top of the Alps right down to southern tip of South America and many places in between. Gerd, lots of fun stories we'll share, I'm sure.

And it's interesting to note that South Africa is kind of an epicenter of the future. One wouldn't suspect that given that there are many challenges in South Africa, but the future is a big topic. As opposed to Switzerland, where I live, which the future is a topic. But in Switzerland we tend to be more careful about the future because we are generally averse to risk. And here it's like one can feel that the future is a big topic. There's a future university in Stellenbosch, right? The Cape Town University has also similar courses there. There are many people in my LinkedIn connection that are futurists in South Africa. And do you know why? Do you have any idea why that is the case?

I think that's a great question. You know, we have such a tumultuous environment that we operate in with many unexpected curveballs all the time. And so not only do Leadership in this country really respond to the present very well, but they're constantly having to see, well, this is a real crisis, but what's coming and how do I remain optimistic about tomorrow's opportunities. And I think that's why, because otherwise we'd be consumed in the negativity of the moment. But our leadership really managed to focus also on the next thing that we need to get ready for before it arrives.

Do you think it has anything to do with the sort of Anglo cultural approach on the future? South Africa being kind of Anglo in tradition, of course, but transitioning to a different culture now. But if we're looking at America, uk, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, we have a view in the future that it can be made, that it can be created, that we can be entrepreneurial. When we go to Europe, heartland Europe, Germany, Switzerland, it's more like we're waiting for somebody else to make that future. We're not actively taking part in it. In fact, in Germany and Switzerland, in many ways you could say the future is difficult because it's not perfect and we can't make it perfect. So we're always in the Wild west, which seems to be more of an Anglo tradition. You think that's part of the reason why it's in South Africa we have such a concentration of future discussion?

I think it's that indeed. But I think added to that is the notion that futurists is a process of engaging with the unknown, with the uncertain, with the messy. I mean, life is messy and we've certainly experienced that. Our future lenses and future events become much more unpredictable than many other parts of the world. So the level of volatility in all dimensions in this country is significant. And I think that's why there's this openness to explore the unknown, the scary, the messy, perhaps more easily than in countries like Switzerland where everything is relatively stable on a hundred year cycle.

Well, it's funny, I thought about this a lot because it feels to me like sometimes when there's more pain and more pressure points to do something, then we're ready to look at the future. Like in Switzerland, where the pain is not, thankfully not very high. You know, we're living a comfortable life, it's very exclusive. It makes us mentally a little bit less. More active, lethargic. Yeah. And we're all intellectually maybe a little bit more lazy in the sense of saying we're just going to jump on something new. But in America, of course, everybody wants to build the future, everybody wants to make the future, everybody wants to Own the future. And it seems like being more hungry to change things and also for good reason. When things aren't working like energy system here in South Africa, precisely that you have to make changes and grab the future. It forces you to do something. I think that's part of the reason why we have this amazing activity of futurism here in South Africa.

But I think it's different here to America. America is like that because they want to grow, drive growth, wall street driven, etc. Short term focus, but capitalize on what's coming down the road here. I think there's a slight nuance to that and that is the fact that unless we grapple with the future while we're solving today's problems, we don't know whether there will be one or not. So it's almost more survival in a sense. You know, if you're going to survive next month, next quarter, next year, you'd.

Better be ahead of it.

Well, it seems like there's more table stake here so that we're, you know, the cards on the table and basically you have to create the future to have one. While in Switzerland, for example, we're more like we want to keep the present so that we have a future.

Absolutely.

And that is also. It's a difficult trap, you know, a mind trap. I think in Europe that we have that the past and the present makes the future, which is just not simply not true anymore. Because you have the past and the present of course implicating the future. But really the future is usually the flip side of what we have today. So for example, in the car industry you're not selling cars anymore, you're selling mobility. And the music industry doesn't sell records anymore, it sells clicks. So it's very hard to sort of extrapolate. And I found this one of my major challenges with clients, that they would like to continue into the future by just making things better. And usually the future isn't like this.

I think for us good is very simple. The present is really not good enough. Whether it's politically, structurally, in terms of country, infrastructure, etc. Not good enough. And it's not going to last very long. So there's this burning ambition to create something different and better and new. And so to do that we can't get stuck in the present. Trying to extrapolate from here, trying to protect and maintain the present because that's simply not going to work.

I'm always thinking about this pain or love thing that I learned from somebody. I think it was Kevin Kelly who said, how do people really change? You know, it's pain and love. Yeah.

Well, we certainly have our faith.

