Design del prodotto per l'innovazione Student name: Wanqun Zhang
Number:873074 Supervisor: Francesco Samore
CHAPTER 1
SCENARIO
IN 2030
WHEN ROBOTS
TAKE THE
WHEEL
Prospects to 2030
Megatrends drivers Megatrends for 2030Driverless-society
Transportation issues today Self-driving technology Transportation system in 2030Self-driving ---tipping point
Collingridge Dilemma for
the society 2030
Social dilemma Humanity dilemma
The consequence of dilemma
Excessive dependence on technologyDiminishing physical activities Deterioration of skills and brain Lack of communicate with others Psychological change People become mechanized CHAPTER 2
“WHITE-COLLAR"
IN EAST AISA
Definition of “White-collar
"workers
Features of “White-collar
”workers
Sub-health group Overwork Excessive drinking Psychologically ill patient Long-term pressure-depreesion SuicideHigh-tech addict
Life habits of “White
collar”workers
Behavioral habits after work Commuting habits CHAPTER 4CONTENTS
CHAPTER 3EAST
ASIA-CHINA,JAPAN,
SOUTH KOREA
Cultural and social commonality
Social ideology and workplace
culture analysis
China - population problems& loving “face” CHAPTER 5
HOW TO HELP
"WHITE-COLLAR"
Solution reference
Quit addictionRelieve stress and treat mental illness Reduce the effects of alcohol on the body
Case study
Device-powered object Focus on feelings & experience Technical Support
ABSTRACT
Japan-pressure from social masks&loneliness epidemic
South Korea- hierarchical society& appearance supremacy
Social impact brought by AI in
2030
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CHAPTER 7
DESIGN
CONCEPT
Diagram of the mutual benefits
Logo design
Service
Costumer journey map APP wireframe Final APP design
Vehicle
Sketches Final effect
Night ride service Ride service flow
Interior design Interior details CHAPTER 8
FINAL
SCENARIO
Service
Interface design Interactive mode Mindfulness mode Unconscious relaxationVehicle
Structure Dimensions Final scenarioABSTRACT
Ataraxia is a system of emotional care service which is designed
specially according to some situation of China, South Korea, and
Japan.Modern lifestyle puts people under lots of long-term stress,
and it does not offer them many ways to relieve their negative
emotions.
The main goal of this system is to help white-collar workers
relieve the fatigue and stress after a long work day, in a way that
reduces their bad emotions before going home so that they can
sleep better at night.The system is consisting of three main parts:
emotional health monitoring, music therapy, and driverless car
riding services. The system is designed primarily for white-collar
workers. Employer companies could provide their employees with
the system as a monthly welfare.
DESIGN
INSPIRATION
Human-oriented
Color Therapy Feeling of shape Material selection Light effectSpace-oriented
Technology-oriented
CHAPTER 6REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHIC
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ABSTRACT2 3 CAHPTER
SCENARIO IN 2030
2030 could represent a real turning point for
the whole of humanity, a process of changes in
place capable of significantly revolutionizing life
on earth and the daily habits of man through a
development program divided into 8 megatrends
that will lay the foundations for the construction
of a new transport system.The driving force of
these magatrends is the following four aspects.
CAHPTER
Changing Values
There is dramatic change underway in consumers’ values, as they put less emphasis on traditional transaction “value” based consumption and focus more on personal “values”. This shift in what is important to consumers plays a powerful role in driving the most influential megatrends impacting consumer markets.
The always-on, mobile nature of technology and the Great Recession have reshaped modern life. Consumers are looking for ways to make their lives easier and spend on endeavours that enhance their self-worth.
In the age of digital transformation, consumers strive to experience more across the customer journey. Consumers are seeking out authentic, personalised experiences to suit their individual tastes, preferences and lifestyles.
"VALUE IS KEY, NOT PRICE"
Middle-class shoppers’ purchasing decisions are driven by the pursuit of value. They are increasingly conditioned to buy on discount, as well as turning into keen deal hunters. However, value is not all about a ‘nice’ price, but is also related to ‘other factors’ including quality, consumer experience, convenience, authenticity and novelty.
Megatrends drivers
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Internet technology
CONNECTIVITY IS THE NEW NORMAL
As of 2017, 45% of the global population uses the inter-net. Euromonitor International predicts that 76% will have access by 2030. The internet has been one of the most transformative innovations of the modern era.
DIGITAL ACCESS HAS ALTERED ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE Consumers leverage connectivity for purposes such as entertainment, education, knowledge, social sharing and shopping. This connectivity has disrupted –and arguably improved upon –many earlier structures.
TECHNOLOGY IS THE ACCELERATOR
Whilst technology is giving consumers more options than ever, it also creating more pressure to optimise those choices. Technology drives demand for premium products while creating new means of selling and finding them.
Connected consumers in Asia Pacific have embraced connectivity, and in particular the ubiquity of the mobile device – more so than other regions. In fact, many turn first to a handheld device for an array of purposes across lifestyle, social and commerce activities.
Our planet is poised at the brink of a severe environ-mental crisis. Current environenviron-mental problems make us vulnerable to disasters and tragedies, now and in the future. We are in a state of planetary emergency, with environmental problems piling up high around us. Unless we address the various issues prudently and seriously we are surely doomed for disaster. Current environmental problems require urgent attention. Overpopulation: The population of the planet is reach-ing unsustainable levels as it faces shortage of re-sources like water, fuel and food. Population explosion in less developed and developing countries is straining the already scarce resources. Intensive agriculture practiced to produce food damages the environment through use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides and in-secticides. Overpopulation is one of the crucial current environmental problem.
Natural Resource Depletion: Natural resource deple-tion is another crucial current environmental problems. Fossil fuel consumption results in emission of Green-house gases, which is responsible for global warming and climate change. Today, the problem of resources is considered in terms of availability, exhaustibility (re-newability) and remaining reserves.
Many renewable natural resources have ceased to be renewable due to an anthropogenic impact: air, fresh water, fertile soil, many animal and plant species, and entire ecosystems.
Human dependence on nature has not been over-come; on the contrary, it has acquired a qualitatively new, global character: people clashed with nature in the 20th century when human abilities matched nature at the level of civilization abilities to use destructive forces. At the same time, human dependence on na-ture has decreased only relatively as people are highly dependent on the environment in terms of their life sustaining means.
