I bring you this from the future and it looks bright
The UK still has pulling power, the tech sector shows us how
I write this to you from the future. During the last week I was transported to 2033 and beyond. This time travel was thanks to a massive number of technology focused events as part of London Tech Week and Founders Forum. At a time in which the UK economy grew marginally but fears of inflation still dominated the headlines, it was refreshing to be with people who are so inherently optimistic about progress.
I'll start with the least surprising. AI really is everywhere. If you thought it was intense in 2023, it will dominate the business landscape in 2033. For example, it was especially interesting meeting Daphne Koller, founder of Coursera and now Insitro, a digital biology company. She really understands the challenges of execution but she was sure that in the next decade the long promised shift to personalised drug delivery would be a reality.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Neural links are not sci-fi anymore. A paralysed woman will be able to use her mind to pick up things with her own or robotic hands. You may not see an obvious use for this in your business yet, but it makes me think about what difficult customers might be able to do in the future when they don’t like a service or product and decide to exert mind control. Gulp.
And now for a quick public service announcement. If you can't stand the endless headlines on the latest AI, wait til quantum computing hits us, which it will. The media is going to go insane about it. You have been warned.
Next, longevity. Crazy techno utopians have invested in this research for decades but now many more scientists agree that an average age of 140 will not be unusual. I talked to one digital biochemist and he was certain that even I had a good shot at reaching triple digits. I find this fascinating - what happens to work if you have only reached halftime at 70? When should businesses start thinking about a totally different lifecycle? It makes quarterly reporting seem a bit of a palaver.
Every year at these conferences a new set of celebrities appear. This week sport and tech have now very firmly collided. There was a time when every self respecting Hollywood star had to have a tech start up side hustle, now it's footballers investing and rugby being “disrupted”. Gary Neville was even the star attraction at one session.
Looking to expand into a new market? I suggest space. There were some fascinating conversations about everything from mining asteroids for water to getting solar energy pumped back down to earth. But as Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal told me “now we just need a space elevator”. So, if one of you could start designing that please.
More worryingly, and this is a big one, there was still a deficit of serious funding, of businesses at scale and of lauded entrepreneurs who are addressing the climate catastrophe with impact. I heard of founders unable to raise climate based funds and I heard of Vcs ignoring sustainability targets when business became tougher over the last couple of years. I didn’t hear enough deep discussion at the top tables about the horror show going on in our oceans, deserts and forests. Some people were too busy worrying about the horror show of the current advertising market.
In a sector obsessed with valuations, I have no doubt the world's first trillionaire will come from climate innovation so this gap seems bonkers.
The overarching point I came away with is that Britain still has pulling power. It’s easy to feel down about our country. Endless headlines of political shenanigans, Brexit muck ups and obsessions with the micro gossip of the royal family don’t help us on the world stage. But last week, 30,000 technology leaders, entrepreneurs, globally renowned thinkers and politicians flocked here from the US, Europe and Asia. The founders of businesses as diverse as PayPal, Supercell, Square, Nextdoor, Indeed and Huda Beauty shared takes on building world changing products.
They are not just here to network. In just the last week a16z, the Andreessen Horowitz investment firm committed to an HQ in the uk. Sequoia capital, Coatue and Thoma Brava have done the same in the last few years. All of which brings me, reluctantly, to unicorns. Even though the tech sector's favourite moniker brings me out in hives, I do recognise that others think of it as a measure of business strength. In 2014 there were just 5, now there are 160 across the country. This matters. It is these new global businesses that will mean our economy modernises and we stay relevant.
Successive governments have talked about turning the UK into the Silicon Valley of Europe. I hope that doesn’t happen. We can look at the successes and learn from the mistakes for sure. We should take all the hard work and energy of the community who came together to create the myriad of incredible events of the last week, and continue to build something even better. We should be enshrining different measures of value to our transatlantic friends - responsibility, sustainability and diversity. This is the UK opportunity. This is something about which to be optimistic.
At events of this nature, two 'faiths' will always prevail: 1) Technological optimism, the belief that technological progress is inherently good and should be encouraged; and 2) technological determinism, the belief that progress is relentless and cannot be prevented. This heady mix often disregards the pace of change and its impact on the folks left behind.
We need to ensure that the divide between have-techs and no-techs doesn't become an unbridgeable chasm. It's ironic, for example, that living longer (140 years!) is more likely to exacerbate this challenge, as younger generations innovate for themselves, with scant consideration for their elders. Technology often adds and subtracts at the same time. It gives and it takes, leaving the world no better for its presence.
Therefore, uppermost in our minds should be both the social value of technology and the pace of its introduction. Unicorn status is a meaningless, politicised metric, whereas measures for social cohesion and happiness are rarely discussed. Somehow we need to transform these tech jamborees into debates about real human needs and technology's response to those needs.
Martha rightly says, "I didn’t hear enough deep discussion at the top tables about the horror show going on in our oceans, deserts and forests." Technology should be pulled by demand, rather than pushed via smart, random (and often ridiculous) ideas. 'Technology pull' should prevail over 'technology push'.
Let's identify our collective needs, then challenge technologists to solve them. We should reward those that do, and castigate those whose self-indulgent innovations (flying pizza deliveries?) add nothing of value, and probably make civilization even worse.