Book review: Digital vs Human: How We’ll Live, Love, And Think In The future by Richard Watson

It’s fitting that futurist Richard Watson kicks off this tome with a quote from former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, as he certainly comes out fighting.

An expert in predicting global trends, the author’s advice is sought by Coca-Cola, IBM, Shell, McDonald’s and the Ministry of Defence. Here, he warns most of us live in a digital bubble as part of a world that is becoming machine-centric and technology-driven.

Four-year-olds have therapy for smartphone addiction and coffee shops are full of people physically there, yet mentally elsewhere. In financial markets, the digital revolution is turning the economy into “a winner-takes-all online casino”.

More worryingly, love and compassion can’t be programmed into a machine, so, in a future of driverless cars and software which writes its own code, will we remember to cater for these most basic of human needs?

He poses the question: It might be progress, but progress towards what?

Published by Scribe