Most Americans aren't ready to evolve into 'transhumans,' study says

Despite the mainstreaming of science and technology-powered fitness and health initiatives in recent years, a new survey indicates there's a limit to what we'll accept in the race to become "superhuman." 

Specifically, the survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, refers to the emerging area of methods (often referred to as transhumanism) designed to enhance our minds and bodies using everything from chip implants, to synthetic blood and even to genetic engineering. 

According to the survey, almost 70 percent of Americans have concerns about the unforeseen issues around brain chip implants as a means to improve cognitive ability. And such concerns aren't the stuff of science fiction. Recent developments in chip implants have led to some patients regaining the use of a paralyzed limb. 

Similarly, 63 percent of survey respondents say they're worried about the development of synthetic blood, despite the fact that such a breakthrough "would greatly improve the emergency treatment of accident victims and wounded soldiers," according to the FDA. 

Those concerns also extend into the realm of genetic manipulation, an area of research that already shows promise in lab animals. Among all the transhuman possibilities, genetic manipulation appears to raise the most eyebrows, with most concerned that unethical actors may use the development to create a kind of "super race."  

"If it starts to sound Hitler-like, [trying to create] a perfect specimen of man and woman," said one survey respondent based in Atlanta, "then people who are not perfect might be treated badly

But those concerns of unequal treatment appear to transcend genetics, with some of the survey's respondents voicing concerns that a social divide may occur if things like chip implants and synthetic blood access are only available to the wealthy. 

"Who gets the promotion at work? Because you could afford to have an implant so you get it? I mean, what about everybody else?" said one Phoenix-based survey respondent. "It's not fair to people who wouldn't be able to afford that."

But the train has already left the station on these and other scientific and technological developments meant to extend and improve human life. From artificial hip and knee implants to Lasik eye surgery to performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) being used by athletes, humans are already using all means available to perform better and live longer. No amount of moral hand-wringing will curtail the trend because whether it's robotics, implants, drug therapies or genetic manipulation, if it helps humans to live longer and better, we're probably going to try it. 

"I was always told steroids are wrong," said another survey respondent based in Phoenix. "But then when my wife was pregnant and we knew the baby was going to be a premature baby ... the doctor said they were [going to] do steroids for the baby, so the baby could develop faster. Then all of a sudden steroids were good. So it depends."

Smart cities require smart construction

Many cities around the world find themselves in a complicated tug-of-war between modernization, funding, and preserving history. This makes it difficult for some regions to take advantage of the latest trends and technologies that shape our society today.

The trend of devolution going on as more cities are getting newly-elected mayors and power over their infrastructure’s forecasted needs and development creates an opportune time for cities to adopt a new philosophy of city planning.

Building an evolving, more connected society

However, it’s becoming increasingly important that city leaders take into account not only how their infrastructure is being used today, but what the citizens of their cities will need over the next 20-50 years.

More and more people are using services like Uber. Instead of buying your own car and paying a high monthly payment to do so, many city inhabitants find themselves using these services to get around – and often saving a lot money by doing so.

In a thought piece for Construction News, Amanda Clack, head of infrastructure advisory at consulting firm EY and based in the UK, offered insight on how important smart construction is to the development of a “smart” city.

“Charging points for electric vehicles are springing up across UK cities and are fast becoming a familiar sight,” she said of the developments she’s seeing near her. “The sharing economy is also having an impact – with authorities designating parking for car clubs such as Zipcar over private vehicles.”

Construction of the future mean rethinking city planning

This means a major shift in how mayors, architects, developers and even contractors think about how they plan their cities.

“It’s about getting the right group of leaders together, from the public and private sector, to create, drive and deliver a vision for their city,” Clack said.

She added that this type of change doesn’t happen overnight, and shouldn’t. Budgets alone would explode if every major city suddenly added facilities for electric vehicle charging and designated spaces for ride sharers to park their vehicles.

However, she pointed out, an evolutionary change – gradual improvements and modernizations – are possible.

If we want our cities to become the trendsetters and most livable places they can be, they need to focus on investing their time and resources into evolving their cities to meet the needs of a modern citizenry.

The future is the trust economy

As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful new currency is emerging — and it’s based on trust.

What’s striking about the shared economy is not the technology that has made it possible, but the vast changes it has triggered in society. It has brought a renewed sense of community, engendered more collaboration, sparked new thinking and put a premium on trust, tapping into a need that transcends boundaries and is still rife with opportunity.

If you’re not working to build and demonstrate it, then the future might be about to leave you behind, as trust is quickly becoming the global — and most-valued — currency of modern time.

The “codification” of trust

Trust was once an expensive pursuit. Banks were built from luxurious materials in bold architectural forms, with sturdy marble pillars and adornments to provide the most powerful declarations of solidity, tradition and trustworthiness — and to project a sense of enduring history. “You can trust us — look how much money we can spend on our buildings!”

