[Music] this week on the futurists Gert Leonard I I would say I personally believe thatdirect democracy as we are practicing here in Switzerland has a lot of advantages but it's not really fit forthe future [Music]welcome back to the futurists I'm Rob turczyk with my co-host Brett King andthis week we're going to be talking to an old friend and longtime futurist Garrett leonhardt but before we jumpinto that let me do the news this week in the future there are some updates and some stories that we covered in previousepisodes of the futurists including this one uh so recently we spoke a little bit about the role that Elon musk's starlinkfrom SpaceX has played a decisive role in the Ukrainian conflict but news broketoday that um SpaceX can't continue to pay for that indefinitely after his call with Putinyes and also after uh after a series of messages on Twitter that weren'tparticularly flattering about musk and Tesla and so forth from the Ukrainian side so he's letting people know that hecan't continue to pay for that now that that service has played a decisive role in Battlefield Communications but alsokeeping hospitals and other other keeping facilities online in the Ukraine during the conflict so watch this spacehe's asking the United States to subsidize it to the tune of about 20 million dollars a month one of thethings he pointed out is that the Russians continue to try to hack the starlink network and they've been fairlysuccessful in the sense that they've forced starlink to continuously rewrite that software but they've been resilientso far another story we've been talking about in the past is nfts and cryptocurrencyalways a lively topic now the general assumption there is that that field is dead and done for because of the bigcrypto crash but long time crypto fans know that it always kind of comes back it's like a Lazarus you just can't killit so this week a watchdog group a consumer Watchdog group called truth inadvertising sent notices to 17 celebrities warning them about Shillingnfts in social media without disclosing that they're getting paid so as it turns out if you're dropping an nft you'lltend to give a few to some celebrity who gets out there and Vlogs it for you on Instagram and other social sitesunfortunately this is against the law and you do have to disclose that if you're getting paid so those notices went out to music celebrities likeEminem Drake DJ Khaled and sports figures like Shaquille O'Neal and Tom Brady and other celebrities uh GwynethPaltrow Madonna Paris Hilton TV host Jimmy Fallon wow and of course LoganPaul because Logan Paul off there's some something bad or mischievous going on he's probably going to be involved in in some wayuh that's an interesting story because that's the first step uh before they escalate to the Federal Trade Commissionuh so this shows that the United States government is starting to pay attention to cryptocurrencies in ways wherethey're they're trying to keep it under control and we've seen uh kind of an Ever evolving regulatory regimen fromthe federal from the SEC which has caused a lot of consternation here and Garrett when we get into it in a momentI want to talk a little bit about crypto and Switzerland because it's generally perceived that the United States has such a chaotic regulatory landscape hereit's actually thwarting the progress of the development there then one other thing I want to follow up on a storyBrett that you mentioned a couple weeks ago which is that NASA asteroid test uhfolks will recall that NASA crashed a spacecraft into an astronaut Mission that's right and uh and the asteroid iscalled dimorphos well that mission was considered to be successful in the sense that they actually shifted the course ofthe uh asteroid and so um the head of by 32 minutes yeah which is the yak ofthat's right not 32 minutes of time but that's a Direction but apparently that that impact uh is is three times greaterthan what they had projected so it was considered a big success and one other thing is dimorphous is now um formed atail well that just happens yep yep cut that all right David Brett thanks forjumping on me sorry NASA has had uh Bill Nelson took a Victory lap uh and saidthat NASA has proven we are a serious defender of the planets which seems a little grandiose but it is an awesomeachievement to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid except for the trail thatyou mentioned this is a trail that is 10 000 kilometers of debris scatteredthrough space and of course that's going to continue to expand forever so three quick stories from the top Q Aerosmithlet's let's get into our show so let's talk to our guest futurist this week oldfriend Garrett lanhart Garrett it's good to see you again it's been a long he doesn't look that old old no but yeahhe's looks in good shape does I remember it's a good light to do that yeahwhere are you coming from today good yeah I'm actually on Zurich in my studioand I'm home for once you know so not bad awesome and how are things inSwitzerland uh now that the pandemic is sort of under control or at least people claim it is we'll see what happensum are things returning to normal things are somewhat return to normal I think a lot of people are still worriedabout big events or traveling too much or you know as first people tend to be much more shielded from the from therest of the world because of our exclusive status you know we only have 2.5 inflation for example uh and youknow the countries run very very democratically with all these direct elections and so Switzerland is a bit ofan island in so many ways yeah but Switzerland it doesn't mean Switzerland is entirely conservativebecause as I mentioned in the opening bit there uh in terms of cryptocurrency Switzerland is one of the jurisdictionsin the world that's at the very Forefront of innovation uh you know you can now uh start an organization you canstart a decentralized uh autonomous organization in Switzerland you can um you can capitalize it withcryptocurrency and so forth that's far ahead of most other places including most of the United Statestalk to me a little bit about that because it seems to me the way I look at that is that the Swiss are taking a verypragmatic approach to the Future where the Sanji we're a banking center this is a financial technology we need to be ontop of it we're not going to stop it so we might as well embrace it what's your take on that did I get it right or am Ijust being idealistic well you know I'm I'm a Swiss citizen I live here for I don't know 15 years but I I you know I'malso a German citizen so I became a Swiss citizen and I think Switzerland in many ways is a place where technologicalachievement and anything to do with money is on the Forefront of things Behavior change and stuff no like herepeople have gadgets that do things but they don't change Behavior very easily for example now everybody is being askedto go back to the office okay that's because in Switzerland you go to the office you can bond with the boss andyou move up in the world right