And I was going to say there's a lot of pain in South Africa. There's also a lot of love for other things. Right. But things change when you have pain because then you're ready to say, okay, it's just getting too much. I want to change something. And American model is the opposite, which is that they also have pain, of course, but it's falling in love with an idea. So here's an American who thinks of, you know, Elon Musk thinks of going to space, and everybody should go to space. Right. Or leave Earth because it's too dirty. So he goes up there and he brings in, and that's kind of falling in love with an idea. And I think this is really something that clients need to learn. We don't want to have too much pain because it makes you, obviously not very positive. But falling in love with new ideas, that's something I think we all need to learn a lot more of.

And I think it's that raw energy that we see on this continent. You see so many stories of desperately challenged people coming up with incredibly innovative ideas, clawing their way out. It's a bit like India. You know, I once described India as the world of the stumbling elephant and a billion squirrels. They're all out there trying to survive and trying to get through tomorrow and make tomorrow better than today. And I think this continent embodies that spirit a lot as well.

Yeah, it's one of those bottom lines. You know, I think Peter Drucker said something very similar. I always say culture eats technology for breakfast. So success really is based not on technology because that's a tool that we use. And lots of countries have great technology, but not making good use of it, or vice versa, of course, but actually having culture that is open to change and open to innovation and open to actually pioneering activities, which seems something, for example, in Europe that we're lacking sometimes we don't have the culture of innovation the same way. It's less table stakes.

It's born of necessity. Right. So your level of necessity in Europe is limited because it's so jolly good. Well, in some respects. In other respects, it's also becoming quite scary. But I think here that level of necessity is so elevated, and that's what triggers the ability to experiment with things that other people wouldn't think about.

Well, this, I think, for clients, very important to realize that I'm speaking to a lot is if you Want to be more successful, you probably have to change your culture.

There's no debate about that.

And technology changes culture as well. But technology isn't something that is actively seeking to do anything. It will do whatever it does because mostly about efficiency. So if you want to change culture, you have to also create room for people to grow and to figure things out and to leave space for others and to make it more diverse and all of these things. And I can see every company that's doing this, like Mercedes Benz is a great example, completely backwards focused, diesel engine focused company that's just reacting to things. And now the last 10 years it's been like Mercedes Benz is becoming a startup. It's getting young people in there, it's getting designers in there.

Can you imagine the cultural disruption in those corridors, you know, with three or four generations?

I can uncle, I was there.

You were there.

The other thing is, of course now you see, Mercedes Benz, for example, is the first company in the world that has gotten a license for Level 3 Self driving cars in America, which even Tesla does not have in some of those states. And it seeks to beat Tesla on its game of self driving. And this has only been possible because of the culture change. And I think it's very, very hard to change established brands like this that have a certain culture. Like, you know, the Patagonia culture has been established from the beginning.

Absolutely. I mean, driven by a strong founder with very specific views about what he felt was important and interesting. We'll loop back to this in one of our series. I know, and that is the role of being a true human and what that means. But how do you embody humanness in how you behave, how you operate in an organization. And look at the value that Patagonia has unlocked by allowing that to flourish, sometimes seemingly contradicting the rules of the capitalist markets.

Right.

Or the capital markets, which is all about profit driven quarteritis margins, efficiency, etc. And they've said, let's stop the board meeting, the waves are good, let's go and surf. We'll come back and think differently when.

We get back afterwards.

I mean, when we talk about culture, I think closing the loop on the country thing, you know, Switzerland versus South Africa, the cultural component of success of countries or nations or united Europe in the end will depend on that cultural change to happen. That we actually see things that are possible, that we don't always say no, yes, but or, or that we say, yeah, it would have been nice, but I can't. And so on and so on. While here it feels to me very much like people say, okay, it can be done, let's get to it.

I think that's true. Let's get to it. And in fact, an interesting observation is the society in South Africa, business leaders in South Africa right now are beginning to stand up and say, we need to do it, because government's not going to do it and we can't leave it to some other body, some other organisation. So let's take charge of our own destination and go and create a destination we're excited about. And I think just to wrap it up for me, the challenge in this country, maybe the continent to some extent, perhaps lesser in some countries, but right now, here, we need a powerful dream that brings people of different cultures, backgrounds, histories, lived experiences together and aligns them around an exciting ambition, whether it's, you know, in organizations. We know how powerful that is, we'll talk about that. But as a nation, I now think we need that unified ambition for a destination that we're excited about, because there are many barriers, many obstacles, and we're going to have to climb over and do some really hard things. But that's what's going to unite all of us from our different lived experience backgrounds to achieve that. And I think we can.

That brings us to the future narrative which we're going to talk about in one of the next episodes. Exactly why it's so important to have a narrative about the future.

Yep.