Environmental pressures
3 For the first time in history, more people live now inurban than in rural areas. In 2015, urban areas are home to 3.5 billion people. In the next four decades, all of the world’s population growth is expected to take place in urban areas, arriving to 5.2 billion in 2050. Migration from rural to urban areas has historically played a key role in the rapid growth of cities. Global migration is on the rise and is becoming a key feature in a globalised and interconnected world. Although the effect of migration is uneven between countries, where it occurs, migration has a profound impact on both the country that has been left behind and the country that is being migrated to.
Also the population aging is an unprecedented, pervasive and enduring phenomenon, without parallel in human history—and the twenty-first century will witness even more rapid ageing than did the century just past.
The world’s population is ageing: virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the number and proportion of older persons in their population.
Population ageing is poised to become one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century, with implications for nearly all sectors of society, including labour and financial markets, the demand for goods and services, such as housing, transportation and social protection, as well as family structures and intergenerational ties.
In 2017, there are an estimated 962 million people aged 60 or over in the world, comprising 13 per cent of the global population. The population aged 60 or above is growing at a rate of about 3 per cent per year. Currently, Europe has the greatest percentage of population aged 60 or over (25 per cent).
Rapid ageing will occur in other parts of the world as well, so that by 2050 all regions of the world except. Africa will have nearly a quarter or more of their populations at ages 60 and above. The number of older persons in the world is projected to be 1.4 billion in 2030.The most rapid increases in older populations are occurring in the less developed world. Between 2006 and 2030, the number of older people in less developed countries is projected to increase by 140 percent as compared to an increase of 51 percent in more developed countries.
However, in countries with very low birth rates, future generations will have few if any siblings. As a result of this trend and the global trend toward having fewer children, people will have less familial care and support as they age.
An aging population is a looming economic and social burden, particularly in Europe and Northeast Asia, and to a lesser extent in the United States. In many of these societies, the public recognizes the problem. How this recognition affects the emerging politics of global aging — the allocation of scarce fiscal resources to pay for the pensions and health care of the elderly – could prove a defining issue in graying economies around the world for decades to come.
Population changing
CAHPTER
Our future is uncertain, shaped by a multitude of powerful, complex and interconnected forces, eventually altered by improbable, unpredictable and highly disruptive events. Seen over a time horizon of say 10-20 years, some of the
big trends we see unfolding before us are in fact quite slow-moving. These are megatrends – large-scale social, economic, political, environmental or technological
changes that are slow to form but which, once they have taken root, exercise a profound and lasting influence on many if not most human activities, processes and
perceptions.
The OECD STI Outlook 2016 covers those megatrends that are expected to have strong impact on science, technology and innovation systems over the next 10 15 years. And through research, I have slightly modified these trends to cover a wider range of areas. The megatrends covered are clustered into eight thematic areas as
follows:
Megatrends for 2030
Economic model shift
Envionmental shift
Silver mega cities
Digital disruption
Security crisis
Co-creation and Connectivity
Social ideology shift and
Cultural convergence
Healthier and sicker
11
A continued rebalancing of economies (ie. circular economy, digital platform economy etc.), rural to urban, rise of Asian economies. Circular economy6
Looking beyond the current “take, make and dispose” extractive in-dustrial model, the circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design. Relying on system-wide innovation, it aims to redefine products and services to design waste out, while minimising neg-ative impacts. Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources, the circular model builds economic, natural and social cap-ital.
Digital platform economy7
We’re at the start of a major macroeconomic shift. It will disrupt competitive strategies and business models for everyone– from large incumbents to nimble startups. They’ll all need a platform strategy, even if it’s just finding the right partnership opportunities in platform ecosystems driven by other companies.
A digital platform economy is fast emerging, creating greater op-portunity for entrants – including individuals, outsider firms and entrepreneurs – to succeed in new markets.
Given population ageing, future income growth will be increasingly driven by innovation and investment in skills. The growing maturity and convergence of digital technologies are likely to have far-reach-ing impacts on productivity and income distribution.Yet, declines in knowledge-based capital accumulation, together with “winner-take-all” business dynamics, could slow the arrival of breakthrough innovations and their diffusion across economies.
Asian economies are expected to climb up the global value-added ladder. These changes will be accompanied and, in part, driven by big investments in STI.
Economic model shift
CAHPTER
New STI knowledge could improve the monitoring, management and productivity of natural resources and, ultimately, decouple economic growth from their depletion.The Internet of Things and advanced energy storage technologies offer opportunities to better monitor and manage energy systems. Cities could play a leading role in deploying these smart innovative approaches.
In agriculture, as in other sectors, innovation is the main driver of productivity growth. New innovative agricultural technologies and methods could help increase land productivity in a more sustainable way. New technologies will play a central role in adapting agricultural practices to climate change and more extreme weather-related conditions.Improvements in irrigation technologies and new agricultural prac-tices should help better monitor water use and slow groundwater depletion.
Onshore wind and solar photovoltaics are ready to be mainstreamed, but high levels of deployment will require further innovation in energy storage and smart grid infrastructure to increase their adaptability to weather variability.
The Internet of Things, smart apps and sensors will en-able a closer monitoring of climate change,ecosystems and biodiversity.Participatory monitoring and big data will generate large amounts of novel data that could support new research practices and citizen science in support of more sustainable growth.
Enviornmental shift
1 SCENARIO IN 2030 SCENARIO IN 2030
CAHPTER
Silver mega cities
For the first time in history, more people live now in urban than in rural areas. In 2015, urban areas are home to 3.5 billion people. In the next four decades, all of the world’s population growth is expected to take place in urban areas. Moreover, most of the expected urban growth will take place in developing countries, where the urban popula-tion is expected to double, arriving to 5.2 billion in 2050. Migration from rural to urban areas has historically played a key role in the rapid growth of cities.
A growing middle class and increasing consump-tion in emerging economies will increase demand for innovative consumer goods worldwide.In OECD countries and some emerging economies, urban areas will become increasingly “smart”, influencing the direction of innovation in sectors such as hous-ing and transportation.
By contrast, urban development in many develop-ing countries will present health challenges, includ-ing the increasinclud-ing risk of global pandemics. These challenges could have a significant influence on future research agendas.
Also the population aging is an unprecedented, pervasive and enduring phenomenon, without par-allel in human history—and the twenty-first century will witness even more rapid ageing than did the century just past.
Ageing-related illnesses, including cancer and de-mentia, will increasingly dominate health research agendas.New technologies, e.g. robotics and neuro-sciences, could help the elderly live longer, healthier and more autonomously.
1 SCENARIO IN 2030 SCENARIO IN 2030
18 19 CAHPTER
Digital disruption
The world is going digital and we are close to the 4.0 revolution. Millennials are the next leading class, being considered the first generation of digital natives.Internet of things, additive printing, wereables…are just few of the digital technology that will shape our future through the power of the web.