uh and it's it's that is very not conservative in the sense but uh not very fast andchanging Behavior the cryptocurrency thing has been mostly too uh out of thefear of losing out on a new Global Market that has to do with cryptocurrencies but of course everybodyknows what's happening uh in that regard is that you know we're looking probably at uh Central Bank digital currenciesrather than independent currencies and and peer-to-peer like Bitcoin and theSwiss government is is of course very cautious on that kind of thing um so I I think we're going to see plansfor Central Bank digital currency from Switzerland possibly a new kind of stock markets and those kind of things butanything that's pragmatic I think and money oriented works here anything that's really risk takingum yeah that that takes longer you know we don't change Behavior very easily here and tell me about the distinctionbetween Germany and Switzerland I used to live in Germany and you know I'm fond of the place I'm still interested tohear about that but but you uh you chose to move to Switzerland I've got a good joke about I got to get a joke about theSwiss versus the German this the Swiss are like the Germans but without the sense of humorthat's a good one you know well in Switzerland you know we speak German here but it's not a regular journalistwith German complications it's high German right that's yeah that's what I speak and the Swiss people have five orsix different types of Swiss German which is actually only a spoken language it's not even written right so you can'twrite Swiss German you can but nobody does so the Swiss German speak Swiss German but the right regular Germanright and they the biggest difference is that in Germany people are primarily perfectionists and engineers and uh youknow they want to make things better uh what they already have uh in Switzerlandit's much more about not taking risks so being independent uh having your own wayof doing things being federalistic that is very very big thing here in many waysSwitzerland is a paradise as a result but also kind of a an island right sofor example we have all the international organizations you the U.N the Wipeout of FIFA here but we're notgoing to do anything International that would upset anybody else like like the Americans rightum like starting something that would be for example our own data center which we could easily do uh that we leave that to Luxembourg andAustria to get their fingers burned on the data center but you know we do a lot of things that are primarily kind ofShoring up against risk and and that is the primary thing that is sometimesmakes it hard in Switzerland to innovate because risk taking is left to others and it's really that's the sort of watchPerfection of watches right but but Switzerland you know the Swiss watch companies would never invent the Applewatch of course uh they would only react once Apple does it and the result is that Apple sells 10x as many watches asas all of the Swiss watch companies together it's interesting you bring that up because I remember really clearlywhen Apple introduced the watch around 2014 uh I had a very Lively discussion with people who are in the fashion andapparel industry and they said it's never going to work it's going to be dead on arrival you know Tim Cook is notSteve Jobs he's never going to pull this off he won't be successful and he went on and on and even had like you know the head of Ellen VH saying uh that theApple watch was poorly designed and it was ugly and it didn't have any appeal it so the the resistance from thetraditional accessory and and jewelry and um you know luxury Market wasincredibly negative and pessimistic and uh you know they've all co-opted it you know well it only took a couple yearsbefore before Apple managed to first outsell most major sport you know Swisswatchmakers and then all of Switzerland right and it's become this kind of global home run how is that perceived like what was thereaction in Switzerland did people were people angry were they disappointed were they you know self-critical what was thereaction there well you know the royalty is that Swiss people are still doing really well with their watches you knowwe we just don't have the Chinese coming anymore and buying five Rolexes you know because they couldn't come for a longtime and now they're buying fancy Apple watches but they're still buying Swiss watches too and and so the theperception in Switzerland is very much like Switzerland is on on the way of becoming more connected moreInternational probably less isolated that's happening it's a huge political thing here and you have to remember thatSwitzerland otherwise it's a true Paradise you can walk out and and put your wallet on a park bench and comeback the next day and somebody will have reported it and brought you the money you know and there's no crime herealmost no crime there is uh very high level of income the supersafe protection direct democracy you know so so a lot ofthese things are very well worth keeping right um cake and eat it yeah I find thatinteresting in that um you know if we look at economies like the U.S and theUK you know that are particularly divided politically you know you you are now themore division politically you have especially when it comes to policy and things like that the more dysfunctionalyou know you you seem to get in terms of bureaucracy and things like that butwhen it comes to um some of the big issues we're facing artificial intelligence climate change you knowwe're going to be required to get to a consensus point you know it should besuccessful at tackling these things so what is it that drives that that consensus mechanism in Switzerlandthat's so successful because obviously there's still political conflict there but they're pretty good at resolving andit would appear I I would say I personally believe that direct democracy as we are practicing ithere in Switzerland has a lot of advantages but it's not really fit for the future right because here's thething you know we have three million people in Switzerland who live in the mountains who vote against anything thatis Progressive whatever it is right uh and now we have to tackle climate change we have to look at AI we have to look atautomation we have to look at genetic engineering I'll be able to get those people to vote to vote no you know andSwitzerland is in desperate need for action or climate change our Glaciers are melting exactly majority of peopledoesn't want to do much about it right so I I think this is really a big problem here is that uh sometimes weeven have laws where then there's groups you know starting a referendum and then they go back on the law that has alreadybeen enacted right uh and you know it's all kind of nice to have that as aprinciple of really strong democracy but we have urgent pressing issues that arenot being looked at uh and I I think that is a really really hard thing to dowhen you have people voting on everything every three months we get a stack of voting material you know