All right. It's great to be here with Anton. I was really lucky and fortunate to be in Cape Town with Anton. I think all the microphones are working, so we had a great conversation. I think we talked for, I don't know, 20 hours straight. And all those will make some really great episodes. Anton, of course, is right now in Cape Town, I'm in Zurich. And so this is the beginning of a new thing that Anton and me have known each other for, I don't know, 20 years or so. And we finally decided, because we've had all these kind of similar experiences, to create this show, the world by 2030. And by the time we get to 2030, it'll be the world by 2040. But in any case, we're going to keep going. And this will be a weekly show or probably bi weekly, and we have lots of great material to share with you. So the first episode was just kind of the intro, also talking quite a bit about South Africa and stuff. So, Anton, welcome and great to have you here.

Thanks very much, Gerd.

And good evening, everybody from all around the world. I see we have participants from Brazil and the uk. Let's, let's get started and have a great conversation. Much to talk about.

Yeah, I think I see the. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

One of the first questions to pop up in the stream I see is the link between capitalization and, or capitalism and this extreme volatility, existential risk, etc. In the market. It's quite interesting that capitalism really is a way of thinking. It's in sort of a philosophy almost about how do we reward the providers of capital, the risk takers, the idea generators, the job creators and so forth. And yet in that quest we facing a world of existential risk. To me, they're inextricably linked to the problem with capitalism as we currently practice it or as Wall street practices it. It unduly rewards some of those providers of capital, risk takers, job creators, innovators, et cetera. And so we have this disparate share of the success of growth and business opportunity exacerbated by some of the existential threats like automation, robotization and so forth, which creates fear in the hearts and minds of many people around the world. And for me, one of the questions about 2030 that we'll need to address in, in our conversations is how do we still adequately reward all of those people that take the risks and so forth, but at the same time give everyone a better hope that their tomorrow will be better than today and yesterday. And so we need to marry the existential risk drive, which is the energy of innovation and capitalism. But how do we do it in a more sustainable way?

Yeah, there's a great saying. I forgot who said this. It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And it's funny, it's just so true. Right now we're having this debate about artificial intelligence and you've noticed the Future of Life Institute came up with an open letter to Paul's AI to think about a moratorium on AGI. That's gotten a lot of heat. And I jumped right into this conversation and here's the number one argument that people are putting forth. We should not stop anything because it's great progress, it will make a lot of money. It will basically explode into another gigantic Internet bubble. So the argument is it can't be stopped because it's too powerful and it can't be stopped because it makes so much money. And to that I would say if we are going into a future where it's all about financial benefit and growth and profit and progress as such. But we don't look at the side effects of that progress, then we have another oil economy. Okay, so we're going into the same story we did in the 40s when it was all about, now we have gas to drive our car. Great. But the side effect is to kill the world. So eventually we're going to end up in a world where the top 10% will have more money because all of these things, but it'll be completely dehumanized. And that seems to be okay for some people. For me, it's not. And I really worry about this underlying segment. You know, we're all. I mean, we're both kind of capitalists in the sense of, you know, we're pro business. Right, Anton? I think we could say that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's how we create progress and solve things, you know?

Right.

But Europeans raised an interesting point.

Gerd.

Ian has raised this interesting question about what is the new story of our time? Well, I'll give you a perspective. I think the new story is the three buttons on the keyboard that we used to hit in the old days to reboot the operating system. Control, alt, delete, and then the third or fourth word is reimagine. I think that needs to become the story of our time together. As we journey towards 2030, we need to reset. And absolutely everything about how we saw today, tomorrow, business, life, parenthood, et cetera, let's reset that and then let's reimagine what's the ideal future we want to bequeath to our children and grandchildren. And let's talk about that. Let's have that conversation.

Yeah. I said this morning in my talk, I think the challenge about all of these AI things is that we are marching in this one direction that looks really promising, and everything else comes later. And I think, again, the argument with AI is that it's probably a lot easier to build an AI than to build a nuclear bomb. For the time being, that's probably on the same level, but in the future, it'll get easier and easier. So if we don't find a good way to embed AI into a purposeful context, we may very well be seeing things that will be out of control. I said many times, I think the good future, as I call it, is a new narrative. And that narrative has to be broader than what it was before, because in the past, in our generation, good meant well off and wealthy. And now good means not just wealthy and well off, but also human, worthy, collective, beneficial, healthy, all of these things. And this is an agenda that's driven by the millennials, by people between 20 and 40, and it's.

That's such an important point, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So the fact that our children are.

Thinking differently about this future, Gerd, I.

