“The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” (William Gibson)  I thought of this quote when I saw what is happening with the war in Ukraine and Putin using natural gas against European support of Ukraine.  Russia has been fighting the war with old 20th century thinking. (They are slowly learning.)  My perspective says change is happening but it is not always seen, because change first happens in select groups and early adopters. 

Let me explain why I think the Russian leadership is behind the times.

The Ukraine war started with a massive show of overwhelming force, but the Russians moved in slowly and had logistic problems.  The Ukrainian army was able to stop the Russians, and it was small drones and commercial satellites that were able to inform the Ukrainians of the Russian movements. Because of the information, the Ukrainians were able to stop the Russian advance by making targeted attacks.  Today drones and satellites are important information sources in a variety of circumstances.

Recently, the Russian army with Iranian technical support is now using “kamikaze” Iranian drones to deliver explosive payloads.  In the past, I would think of planes dropping bombs and missiles being fired.  The Russians have done that but that is old school.  Remotely piloting drones to targets is the latest method.  Drones can play a major role in warfare whether it be shooting at targets or blowing them up.

And Putin is attempting to punish Europe by withholding natural gas.  That will cause pain, but it is nowhere near the pain as it would have 5-10 years ago.  Renewable energy, wind and solar, will and can carry a major load this winter.  Europe has lessened the pain with renewable energy resources, as well as importing natural gas from other sources. In fact, right now Europe has an oversupply of natural gas due to warm temperatures and increased shipping of liquid natural gas to Europe from other sources. 

Russians are thinking that the world has a petroleum based economy and they are still right, but the world is changing to an electricity based economy, so the impact of their withholding natural gas is less than it would have been.  I believe that we are headed to an electricity based economy and we are moving away from a petroleum based economy.  Why?  Because battery technology has been improving a lot.  Remember when garden tools were gas powered with few electric tools that required an extension cord.  Now everything is battery powered. When I look at all the devices I have that are battery powered, I am amazed.  I count 5  battery powered devices that I use at least once a day, and there are many more battery powered devices in the house. 

There are also the dropping prices of wind and solar energy.  DOE in a report for 2021 (before the recent hike in gas prices) says that solar is competitive with “the cost of burning fuel in existing gas-fired generators.”  So it may be cheaper to build a solar farm instead of paying for natural gas for an existing gas-fired generator.  From a purely economic perspective, solar and wind are well on their way to become the cheapest option.  The future can be seen in the trends.  The future is here now, but it will take awhile before the future is realized everywhere.

The “future is here” has shown up in other places.  I think of the company O’Reilly Media whose “mission is to change the world by sharing the knowledge of innovators.”  They  track trends by watching “the alpha geeks”.  Alpha geeks adopt or innovate the technological future, and by watching them you can get an idea of what the future may look like.  The company has been at the forefront of many tech trends because of it.

A philosophical cultural trend today is this focus on looking inside oneself to find the authentic you.  Back in the 1980’s my wife, Gail, was at a “Christian” retreat center where participants were encouraged to “Be still and know”.  Back then she felt it was odd that they did not include the rest of the verse in the instructions and to her the whole exercise seemed like an exercise in futility.  That Bible passage starts with “Be still, and know that I am God …” (Psalms 46:10).  Today, finding yourself by looking inside at your feelings is very popular, but back then it was found only with the early adopters.  And those four words, “be still and know” are still being misused to promote finding yourself without God.  The future took a while to spread from the early adopters, and yet this trend took me by surprise.

What does the future hold? I do not know, but I can make some guesses based on what I see happening now.  Not everything happening now will be in the future but some of it will be.  Besides an electricity based economy, I have some other guesses. Government will go much more online. Estonia is creating a digital society by embracing the internet for its citizens as the way for the government to interact with its citizens.  Web3 and blockchain technology appear to be in the future, but I think it might look different than it does today.  And today the West is post-Christian and I see Christian missionaries coming from the Third World to evangelize us here. 

“The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

We take so much for granted.  I am again surprised to find out how much our economy is dependent on materials or manufacturing halfway around the world.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing more supply chain problems.  Ukraine supplies about 50% of the world’s neon gas (and about 40% of the world’s krypton gas).  Neon gas is used in lasers for making computer chips. The two neon producing Ukrainian companies have halted neon production. Ukraine is also a significant exporter of wheat.  We live in an interconnected and global economy.

The global supply chain has been a wonderful blessing in many ways.  Take a look at all the fresh produce on our grocery shelves. I think of the bananas we have year round.  They are not local and usually grown outside of America. And the berries we can get anytime of the year.  Much of the produce in winter was grown thousands of miles away.  Some produce is local or from storage, but a lot of produce is shipped to us from far away.  The global supply chain has allowed us to enjoy some of these luxuries.  Our companies these days have greatly benefited from the global supply chain, and it has allowed our companies to become more efficient, but it also has created some vulnerabilities.