andwhat's happening in Switzerland is that we are we are very stable very very uhcalm and quiet Society but we don't have a future focus at all so I mean do you find yourself spendinga lot of time trying to educate people I mean is this part of what drives you asa futurist good yes I do I mean I try to work with the government I you know I'm a foreignerhere uh still regardless of the passport I'm more of a foreigner here than I ever was in Americaand where I didn't have a passport that's because I just say one word in German and I know I'm not Swiss rightum and and so I I work a lot I try to work with the government to be more forward-looking but if you remember inthe book you know Kim Stanley Robertson's amazing book the ministry Ministry of the future yep right thatthat is actually here in Zurich exactly yeah the whole Stars which is a hundredfeet from here where I stand now but Switzerland would never ever dare to dosuch a thing right because a Ministry like this will be highly contentious and highlymingling with all kinds of things right and I also and yet Switzerland would make the perfect place for it because ofits neutrality right right right but I I live we live in a country with our courage like this if we don't have thecourage right and that is if you don't have courage you don't look at the future because the future may be scary right uh and that that desperately hasthe change so so then would you characterize that the the things like like the initiatives in cryptocurrencythat I described earlier are those just defensive Innovation are they just a way to protect whatSwitzerland's got and not lose it uh you know not not slip in the world standing is that what you're sayingbasically you have a city right here over the hill called z-u-g which is the center ofcryptocurrency in Europe really and basically what the the city has said anybody moving here with a startup incrypto we have we make a great deal right this is the defensive move move against losing the financial uh Centerof of the world being in Switzerland right interesting but you know it's mostly sort of just kind of uh you knowit's it's a little bit like yeah it's showing stuff but not actually not doing much about it rightum and not really making a decisive step like you know starting a Ministry for the future an international organizationthat would be courageous and needed and ballsy right uh it would be quitedifferent than starting a bunch of crypto companies in zook true but what people are thinking right now when theyhear you say this they're going to probably think wait a minute these guys are talking to a futurist who's based in Switzerland and that's achoice that he made he moved from from Germany to Switzerland but yet what Garrett's saying right nowis it's not an Innovative Place why on Earth would you pick that no no it noit's actually a Switzerland is very Innovative on practical things like you know better chocolate water bettercheese and and a great eth the universities are great on this butReinventing and actually doing what is most urgently needed right now which is a reboot right rebooting Financialsystems rebuilding food rebooting uh education right that is very difficulthere because rebooting is just hard right okay so tell us about that don't tell us how you do that you youobviously have a well-developed philosophy here how did you arrive at that what is your what is your futuristmethodology how do you arrive at the initiatives that you get excited about want to support yeah you know I spent 20 years on thisnow and the beginning was mostly about technology and digital transformation because it was also new you knowexplaining the tech to people but after I did that for 10 years and I've done you know almost 2 000 speaking gigs andI've worked with the top Fortune 500 companies I realized that you know thethe real story here is not just the financial and the business part and the tech part that is actually very obviousnow but the real part is like what kind of world do we actually want with allthe tech that we have right uh and now I say basically we have all the tech andscience we can possibly ask for and we're getting new stuff every week but what we're missing is the the purpose soeither tell us the intelligence the the collaboration to solve the true problemsit's not a question of tech right so five years ago I started shifting towards this topic of technologyHumanity the future in a larger way right which is primarily about policyand about making the right decisions and being future fit right and and so I callit people plan that purpose and prosperity that the Paradigm right um and so we developed this frameworkyou developed a framework uh Planet purpose and prosperity and that was part of your your Tech versus Humanityframing but now you're starting something I know you're the founder of a new project right it's called the the good future project can you tell us alittle bit about that I like that yeah well you know two years ago I made a film called the good future and it'sshot in Lance about Canary Islands and you can see it at the goodfuturefilm.com and it's quite popular and it'sbasically saying like look the future is not as bad as it looks right now mostpeople have a bad view in the future right pandemics pay high automation Putin erdogan you know story goes on uhit's not looking good if I ask my kids about the future you know what they say said the good future is all Bs rightthere's no such thing as the good future and they're Millennials right so I made this film to say to people look thefuture is good all we have to do is to get some wisdom about what we're doing here right because we can use AI forexample to bring down pollution and those kind of things by 50 60 70 like anAgriculture and some food right but we could also use it to be to build super soldiers you know so we we need to havethe right wisdom and that is what's missing so I can't I I basically uhstarted the good future project as a way of getting together with hundreds of people who are telling stories aboutwhat the good future could look like uh and where the goal is to make filmsabout this this is one of the key goals because firms are a great medium and to create events both online as well asevents think of something like burning man plus Ted plus divorce nice you knowthen you would have the good the good future or Festival uh okay well not at all this is atthegoodfuture.com we we uh we should definitely talk to you about the futurists conference series we're tryingto put together as well that's right but uh now it's time the goodfutureproject.com oh the goodfutureproject.com okay great so uh we will definitely come back to this topic after the break but before we do thatit's time for our quick series of questions this is the lightning round Brett take it away all right goodum here's here's a few uh quick questions for you what was the first science fiction you remember beingexposed to TV books that was the definitely BladeRunner 1982 when I thought oh my God you know this is really