Institute For The Future

Longer Lives Make Suicide a More Popular Option

I was presenting some of the forecasts from our recently released HC2020 map last week when I saw a detail in one the map that I had never seen before. Check out this image from the map--something we call an artifact from the future--that highlights our forecast for neurointerventions:

 

 

 

 

Artifacts from the future are essentially a form of storytelling--they offer a visual representation of how a person might encounter a particular forecast in her daily life. They are also designed to provoke new thoughts--to raise questions about how or why we might want to use a piece of technology to improve something.

 

The big ad at the bottom right of the newspaper there captures the storytelling aspects--it depicts the idea that you someone might wander into a retail office for deep brain stimulation to treat obesity in the same way that today's shoppers can arrange for LASIK surgery.

 

There's also a headline at the very bottom of the page that reads "Worries about Neurointerfaces," pointing toward a future where our physical spaces are increasingly designed around how our brains work.

 

What I hadn't noticed before, however, were the headlines under Age-Related Issues, such as "Longer Lives Make Suicide a More Popular Option." This is the part of the artifact that strike me as more provocation (at least for the next ten years) than forecast--I think it's unlikely that we'll see widespread suicide in response to advances in medical technology over the next decade.

 

But I do think the headline is a helpful reminder that we are moving toward a world in health where we need to begin thinking about more than just the question of whether or not a treatment can extend life. A simple example of the potential complexity of health management comes from North Korea, which claims to have developed an anti-aging drink. If, by some miracle, North Korea really had an anti-aging drink, would you consume it--if drinking it meant you had to move to North Korea?

 

I know I wouldn't.

 

In the realm of products and services that exist in reality (or are really being developed), we really are gaining an astounding amount of information about what is good and bad for us, which has the potential to turn virtually every decision into a question about how we manage what we do to our bodies. In other words, imagine a future where you're not simply thinking about whether or not you had a healthy dinner, but are also thinking about whether your environment has toxins, whether your activities help you manage your stress, whether your friends are making you less healthy, and so on.

 

The idea that virtually every decision has a health lens to it is not a future I particularly like.

 

Which brings me to a couple points: The first is that innovations in health will, in the next decade, likely involve not simply extending life but making it possible to continue to live in a reasonably healthy way. The second point, really stemming from the first, is that technologies and innovations that are likely to succeed are those that disappear--those that make people's lives easier to manage, rather than harder.

 

That said, I think there's a third point, which stems more directly from the headline in the artifact: There's probably some useful level of unhealthiness in the world that, for all that it's unhealthy, makes life better. And helping people manage that balance in their lives in the next decade will be a significant but important challenge.