Many moons ago, Bill Gates envisioned households around the world using a personal computer
when a lot of people didn’t know what one was.
That vision became a reality, and Gates has seen a few other of his predictions come true
since.
He’s now looking into his crystal ball again, and in it, he sees virtual reality avatars
as part of your everyday life.
He sees an end to long lines at the doctor’s office; he’s seen your brain being read
by your phone, and he sees, thank God, some good news just around the corner.
10.
As you know, Gates has been very outspoken on the matter of a certain pandemic that has
pretty much changed the world we live in over the last two years.
Still, if you’d heard what he was saying at the end of 2020, you’ll know that he
was hopeful 2021 would be a vast improvement.
He wasn’t exactly spot on with that prediction.
Gates admitted this year that his hopes had been somewhat dashed, and things didn’t
improve quite as he’d have liked them to, but this time he feels quite certain that
the end is in sight.
He wrote that now with billions of people vaccinated, “The world is somewhat closer
to normal”.
He starkly added to that, “If you’re one of the millions of people who lost a loved
one to the virus over the last twelve months, you certainly don’t think this year was
any better than last.”
He admitted that the new variants he hadn’t seen coming, or at least he didn’t see the
full extent of the damage they’d cause.
Nonetheless, he said this time he is more confident that the pandemic and the devastation
it causes will be over by the end of 2022.
You might ask what gives him such confidence?
It’s not only the vaccinations people have taken, but that this time the world is so
much better prepared to deal with new variants, including the Omicron variant.
Of that, he said, “We caught this variant earlier than we discovered Delta because South
Africa has invested heavily in genomic sequencing capabilities, and we’re in a much better
position to create updated vaccines if they’re needed.”
Like many scientists, Gates believes that the virus will peter out, just as other viruses
have done in the history of mankind.
He added, “Communities will still see occasional outbreaks, but new drugs will be available
that could take care of most cases and hospitals will be able to handle the rest.
Your individual risk level will be low enough that you won’t need to factor it into your
decision-making as much.”
Not only that, but he believes our breakthroughs in mRNA vaccines will mean the next time a
virus tries to shake our reality, we’ll be able to make “safe and effective vaccines
super-fast”.
He called this a “gamechanger”, and he said when you add in our experience with “non-pharmaceutical
interventions (NIPs)”, when the next virus does hit, we’ll be much better at keeping
people safe without having to create so much mental stress and financial devastation.
That’s all good, but what if our world becomes so damaged a virus is the last thing on our
minds?
9.
Gates is certainly not all doom and gloom.
He has some promising things to say about the climate crisis, too.
What we need right now, he said, is collaboration, and if anything has shown us just how capable
we are of working together across the world, the pandemic has.
In 2021, Gates, a man who undoubtedly is an acquired taste, admitted that he is an “imperfect
messenger on climate change.”
After all, a lot of folks out there don’t like being told by a billionaire with private
jets and a fleet of cars that they have to change their lifestyle.
Gates said of that, “It’s true that my carbon footprint is absurdly high.
For a long time, I have felt guilty about this.”
Still, he said he has managed to reduce his carbon footprint, not only by making some
personal changes but by investing in zero-carbon technologies.
He now believes that the world is ready to collaborate and attempt to do things such
as reduce the amount of steel and cement we produce – which accounts for about 14 to
16 percent of global carbon emissions.
Gates mentioned a new technology that injects recycled carbon dioxide back into the cement
before it goes to the construction site.
The outfit that’s doing this, called CarbonCure, already has some big-name customers such as
LinkedIn and McDonald’s.
Gate’s wrote, “So far it’s only able to reduce emissions by around 10%, though
it hopes to get to 33% eventually.”
He believes the pandemic has pushed people and companies to really make a difference,
saying, “Our emissions, it seems, are no longer a problem that we’re willing to kick
down the road.”
So, his prediction is that 2022 will be a success in terms of increased collaboration
about the climate crisis.
Ok, but what about the very important factor of your own, immediate health?
8.
Gates was further a bearer of good news when he said in 2021 that how we look after our
health will improve.
One reason for that is the fact health technology is improving as we speak.
According to Gates, the pandemic forced us to innovate as hospitals were overstretched
and some people couldn’t get to see their doctor.
Imagine a world in which your smartwatch beeped and told you there was a small problem, after
which you were told exactly what to do?
And you never even had to leave the comfort of your own home.
Of his prediction in this regard, Gates said: “Right now, when it’s time for your annual
physical, you probably need to go to your doctor’s office to have your vital signs
taken and blood drawn.
But what if you had a device at home that your doctor could remotely control to measure
your blood pressure?
What if you could look at the data collected from your smartwatch to see how you sleep
and what is your active heart rate?”
He also said that it will become normal to go to a convenient location near your house
where your blood can be tested.
After that, the results will be sent to your doctor and in turn, that doctor can send you
all the relevant information.