Internet of Things8
The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is one of the most important technology trends of our time – with the potential to radically impact the way businesses and consumers interact with each other and their surrounding infrastructure. It connects the physi-cal with the virtual world as never before. A whole array of physical “things” – from people and places through cars and computers to domestic applianc-es and production machinery – is being equipped with embedded electronics systems, software and sensors.
This is paving the way for a new dimension in con-nectivity and intelligence with profound implica-tions for our society and economy: The IoT will al-low us to predict errors in production settings long before they occur, makes driving safer and more convenient and will lead to substantial energy sav-ings in home and business settsav-ings. Across markets, innovative business models offering advantages for business and new consumer experiences are rapid-ly emerging.
For 2020 the forecast it is for 4 billions people to be online and more than 16 billions devices connected to the net. Online shopping it is going to become a new relevant channel able to grant accessibility to goods and services for fast increasing markets as China and India.
After September 11 the perception of our planet as change and the sense of safety is continuously change its meaning, according to terrorism increas-ing role, to religious war, to health diseases and new plagues, to migration flows and policies.
The risk can be where you do not expect it and from country to country a new search for peace and se-curity is in permanent motion.
Neither the digital dimension, experienced in your private environment, can be considered a safe place by itself, as also the web, mobile phones, pc are rel-evant tools not only for terroristic actions, but can easily become a source of aggression toward each of us, via cyberattacks, virus…
Security crisis
CAHPTER
Co-creation and Connectivity
10Globalisation will continue to facilitate the wide diffusion of knowledge, technologies and new business practices and will itself be deepened by this diffusion. Business R&D and innovation are increasingly global.As important agents of globalisation, multinational enterprises could internationalize their R&D at a faster pace and on a larger scale than before.Global value chains could further encourage national industrial specialization and an increasing concentration of innovation capacities.
Creativity will be more and more a spread attitude and a shared value, start-ing from places constantly fertilized by technologies, people and trades, like big metropolis. Smartphones, web, digital media will help people to exchange they experience and to spread they vision, careating creative communities at a global scale. Design will be a practice in a scenario where everybody designs, an co-autorship, co-design and co-production will be the new pathways. Woman will play a more relevant role and new collective ingenuity tools, like crowdsourcing or co-working spaces will become the natural environment to grow new business and to manage transformation in a more aware and par-ticipative way.
Digital technologies increasingly help ease the strains of mobility, enabling individuals to maintain regular contact with friends and families for example. Digital technologies are transforming societies, altering the ways in which people live, work and communicate. Ubiquitous connectivity will support more flexible working arrangements,though with uncertain consequences for work-life balance.
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Social ideology shift and
Cultural convergence
The development of digital technology will cause many changes in the inherent so-cial ideology, espeso-cially in China.“Job hopping” has become a common phenomenon among young people in China. They no longer flatter their superiors for work, but want to have more freedom and opportunities to demonstrate their abilities. If the current work unit can’t meet their expectations, they will immediately find a new job. Because of the popularity of social media and the Internet, let the younger generation of Chinese know what the working conditions of people in other countries are, so that they can realize what the real meaning of work is. And a variety of job search sites can help them find new jobs quickly.This is a phenomenon that did not exist in the former Chinese society. The older generation of Chinese people tend to find a “stable job”, hoping to find a job that can guarantee their work till retirement.
The rapid growth of multicultural societies and countries, ever stronger international migration flows, and the accelerated development of digital technologies, cultural diversity is becoming the principal challenge of our times. As global networks of so-ciability drive forward to convergence on many different fronts, they leave in their wake a greater uniformity in our formerly diverse ways of making the world, our ways of thinking and living.
In the positive way, Convergence brings the whole world together. Through the dig-italization of media, it becomes more easy to know, what is happening in the other parts of the world. Who is the supreme or the celebrity figure in the foreign countries. Digitalization let us to know the exotic cultures, how those do functions. Thus cultural convergence doesn’t let the world to get static in a single place. The world, as well as with its dwellers’ mentality are moving forward, developing.On the other hand, simul-taneously this convergence can be fatal too. There are a lots of examples of destruc-tion and damage due to the spreading of internadestruc-tional culture.
Healthier and sicker
Much of the extension of life expectancy and improvements in quality of life over the last century can be attributed to the suc-cess of biomedical research and innovation.
Pharmaceutical research is entering a new era of open science and the use of converging technologies to uncover the genetic and biochemical underpinnings of diseases. Digital technolo-gies will massively increase the amounts of medical data avail-able and enhance the power of data analysis in the service of healthcare decision-making. New public and private R&D will be essential to deal with the threat of growing antimicrobial re-sistance.
The development of new technologies will lead to a growing gap between rich and poor countries, which has created a large degree of inequality in the national health and education sys-tem. In addition, the widening gap between the rich and the poor between people will also bring about a lot of inequalities, such as inequality in job opportunities and access to social re-sources.These inequalities can lead to many new diseases. For poor countries,there are still many people in the world who have died of hunger and polluted drinking water.In the future, this phenomenon will not improve if it does not solve the prob-lem of their living conditions.
For the individual, the sedentary working style and the reduced exercise lead to an increase in the obesity rate of today’s peo-ple.Huge pressure on life also makes people’s mental health worse and worse.Depression is currently the most common mental disorder, with 300 million people affected globally. The World Health Organisation expects that by 2030 depression will have become the largest single healthcare burden, costing $6 trillion globally. For perspective, that’s roughly equivalent to the total global healthcare spend in 2012.
1 SCENARIO IN 2030 SCENARIO IN 2030
CAHPTER
Transportation issues today
Today, traffic congestion is the main source of air pol-lution, both in developing and developed countries. In the United States, emissions from cars and trucks account for about 29% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.The same happens in China, as more and more middle class upstarts enjoy the convenience of car travel,Cities like Beijing and Zhengzhou have had to endure the staggering eight-lane traffic jams and the increasingly hazy smog. In addition, another common behavior that cause a negative impact on the environment on a daily basis is parking.Drivers looking for parking spaces are often careful patrols who often walk around many streets consuming time and gasoline without finding one. However, traffic congestion and parking difficulties not only damage the environment, but also affect the quality of personal life. People have to spend a lot of time on traffic trips, which undoubtedly increases people’s transportation costs.
Last but not least, the heavy toll of traffic accidents caused by distracted drunken or fatigued driving, or the emotional impulse of drivers is also a problem in today’s world.