Trust, more than anything, came from being purposefully wasteful.

Likewise, expensive educations from Ivy League schools represented not just a level of intellect or achievement, but an aura of excellence one can derive from investing in a trusted academic institution that came with a built-in reputation. It signified the social status and financial ability to spend more than necessary to be part of an elite group, and, like a stamp of approval, projected specific qualities to potential employers.

And think about the hospitality industry. Historically, hotels found success through standardization — guaranteeing a level of comfort and quality under an umbrella brand or chain, often built on emblems of safety, trust and tradition.

This has all changed. Today, we are prepared to place our lives in the hands of people we know nothing about. We’ve taken our most visceral fear of the unknown and cast it aside in a matter of months.

What’s empowered this shift in values is the codification of reputation — it’s the five stars next to people’s names that make it possible to trust someone we otherwise know nothing about. And it’s transforming the way we live: From riding in an UberX to staying in an Airbnb; from buying or selling handmade products on Etsy to peer-to-peer loans; from hiring someone on Upwork or TaskRabbit to booking home cleaners on Handy or renting a car onTuro.

Similarly, we’re seeing a codification of influence and status, the result of which is also trust. The recommendations you receive on LinkedIn and the connections you share with a potential employer can determine whether you get the job. And your Instagram presence — specifically, earning the “endorsement” of high-profile followers — determines your next date, if what you seek is a membership on Raya, a new dating app that prides itself on fostering an intimate community of celebrities and creative people.

Reputation is now carried by a new system, which takes rather elusive notions of credibility, influence and status and turns them into measurable scores. It’s “digitizing” relationships and social connections, extracting value and insights from our associations and bothcodifying and commodifying trust — signifying it and selling it.

Re-thinking branding around trust

PR, marketing and advertising campaigns have long looked to assert signs of quality, establish credibility and give buyers reasons to believe in them.

As consumers, we used to trust that a recognizable hotel brand must provide a great guest experience — otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to build its name.

In fact, in the pre-digital age, the advertising that helped build brands was expensive, and that was key. Just as banks spent big money on marble columns, anything in TV commercials exuded an aura of quality, stemming from the feeling that advertising had a high production value and air time was limited.

Compare that to today’s decentralized and fragmented media landscape, and we see the challenges for brands. What becomes of brand-driven trust when we read news stories that our friends like and share with us, buy products because of reviews on Amazon and stay at hotels we find tagged on Instagram?

The very notion of branding is rapidly changing.

For a start, it is less physical. That’s what allowed the rise of bitcoin — it isn’t tied to physical assets like the gold standard; it’s the collective beliefs and hopes of its owners that make it so. Similarly, anyone can build an e-commerce site on Wix for $29, with an accompanying social feed that sells products under the guise of a carefully curated aspirational lifestyle.

The modern language of trust is a slick user interface, a decent booking flow and impactful images; above all, it’s great reviews, ratings and influence.

Will there be a single metric of trust?

Trust may soon be a commodity that consumers not only want from the brands with which they interact, but demand to know about other people. It won’t just be about customers reviewing brands, but our own personas being attached to a score or reputation; people themselves will be “measured.”

Everything from our influence, social following, work connections, credit worthiness and beyond, could make up the metric of trust. This may end up deciding who gets upgraded on a flight, who can buy products from us or who gets priority customer service.

In this new world, our “trust score” will be the only metric that people need in order to make decisions on how to do business, and with whom. It effectively becomes the new credit score. For someone with VC funding, the opportunity in the next year to find a single metric of trust is huge.

The question is what are you doing to actively build trust with your customers? In a world where your brand is less what you say and more the collective experiences of everyone using it, you can’t simply rely on marketing to meet the challenge for you in the future.

For self-driving future, fire the crash-test dummies

Your grandad’s safety testing methods are just not up to snuff for the complex demands of autonomous vehicles, says a new research report. And neither are his old-timey rigidregulatory frameworks for that matter.

A research report by RAND Corporation found that autonomous vehicles are creating a whole new set of demands on safety testing regimes, and existing safety methods just are not enough to keep up.

“At least for fatalities and injuries, test-driving alone cannot provide sufficient evidence for demonstrating autonomous vehicle safety,” said the report. “Developers of this technology and third-party testers will need to develop innovative methods of demonstrating safety and reliability.”

The authors of the report “Driving to Safety” sought to find out just how many miles of driving would be needed to demonstrate the reliability of self-driving cars. In order to statistically prove that autonomous vehicles were safe in terms of fatalities and injuries, the report determined that these cars would need to be driven for hundreds of millions of miles, and that would take many decades or even centuries.

Even if such impractical testing regimes were undertaken, it would not completely eliminate the uncertainty in such tests anyway. And so the report concludes that an entirely new approach to safety testing is needed for autonomous vehicles.