One of the problems concerning how fast this will take off in 2022 is the fact that we
still don’t have gadgets equipped with sensors that are adequate at confidently spotting
a problem or potential problem.
Gates might be talking about 2022, but in reality, he’s likely looking farther ahead.
Still, he talked about one matter relating to our health that might improve very quickly.
7.
That is the fact that we are on the cusp of seeing vast improvements when it comes to
diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease.
Gates wrote, “Alzheimer’s diagnostics.
Huge progress has been made on this front recently, and there’s a decent chance that
the first affordable, accessible blood test for Alzheimer’s will get approved next year.”
The problem of course is that if you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there is no
cure.
In fact, mankind is still unable to slow down its progress.
So, what’s so good about being able to diagnose faster?
According to Gates, this will help speed up the process of eventually finding a treatment.
This is something he feels very passionately about since his own father died from the disease
last year.
In fact, one out of every nine families in the US has someone over the age of 65 with
Alzheimer’s.
Gates wrote, “Too many families are being forced to watch their loved ones go downhill
and disappear.
It’s a brutal way to lose someone, and right now, there’s no way to stop or even slow
down the decline.”
He explained that if these new diagnostics do become the norm very soon, scientists will
be able to find sufferers who’ve only recently shown even the minutest signs of having it.
Usually, people don’t know they have it at the start of the disease.
So, if they are diagnosed quickly that will mean they are able to take part in trials
and this will help scientists test various hypotheses.
Gates mentioned research that is currently happening at the University of Gothenburg
in Sweden.
He said researchers there are in the process of looking into new ways of finding things
in the blood that might indicate the early onset of Alzheimer’s.
One of those is a protein called amyloid, which can cause plaques in the brain.
Gates sees a future in which you get your regular blood test done, but it isn’t just
for checking your heart, liver, kidneys, blood sugar, etc, but the test also gives doctors
information as to how your brain is doing.
This next one is even more hopeful for many people in certain regions of the world.
6.
Something historic happened while you weren’t looking in 2021, the World Health Organization
approved the malaria vaccine.
This was groundbreaking, with the WHO saying, “This is a historic moment.
The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health,
and malaria control.”
Currently, around 600,000 people in the world die from malaria each year, most of them children.
Thanks to the vaccine, Gates sees this number being vastly reduced.
In fact, in his crystal ball, he sees mass malaria deaths eventually being a thing of
the past.
To explain that, he said, “This new vaccine is giving us insights into how to develop
second-generation vaccines and preventative tools that can be used on all ages, are even
more effective and can help us reach the goal of eradication.”
Ok, it’s time we talked about the Metaverse?
5.
First of all, what the hell is a metaverse?
What it simply means is humans interacting in a virtual space with computers.
It’s the next frontier in our connection with our devices.
That’s not always great of course, because face-to-face human interactions are important
for all of us, but it might just make your life a bit easier.
Gates said, “Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will
move from 2D camera image grids - which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although
I know that probably dates me – to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars.”
He said what is coming is a kind of virtual meeting with people that “replicates the
feeling of being in an actual room with them.”
To make this happen, you’ll need things like virtual reality goggles and motion detector
technology, but if Bill got this one right, the adoption of such tech will happen sooner
than we think.
Still, if this will be particularly beneficial to humans is debatable.
There are a lot of people out there that think we need to put our tech down a bit more and
embrace that old-fashioned thing of being together in the skin.
Gates also had some bad news, in regard to how we use technology.
4.
He said one of the worrying things in 2020 and 2021 that he noticed was a heightened
lack of trust in governments.
He said, “Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried
than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done.”
People wanted someone to blame for the pandemic and the lockdowns and hardships, and so they
chose the government, he said.
But he also said the lack of trust came in the form of a political divide, in which one
side blamed the other.
As for the media, it made hay while people were busy putting the blame on the right or
the left or the middle, or the bits to the extreme of both sides.
Gates said, “There are many reasons for this growing divide, including a 24-hour news
cycle, a political climate that rewards headline generation over substantive debate, and the
rise of social media.”
What he has seen is an increase in the spread of misinformation, aka, fake news.
No doubt he’s seen himself in a few articles that say dubious things about him.
If he read the comments on the social media platforms where the stories were posted, he
would have seen one side calling the other ignorant, or perhaps designating them as “sheeple”,
while the other side accused its foe of being moronic tin-foil hat wearers.
You’ve all seen it, and it worries Mr. Gates.
At the end of the day, a good society needs robust debate, but it doesn’t need mass
hatred and cynical distrust.
It needs solidarity and it also needs regular helpings of that thing called TRUTH.
In Gates’ mind, society isn’t seeing enough solidarity and truth at the moment, and he
partly blames social media.
So, going into 2022, Gates, like many politicians right now in the world, says social media
platforms need to feel the weight of the government.
He said, “I believe that governments need to regulate what you can and can’t use social
media for.