Mean, when we get to 2030, we'll have to measure success still according to, you know, profit, ebitdar, some roi, whatever math you want to do. But we have to add on top of that other measures of success. One of the comments said we have to do the best we can for humanity. Now, again, what's best? But what are those other dimensions now? The challenge, I think, is that in the past we've had triple bottom line. We've had balance school cards, but we've kind of paid, in my view, lip service to them. I think we need to reimagine new words, new success metrics that really are kind of tangible yet emotional, that progress humanity forwards in a better way, while still, and I come back still rewarding the people that take the risks, come up with the ideas, create jobs, create opportunity, and create forward positive momentum. And how do we merge these two, I think is going to be the challenge.

Yeah, we may have to. We may have to get rid of some of these old words. You know, like a lot of speeches I give, people say, okay, so that's socialism, that's communism, that's capitalism, that's whatever, ism, right? Fascism or whatever. I think these words are kind of useless now. This is not about communism, socialism, fascism, sustainable capitalism, whatever, right? This is to have a future fit business model for humanity involves people, planet, purpose and prosperity. It doesn't just involve prosperity. And I think this is a really tough shift, especially if you're our age, because we've been kind of trimmed to recognize everything that that doesn't create the bottom line is kind of less important. And this is bringing us to the abyss. And the first abyss is climate change, which I think we'll master. And the second abyss is that machines will get stronger and stronger, and basically machines will do the narrative of our lives and we'll talk to machines and we'll marry machines and we get into machines to go somewhere else, and that will be the end of us as humans. And I think that's just a really bad idea. I prefer to not, you know, marry a robot. I'm already married, but the robot probably wouldn't care anyway. Let's take another question. Keep going with your comments here.

There's an interesting comment there on valuation, and I just thought I'd share with the audience just some insights around how capital markets have shifted over the last 30 or 40 years. You know, very often someone says if you want to see the opportunity, follow the money. Well, let's just have a look at capital markets. Sylvain if we can bring up that capital market shift slide, that would be really great. And what we see folks is that, you know, in the 1960s and 70s and 80s, the green of the chart on the bottom left of your screen represents tangible asset value as a portion of your market cap, if you like, if you're a listed company and the yellow is intangible. Now you see how that has fundamentally shifted right at the time the Internet started in the sort of early 1990s and today the vast majority of valuation of listed companies is driven by intangible assets, intellectual property, in other words, ideas, willingness and ability to execute and take risks, data, information, software and patents. Which again comes back to innovation and ideas. Coupled with that on the right hand side, you'll see the decreasing relevance of the top companies in the world with really good management, expensive consultants, etc, where in the 1960s if you were one of the 500 best companies, you stayed there for 30 odd years plus. Now it's shrinking to almost below 10 by 2030. Which tells me that executives, leaders need to reimagine constantly to stay relevant in the capital markets. So again it comes back to Gerd's point about, you know, we can create the robots, we can create the AI, but we now need to use it positively for improvement in the journey forward. And the old world of measuring success around tangible buildings and materials and stock in trade, et cetera, that world has fundamentally shifted. And so it's all about humans coming up with new opportunities and new ideas to make it better. Sorry.

Good.

Yeah. I think if there's any motto to the show the world by 2030, it's is the Buckminster Fuller saying where he says humanity is inventing all the right technology and science but ends up using it the wrong way. I think this is our problem. Our problem is not that we don't have the tools. We're genius in inventing. Every week there's a mind boggling thing like ChatGPT and generative AI every week. And now we have this kind of pivoting moment, the iPhone moment. In AI we have all that, we have battery technology, we have climate technology, we have carbon sequestration, we have desalination, we can fight cancer, we have longevity drugs, we have all of that, but we end up using it in the wrong way because a, we don't collaborate Good enough. And B, we're on this old agenda of saying that if I have more, you can have less, I'm still better off. And that is just completely flawed basically. I mean, you think about your kids. You know, I have two kids, 27 and 33. And I think about their future. I want them to have a better opportunity, not a worse opportunity. And I think this window is closing in the next 10 years if we don't figure out how to get on the common agenda and to create this kind of sustainable Al Gore type capitalism or better a new future fit economics. That is the topic. And Harari talks about this in his books. Bill Gates talks about that. A lot of great people talk about this. I know it's going to be hard. A lot of people are saying that it won't work because humans can't seem to make anything work. And to that I would say I don't believe it. I have solid evidence all around us that we can, we just need to get, you know, a little bit of a push in the shove.

I mean, I think that is so, so important for us to say. Let's ask the question, why do we have a right to breathe oxygen as a human and as a business? Why do we exist? What is our purpose? And the purpose can't only be about market valuation or just rampant growth. It needs to be connected to the hearts and minds of seem to be 9 billion people on the planet. And when leaders and organizations I think articulate a purpose so powerful that the listeners or the audience or the marketplace or their customers actually get goosebumps, then companies will succeed in creating the sort of future we need gerd, the good future. But if companies only purpose is to make shareholders rich, I think we're going to lose the plot. And I think we risk the long term relevance of humanity by 2050 and beyond. We need to create a powerful story about why we should breathe oxygen, literally.