Driverless society in 2030
26 27 CAHPTER
Robots use machine learning software to learn how to drive autonomously.（Machine learning is also known as data-driven artificial intelligence.In the beginning, humans were driven to train the car learning software by letting the robot “watch” and “mimic” all the ac-tions of human drivers.
After accumulated to a certain extent, to reach a cer-tain critical point, the depth of learning software to start autonomous navigation, while collecting new training data, the formation of a stable data stream. When it made a mistake, engineers returned to the data to explain the cause of the error, giving the robot a chance to correct the error.
Machine learning using a large number of data al-gorithms and the appropriate technology for data processing, and machine learning can also learn and identify a fixed pattern （ultimately make the car soft-ware without human supervision.For example, when a computerized driver system learns that “it has to decelerate itself when the vehicle is decelerating” and then replaces the car with a motorcycle, the automo-bile system can also takes the same approach.Because one of the features of machine learning is pattern rec-ognition, after teaching it some sort of program, it can react or discern a variety of patterns.
Self-driving technology
14 MACHINE LEARNING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Data driven,bottom up NEURAL NETWORKS SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES OTHER STATISTICAL METHODS DEEP LEARNING MID-LEVEL CONTROL Object recognition Obstacle detection HIGH-LEVEL PLANNING Traffic analytics LOW-LEVEL CONTROL Engine tuning Vehicle applicationsThe machine learning algorithm can “learn” autono-mously according to the example of a car and generate a motorcycle treatment.
Driverless vehicles use machine learning software to handle real-time traffic conditions, provide vision to vehicles and enhance the language comprehension of speech recognition software.As a result, deep learning software has made the vision of an unmanned society as a reality.
CAHPTER
Transportation geek Wanis Kabbaj 15thinks we
can find inspiration in the genius of our biology to design the transit systems of the future. Traffic could flowed through our streets as smoothly and efficiently as blood flows through our veins.In this forward-thinking talk, preview exciting concepts like modular, detachable buses, flying taxis and networks of suspended magnetic pods that could help make the dream of a dynamic, driverless world into a reality.
The on-board system will be able to get informa-tion about the road through Internet and accu-rately plan the most suitable driving route. The exchange of data between interconnected smart cars creates a clear and highly integrated infor-mation system that enables us to bid farewell to traffic jams and traffic accidents.People could pull out from the task of driving, freely spend time in the car taking care of everything except driving. In addition, in the driverless society, cities no longer have to design a large number of parking spaces for cars. Because driverless cars do not need to park at all, only one space is needed to charge.Well, without a large number of parking lots, the streets in cities become less congested and their living space increases. More people move into newly emerging urban areas.Those who do not like city life can also choose to relocate to the surrounding countryside that has been very far away,because the time it takes to reach those locations has been significantly reduced when the driverless cars are heavily used.
Driverless cars can improve the efficiency of urban transport systems, reducing the number of private cars, thereby reducing congestion and reducing carbon emissions from city traffic .Driverless cars use electricity as a source of energy, reducing the threat to the environment and improving the quality of the air.
One of the more important aspects of self-driving is reducing transportation costs.Zero driverless, zero-skill, zero-hour and zero-size features not only allow people to spend less time traveling, but also increase the safety factor for people traveling. People no longer have to worry about drunk driv-ing, fatigue driving and accidents caused by dis-tracted drivers ,and for this reason it will therefore be possible to significantly reduce the medical costs of hospitalizations due to traffic accidents and the associated loss of wages.Allowing com-panies to eliminate the costs of personnel man-agement , it will be also possible to revitalize the automotive design industry.
Cars and freight cars no longer need the shape of “bulky” or to be designed in accordance with the “safety parameters”; they only need to have a compact body and have accessibility to a wide variety of shapes ,so as to allow anyone , including the disabled and the old people to freely experi-ence the feeling of moving in the car.
Transportation system 2030
30 31 CAHPTER
WHEN ROBOTS
CAHPTER
Autonomous technology will open a new era after autonomous car are fully implemented in 2030. The transportation industry evolves into an automated, instant-on-demand service, the way to transport people and goods changes dramat-ically in the world. Autonomous technology will turn our perception of time and space,the way we move, work, create new patterns of life and even the leisure in the cities could be completely altered.
The improvement of unmanned systems technol-ogy will reshape the industry structure, and many jobs with periodic repetitiveness will be replaced by machines. The most optimistic result is that unmanned systems technology can promote economic growth and create an efficient working environment for people from all walks of life. AI software will be a new “must” for marketing: res-taurants and businesses that carefully plan their routes will benefit greatly from this new phenom-enon.In the meantime, self-driving cars will also trigger the last revolution in the retail industry. The different styles of cars will create a new era of e-commerce, and online shopping will become the new mainstream of trends for those who love shopping ,unmanned vehicles will be able to offer a delivery service based on efficiency and timeli-ness and consequently make the shopping activ-ity much more attractive.
Until now we have only analyzed the positive aspects of this futuristic project, but we must also take into consideration the other side of the coin. When the figure of the human driver will be removed from any kind of placement list, we will witness the disappearance of thousands of similar jobs. In relation to this , we should ask ourselves how such a result much can affect the widening of the gap between rich and poor.
Self-driving cars and their side effects will face many moral dilemmas.
Amazon’s checkout-free convenience store, Amazon Go, officially opened its doors to the general public. Employs computer vision and machine learning to let shoppers skip the checkout line and literally just “grab and go,” which separate Go from the many other stores with self-checkout services.
Here is how it works: After downloading the Amazon Go app on their phones, shoppers scan the app at the turnstiles upon entering the store. From that point on, a bevy of cameras and sensors outfitted throughout the store track the whereabouts of each shopper, recognize what items they took off the shelves and put in their shopping carts, and charges their linked Amazon account for the selections that they walk out with.
The opening of Amazon Go points to an interesting path for the future of retail where automation starts to replace (a portion of) the human staff and create a more convenient and frictionless shopping experience in the process.
Amazon Go
2Self-driving--tipping point
34 35 CAHPTER
Self-driving cars bring convenience to our live,on the other hand, it also generate a lot of additional problems. Entrusting the responsibility of a choice relating to the management of an emergency to a car , is a moral challenge.When unmanned vehicles face sudden acci-dents, it uses algorithms and software instead of human intuition to figure out the best ap-proach.In order to allow vehicles to calculate the risk factor ,programmers could encounter many difficulties, especially in quantifying the value of life and property. However, how to define the value of life and property? Who defines theme? Passengers inside the car have a definite value, the road pedestrians also have it.If the driverless car was programmed to “minimize property damage only,” it would be hard to imagine what would happen if an imminent risk is assessed.