something thatchanges my life my perspective cool um is there a specific technology youthink that is most benefited or changed Humanitywell I I would say that's definitely a cognitive Computing intelligent machinesuh that well I think it has the potential to be mostly positive yeah sothat's definitely number one it can solve many problems for us and and the next one would be really sustainableenergy and you know solar and all that kind of innovation that we see there great we might get into a bit more ofthat later name a futurist or um entrepreneurum that has influenced you and why oh God they are a lot I think thebiggest influence really would be Buckminster Fuller you know the the designer and you know who basically saidthat you know we're inventing all the right technology but we're using it for the wrong reasonsand uh you know that was 60 years ago and of course along with that Marshall mcgloone and Alvin Toffler and peoplelike that entrepreneurs I really admire what Bill Gates has done I know he's sometimes not so popularwith people because of his uh enormous uh uh how can I say output rightum but he is amazing and uh so and he's very much a futurist as well yeah Iagree um can you can you identify a specific prediction that an entrepreneur afuturist or a science fiction uh practitioner has made that has has been particularly appreciateum I would say well I I guess I could quote my own you know 1970 in 1999 Isaid music will move to the cloud and become like water like you know and I got influenced byDavid Bowie who said something off that yeah you know a few years before right and on the opposite side I would saythat people have said that we're going to see self-driving cars in 2020 and we're still not seeing them so uh theopposite is also true yeah and finally what science fiction storyis most representative of the future you hope for yeah I would say Kim Stanley Robinsonagain yeah a Ministry for the future because it's basically 2030 but it feelslike it's now yeah uh and he has actually a positive ending uh which isextremely hopeful and and so it's just brilliant also all the stuff he puts forth there is actually very muchoriented towards Solutions yeah in fact he's written a whole series of Science Fiction climate focused booksand of course uh he does the ma he did the Mars Trilogy which I think you know my position is is the greatestum series on the colonization of Mars that's ever been written but we'd love to have him on the show we're going totry and get him on so all right well listen let's take a quick break you're listening to the futurists uh um withBrett King and my co-host Rob tersek we're talking to Gert leonhard this week we'll be right back after these quickwords from our sponsors provoked media is proud to sponsorproduce and support the futurist podcast provoke.fm is a global podcast Networkand content creation company with the world's leading fintech podcast and radio show Breaking Banks and of courseit's spin-off podcast breaking Banks Europe breaking Banks Asia Pacific and the fintech 5.but we also produce the official phenovate podcast Tech on reg emergeeverywhere the podcast of the Financial Health Network and next-gen Banker from information about all our podcasts go toprovoke.fm or check out breaking Banks the world's number one fintech podcastand radio showwelcome back to the futurists I'm Brett King your host with Rob turc and in thehot seat today we're interviewing gerd lean hard but before we jump back into that I just thought I'd do a quick Deepdive on some of the updates that are happening in gene therapy um you know we have some gene therapytreatments that are actually you know getting some pretty big traction right now there's a possible cure for sicklecell anemia we have Gene editing boosting the effectiveness of cancertherapies um gene therapy being used to improve night vision these are Gene therapiesthat are already in um in trial aroundthe world um so of course the you know sort of a simple umoverview of What gene therapy is is the ability to use Technologies like crisprtas9 other other Gene editing techniques to actually change protein switches inyour genome in your DNA so think of it like editing out a bad software bug interms of specific diseases or conditions but we've made rapid progress in this not only using crispr to splice uh umgenes or spice DNA but we're now learning more about howwe can switch proteins on and off for certain conditions a interestingresearch paper came out in April earlier this year from w e h i researchers whichwas that when you when we're looking at adjusting specific genes in the genomethere's an accordion effect there's various genes that work together and so we're learning how when it comes to genesilencing which is if you've got say a gene that is dominantly involved inParkinson's or Alzheimer's or or these other genetic conditions silencing those genes or turning those proteins offum are going to be obviously this is the the the the the part of the researchthat we're really um going after but to enable this um these researchers came up with thissystem called Xmas based on red and green tags and are normally switched off during development and we were they wereable to learn different gene activity from different chromosomesum using the sort of great red and green fluorescence on the proteins to revealhow gene silencing process was occurring in um in relation to different proteinsworking together so if we're going to tackle specific conditions it's not just a single Gene that we're looking atwe're going to be having to look at how we can stimulate various genes at the same time and it looks like we're makingsignificant progress on this front but gene therapy um you know we have sometraction on some of those specific diseases or conditions that are alreadybecoming operational gene therapy for high cholesterol has been put in place we see many cancersbeing tackled using gene therapy we've seen various types of Leukemia and otherthings like this tackled now with this but we're making some really interesting progress so it's very positive who knowsin 15 to 20 years maybe you'll just be able to go in for your regular Gene checkup and have your genes adjusted uhyeah and of course this does parallel with the whole longevity thing as well so yeah with cell senescence and youknow telomeres and all of that working concert could be very interesting times this will be a topic we'll certainly bereturning to a lot of folks things this is going to be the century of synthetic biology or programmable biology whereyou program a cell just the way you would program a computer so super fun thanks for that update uh it is kind ofamazing as we get deeper and deeper into these systems what we discover is the immense complexity in other words we keep uncovering more and more layers ofcomplexity how these different genes interact with each other it's a little bit like the study of the brain and andtrying to understand Consciousness and memory because as we start to peer into the brain structure we