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Scarcity Versus Abundance

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Nearly two decades ago we embarked on a journey of envisioning, and, to the best possible extent, reifying the Enterprise of the Future. That was a research and services initiative within the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at George Washington University (GWU), seeking to help organizations learn and innovate at the speed of change. Spun off from GWU, the institute is now the International Institute for Knowledge and Innovation, an independent research organization (iiki.org).

Along the way we’ve seen the future as a continually moving target, often with a wide variance between expectation and reality. We’ve also learned that trying to accurately predict eventual outcomes is a fool’s game. It can be fun when you’re correct, as has been the case with Ray Kurzweil’s technology predictions, which reportedly clock in at an accuracy rate of more than 78%. But for us mere mortals, perhaps the best we should hope for is building an enterprise with enough foresight capacity to anticipate, sense, and respond to a wide range of possible alternate futures, even as they unfold.

With that in mind, let’s step back and take a look at two opposing alternate futures making the rounds. One is fraught with scarcity, the other overflowing with abundance. These two scenarios cover pretty much everything in the ecosphere, from natural resources to the economy to societal well-being. Correctly guessing which scenario will ultimately unfold isn’t nearly as important as building the capacity to make timely and effective adjustments along the way. If you’re thinking of such capacity as being extremely knowledge-intensive, you’re in the right place.

Peak Everything

It’s hard not to imagine a world impacted by increasing scarcity. One obvious driver is an ever-increasing population, expected to reach 10 billion globally in less than 4 decades. More hungry mouths means stretching existing supplies of food, water, energy, and other resources to the limit. This is critical because history has shown that when scarcity of these basic needs reaches extremes, social, economic, and political instability increases, too often leading to armed conflicts or outright war.

Almost everything we consume ultimately depends on energy. The demands for energy are only going to accelerate as AI continues its upward trajectory. Each AI server consumes 16 times more energy than the traditional cloud server and pumps millions of gallons of water for cooling. According to Alex de Vries, writing in the October 18, 2023, issue of scientific journal Joule, global AI-related electrical power consumption alone will require an additional 85–134 terawatt-hours in the next 2 years (cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3).

In a strange way, the more energy we produce, the more energy we need. For example, as fossil fuel reserves are depleted, discovering, extracting, processing, and delivering new reserves results in a steadily increasing percentage of energy invested versus energy delivered.  Nuclear, and even sustainable, energy sources are experiencing similar supply-side tightening.

The same law of diminishing returns applies to water, especially water used for irrigation and drinking. While it may be everywhere, supply struggles to keep up with demand. What about desalination of ocean water, you might ask? Sure, there’s plentiful supply. But once again, there’s that nagging energy problem. Anywhere from 1 to 3 kilowatt-hours of energy are needed to treat a single cubic meter of salt water.

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