The dilemma faced by autonomous driving technology, in fact, should be the problems faced by human beings.Not Auto-driving cars challenge our values and our reliability,but ourselves. This kind of moral contradiction is a problem that cannot be solved by human beings. If we can’t solve problems as human beings, how can we hope to solve them by ma-chine?
In addition there would be another aspect to take into account that unfotunately exert a leverage on human vulnerability.
Automatic robocar saves human travel time, and can let people do whatever they want in the car. But at the same time, saving time means that people have a lot of free time, how to use it properly will become a new problem. Furthermore, the automatic driving robot can allow people to move easily and in total comfort ,but unconsciously forces them to rely too much on it, human beings will no longer use their own feet to move.
This seems to be the problem brought by the driverless technology itself. In fact, this prob-lem also reflects the diprob-lemma caused by the entire AI era behind the driverless technology. This problem represent the dilemma between the good social productivity and human iner-tia.
Collingridge Dilemma
for the society 2030
Social delemma
Already, computing systems are outperforming humans in many tasks that profoundly shape our everyday lives in the fields of transportation, communication, energy, finance, healthcare, retail, education, public services and utilities, law as well as defense and security.
There are also clear upsides and opportunities, disrupting the fabric of our social contracts, our sense of human identity and dignity, and our considerations of agency and personal empower-ment.
Advances in machine learning and artificial intel-ligence are expected to expand the capabilities of task automation and could lead to a further hollowing out of employment and wages. Fur-thermore, most new technologies require new sets of skills to use. This possibly contributes to unemployment and inequality.
Digital platforms that mediate work could lead to more “non-standard” jobs and contribute to the rise of the so-called “gig economy”.They will also likely create new jobs that, as yet, have not even been imagined.
Security and privacy are also a big social issue. Today, everything related to life is connected to the computer.The convenience of the Internet of Things is beyond doubt,but everything has two sides,the hidden dangers behind the Internet of Things are also unquestionable.
So who can protect our privacy? If a person wants to investigate your identity, he can get all the basic information through various websites. He can know where your favorite restaurant is,what you recently bought online. Even your family’s information can be understood together.The security risks behind the Internet of Things not only threaten the privacy of individuals. If one day hackers attack the control center of artificial intel-ligence, then the entire city’s control system will collapse, and the operation of all walks of life in society will be shut down .
CAHPTER
Human dilemma
In 2030 people will have too much time, which is not a problem per se, but it does entail negative side effects. As early as 2017, the Israeli futurologist researcher and best-selling author of “Home Deus”, Yuval Noah Harari, warned: “Most people will no longer be needed for business. They will become obsolete.” This is due to the fact that highly specialized experts are in demand. Everything else is done by robots and machines – and they are faster and cheaper than humans. Many had to adjust to this change. The problem was the lack of perspective that arose from it. Making decisions is also hard for many people. They are simply no longer used to it. Harari puts it as follows: “We dele-gate them to algorithms.” We asked Google for directions, Siri for information and Alexa for our choice of music.If we don’t have to rely on our own brain to think and solve problems, but let everything about life be determined by artificial intelligence, what is the meaning of living as a person?
Another question we need to ask ourselves is: What will our purpose be once everything in our lives is automated? Ordering a book, buying diapers or changing the music in your living room may just be the beginning of automation taking over our lives. When we have self driving cars, personal AI assistants, and other more complex AI solutions replacing jobs and our more challenging tasks – will that finally allow us to focus on the present, and be happier?3
Must be recognized that sometimes the process of doing one thing actually makes us feel happier than the result.For exam-ple, driving, if everyone thinks driving is a very troublesome thing, then there will be no racing competition. Some people are enjoying the process of this trouble.For example, if you are going to a place to travel, AI will help you make a good route and help you book restaurants and hotels. You only need to follow its instructions to go to every destination. This may seem like a very convenient thing, but for some people it doesn’t make sense, because they prefer the feeling of “experience” of searching for information online.Sometimes the seemingly trou-blesome process actually brings its own fun. If we ignore these ‘fun’, just pursuing perfect and convenient results will make us feel empty.
In a world where there is a variety of highly effective high-tech tools created specifically to promote a more convenient or simply better lifestyle, we can only predict an opposite effect as a result of what was anticipated: people reduce their physical and intellectual activity, becoming lazy and apathetic ,with consequent health problems,such as obesity. Moreover some people could lose sight of personal goals, may not feel able to find any kind of stimulation or motiva-tion because the machine replaces their work, or even worse ,because of the excessive dependence on technology, they could forget the reason of why they are human being. Moreover, social unfairness and social pressure has in-creased.not everyone is in line with the requirements of the new era. Many people just want to do simple work, live a simple life, so if the machine replaces their own work, forc-ing themselves to find new ways to survive in such an effi-cient society,they are overwhelmed. It is easy to cause dam-age to their minds and increase the risk of people suffering from mental illness.
If we really automate our whole lives, it is convenient that we don’t need a little bit of effort. So what is the meaning of our living? Only enjoy it?
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The consequence of dilemma
If human beings encounter a person who is 100% trust, they become overly dependent on that person.The same is true about technology. Once people see that technology is fast and effective, then they would trust technology quickly and rely on it,this is human nature.When people are too dependent on technology, they will let their guard down.For example, if people are given
the right to ride , it is difficult for them to go into driving mis-sions again.The impact of high technology is like a double-edged sword. At a time when people are enjoying their conveniences for life, high technology like a psychotropic substance,it make People
over-dependent on it,even couldn’t live without it.
Excessive dependence on technology
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The reason why human over-rely on high-tech,is be-cause we don’t like be bored.In 2014, Professor Timothy Wilson published an article in the journal Science called Just Think: Disengaged Mind. 4Through 11 related
stud-ies, Professor Wilson found that people generally hate to be alone and do nothing (can only think), even bor-ing thbor-ings are stronger than nothbor-ing, some people even prefer to accept a slight electric shock. Willing to endure nothing to do.
There are several reasons why humans are reluctant to stay alone and think for a long time:
When you are alone, people can easily think of troubles, their own shortcomings, sadness or embarrassing past. Thinking is an active, energy-consuming thing com-pared to focusing on external stimuli.Without the help of the outside world, it is harder to insist on thinking about something without distraction. It takes a lot of effort.From an evolutionary perspective, in history, the value of focusing on the outside world is obviously greater than solitude and contemplation.