start to see again uh layers and layers of complexityit's the Imaging it's the advancements in Imaging Technologies and the advancements in Computing that haveobviously enabled us to make these progress I wonder if we uh if we underestimate just how complex thesesystems are you know what we're mucking about turning on and off um different genes um my sense is there's going to probablybe some unexpecting steps yeah unexpected side effects maybe unintentional consequences and so forthis this a topic that's widely debated in Switzerland and you're part of the world tell me Garrett is uh the gene therapysomething that people have embraced or are they people skeptical well here in Switzerland of course we have all the big Pharma companies whoare here looking at this issue and I've done some work on the on those topics with some of them I think and generallythe the idea of uh doing that without really knowing what comes out on the other end is uh frowned upon hereum there's a lot of precaution that people want to apply I mean I think there's a difference between uh effectin the germline which is you know changing the genome that can be inherited on that's completely different thanactually changing my only my genome and the sense of fighting a symptom you knowso I may die as a result but it's just me and I probably would have died anyway if it's going to be so serious rightokay um so that that is really quite different but the change in The Germ line which is a change in the right veryprogramming that could kill everybody in 10 Generations yeah that's right so uhthere are vast differences here on those but I think it's extremely uh promisingyou know the the work on this no doubt and it goes beyond Healthcare of coursebecause if you think about you know the whole economy almost half of what we consume um you know with fossil fuelsall the food that we have of course all the Pharmaceuticals and so on um but also a lot of our clothes it all comesfrom products that are derived from natural plants you know from from natural environment and so uh thisnotion of of programmable biology extends way way past Healthcare but even Healthcare alone is now you know 20 20some percent of the economy uh and I understand that um outside the United States Switzerland has the secondhighest spending uh per capita on health care so clearly it's something that two countries shareuh area that could be you know that money could be better spent I think it's not necessarily the most efficient spendum you mentioned some other Technologies before the break and I want to make sure we cover those off because we had to goto our lightning round one of the topics you brought up was cognitive computing uh so there's been tremendous advancesrecently in particular uh in machine learning tell us a little bit about your perspective on that technologyhow is it going to influence the world I mean I I think really what we're seeing now is tremendous progress in uh what Icall IA intelligent assistance uh that means that computers are no longer that stupid they're still prettystupid to a large degree but they're not stupid like they were 10 years ago so they can actually do things like learnpatterns understand things right they do not have human level understanding because human level understandinginvolves the real world right and we have emotional intelligence kinesthetic intelligence social intelligence youknow that's that's a human only thing in my view but machines have this kind of binary intelligence which is gettingvery useful right so my view is that most routine commodity tasks willeventually be done by machines if they don't involve human intelligence youknow for example a financial portfolio management Radiology uh things like that but itwill not make the humans uh it will not get rid of the humans because we still need the other stuff that only we can dothe fuzzy logic right um and so the machine learning the Deeplearning is often confused with human learning which is completely different it is basically binarybut endless and we are multinary but pending you know we don't have it's theopposite of us so I always say the future really is awesome to awesome awesome humans on top of amazingtechnology so that we can use these tools for example to finally work lessyeah it's extremely hopeful that we can imagine that if we can make Healthcare really cheap and people don't go thehospital or doctor for every little thing that they have and and they can monitor themselves and get smart aboutwhat they do yeah that should shave off like 50 of the cost right yeah at leastyeah yeah well you know as long as we do don't cut out people well also justgetting better at Diagnostics uh you know obviously if you look at um maladies like cancer and things likethat the ability to diagnose those you know early is very important um you know AI is obviously having huge improvementsthere um in in in terms of the way Healthcare might evolveum it appears to me and I'll just get your thoughts on this that you know we're probably going to end up with something like a you know because it'sgoing to be a data um driven service would best be sort of in a maintenancemode sort of a subscription-based service where you've got your you know genome analytics you know blood work gutbiome your behavior your diet all of that sort of mixed into some sort of modelum where we we look at individualizing um treatment and and so forth how do youthink um the industrial element of healthcare is going to evolve in the futurewell I mean first of course there's complete conversions coming up of of info technology information technologyand biotechnology right and we're going from the the idea of what we have rightnow which is what I call sick care you know we're taking care of sick people giving them pills right right which isvery costly it doesn't do anything uh to the idea of health care which is to prevent stuff and to cure and to healand to use technology and not some Voodoo pill you know that that is goingto end up in a four that million people take statins you know for for cholesterol right and and they don't doanything and so uh so there's all these things that are changing here and I think the biggest challenge will be thequestion of you know if we don't share the data in the cloud so we can computeright then it's going to be hard to get the intelligence right and so what we'regoing to see the healthcare companies do is probably establish a sort of independent depository of informationthat's in the cloud that can't be run by one company it has to be sort of a public utility of A Sort you know thatsafeguards and dishes out my data without that I don't see progress because you know we have once we havefive billion genomes in the cloud you know I imagine the kind of intelligencewe can get from this but on the other hand it has to be safeguarded right and this is a very bigTopic in Europe nobody will do that until we find out how exactly we would actually be safe you brought up twotopics there that I really want to drive deeper into