You know, I need to clarify because I get this a lot when I talk to people at events. They say, okay, this kind of thinking is anti progress, it's anti business, it's anti free market, it's anti capitalism. And that's just absolutely not the case. It's just I'm looking really, I'm looking for a future fit idea of how we can all bring this together. And I think this is really where the institutions like the UN have done good work but ultimately are kind of breaking down a little bit because we have this conversation. But we don't have enough impetus to actually jump in and really make this change. And I fear, for example, with AI, the only way we're going to make that change of making it human worthy and to have standards and regulation, the only way that will happen is through a giant accident like Hiroshima type accident. And I think that would be very sad if we had to go down that direction of having the bomb first before we decide to come together and not have any more bombs. So that's one thing I worry about is that are we going to actually have more foresight? And the governments that really matter here are actually not the developed countries, you know, they are the developing countries that we need to come aboard on this agenda on climate change and ultimately also on technology.

And I think that's where we look as we approach 2030. We're desperately looking, seeking for courageous leadership in the world. And in the absence of governments providing that with their five years of re election cycle, I think it's going to be up to leaders of big organizations around the world to provide that courageous leadership. It's interesting when you look at the Fiedelman trust index of 2022 generally across societies and yes, it's an average and there are some anomalies, but generally societies around the world are saying to business, we trust you more than we do the media or government. So where are those courageous business leaders that can stand up and start asking the tough questions as we try and reimagine the 2030 and the good future with a willingness to challenge all of the holy cows in business, in society, as you said earlier, Gerd, reinventing a new language even because the old binary language of capitalism or socialism or communism, those days are over. A friend, a very good friend of mine and colleague loves talking about the elation of and versus the tyranny of all. And I think as we move towards this 2030 future, it's got to be less about either or we have to combine ideas as you said earlier on, collaborate differently, combine seemingly competing concepts like capitalism, profit, success with equity and goodness and they can coexist. We just need to define how we want that to be.

Yeah, I think that is of course the purpose of our show. We want to show what is possible by 2030. We want to also remind people of what we have to do to get to that point. And we want to do away with the hopelessness which seems to be all pervasive in so many places. And this is part of the Good Future project that I'm working on is this concept of saying we are actually capable of this. We just have to have a Better narrative. And we have to get off this narrative of which is social media induced, and media induced in general is that everything is doomed. Let's take another question. Pick a question. Okay. Putsman music. Well, that's a nice name. Okay. How does emerging technology bring our innovation closer to doing no harm for the common good of humanity? How do we educate and collaborate to bring this about? Well, I think one brief answer for me would be I think we're heading towards a mass movement. The first instance is the mass movement of climate emergency that has already started. And once Ukraine, Russia is less in the forefront, this will explode. And the other kind of pivot moment in AI is happening right now where people are saying, okay, great tool, but I don't want to be governed by a great tool. I don't want the great tool to have great purpose. So it's kind of like the Gandhi moment in many ways. First 5% of people are coming along and then it's 10%, and before you know it, it's 90%. And I think this is where we are going. This is not going to be driven by politicians. I don't think I agree with Greta on this that politicians aren't going to lead. They're going to follow that call by people that we finally must get this right. And I think that is what's happening right now.

And I think add to that, don't underestimate or undervalue the role that children play in this transition, if you like. I think despite being absorbed by social media, online gaming, and the technologies of the day, which our children are really, really good at, to me, I sense, as I travel around the world, I sense young people utilizing, leveraging the technology to achieve outcomes that they want to achieve. But the definition of those outcomes is far more aligned to a balance between technology and the good of humanity. So they will use it, leverage it, embrace it, but not at the cost of humanity. And there's a greater sensitivity and awareness and an aspiration amongst young people around the world than certainly the baby boomers had. I think we went into this blindly. We loved it, we used it, we created immense value in the markets with it, but our children are thinking entirely differently about it. That gives me a lot of hope. It really does.

Yeah. I think one thing that is on top of this whole discussion is the traditional education, the way that it has worked in the past, that we were so driven by science, technology, engineering and math as being the ticket to the future. And it still is, there's no doubt about that. But that alone will not be the ticket to the future. Because science, technology, engineering and math can be done by machines and is being and will be done by machines, at least partially. Of course, you know, great scientist is not a machine, obviously, but to a large degree, a lot of that stuff. Bridges can be built by machines and houses can be printed by 3D printers. So in the near future, that means we have to actually focus on the human things. And I keep saying that in my speeches. I know this is very difficult because we just got out of this period of growth where being human in a company and having more of an emotional agenda and emotional intelligence got you to the opposite, got you punished, basically. Again, Buckminster Fuller, great quote. He says, what happened in school is that we were de genius. That they told us in school that the genius has to go because it's about functioning. And now it's the opposite. Now we have to go back and become geniuses again. I think this is absolutely crucial because my kids are only in the millennial range. But imagine kids today around 12, 14, 15, they're going to have to be a genius in making up their own job, finding their skills, learning on demand, dealing with a really confusing world, looking at how 10 billion people will live together, they're going to have to be ingenious in that, not so much in memorizing the process of some MBA program.