Therefore, it can be said that regardless of whether there is external stimulation brought about by modern technology such as mobile phones or television or radio, human beings do not like to “free up” from instinct. In order to not idle, we have created many activities, chats, and fights. , sports, etc., we use these activities to fill the idle time and avoid the pain of thinking when we are alone.Mobile phones, or television, the Internet, etc., as a better solution, replaced most of the original activities.
In modern society, the Internet has given people the same physiological dependence as drugs.The Internet has been in our life for more than 20 years and the social network has also been available for more than 10 years.In so many functions of the Internet, communication is the most important for most users. The emergence of smart phones makes people more inclined to communicate in the virtual world. Sherry Tekker's "Alone Together" said that there is a "real-time demand" that keeps many mobile phone users dependent on their smart devices to receive information or to recreate.Once users can not expect to achieve immediate expectations, they will have negative emotions.
Rosalie Del Rey (psychologist at the University of Seville)is not willing to compare this dependence with drug addiction, but at the same time, she also pointed out that this phenomenon can be defined as a "material dependence".The results of the studies cite countless examples of how stressful and anxious people can become if they keep their phones all the time.The relationship between people is increasingly illusory,people completely dependent on the communication of the virtual world,over time，the object of human communication may not be people, but technology itself.
The hidden dangers of technology are not just the fact that people no longer communicate face-to-face.In modern society, people's lives are under great pressure.They need to improve the efficiency of their work through technology or to ease the psychological pressure in various situations.If we continue using technology in the right direction, technology will continue to help us to make our life better and to ease the pressure of our lives.But we have to take into account the negative aspects, after all, not all people have good control over themselves,we do not know whether over-reliance on science and technology will gradually lead to the loss of human nature,but we still have to beware of this happening.
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The new online shopping methods and the continuous reform and innovation of modern science and technology have led to changes in people’s working style and entertainment methods.More workers need to sit in front of the computer to work, more teens prefer to sit and play video games to relax, more women like to sit online shopping.Sedentary life-style has become a daily way of life, people spend less and less time on physical activity In addition（the increasingly updated traffic system has also become an important reason for the diminishing of people’s physical activities.In the unmanned world, the means of transport to replace our hands is not limited to the unmanned taxis . The last mile delivery of parcels and take-outs will also be delivered by small, lightweight autos.This delivery ro-bot can pick up the goods in person and deliver the goods to their destination（the whole process does not need to consume any manpower.Imagine that after such an effective delivery robot appeared, as mentioned in the section of humanity inertia above, perhaps people would all choose to let the robot do the job about going downstairs to get a news-paper or going to a corner convenience store to buy a bottle of milk.
Progress and effectiveness in science and technology sometimes tend to aggravate human
inertia, devastating people’s activity and triggering many health problems. Starship Technologies is a European company, started by a pair of Skype co-founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, has unveiled a product called
the “Local Delivery Robot.” It probably won’t replace human mail deliv-ery, but seeks to make the process more efficient.
According to a Starship Technologies release, “For businesses, Starship’s technology eliminates the largest inefficiency in the delivery chain, the last mile. Instead of expensive and time-consuming door-to-door delivery, retailers can ship the goods in bulk to a local hub, and then the robot fleet completes the delivery to the shopper’s door for a fraction of the cost.”
Diminishing physical activities
Local Delivery Robot
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Long-term dependence on high-tech equipment can lead to human brain degeneration.A 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 81% of Americans use their mobile phones to send and receive news-letters, and 67% of mobile phone users check their mobile phones for new messages or calls from time to time, 44%. Users sleep with their phones because they don’t want to miss out on any calls, newsletters, or the latest news on social networking sites.
According to the Huffington Post, technological ad-vances are bringing unintended consequences to humans. Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich said that the human brain is being “substantially reorganized” by smart technology. “The network makes us stupid? Nicholas Carr Merzenich, author of The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, also warns that technology makes people stupid, today’s technology The big bang not only changed the way people live and communicate, but also had a “fatal” impact on hu-man intelligence.
A study by Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Center for Memory and Aging Research, found that the Internet does make a dramatic change in the brain. If people use the Internet for 5 hours, it is enough to wake up the sleeping area in front of the cerebral cortex. Daily use of computers, smartphones, search engines, etc. “will promote brain cell changes and re-lease of neurotransmitters, and gradually weaken old passages as new nerve channels are strengthened.”
For example,Take a foreign language as an example. In the past, people both learned the grammar and vocabulary of a new language by “reciting” and “prac-ticing”,practice speaking and listening by communi-cating with others.The foreign language knowledge that people learn in this way of “active learning” will be firmly recorded in the brain and become the re-serve knowledge in their own brain.But in modern society, electronic dictionaries and translation soft-ware are emerging,people have been trying to use computer programs to translate the language more accurately, so that people learn the foreign language more quickly and effectively.Over time, science and technology did improve people’s efficiency in learning languages. However, people rely too much on soft-ware to learn languages. “Passive learning” has led to the degradation of human brains’ own ability to learn languages.People find themselves simply do not know how to use this foreign language in the right way without smart software.
In addition, over-reliance on technology can also de-grade the skills people use infrequently.
Deterioration of skills and brain
In the plight of air France Flight 447,which,in 2009,plunged into the Atlantic Ocean,tragically killing all 228 people on board.Later analysis of the plane’s black box revealed that the cause of the crash was not ter-rorism or a mechanical malfunction. What went wrong was the handoff from automated flight mode to the team of human pilots. While in flight, the plane’s auto-pilot software became covered in ice and unexpectedly shut down.The team of human pilots,befuddled and out of practice,were suddenly called to the controls on what they expected would be a rou-tine flight. When thrust into an unexpected position of responsibility,the human pilots made a series of disastrous errors that caused the plane to nosedive into the sea.7
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Excessive dependence on high technology make people less able to handle interpersonal relationships,especially in the real word. The modern communica-tion tools have changed the form of people do social interaccommunica-tion, narrowing the connection between people in long distances but pushing away the people who are nearby . The best social place to talk about of “driverless” is the “third space,” aside from the home and work place, it makes sure that people let their guard down.However, when people have electronic devices such as mobile phones to help them kill the time, they seem to be immersed in their own world.In the public transport ,you can see some people use their computers to handle their work ; some people play their games with their cell phones;some people read their e-books with their Kindle;and someone prefer to listen to their own music with headphones,no one want to be disturbed.
