HUNDREDS of the world's most interesting topics and ideas are squeezed into a small Alpine village; that is simply what the World Economic Forum is about. It has become the global brainstorming session. But the forum has always struggled with purpose. The organizers of the event announce a theme each year, but it is usually as vague and inclusive as to be meaningless: "The New Global Context" (2015), the "Reshaping of the World" (2014), "Resilient Dynamism" (2013). This year the forum was different. The topic was "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution." In case there is any doubt about what that means, Klaus Schwab, the innovative Swiss professor who created this uber-gabfest, has written a briefing on the subject to explain it further. Intellectuals can argue over professor Schwab's numbering structure, but there is no longer any question that the early 21st century is witnessing a set of economic changes of historic importance — characterized, as professor Schwab says, "by a much more ubiquitous and mobile Internet, by smaller and more powerful sensors that have become cheaper, and by artificial intelligence and machine learning." How will this new industrial revolution transform business and economy? How will it change the nature of work? What does it mean for jobs, inequality and the environment? What if robots go to war? What if your brain confesses? What if you are still alive in 2100? Life extension is "a solvable problem," but the focus should be on avoiding "the avoidable declines in health that make us so miserable." All agreed on the challenge of extending not old age but our productive lives. The emergence of new life stages, including one called the Explorer seems inevitable. Why would you want to start making all your big career decisions at the age of 20, when you could explore and create more choices? Our personal capacity to change and manage transitions will become a vital asset. The question of whether technology, that immensely powerful, contagious remedy for so many problems, can evolve fast enough to offset the enormous challenges to the environment, the food supply, economic justice and quality of life that could come from a global population that reaches 11 billion. The decisions we make in the next 10 years or 15 years may be the most important, particularly the political, the ethical and the social decisions we make, to protect the ability of older people to age into a society where you are actually able to take full advantage of the technologies. We need to deeply change how we think about the future, especially how long that future might last. Humans were not designed to think about the distant future, but in many ways our health and happiness are the sum of our habits, including the countless small choices we make every day about what we eat, who we engage with, even how much time we spend moving versus sitting. All this is beyond food for thought, it is simply challenging the normal paradigm and that can only be good.