Yeah, you mentioned the STEM skills, Gerd. In Google, they try to understand why do some project teams always outperform the others. Now let's just remind ourselves that in Google, everyone is super smart on STEM skills. What they discovered is that those teams with an A in those. So it's steam versus stem. The A is for arts, liberal arts, in other words, empathy, thoughtfulness, curiosity, collaboration, trust. Those features, or virtues, if you like, in teams, actually enabled them to super perform. And what that did was it unleashed the humanness of the participants in the team, as opposed to simply deep technical skills. So let the machines do that stuff and let's find a way as we move forward to 20, 30, of monetizing, of valuing humanness, whatever that is. And if you help an aged person safely cross a road which prevents a medical burden on the state, how do we monetize that so that you can put a roof over your head and put some food on the table? And we don't in the current system, so we need to kind of reimagine the model. And I know in one of our subsequent shows we'll come back to this, so let's not reveal all our secrets too early in just the first show. But you'll have to come back, folks.

All will be revealed step by step. You know, I talk a lot about human resources in my speeches and one of the things I've learned over time, I think we, we're going to replace this kind of the index, how we actually judge people. The KPIs, we're going to replace those by KHIS. I call the key human index, which is going to be much harder to evaluate. But the KHI may mean that you only work an hour a day, but your key human index is through the roof and you make more money than ever before. And I think this is also going to do away and I think it's a little bit late for us. But when we talk about the paradigm of work, the obsession with work and all this, that's going for the exit door. It's going to be much more about a more balanced approach. Also getting paid for what you do rather than for sitting in the hours. Let's get another question.

No question.

We've got like five or 10 minutes left. So Felix, thanks for the answer for the question. Why is China the new game changer? Yeah. Okay, let's talk about China.

I think it's, and I'll give you my perspective on this. And I think this is, this is a classic dilemma that we face in the west, if you like, because we see the China and the centralized system as very different to ours and therefore a risk or a threat or maybe even wrong. And I think that's the problem that we have as we become in all of this confusion, in all of this existence substantial threat zone that we're living in. We tend to see views which are uncomfortable as, as a problem. And I think the way forward is for both the central system, let's use that word versus a decentralized system to come together. And there's a time for centralization and there's a time for decentralization. Again, it's, it's the elation of and, and how do we blend the best, how do we collaborate with the best of systems that are different to ours and vice versa to make for a better world. And I think as long as we say that, you know, in America if you're Republican versus Democrat, that's the wrong question. Should be Republican and Democrat. If you're, you know, if you're east versus West. No, it's not versus it's east and West. We occupy one planet and what we really need to do is find a way of journeying together into the Future China doesn't have a 20, 30 different outcome to what we do. It's the same stage gate in the journey of planet Earth. And we need to get there together, successfully embracing differences, tolerating differences, but aligning around some really cool features for the betterment of 9 billion people.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's tempting for some people saying that because China is so centralized and the state runs everything, they can do whatever they want with the data and that is a huge advantage. And they can do all these things that disrespect human rights and get away with it and da da, da, da, da. And I think that is just not true in such a way. When you go to China a lot, and I used to go quite a bit before COVID first, a lot of things are much more capitalist there than they were ever here in the sense of competition. And what's happening under the state is a hugely active competitive space that rivals Silicon Valley in so many ways. And of course the state system then on top of that is rather murky and hard to understand. But I also think that sooner or later we're going to see a lot more convergence between the global ecosystem than we would have ever thought possible. Also between the whole debate about AGI, we can't argue that China is going to build an artificial general intelligence and hence we have to make our own. That's like a nuclear bomb. That would be an AI arms race that we cannot possibly win. And so that's a very, very big discussion. That's often used as an argument why Europe needs to go full ahead on AGI and America needs to go full ahead so we can compete with the Chinese. I think it's just ultimately quite faulty and probably subject to a separate show. Another question or comment?

There's a good one there on decentralization. Ah, okay, I see. I've been challenged with a different question. So, 50 years since the first mobile phone call, where do you see the next wave of communication? Well, if you listen to Elon Musk, it's neuralink and thought, which is a really scary concept.