Especially during rush hour, you will see people in the subway or in the inter-urban trains in total tranquility. Although the public vehicle is apparently often overcrowded, in reality it is as if it were empty, only the noise of traffic can be heard. In a big city when people go down to a station in the center, you can hear the sound of the steps we perceive as the sound of a robotic unit, and you can see the indifferent or sleepy expression on each person’s face. If the mobile “third space” can not increase communication between people, then when the so-called “driverless” society arrives, the old inefficient public transport, such as the subway, the bus and the train, will cease to exist. at that moment, how will it be possible to increase the level of interpersonal exchanges and the communi-cation that depend on them.
Lack of communicate with others
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In recent years, impetuousness has become the most fre-quent word in China’s “critique of national character.”This impetuous mindset is not a phenomenon of one group at a time, but an unavoidable experience under some histor-ical stage, especially in the society that has suddenly pros-pered in the process of modernization.Because everything is not clear at this transitional period, every old thing is gone, and the future seems to be at your fingertips, in-spiring everyone’s desire to pursue better material.Impet-uous, precisely because people think about every day to change, to catch up, restless desire.
“Impetuous” can be said that it is part of the Chinese “mo-dernity experience.”10If we say anything different, it may
be that China’s modernization has been compressed and completed in a very short period of time at a high speed. Therefore, young people in China are more impetuous mentality, they have begun to adapt to rapid changes, and thus no patience.
The over-reliance of modern Chinese on the electronic products and high-tech more emphasis on the psycho-logical changes caused by the phenomenon of “modern experience”.Make people more impatient, irritable or even emptiness.
As an example, bloggers now have a fast-track interpre-tation channel on youtube and many Chinese video web-sites.The titles of those videos are like telling the audience: Hey! I can let you watch a movie in the shortest time!Ti-tles are “8 minutes to watch a movie” “13 minutes to let you know the story of a movie” and even “20 minutes to watch a full season of drama.”And these channels have a lot of fans subscribed volume, which undoubtedly illus-trate a problem（Impetuous young people do not want to spend an hour and a half to finish watching a movie.In fact, not all because of the impetuous reason, in order to study the impact of AI technology, I also read in this chan-nel a dozen “6 minutes let me you a science fiction film”, in order to be in the shortest possible time Knowing more helpful information for myself to increase the efficiency and speed of my research.
In addition, cheap and efficient personal mobility may also have some side effects, “loneliness” is one of them. In fact, one of the reasons why people feel lonely is that they do not get along with the “third space,” and that such places can neither be the workplace nor the home, but rather the place where they can go for relaxing.How-ever, one sad thing about modern life is that it does not provide people with many different types of third spaces. Lack of social opportunities in the “third space”, people can only rely on electronic products and social networks to resolve their loneliness.Whether you are familiar with such a scene: family together, not talking, but their own computers and mobile phones; friends meet, not to chat, but desperate to refresh microblogging, WeChat; in the classroom, the teacher is talking, students chatting online; During the meeting, others were reporting and listeners were sending and receiving information.All of these phe-nomena can be attributed to “group solitude” - we seem to be together, but in fact live in our own “bubbles.” We look forward to fewer people but more technology. Uninterrupted contact, in fact, aggravate the emptiness of everyone.
In addition, highly developed technology has made the whole era show a state of high-efficiency results, which will increase people’s anxiety, people will continue to wor-ry, if they are not efficient enough, they will be replaced by others or machines.
The existing pressure that society has brought to people has not decreased. On the contrary, because of the rapid development of high-efficiency era, new pressures will be exerted. Then more people will not be able to withstand such pressure and have increased the probability of suf-fering from mental illness. .
Psychological change
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People want to manipulate the machine, they must use their own set of “machine mode”.The originator of this method was human, but later it became: man must act in the manner of a machine.12
Take human driving for example, when you drive, you think you are driving, in fact, the car is driving you.You must follow the machine’s instructions to drive, you step on the throttle action is to set the speed, you hit the steering wheel action is to set the direction. If you are a Formula One driver, even the sight of the mirror should be precisely calculated.How precisely the person operates the machine, how faster the car travels.But really faster thing is machine, not you.This is the machine’s requirements for people, not people’s requirements for the ma-chine.
Machines require humans to be machine-efficient, data-driven and standardized.When we think we need to be more professional, it is actually social division of labor and science and technology that prompt us to think so.This is why, the more professional we do one thing, the more scientific the conclusion is.”How much of the%,” “how much profit,” and “how long it will take to complete” all give off a cold machine taste.
The operation of the machine on the person is a forcing, it’s operation, unaware.In fact, the behavior of two people chatting through a mobile phone is very mechanized, the screen is the main control , human is only an extension of this media.Instead of speaking to you, I was talking to the phone. If your machine can not decode my data, I will not be able to finish speaking to you.
Karl Marx said, “The danger is not that machines are becoming more human-like, but that people are more and more machine-like”.In today’s rapid technological development, the popularity of the machine has reached an unprecedented prosperity. Many people will ques-tion whether the process of robotizaques-tion will make mankind more mechanized. Are people using the machine or being “captive” by the machine?
People become mechanized
“The danger is not that machines are
becom-ing more human-like, but that humans are
be-coming more machine-like”
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EAST ASIA-CHINA,JAPAN,
SOUTH KOREA
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The “Sinosphere”, or “East Asian cultural sphere”, re-fers to a grouping of countries and regions in East Asia that were historically influenced by the Chinese culture. 1
The East Asian cultural sphere shares a Confucian eth-ical philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism and, historeth-ically, a common writing system. Although Chinese characters have become almost obsolete in Japan and South Korea, they still hold a special place in the cultures as their history and literature have been greatly in-fluenced by Chinese characters; Chinese characters can be seen in temples, cemeteries, and monuments today, as well as serving as decorative motifs in art and design.Korean and Japanese are still accustomed to using Chinese characters when signing official doc-uments and printing business cards.The core regions of the East Asian cultural sphere are Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
In today’s East Asia, the most influential, socially and culturally similar countries are China, Japan and South Korea.
The countries of China, Japan, South Korea,share a Confucian philosophical worldview.Confucianism is a humanistic philosophy that believes that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour es-pecially including self-cultivation and self-creation. Confucianism focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, the most basic of which are rén ( 仁 ), yì ( 义 ), and li ( 礼 ). Rén is an obligation of al-truism and humaneness for other individuals, yì is the upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good, and li is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act in everyday life.
Cultural and social commonality
It is better to reflect the influence of Confucianism on the workplace culture in three countries.Japan features hierarchically-organized companies and the Japanese place a high value on relationships (see Japanese work environment). Korean businesses also adhere to Con-fucian values, and are structured around a patriarchal family governed by filial piety between management and a company’s employees.This is no exception in China.As for these three countries,in a family is di-vided by very distinct roles; there are even separate terms used to address older and younger cousins, aunts, and uncles. Giving the same amount of respect to older and younger aunts or uncles might be viewed as a serious breach of etiquette.
