In a video filmed as part of the 2019 Gwlad Festival arranged by the Welsh Assembly, unelected ‘Future Generations Commissioner for Wales’, Sophie Howe, explains what she believes the Wales of the future should look like in the next 20,40,100 years.
Mrs Howe starts off by explaining how her role as Future Generations Commissioner is set in statute to ‘act as the guardian of the interests of future generations.’
“My role is to ensure that those in positions of power , decision makers, the people who sit in this very chamber (the Senedd) are considering the lives of tomorrow when they take decisions today”
(To listen or download a basic quality audio fle of the speech please click here. Or listen only below)
In the hour long video Mrs Howe explains, how, based on predictions, she thinks our world might be in 2040 (comments in brackets are The Sovereigner comments):
- Surgeons will be using remote robots to perform operations anywhere in the world
- Security systems will be based on our biometrics
- New smart homes house will be printed on site by 3d technology and will be assembled by robots. The new homes will be linked in to the ‘smart grid internet of things’ using 7G technology which Mrs Howe states is 100 times faster than the current 5G – (even though 5G mobile techology is an already highly contentious technology which is being increasingly banned around the world due to serious health and environmental concerns.)
- Smart fridges will monitor our food and reorder our supplies
- ‘Smart houses’ will have fully immersive travel, gaming, sporting, educational and musical experiences using augmented reality, holographic and virtual reality technology – and humans will sit or stand inside virtually events as they take place around them (probably meaning that we won’t be ‘required’ to go outside to interact and meet other people.)
- Homes will have diagnostic systems and sensors built in to them including bedrooms and bathrooms, and these will be monitoring us and carrying on ‘silent and invisble medical checks whilst we sleep’ and tell us if anything’s unusual in our sleep pattern. The bedroom mirror will tell us if it spots any cardio vascular or other problems. We will also have diagnostic and analytical toilets which will tell us if there’s any health isues. Our toothbrushes will be able to detect a fever or ‘something suspect’ in our breath. And all of these vital signs would be communicated to our domestic hub.
In the speech Mrs Howe also suggests that there will also need to be a debate about equality between humans, enhanced humans and AI-robots.
“What about equality between humans, enhanced humans and AI /Artificial Intelligence…how will we all live together? …..we’ll be working hand in hand with robots – what will that mean in terms of potential inequality and inequity in our society?”
She also lets us know that this will be an era of accelerated technology which could “bring hardware changes to the body and AI could bring software changes to the human mind”
Discussing employment in the future Mrs Howe adds:
“We know that we’re not going to be able to compete with robots…artificial intelligence will outdo us in terms of capacity around knowledge and so on”
Mrs Howe mentions that health, wellbeing and the environment are some of the prime areas of importance in the Well-being of Future Generations Act which is such a crucial part of her remit as Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. It’s not understood how this fits in with her aspirations to see 7G in place by 2040. A huge number of scientists are already saying that 5G towers and mobile phone masts technology need to be stopped and discontinued due to serious concerns over threats to human health and the environment. An increasing number of towns, cities and countries around the world are now stopping 5G mobile technology due to these scientific concerns-see full current list here.
Mrs Howe rounds up the lecture by saying that she recently published a ten point plan for the Welsh government on how they should approach demands to tackle the climate emergency. She also adds that how the Welsh Government has responded is not enough and that she has contacted Welsh Cabinet ministers to explain themseleves to her on this suject. “I will not be letting that one drop and they’re gonna have some explainig to do to me…” she added.
On education Howe also added that she will be publishing a white paper in collaboration with Cardif University which will set out some thoughts on “what i think the Welsh education system of the future needs to look like…”
She adds “Over the next year I will be publishing the rest of my guidance for public bodies… and I’ll also soon be reporting on the findings from my first round of monitoring and assessing of the progress of public bodies are making”
Mrs Howe hasn’t been elected by the Welsh electorate and has no electoral mandate. She is appointed to her role by the Welsh Government and her salary was noted as being £95,000 per year in 2015. Many are asking how an unelected person has any right to try and determine or dictate the future for any Welsh citizen including the unborn.
Likewise many are asking what right Mrs Howe has to try and dictate or put pressure on the Welsh Government and their policy decisions as this is supposedly the scrutinising job of elected MOS’s (Members of Senedd).
At the time of the new Future Generations Commissioner appointment in 2015 there were a lot of raised eyebrows. Friends of the Earth Cymru said: “This appointment clarifies the problem with the commissioner being accountable to the Welsh government, rather than the National Assembly for Wales.
“There’s a real danger that the commissioner’s role will be compromised because of a desire to please the government,” a spokesman added.
A number of people also comment that the Future Generations Commissioner job could be construed as a form of lobbying. The difference being that it is our and Welsh Government money that pays for the Future Generations Commisioner job which, many suggest, makes it appear that the Welsh Govenment is effectively paying someone to lobby itself.
The Futue Generations Commissioner role fits in to the larger picture and context of Sustainable Development and Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030. This is a global plan which the Welsh Government has adopted and which the renowned researcher Rosa Koire of the Post Sustainability Institute describes in the following way:
“UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education,information, and all human beings in the world.”
Out of a crowd of around 25 people listening, there were two people visibly not clapping along with everyone else at the end of Mrs Howe’s speech. One of them seemed to be the youngest there – a young girl of around 8 or nine years who seemed to look embarassed and slightly angry at what she had just heard in Mrs Howe’s speech. The fight to stop this horrible dytsiopian future may well be with her and her generation – the true and genuine future generations.