Well, I think what's happening is that first we're going towards the spatial web, some people call the metaverse of virtual reality. I call the spatial web much better. Basically we're going to go to a future to where a lot of things that we do in communications will be three dimensional, just like our real life, and we'll be able to bring that together in holograms and projections, in helmets, in glasses, and we can communicate, we can speak to Machines, that's the other really big deal. So the mobile phone as such will be replaced by multitude of devices that can speak to us, we can gesture to it, it can translate, and we can project on the wall and on and on. So multimedia environment by default. I don't think the metaverse as such is the same thing. It's really just about having a 3D environment. And of course AI allows us to speak in several languages. It allows us to communicate, summarize things and get the nuts and bolts done and save time and all that stuff. That'll be a big part of communication as well. But just the bottom line of this, imagine by 2030 we're going to have roughly 9.5 billion people on the planet. And the forecast is 8 billion people to high speed Internet connected. That's only 4.5 billion now. So we're only at the beginning of the entire world hyperconnecting. And when we hyperconnect, it's going to be so crucial that we value what is human inside of this connection, that we don't replace everything with this idea of the more connection the better. Because that's just simply not true. The official pitch of the mobile phone companies has been for a long time that the more we are connected, the happier we are. And that's just simply a marketing thing. I mean, yes, I'm unhappy when I'm not connected, but when I'm hyper connected, I'm also unhappy. So it's something we have to keep in mind. The balance between those things that will be crucial.

I think coupled with that.

By 2030 we'll see a world of not only ubiquitous connectivity and connection gerd and communication, but also at very low or zero cost. So the whole notion of visualization, connectivity. And someone made a comment earlier about decentralization. Think of a world of 9 billion decentralized smart nodes, infinitely connected in amazing ways, where we can communicate, visualize completely differently. It's a. It's absolutely ripe for enormous innovation and exciting ideas. So you know, I think in a decentralized world, the nodes of the very periphery often are very powerful and can open up avenues of thought and connections which centralized cores can't give you access to. And again, the point is it's not either or, it's. And so how do we leverage the power of the fringe, but use the power of the center to, to actually execute that at scale for humanity's best gain?

Well, I think decentralization does have competitive advantages in many ways. For example, using the blockchain for smart contracts and stuff like this. On the other hand, we're going to see a lot more globalization and somewhat centralization because it is important for a democratic society to have a public discourse. And so we have to kind of look at the same things and see the same things and be on the same platform to do that. And it's also very human to be in tribes. So these tribes I think will be organized in a decentralized kind of way. Maybe. And maybe on the economic side we have digital money and decentralized money, but other components will have to be centralized in order to function or to create trust. So it's not going to be an either or. And first of all, I don't believe in the solution of Web3 and decentralization and DIOs and all that stuff to solve human societal problems. They can solve technical problems like bring down transaction costs and things like that. And they can make things faster. And digital money would be a great benefit, as we can see in India right now, has caused a great benefit in India in many ways. However, we need to balance that out with the need for other things that may actually remain centralized. For example, central bank digital currencies will not be open sourced and in the sky, so to speak, encrypted peer to peer because states just couldn't live with that. So it'll be the balance of those two things. And I think ultimately looking 20 years from now when we are 10 billion people and then we start going to space because we have nuclear fusion and of course AI, then entirely new things are possible. We may eventually, if we play our cards right, get to this kind of space Star Trek society that's been jokingly outlined in the TV shows where we don't work for money. That's one of the key issues that was laid out in there. I think again, I'm very hopeful that these possibilities exist if we use them in the right way, with the right objective. And for that I've proposed many times that we need a global council of the wise people. Not to run the globe, but to have nothing else to do than to think about how we can do things in the best possible way. And I think we're gearing up in that direction to really think about, for example, with AI, we're going to need this kind of guidance that's free of national thinking or of thinking about companies and money.

Yeah, Thomas, you asked the question, what.

Do we think about digital money?

Well, let's just think about the friction in the global financial system is simply crazy. And yet it's the Friction, which underpins the business model of many of the banks and other financial institutions in the world. Yet contrast that with the frictionlessness that we are creating in how we transmit data, how we communicate, how we connect, the lightning speed which we can do that. So the underpinning of the global financial model being friction to charge basis points for transactions is disappearing. So digital money is a yes, a big yes in, in my book, it's instant money. It's frictionless money and therefore plummeting transaction costs which will stimulate the global economy. If we simply take the wasted basis points earned unreasonably by these institutions, plow that back into the economy, I think we can achieve a lot of forward momentum for humankind. Then couple that with all the sexy things like blockchain and crypto and all the rest of it, and the game gets really exciting. But the old world of financial institutions was built around paper systems in local offices, functioned by humans with lots of friction, and the new world that all breaks down.