Interpersonal relationship for people of these three countries are very important.Interpersonal relation-ships play a key role in maintaining a good social bond.Even in modern society, this level of emphasis has been distorted to extreme levels.In some situa-tions and situasitua-tions, if you don’t use your good rela-tionships, you won’t get the results you expected.
In East Asia, dining and drinking with your coworkers is very common, in fact it can be an unspoken require-ment in some companies. Many employees feel that after work parties are an important way to enhance relationships. It can be useful to understand who your coworkers are, their typical mindset when they are re-laxed and outside of the office.
For South Korea and Japan,the background of this activity may have a lot to do with the fact that lifetime employment was the standard in these three coun-tries for a long time. Establishing good relationship with your coworkers was very important as you may spend nearly forty years with them.In Japan, it even had a name – nominication (coined word combining “nomu(drinking)” and “communication”).
A common saying in Japan is, “if you want to work your way up the corporate ladder you have to drink”. This was how many older generation workers estab-lished relationships and considered this the normal way of doing business.
A lot of those who experienced the culture of dining and drinking with coworkers agree that they did ben-efit from the time spent. They found it easier to talk to their boss in a relaxed atmosphere outside work. Rela-tionships with coworkers developed closer after casual talks, sharing concerns about their work or about oth-er coworkoth-ers. Some become more than just a cowork-er and a friend. Like many othcowork-er relationships, dining brought them closer.
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However,this point in China is a little bit different. The corporate life and culture has changed a lot in the last decade or so. The work environment is more flexible and accommodates the needs of individuals according to their lifestyle and stage of life. Career changes are more common and easier. If one corpo-rate culture is not a fit, moving on is an option and there is less emphasis on building relationships that need to last a lifetime. The majority of the younger generation in China who started their career in such environment with more freedom tends to spend less time with their coworkers, and focus more on their life and relationships outside work. 2
But this does not mean that the Chinese have no drinking culture similar to Koreans and Japanese. The Chinese only changed this culture of drinking with their colleagues to maintain their relationships into a commercial activity. The Chinese talk about business is never in the company, but in the restaurant.The Chinese also follow the rule that it is easier to talk the business in a relaxed atmosphere outside work. In addition,Toasting is a very important point in Chinese drinking culture.Toasting others is frequently consid-ered a test of a person’s eloquence and charisma. In
China, not everyone who can drink is very valued for work, but those who are valuable are definitely good drinkers. So when it comes to drinking with these valuable people, how to show personal interpersonal skills is especially important. What to say to break the ice? What to say to connect different interest groups? Think of drinking as a microphone: What really makes you heard and remembered, is how you give a toast. Regardless of how to behave or how to do things, because of the far-reaching influence of Confucianism, the ideology of people in these three countries has striking similarities.
Because we all value interpersonal relationships,and influenced by the Confucian thought of “Harmony is most precious”, people in these three countries do not like to have disputes with others.For example, we are not accustomed to directly speaking some bad words, but rather euphemistically express our mean-ing. When we encounter terrible things, we are used to being forbearing.Therefore, the feelings of people in these three countries are always very patient and hard-working.
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Social ideology and workplace
culture analysis
Although we have many similarities, we also have our own differences in so-cial ideology.
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China - population problems& loving “face”
The current population of China is 1,416,274,747,still ranks number 1 in the list of countries by population. China has been adopting different policies at different stages in order to solve the population problem. After the end of World War II,because the construc-tion and rehabilitaconstruc-tion of the country required a large amount of labor, the state implemented a policy to encourage people to have more children, in order to strengthen the country’s workforce in the future.The government trained tens of thousands of “barefoot doctors” to bring health care to poor and rural areas. The mortality rate plummeted and the population growth rate rose from 16 per thousand in 1949 to 25 per thousand just five years later. This prompted the first attempts to encourage family planning in 1953. Still, total population expanded to over 800 million in the late 1960s.
By the 1970s, China was facing food and housing shortages. 1980s（In order to slow the rapid popula-tion growth, the government has issued a new policy ---the one-child policy.This policy has been going on for 30 years. The one-child years left social scars. The traditional preference among Chinese parents for sons caused many parents to abort female fetuses, and the male-to-female ratio reached 120-to-100 in some provinces. The sex ratio for births has been dropping in recent years, though the 2016 figure, 115 boys for every 100 girls, was still above the natural rate of 105 to 100.
Mary Gallagher, a politics professor at the University of Michigan, said: “[The government] now faces a colossal demographic cliff, as the working population shrinks and the ageing population rapidly expands. It also lacks a social insurance program that can ade-quately support its ageing population.”Concerns are mounting that an ageing and shrinking workforce could slow China’s economy, while gender imbalances could lead to social problems.Therefore, the Chinese government began to implement a second child poli-cy to encourage people to have two children. But who is this group that is encouraged to have two children? It was the generation born in the family planning era. These only children are encouraged to give birth to two or even more than two children in order to sup-port the country’s future economic development.3
However, the government seems to have forgotten one thing. China still retains the tradition of children need to caring for their parents when they become older ,which means a Chinese couple want to set up a family,they need to take care of four old people and two children at the same time.
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The shortage of resources caused by China’s huge population base is already obvious to all. Increasing populations will lead to a reduction in social resources. A reduction in resources means that social welfare will be scarce and people’s competitive pressures will increase, and the social happiness index will decline.
In this so competitive society, let two adults take care of the lives of six people at the same time. I think everyone can imagine how much pressure is on the generation who born in the age of the one-child program.
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China - population problems& loving “face”
"Face is the spiritual program
of the Chinese people"
Face is deeply rooted in the Chinese society and mindset, and its importance will not fade over time.In China and much of Asia, Face represents a person’s reputation and feelings of prestige within multiple spheres, including the workplace, the family, personal friends, and society at large. The concept of Face can be understood more easily by breaking it down into three separate components: the indi-vidual view, the community view, and actions. The “indiindi-vidual view” pertains to the amount of prestige individuals feel based on their accomplishments, and the amount of respect they feel they are due based on their position and status, such as in a company or the home. For example, in the modern Chinese economy there are many opportunities to buy status symbols, which help a person gain prestige. And in China’s hierarchy-focused society, the respect a person is due is determined first by status relative to another person’s, not necessarily by personal achievements.
Irresistible Laughter – Yue Minjun