European regulation and andbasically the Europeans preventing themselves from innovating but let's bookmark that I want to come back to that because I want to talk aboutsomething you mentioned you said that the healthcare companies are the ones that are going to lead this infotech revolution I want to push back on that alittle bit a couple years ago I spent time in Brazil with one of the big Pharma companies there and I pointed outto them that their basic business model is selling Better Life Through Chemistry right Better Living Through Chemistrythey are chemical companies they just dispense it in a form uh where we you know we pop these pills uh dental pillsdon't do nothing but they do they do not necessarily solve the problem right because the business model of Pharma isto put you on a lifestyle drug that you're going to take for the rest of your life and right literally hundreds of millions of people around the worldare on that program uh you know here in the US pills are prescribed for all sorts of things but they're never you'renever told to unsubscribe from those pills so this idea of subscription Pharma has been a very big businessmodel it's one of the reasons why the Pharma companies don't get into things that actually cure you like antibiotics there's less investment there becauseit's not as good as a business model if you cure the patient they stop buying your pills so right yeah you could argue that's whywe don't have cures for cancer right so farmer companies are hooked on this business model of subscription uhlifestyle medicines the companies that are focused on information as a substitute are notPharma companies those are the big tech companies and it's no surprise then to see that Google Microsoft Amazon andapple have enormous Healthcare initiatives and the point of those initiatives is prevention basically theywant to use information as a substitute for chemicals or information as a substitute for healthcare services theidea being if you can get people information sooner about what they might do to prevent a problem then you youkind of keep them to the left you know before they even go into that health care or what you call the health the sick care system right before people getsick if you can keep them healthy longer by giving them intelligent reminders you know the reason I love this Apple watchfor instance not just because uh Apple dominated Switzerland and in terms of the watch business but because itactually gives me constant updates on how I'm doing and constant reminders to do things like breathe or move or stepstand up and so forth then you can manage those notifications but the point is that Apple's helping me do somethingproactive about my health there's no Healthcare company involved there's no insurance company involved and there's certainly no Pharma company involved andcandidly I'd rather not deal with those companies so this represents then an existential threat for the Pharmacompanies because if the tech companies are successful in using health and so all about the data using data as a wayto prevent people from using more Health Care Services then that means they're going to sell less medical they're goingto sell less chemicals they're going to sell less pills in the future how does that look from a from a Europeanperspective what do you what is your take on that because there is a huge data problem there as you described notonly that but we're going you know we're going to have to design medicine to be much more personalized as well right sothe sort of mass pay even before we get to that though Brett that's 10 years down the road what I'm talking about is happening right now right you getinformation as a substitute for pills uh that's a real problemthis whole process will kind of be like the other Innovation processes uh the really big shifts are almost never doneby the ones who are currently in the business yeah yeah so Spotify versus record labels right Netflix versus thestudios or Uber versus the car business same story right so what we're going to see here uh with one big differencebeing is that Healthcare is primarily paid in in Europe by the state right soso the state has a big role there so that that's a one equalizing Factor there but we're going to see hugeInnovation coming from companies that have no current business and Healthcare or very little or different and that'sgoing to frighten those guys like Genentech for example has an investment from push right and human longevity Incis owned by Genentech and so on and so on right so that's already happening so the big Pharma companies are looking atthis and saying okay what's Happening Here totally clear they're going to eat all lunch if we don't make deals if we don't and and and the government's alsosaying you guys need to be better and cheaper um so we're going to see a slightly different thing here uh than we've seenin the past we're going to have probably more productivity from the big Pharma companies um that I'm seeing here in Europe alsobecause it's the government that needs to tell people it's okay to give your datathat's true and and in America it's all voluntary and you know we give our data to Facebook and they can screw with us alittle bit of which way they want and there's no law and there's no one who's going to protect you right but you knowhere in Europe is I mean basically this is already happening in Brussels there's already entities that are preparing yourdata depository with a secure ID and all that stuff that's run by the government run like like a bank basicallyum so we have a central bank digital currency and we have a central Pharma you know DNA Bank in the same way yeahand that is government business right so I think we're going to see a lot of a big revolution there and I I generallythink that regulation is going to have to become a lot more data driven um you know if you look at money laundering andand you know there's got to be a data exercise you know the the suspicious transaction reporting all the stuff wedo for um you know um you know money laundering tackling now it's woefully ineffective and it now youif you look at things like artificial intelligence and regulation around that and the data sharing for healthcarebecause obviously as you said you talked about the five billion genomes you know as an illustration this requires datasharing do you think that part of this um is an epiphany that we need to havethat privacy is not as important as the shareability of data as long as it'sdone right uh well most Europeans wouldn't agree on on that trial and I think yeah what whatwe need to have is a safe and supervised way of doing this that does the samething but doesn't open us up to the Facebook type syndromes you know uhbecause Facebook knows more about us than the NSA and in fact they probably work with the NSA on getting thatinformation to them yeah as has been documented uh so if I go to put mygenome in the cloud because it may prevent me getting diabetes and stuff that's a good motivation I'm going towant to make damn