Blessed are the Geeks

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Guess the King James Bible got it wrong. Must have been a typo.

The Geeks, “a person that is socially awkward… a person of an intellectual bent that is disliked by others,” not the Meeks, have inherited the earth.

The blessed Geeks have transformed every aspect of 21st century life, and it’s just the beginning. There is virtually no corner of human existence that has not been directly and powerfully affected by the Geek created techno-world.

Lacking style and grace, from the Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerbergs of Geekworld, the only thing that’s changed in a generation is the color of their T-shirts…from black to blue.

Not an ounce of boogie, not a drop of jive, they’re stiff, dull, and predictable. Spiritless, they exude the energy of their hardware and software.

Not only is there no Motown in Silicon Valley, Geeks have replaced the soul of human musicians and the voices that belted out songs with passion and heart, with computerized programming that embodies the passionless personalities they personify.

Across the spectrum, algorithms have replaced heartbeats. The human emotion has been diluted. Think for yourself has been lost to Geek control that does the thinking, solves simple and complex problems, educates, intellectualizes, sexualizes, drives artistic impulses and ultimately decides what’s worthy and relevant.

ANCIENT HISTORY

For nearly two generations, the Millennials and Generation Z, it’s a new world order. Having been born into and growing up at the dawn of the Internet and techno-revolutions, they have no feeling, understanding or emotional connections to what the world looked like or how it functioned before the Smartphone, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Alexa era.

Thus, while the technology trend has been evolving for years, for the first time in history the mantle is being handed off to a generation completely in and of their world.

They work, live and play in those spheres. Rather than trust themselves, they trust Amazon’s technology enabling Alexa to detect users’ physical, emotional, and behavioral states, and provide responses based on that information.

For them, rather than designing their own future, how and where they live will be left to Alphabet that will devise and implement sensors and analytics to decide how tomorrow’s “smart cities” are built, run, and lived in.

Perhaps most removed from thousands of years of human history, but soon to be mainstream and commonplace, is technology that sets new standards for “imagination.”

What you think, how you feel, what you believe, what you can imagine and aspire to means nothing because Google Brain, Deep Mind and Nvidia AI systems will create and evolve ultra-realistic, computer generated images and sounds to tell their own story, not yours.

They will write their own script, create their own characters, determine what emotions or thoughts they want to elicit and the best means to accomplish that. They know what you want and they know better than you how to express it.

Today, the avalanche of VR/AI technology we forecast in our Winter 2015 Trends Journal would soon saturate public consciousness and become the norm, is now the norm.

With studies showing since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, and smartphones gained widespread usage, the percentage of teens who reported having sex fell significantly, therefore, the future for sexbots looks bright.

The human touch is dying. Long live the Geeks. TJ

TREND FORECAST

In 2019, the Blessed Geeks celebrate their overturn of the human experience. The generation now entering adulthood, is primed to engage these fast-evolving technologies across every aspect of their lives.

Their AI/VR technologies will sweep industries, households and governments worldwide. More and more jobs will be replaced by robotics and AI programs will become, in effect, virtual human beings; they’ll take tests, advance their knowledge base through trial and error, perform complex human functions and learn from their mistakes and failures.

They’ll get degrees, honors and salutations along the way, and become motivated to become more “human” as we become less human.