In the United States, this topic has raised a lot of free speech questions.
But the reality is that our government already has all sorts of norms around communication.”
Still, he admits that choosing one truth is not easy to do, especially when the subject
matter is very complex or at least a work in progress.
As you all know, science is continuously upgrading itself, but according to Gates, social media
could still do more in protecting people from what he called “tangible harms.”
He gave the example of articles doing the rounds online that said the Covid vaccination
could make people infertile.
He said it doesn’t help when a person’s particular political representative is stirring
the pot, adding, “This creates a compounding effect where people lose confidence in government,
elect politicians who share their distrust, and then become even more disillusioned.”
Ok, so what does he see as a fix for this in the year ahead?
He actually said he couldn’t come up with a solution.
He was stumped, but he said in the next year he believes that young people especially will
“have fresh ideas about how to tackle a problem that is so deeply rooted in the Internet.”
Nonetheless, he said one thing that can help as we move into 2022 is more transparency
around scientific issues.
If folks are given clear data, they might have more confidence in institutions.
Even that can be tricky, though, if politicians get involved and stir the pot.
We still don’t know for sure the origins of Covid, which has become a contentious issue.
So, in this regard, Gates seems to think we have a lot of hurdles to cross before we make
any progress, or more likely, he sees a pile-up on the hurdle highway.
Ok, now let’s talk about you.
Yes, you.
3.
Gates said one of the most positive things that has happened to him during the pandemic
is that he’s spent much more time watching educational videos on platforms such as YouTube.
Let’s face it, many of us have.
This can not be a bad thing at all, providing you’re watching some quality content and
not just seeing who would win in a Scorpion Vs. Spider fight.
Ok, so animal fights are nothing to turn your nose up at, but many of you watching this
video will have watched a ton of other educational videos during the pandemic.
Gates said, “I’d like to keep up my COVID-era habit of watching lots of educational videos
on YouTube and subscription services like Wondrium, because they’re a really great
way to learn about obscure topics.
(I now know more about glassmaking, birdwatching, and the history of American Samoa than I ever
expected.)”
Just to see if Gates was doing what others were doing, we looked at one survey published
by MarketingCharts.com that showed learning new things was the most popular kind of video
in the 2000 US video watchers it interviewed.
The website said, “It would appear that upskilling has been on viewers’ minds since
the pandemic, with the largest proportion (33%) claiming they have watched videos to
teach themselves new skills.”
As Gates said, this has been a positive thing to happen during the pandemic, but it is very
likely a habit people won’t just quit.
He believes learning more online will just be the “post-pandemic new normal.”
But as you’ll now see, our new normal online education will mean more than learning new
skills at home and occasionally seeing a spider make short work of a scorpion.
2.
Formal education has already been partly transformed during the pandemic since many people had
to learn at home.
What that means of course was improved technology that helped teachers hold virtual classes.
Ok, so you’ve probably seen your teacher’s new stress-related hair loss and the fact
he now pines for a dirty and noisy classroom, but let’s remember that virtual teaching
tools are being vastly improved right now.
Gates says these improvements in online learning will help teachers when they do get back to
the classroom for good.
He said, “If you’re a teacher, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how your students
are doing.”
He believes that technology itself will be able to point out problems, not just be used
as an administrative tool.
Such artificial intelligence he believes will also be able to tell students where they are
going wrong and how they can fix it.
One of the problems, though, is ensuring all children have access to such technology, something
Gates said is at least getting better.
According to him, since the pandemic started more kids have had access to computers and
software and this will only improve as we go on.
Now let’s talk about how your phone might soon be able to tell you how your brain is
functioning.
1.
Imagine you could play around on your smartphone, and it tells you some very important information
as to how your brain is working.
We already discussed Gates’ hopes regarding Alzheimer’s, but he also has high hopes
for tech being able to see how other aspects of your brain are functioning.
He has been investing money into something called the Diagnostics Accelerator, of which
there are 25 candidates as we speak.
One of them is called “Cogstate”.
On the company website, it says, “We believe that brain health is profoundly important
to the quality of life and should be easier to measure.”
Gates is very optimistic about such technology, which he describes as a person being able
to play a series of what look like mobile games, but the technology actually tells you
something about your cognitive function.
He talks about another company called “Altoida”, which again, uses an application and normal
phone technology to assess brain health and neurological disease.
Imagine a near future in which your smartphone is able to tell you that you may have some
serious problems under the hood.
That’s good news for everyone, but change is also scary, especially as it’s so easy
to conjure up dystopian nightmares.
In this regard, Gates quoted one of his favorite writers, “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari,
and his wise words that Gates liked so much were, “People are usually afraid of change
because they fear the unknown.
But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.”
Now you need to watch “500 Years From Now - What Will Life On Earth Be Like?”
Or, have a look at “Scary Experiments That Could Have Ended the World.”