sure that there's public supervision and rights and risks you know and all that stuff can't bedone by say IBM you know it that that wouldn't be enough so that's a very very something there yeah okay I hear youGarrett that's a very European perspective for my view so sitting here in the United States I would say mostAmericans don't care about privacy we say we do we talk about it it's in the Press people politicians talk about allthe time but we don't do anything to protect our privacy and on this show previously we've we've broken it downlike this you've got sort of three different uh approaches that seem to be playing out simultaneously in China youhave this kind of autocratic approach where the government issues very Stern decrees and and business must conformum and in fact if business doesn't conform the penalties are Swift and severe and personal to the executives soChina has a exerting is exerting total control over the tech sector and China's also the Chinese government is exertingcontrol over all the data they collect all the data then you have the European approach which is to focus on individualprivacy uh initiatives like gdpr the general data protection regulations andthen the United States you have kind of a laissez-faire approach which is very typical of the U.S where we're saying you know we're gonna let this unfoldwe're not going to really the government's not going to get in the way let's see how business but it does get in the way all the time for sureno no and I'm not trying to say that's a perfect breakdown what I've given you of course there's a there's a blending andthere is more regulatory initiatives happening under the current Administration in the U.S that's certainly the case but I think thatGeneral generalization holds to some extent Europeans are very focused on privacy for good reason good historicalreason they're very skeptical of governments managing this um and centralizing in the governmentbut they're also leery of businesses like the United particularly the U.S tech companies which effectively beenpillaging European data for 20 years now and collecting huge amounts of it but both of them are kind of like theopposite of the Chinese approach which is to centralize everything and manage it from the central government my observation is thatum there are very few examples of successful European tech companies and I wonder if that's a result of theregulatory environment it's hard to name a really successful European tech company uh with the exception maybe sapthem's fighting words dude well I mean regulation does have an impact rightyou're going to allocate Resources with a private Market or through government regulation and in Europe it's clearthey're focused on government regulation doing that allocation and it's and it seems different I think the primaryreason is is really that you know we are a conglomeration of different countries and languages and customs and we don'thave big markets uh so like you know for example as a futurist in in Europe Ihave to cover each country in a different language uh and and what I do there is different in each country inAmerica if you're futurist and you go on the CBS good morning show everybody watches that everybody knows you wedon't have this kind of thing here you know you can reach an audience and you can say like you know if you sell booksin Europe you sell 10 000 books it's amazing right and in America youwouldn't even talk it wasn't 500 000 right yeah so and this is the same reason why those companies are laggingright however all of the great researchers from epfl eth which is right down the street thethe biggest university here in Zurich they all end up going to Silicon Valley and driving things there or to China sothere's an indirect influence there and I would I would say that generally the European perspective on uh you knowmaking a deal between security and freedom you could say in a way with the data is is probably quite well balancedbut the execution is awful and it smells of bureaucracy and and all of that kindof stuff right but the opposite is in in the US you know it smells out of itsmells of selling out right um and and and that is also not good Imean if you if you see what's happening in social media if we have a disaster like this in healthcareright yeah it's it's right no we don't want that you know we don't want our DNA to go out like Facebook has shared ouruser data uh you you good you you talk about this approach you know different countries in Europe with the differentlanguages and so forth um as a futurist coaching these types of organizationsyou know in the US versus Europe um you know do you adopt a differentstyle as a futurist in terms of helping you know organizations being Future Ready depending on where it isgeographically yes I mean I think that you have to probably be more sensible in many waysand Europe Americans uh in general like a great story you know the culture in America is forward-looking its futurefocus is Visionaries entrepreneurial at all costs right and and sometimes youcan laugh about that but I lived there 17 years and I'm like you have to admire it right then you come to Germany withthe opposite right if you have this kind of culture in Germany people will say you know it's one of those nutcasesthere's going to be either very successful or die right um and so my approach to when I speak inGermany is completely different than when I speak uh in the US and I don't speak in Germany very much for thatreason people think of me in many ways as an American oh interesting that's interestingbecause your future Focus yeah yeah because my work is in English and I lived there a long time and you knoweven Germans think of me as an American in many ways uh also because of my the way that I presented and yet the Swissthink of you is German yeah you can't win right so is that anadvantage or a disadvantage for you like to be perceived that way is that it does that help do people take you moreseriously or do they resist it I think I get more of a wild card because of this uh when I speak inAmerica or in Brazil or Colombia people think of me as sort of half American half European which is a great Advantageyeah yeah I agree you know so I'm not as as over the moon as Michio Kakuum you know brilliant guy but definitely out there right he is in terms of what he says and you know he's I love I lovehim but I think for many audiences it's quite a stretch right um and I could bring the Europeansensibility that and when I speak in Germany I can speak a little bit like I came half out of Silicon Valley and thatis also a great Advantage so I'm I'm quite happy with the position and you know that's basically what I do well canyou give us an example of a company where you've given them advice that they've implemented um I know you probably can't talk about confidentialthings but maybe you can make a a general uh statement like what kind of industry is your advice really going toresonate in you know I think I think of this symptoms like therapy you know when yougo to