A VIEW OF THE FUTURE FROM DUBAI IN 2022

By Leopold P. Mureithi Co-Chair, The

Project

THE Dubai Future Foundation organized the inaugural Dubai Future Forum from 10 to 12 October 2022 at the new iconic Museum of the Future (MOTF).

Here gathered some “400 experts, 70 speakers, 1,000 attendees and 45 leading institutions to explore myriad topics, including space travel, climate change, digital inclusion, ethical artificial intelligence and preparing for the future.” (Dubai Future Forum Concludes, Setting Pathway for a Promising Future — Dubai Future Foundation).

As background reading for the Forum, the Foundation issued a 166-page document titled The Global 50 Future Opportunities Report. These fifty cover “the breadth of human experience and our relationship with our environment, spanning energy, communications, health, medicine, governance, ecology, education, culture and business. They range from universal access to energy to evolved digital and immersive realities, from machine-run companies to advances in medical screening that promise to dramatically reduce the burden of disease” (p. 8).

The global forum explored these and related issues by focusing on four themes: The Future of our World; Value and Humanity; Mitigating Existential Risk through Foresight; and Hedging our Bets through Foresight. There were keynotes, power-point presentations, one-on-one interviews, expert panel discussions, and parallel workshops around these topics – a twoday pack of activities in a relaxing atmosphere.

The Forum provided physical networking opportunities, a most welcome opportunity, particularly for those who have previously met only in cyberspace and considering the long cavernous existence forced on humankind by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some Takeaways and Insights

“The future can be imagined, designed and executed,” His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice n There is a need to rethink law-making models, which are currently running far behind rapid technological progress. We need to become more agile and proactive in governing artificial intelligence, now moving towards sentience and self-prompting. n The space industry has seen a lot of research on how to terraform other planets to make them fit for human colonisation and sources of resources. Neglecting the earth and could simply galactically spread planet earth’s Anthropocene misadventure. n Solar energy and hydrogen extracted from seawater will create a new era of renewable energy, provided some constraints can be overcome, such as cheap ways to catalyse water. n Technological progress will be measured in seconds, and Information costs will plummet. n The focus of wealth in the future will be knowledge, not material possessions. n We have to face squarely the crisis of democracy characterised by trust deficit, and the prospect of future politibots adding to the confusion. Multiple- and inter-generational perspectives are called for. Attending the Forum was Sophie Howe, future generations commissioner for Wales, the first country in the world to have such an agency. It is important to institutionalize parliamentary committees on the future pioneered by Finland and ministries for the future proposed by Kim Stanley Robinson in a book of a similar title published in 2020. n Who owns the future? Colonizing the future poses a real threat to participation and equity, just as it was in the past and the present; experiential futures is a living testimony to this phenomenon. n Data can be used for good or neutrally with respect to persons. But the danger of Orwellian surveillance capitalism in the misuse, abuse, and commercialization of personal information surreptitiously is a real threat, bordering on existential. n The implication of now-ism and short-termism denies businesses, societies, and governments the opportunity to make decisions that promote sustainable development, which is in everyone’s best interest. n Human longevity and the death of death; Advances in genetics, genomics, medical research, and health care have lengthened human life expectancy. This trend could reach the longevity escape velocity, making old-age-related natural death extinct, leaving it as a mere option.

President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ruler of Dubai: Dubai Future Forum to Welcome 400 Experts at World’s Largest Gathering of Futurists Kick-starting Tomorrow — Dubai Future Foundation.

The importance of developing foresight capacity at every level cannot be overstated as a powerful tool for “unveiling strategic pathways; enabling societies to flourish, economies to grow, countries to thrive, and humankind to prosper.”

Victor Vahidi

Motti gives a definitive statement to this effect in his email of 31st October 2022 to members of the WFSF: “Effective futures studies could change the course of world history.”

What’s in a Name?

In the futurists’ lexicon, the future is seen as a plurality -- many futures, not just one. But, when futures become foresight, and a preferred future is pinned down, the focus on one future to actualize is possible, though uncertainty as to its exact reification remains since this is intrinsic in all things future. In this context, one appreciates the lack of an s in the name of Dubai Future Foundation and its annual event, the Dubai Future Forum. Instead, the future of Dubai and the instrumentalization of its near-miraculous development is identified in and driven by a magnum opus of His Highness

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, namely My Vision:

Challenges in the Race for Excellence.

Can this one-future view be said of the new kid on the block, namely Global Future Foundation (GFS)?

Dubai Future Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), Public Sector Foresight Network (PSFN), The Millennium Project (TMP), and the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) to establish GFS to define pathways for future collaboration, joint research, and knowledge-sharing opportunities. This MOU will fill the vacuum left by the fading out of World Future Society (WFS). Being headquartered at the Museum of the Future, GFS will establish Dubai as the home for the world’s futurists and visionaries.

At a session of The Millennium Project Planning Committee (TMP-PC), I asked a trivial question on what the name Dubai means in literal terms. In his reply, Muhammad Almheiri, TMP Dubai Chair, indicated that the name’s root is French deux baie, meaning “two bays,” Romanized (Wikipedia) as Dubayy.

Between those two bays, in the vicinity of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the future is happening in real time.

Final Observation

The 2022 Dubai Future Forum was heavy on technological and economic spaces, not so much on other human domains – like the social and cultural -- that could causallay the rest. Such gaps in systemic complexity could be addressed in future forums on sustainable futures. In this, the symbolism of the museum structure is telling. Its oval shape represents humanity. The centre of the building, located at approximately the centre of the City of Dubai, is an oculus. Does that epitomize an all-see-through eye, a treasure trove of unknowns, or a gravitational black hole? The future could be a mélangé of all these and more.