We were made acutely aware of these vulnerabilities during the covid pandemic and it showed how fragile the supply chain really is. To illustrate, I remember learning that when I ordered a new laptop, the order was sent to China and parts from various suppliers around the world were assembled according to my specifications before being shipped to me.  And in days I had the laptop.  It was a smooth fast process that was quite efficient. This is known as just-in-time or lean manufacturing. However, there were signs of supply chain fragility.  I remember in 2011 the floods in Thailand caused hard drive production to drop 28%.  That affected the delivery and price of laptops.

Today, the computer chip industry is still trying to get back to operating at full capacity, and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine will slow the recovery of the computer chip industry.  The supply chain, though quick and efficient, is fragile.  All that is needed is for one supplier or service provider to have problems and the rest of the supply chain is in trouble. The covid pandemic caused multiple failures to the supply chain and that ground everything to a halt.  I do not think it will be that severe in this case but there will be an effect on computer chip production.

Also with a global economy, prices tend to get set globally.  This is especially true of crude oil. The price of gas here depends on the global oil price, and this is why prices here have been soaring due to fears of a Russian oil shortage even though America does not import much Russian oil.  And I believe we have many other products whose price is based on the global market.  We live in a global economy.  Our economy depends on events that happen around the world. Some products are more affected by the global events than others, but one should expect supply chain disruptions to occur now and then.  

Companies need to be resilient and flexible to manage these disruptions. Toyota, after Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami, put together a huge database of suppliers, suppliers’ suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers’ suppliers. They asked themselves what were the strategic items they needed to stockpile. They were trying to become more resilient.  I believe short term profit taking is what has made the global supply chain so fragile. There needs to be some longer term thinking to deal with these disruptions, so that there is a more robust and resilient response.

How flexible and resilient are you? How about the companies you depend on?

The only thing constant is change or so they say.  Big events like a major war, a depression, or a pandemic causes the change to new ways to accelerate, and the old ways to die off more quickly.  The question I have been pondering is “What will the new normal look like after the pandemic is over?” Or will it ever be over?  COVID19 might just be a part of the “new normal”.  There are a lot of unknowns and many choices that will be made, but we can look at what is happening and be prepared for various possible scenarios that may occur.  We need to prepare to be resilient and robust.  We need to be flexible and adaptable to the changes around us.  Being not willing to adjust to the new normal will lead to failure.

Some would say that the 21st century really started in 2020 with the pandemic.  All those new 21st century ways of doing things are firmly taking root now.  It happened before.  World War I was the catalyst for the 20th century to “really start”.  A lot of aristocratic ways were discarded after the war and the 20th century truly began.

How has the pandemic changed our lives? Are these changes part of the new normal? Or are they temporary?  Looking at what has happened, we see a lot of changes.  People are wearing masks.  People are not shaking hands.  People are working from home.  People are buying online.  Students are learning online, instead of in a classroom.  Meetings are being conducted via video chat.  Concerts are performed online.  People are streaming videos to entertain themselves instead of visiting a movie theater.  People are isolating with no large gatherings allowed.  How much of this is temporary?  How much will become part of the new normal?

Looking at Tourism and the Travel Industries, you can see they have been hit very hard by the pandemic. Tourism provides 1 out of every 10 jobs worldwide.  How does the future look for them?  One possible outcome is that the pandemic will end and people will begin to travel again.  This will likely happen with assurances from the airlines, cruise ships, hotels, and other event centers that they have and will continually disinfect and clean everything to close to hospital standards.  They would also monitor people for fevers and employ other disease monitoring equipment.  They would be motivated because an outbreak would be very bad for business. Likely business would not return to the numbers they saw before.  The worst case scenario would be if the pandemic continues and they are unable to fully open.  They would go bankrupt, or would have to charge enormous rates for the very rich to travel and see the sites.  The rest of us would view the sites from our home in virtual reality or by video.  Travel would be very limited.  That would be a disaster for the travel and tourism industries.  The travel and tourism industries make their money by packing lots of people into close quarters.  Unfortunately that is also the way disease spreads.

Already we see companies saying they will allow employees to continue to work from home after the pandemic is over.  How many offices will be vacant because of this change?  How many companies who rent out office space will be struggling financially due to too many empty offices? There are some adjustments that will need to be made.