a therapist and sometimes I jokingly call the work future therapy when you go to a therapist you know thetherapist does not give you an instant solution he tries to figure out a way for you to discover yourself what thesolution is by bringing up the painful points with you and your wife or whatever reason you're going you're notthe only one to bring that up we had a call with uh Rohit tawar who said something very similar he talked aboutthe psychology of being a futurist and and how you have to have a lot of social skill and a lot of like you know kind ofarmchair psychology Insight in order to persuade and kind of cajole the group tokind of come along with you but it's an invitation you're not you're not preaching at them you're inviting them to join youum okay let's see yeah I think I think the future just just as an example you know I I kind of coached parenthesis abig Swiss insurance company into responsibility for him for supportingenvironmentally that activity right right right so so I said look if you guys are really into sustainability andyou want to change the world there then don't ensure the coal plant yes right yeahand and so they did oh you know they stopped doing it awesome I think they had other they had other reasons but uhI think but it finally landed at some crucial Point uh passive uh you know towhere they made that decision and that has happened a bunch of times like with the major TV studios I kind of eggedthem on a little bit towards opening up the licensing procedure and things like that so sometimes a good therapist canyou know move the needle get them to take action that's great uh and that fits with your Tech versus Humanitythesis right it's uh it's consistent with what you've been writing about so it's nice to see you're able to put thatinto action we like people who put things into action on this show that's that's great okay let's let's now let'stake a look at the far future so this is the part of the show Big Picture stuff yeah go way out there tell us 10 yearslike 30 50 years out you know what what do you what do you perceive the world isgoing to be like um you know what do you think will have changed uh the human space sees as a humanist you know tellus about your vision for the future in terms of you know what what you like about it what what it What Makes Youoptimistic well you know the reason that I have this good future topic is because Ibelieve the next five to ten years in many ways the the is going to hit the fan so to speak uh which meansclimate that serious action there uh automation jobs AIright that's going to be have no health so to speak right uh social justiceinequality north south the climate coin that uh that uh Kim Stanley Robertsonyeah I like that idea I believe I believe that basically we have 10 years to get our stuff together and wewill because it I think it has been proven that humans are basically capable of emergency actionyou know in the covert yes for example right we just have to get enough pain sowe're going to get a lot of pain uh and we're gonna you know I would say all this bad weather patterns and you knowthe food problem and all that stuff there's going to be so much pain that catalyzes people into action and thenthe best thing of course is the Millennials are coming the kids between 25 and 40 and they're saying I've hadenough of this stuff you know I'm going to get elected right and women are cominguh and so they're going to take over in decision making from us basically and in the political sense right and thisparadigm shift is going to play out the next 10 years and if it if it goes according to that I think we're going toharvest technology to actually solve most of our practical practical problems water food disease all of those thingsright and it could be a kind of Golden Era like a a a pogyou know in in starting in five years if all that comes together but the pain to get there will be hugebecause you know we're talking about 150 trillion dollar value shift from the fossil fuel to the green economyright so lots of pain lots of our hero upheaval lots of Chaos in the next 10 years but potentially an Outlook of aprotopia society as Kevin Kelly says uh a slowly improving March towards thegood future um that's my positive view I think that it's quite likely that we can make thathappen #optimal Humanity that's awesome well good this has beenfascinating where can people find out more about about you and and the good futureproject and and everything else that you're working on yeah so my website is futurist gerd gerdlike gastrointestinal reflux disease same thing right uh futurevisgard.com don't look for good you'll find otherother stuff first and my book is at Tech versus human.com it's my last book andmy YouTube channel good tube here it is I'm gonna put it in here right what's the tool here goodtube.comall right and uh that's where the stuff is a good future has a bunch of websitesso thegoodfuturefilm.com it's a free to watch on YouTube if you just look for that and the project officiallylaunching in two weeks thegoodfutureproject.com is already up and running and it already has 50members and supporters including Corey doctor off and and a bunch of other really interesting people awesome wowgreat fun great fun to catch up with you Garrett I'm very happy to see you thriving in this post-pandemic timethank you same here well that's it for the futurists this week thanks for joining us if you likedwhat you heard make sure to leave us a review on social media or um you know tweet it out put it onLinkedIn wherever it is you consume or watch social media and uh you know let others let others know about the show ithelps people find it and and also um you know tell us what you'd like to hear who who you you would like us to interviewon the show and we'll uh we'll try and get onto that I still think we need to get Kim Stanley Robinson on even more soafter our conversation today I talk about it almost every week but we will get there we will get therebut I think the great way well in Moby Dick you're going to absolutely yeahum but uh yeah thanks our thanks go out to the production team to Elizabeth severins Uh Kevin hersham uh SylvieJohnson Carlo Navara who help us on the social media side as well and the team at provoke that helps us put thistogether but uh join us next week we're going to have a more interesting uhdiscussions I think Ram is nam is coming up next week so um it'll be uh be another great showthanks for joining us on the futurists and we'll see you next week in fact we'll see you in the future in thefuture [Music] well that's it for the futurists thisweek if you like the show we sure hope you did please subscribe and share it with the people in your community anddon't forget to leave us a five star review that really helps other people find the show and you can ping usanytime on Instagram and Twitter at futurist podcast for the folks thatyou'd like to see on the show or the questions that you'd like us to ask thanks for joining and as always we'llsee you in the future [Music]