Can we plan for an age in which people live to 100?

Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott’s The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity (Japanese title: LIFE SHIFT). An instruction manual, written by professors of the London Business School, on how to weather an age in which the average life expectancy is 100. Because things like asset management, financial planning, and family planning are weak points of mine, I read this with a focus on relevance to IT, IoT, and AI.

It is said that from now on, labor in cooperative ecosystems between smaller businesses, the sharing economy, the blending of work and leisure, the concentration of cities, and the increasing demand for smart cities will continue.

These are all brought about by computerization and automation. There isn’t likely to be a special link between these things and the extension of life expectancy to 100 through advances in medical technology. They just happen to coincide.

But because they coincide, the use of time will become a problem. In the 1930s, Keynes pointed out that, as economies became wealthier, free time would increase, and the use of this time would become an issue for humanity. After that, although free time did increase, people still felt pressed for time. The tendency is for people to work longer the higher their salary is.

I agree with two points in this book. First, the argument that the internet of things and AI will create new forms of employment, so we should welcome the shift of manufacturing to robots. I think so too.

Still, the book suggested that people do work that has an advantage. I think that the work people have an advantage at is killing time. Robots aren’t likely to be good at killing time. “If I’m not busy, switch me off!” they might say. What Keynes thought would be a problem is actually an advantage.

The real problem of this age will be the concentration and inequality of wealth. I think the problem won’t be production so much as it will be distribution. Basic Income may become an important theme.

The other point I agree with is that social links and knowledge will become economically more important than tangible assets. This too is the effect of information technology and social media rather than a consequence of the era of 100-year lifespans. In particular, I think that what one can obtain socially, i.e. human relationships, will be more powerful than what one can obtain through information technology, i.e. information.

Information (e.g. skills, abilities) is a means to obtain assets (i.e. economic value). The means for obtaining information is changing over from education to information technology. On the other hand, society will move towards a situation in which economic value comes to be shared along axes of relationships between friends, which involve trust and evaluation.

However, this book looks at things like personal connections, human relations, and reputation as factors of production and treats them as a “means” in the same way that information is. But I think that human relationships (i.e. the social world) are an end goal and not a means.  

　I think, in fact, that it used to be the case that people made human relationships and reputation the goal of their lives rather than having property centered around information as their goal. That is, couldn’t we escape from this modern era to the past by using technology to strengthen our ties, be less busy, and extend our lives?

　This book says that in the U.S. in the 1880s, half of all people in their 80s worked. I think the era of 100-year lifespans will be like this. This, too, may be a form of returning to the past.

　The book also makes the case that we won’t be able to predict the consistency of life or the growth of the economy from now on. This is also unrelated to the era of 100-year lifespans, but it’s a warning to people that they should get ready to live longer under uncertain conditions. The younger generation seems pretty good at living flexibly and however they see fit, even without having this explained to them by adults.

Really, though: is lacking the possibility of forecasting growth and stability the sole province of a single generation in a developed nation like the one a business school professor (i.e. me) lives in? When I was born 55 years ago, they could foresee a fairly stable and growing future for Japan, but the generation 55 years before that was born after the Russo-Japanese war into a life with earthquakes, a depression, incidents, war, defeat, and restoration.

　Since self-awareness is important for coping with upheaval, and what supports self-awareness is education, this book argues that online education MOOCs are significant. I also agree with this. However, what’s important here is not the behavior of the provider of education but instead the willingness of the user who studies. We should organize an environment that supports the ambition to learn.  

The authors’ observation that existing educational institutions are driven not to lose in their competition with MOOCs is a manifestation of their sense of an impending crisis. While this sense is correct, at the same time it looks like we can expect situations in which the MOOCs will win. I expect that education using information technology, including MOOCs, will completely overturn the educational environment.

In the preface to the Japanese edition, Japan is noted as a trailblazing model because it is the first nation to achieve longevity and an aged society. I certainly hope that we can live up to the expectations.