Big box stores were in financial trouble before the pandemic.  How many of them will be able to survive with the increased online purchasing?  Many of them got their start with catalogs.  Online shopping is nothing more than using an online catalog, and yet they are struggling to make that change.  It seems to me that they are no longer flexible, and they can not change.  I like to think I see there will be a return to catalog stores, where you can get advice and place an order, and also where you can return those things that were the wrong size, color, or whatever that was not right for you.  I hope that will happen, if they are willing to make the change.

These big box stores remind me of Kodak.  Kodak was the company that invented the digital camera.  Yet Kodak was destroyed because it refused to adopt the digital camera until it was too late.  Its film business was too valuable for them to make the change to digital.  Today Kodak is only a shell of the original company.  

So how flexible are you?  How flexible is your favorite company or organization?  Can they quickly adjust to the changing environment?  I am amazed at the stories of how breweries and distilleries started producing bottles of disinfectant, and companies who changed their production line to produce face shields and even ventilators in a matter of weeks.  These are the companies that are resilient and robust. They saw the opportunity and made the change.  

Likely you have already adjusted a little to the 21st century.  Do you own a smartphone?  That is a 21st century device that is changing society.  I admit I don’t use it to its full potential.  It is more than just a phone and a camera that you carry around.  Some 21st century thinking is needed to make better use of it.  What adjustments will you need to make?

This post was inspired by a very interesting article by Tim O’Reilly, “Welcome to the 21st Century”.

PS For different reasons many local churches have been in distress for years.  They have lost the younger generations.  I feel they have been living in the past, and have not been willing to change and reach out to the younger generations.  Can they be resilient and still live out their calling?  I think for some churches, if they are willing, they can make the change and survive. Unfortunately for many of them with only senior citizens attending it is likely too late.

I have known several people who have done mission work to the Chinese people, and because of that I have developed an interest in China.  Over the years, I have seen China open up and Chinese Christians worship without concern.  Unfortunately that began to change about 5 plus years ago.  The Chinese government has become more and more authoritarian.  The Chinese ruling elite have become, in my opinion, increasingly concerned with potential rivals and threats to their power.

July 1, 2020 was the 23rd anniversary of the treaty of the British returning Hong Kong to China which set up the “one country, two systems” arrangement between Hong Kong and China.  Unfortunately July 1, 2020 will also be remembered as the day China in the name of national security forced Hong Kong to enact a new law that greatly restricts freedom of expression. Secession, subversion of state power, terrorism, and collusion with foreign entities are now broadly defined illegal activities with up to life in prison if convicted.  Due to “national security”, the trials can now be moved to mainland China where the trials may be done in secrecy. Hong Kong’s judiciary can now be superseded by China.  A man with a flag calling for Hong Kong independence was one of the first to be arrested.  The “one country, two systems” seems to now be “one country, one dominating system”.  

Also the law empowers China to set up a national security agency in Hong Kong to oversee the investigation and prosecution of any violations.  This law allows China to act outside the law of Hong Kong.  The law also extends past Hong Kong, so that this blog post could be a reason for me to be arrested if I ever visited Hong Kong.  I believe this law is designed to suppress dissent in Hong Kong.  I believe it is already working with two political opposition parties disbanding and several activists resigning from organizations that might be considered subversive.  At least one activist has left Hong Kong out of fear of being arrested.

As you can tell this new law bothers me.  More information about the Hong Kong law can be found here.  But this is nothing new.  In China, you are tracked by many different means.  You are not trusted. You show your ID card everywhere.  For a couple of examples, you show your ID card when you mail something, when you enter or leave a university campus, and when you ride the subway.  Also cameras are everywhere observing you and facial recognition is being used.

I believe that China is now the leader in surveillance technology, and may already be exporting the technology to other authoritarian regimes.  China has the perfect test bed for surveillance technology.  Right now in NW China over 1 million Uighur Muslims are in re-education camps.  There they are monitored 24/7.  With these camps China is implementing social and behavioral controls. They are using surveillance to try to predict behaviors.  If you are in NW China and not in a camp, you are still very closely monitored.  You could be arrested for a ‘pre-crime’ if your behavior and identity suggest a possible crime in the future.  I believe their goal is to create a society where everyone is obedient to the authorities and there is no dissent.  I am afraid that the rest of China could be next. I am especially concerned for the Christians there.  They are viewed with suspicion because their allegiance is not totally for the State.  The legal Christian churches have been given the task to change Christianity to be more Chinese, which I take to mean more beholding to the State.  I am concerned!  More information on Chinese surveillance can be found here.

If you think that is bad, there is talk of ranking people in China, so that if you are in good standing with the government you can go where you want but if you are in bad standing you might not even be able to ride a bus or the subway.