Yeah, Thomas, I think that digital money is kind of like digital energy. You know, by the time we're done building the intergrid, the connected network of energy, I can have solar on my house and pipe it back into the grid and somebody else can use it. That can solve huge issues. Essentially. It's really strong here, but weak over there. And the intergrid will connect that. And I think the same thing is going to happen with digital money, but it's not going to be, I think, encrypted peer to peer transactions primarily it's going to be more like central bank, digital currencies, currencies and digital money backed up by fiat currencies and so on, but a gradual move towards complete liquidity. And so if you're a bank insurance company, and so you have to think about that, if you're an energy company, it's about distributed energy just the same. And once we have, of course, nuclear fusion, that problem is kind of going towards the final phase that's roughly 15 years from now or so, where we are able to rebuild our planet based on, on abundant energy. And that's of course, a great hope to have. Digital money is one of those things that is really going to impact pretty much everyone in the current food chain. A lot of players who are kind of hanging on there with outdated business models. Kind of like the music business, you know, the record store and the record labels with the A and R departments and, you know, now they're basically just waiting for the licensing money to flow in, which is not a bad Business model, I suppose. But anyway, let's bring another question.

We have to wrap it as we conclude. Let's think about how we get political leaders to make smart decisions. I think both political and business leaders together need to be differently incentivized. I think we need to look at how we measure our politicians. You know, there was once a television program in Britain where you can vote off, you know, business people in a weekly sort of vote, and more votes were cast in that weekly show than in the, in the general election every four years. Imagine a system where you could vote politicians off on a weekly basis if they weren't doing good things, taking the right decisions and not telling us the truth. We might just get a better outcome from politicians.

Well, I've said many times in my speeches, you know, I think that we should institute a driver's license for the future. You know, like every politician needs a license, a driver's license. And that license would be, do you know, the future? Do you understand the future? And just yesterday, a couple days ago, when I was in Delhi in India for this event for the India Digital Fest, I talked about how we need a technocratic oath from the tech companies that says, like a doctor, I will use technology for the benefit of my patient, of my consumer, of my customer, and nothing else. I'm going to make that promise. And I think if we're talking to politicians, we need to make sure that they understand what's coming. Not the past, but the future to some degree. And there are quite a few examples of people who do. Jacinda Ardern, of course, is the shining example. Unfortunately, she's no longer active there. Let's see where she will resurface. But there are people doing this and I think Germany has some good leadership in that direction. Now we really need people to understand the future as if it was today, to make the right decisions. And that's solely lacking in so many places.

Yeah, I think also just let's not leave business leaders off that. And I want to wrap up perhaps with a comment on the constitution of boards of directors of companies, both listed and unlisted, and ask yourself this question. We have the normal audit committees, the risk committees, the talent and HR committee on boards of companies. But where's the committee on the future, on future relevance, on disruption, on innovation, on how we actually applying the capital to prepare for a better future. And I think how we run our corporations needs to be reimagined as well. And I'll conclude on that note, Gerd.

Yeah, interesting point. You know, if you're seeing what country has a minister for the future. Yeah, you guessed right. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, they have a minister for the future and the Emirates even has a minister of happiness, which must be an interesting job. Anyway, that's a good job description to put in your resume. I was the Minister of happiness but I got worried so I left. Anyway, never mind. Let's talk about the show briefly so you know what's coming. So we have about 12 episodes with Anton and myself on wide array of topics and we're still sharpening how exactly this will take place but usually like this that we're going to have 10, 15 minutes of the introduction pre recorded conversation, very much edited. So that's to the point. And then we have open conversations like this. We will also have call ins. So the first time I think in next week we're going to bring in a live guest on video and audio. If you're interested, just send us a message. You can do that right here on the chat or otherwise. And we'll bring people into the video feed to have live conversations with several people at the same time. The purpose of the show is to basically figure out how we can create a good future as people, as companies, as countries, and how we can shape that together and what we need to do to get to that point. The good future by 2030. So Anton, where can people find out more about you? I think that's FutureWorld, right?

Yep, it's all the W's again. FutureWorld.org Anton Musgrave on LinkedIn My email is very simple. Antonutureworld.org Join me for an exciting conversation about how we can create better futures.

Yes, and of course we have a little micro site that I started last week, theworldby2030.com that has all the links to Anton and me and you can reach us through that. And of course don't forget about my films. Twiceuponthetime.com the 2030 scenario. One's good once bad twice upon a time TV, not dot com. I keep forgetting that. But you'll find it all of course here on YouTube as well. So I want to thank you very much for showing up. Thank you Anton for hosting me in Cape Town. And I think it's going to be a great show. Okay, thank you. Sounds good.

Thanks everybody.