Report on the future of human potential

You can download the report here.

La Futura offered me the opportunity to create a space for a reflection point related with realizing human potential. The following document was written in collaboration by a group of volunteers across the Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia. I aspired for contributions from a larger geographical spectrum, fortunately, this current body of work, will spark the curiosity from forthcoming members to incorporate an increased diverse and divergent thinking with origins in other parts of the globe. I hope this release, become expanded and reviewed in the future – instead of remastered as it happens with music records – this is, an ongoing ambition that I expect to be achieved.

The genesis of this outcome that is now being made public was to create an instrument that would serve to make decisions and positively influence the society in which we will live in the future. Although some of the presented scenarios were accelerated and made a reality 10 years earlier due the covid 19 pandemic, there were already weak signs that the way we would work would forcibly change – hybrid work models with a greater distribution of time in remote mode supported by co-creation and communication technologies.

However, this document is not about the future of work. It is about the future of the potential of the human being. Solely understanding the technological impact on humans and how soon we might be outcompeted is not enough. As such, this task force aims to expand the analysis spectrum to these areas, which present a more complete and diversified understanding of the challenges to be addressed. We defined to understand the scenarios and the recommendations for realizing human potential around these broad five categories.

• Job creation or workless future & social protection – as economies become increasingly automated, their general ability to create new jobs needs to be redefined, or to pursue a new welfare model in which people will not have a job and economic growth is redistributed. On the other hand, organizations & governments need to be aware of where talent is headed and how they can shape the workforce and ensure a just transition.
• Productivity, and well-being – productivity and satisfaction vary by experience, role, and social context. Not all the work can be done virtually, and there is still a considerable amount of effort to maintain a work-life balance, and the ability of workers to cope with distributed demands for near-immediate availability, out of what had been considered the “working hour period”.
• Human augmentation – people and technology cooperate to enhance the way work is performed, considering human-centered design for human capabilities – cognitive and physical augmentation – and intrinsic limitations.
• Virtual universe, twin worlds, and physical spaces – the recreation of immersive collaborative work environments that convey a sense of real-world presence, the rise of avatars. The impact on office spaces redesign and collaboration in a hybrid environment and the downstream changes on urbanism and cities regeneration with the diminishing presence of buildings. Additionally, exponential growth of data and digital twins enable workers to perform their tasks and gain insights from digital twins more than the physical environments they represent.

And last and as important is the aspect of diversity and inclusion. One element we learn from the meaning of the South Africa’s coat of arms – the motto, written in the Khoisan language of the San people (a tribe) – is: “diverse people unite or people who are different join together”.

• Ethics, privilege, and being inclusive – One key element to unlocking potential is opportunity. If groups of workers are locked behind barriers of racism, sexism, lack of privilege ableism, and other obstacles, they will never be able to reach their individual potential. Organizations must take a leadership role by influencing the shift in social norms and affecting the collective mindset might be more effective towards combating barriers for people to openly participate in the labor market.

LaFutura´s task force aims to contribute to individuals to go beyond getting skills, wants to contribute to people to get employed contrary to the tendency associated with a persistently low demand for labor, in a continuously evolving environment, this document is headed towards identifying scenarios, to find solutions and possibilities instead of resignation or adopting a position of protest against globalization, automation or liberal policies.