Glassman Wealth Tackles Non-Obvious Thinking

In a time with so much advancement in technology and changes in the way we live, now is the perfect time to hear a futurist’s perspective on what our lives may be like in the coming years.

Glassman Wealth recently hosted a fascinating conversation with Rohit Bhargava, the founder of the Non-Obvious Company, best-selling author (his latest is The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work, and Thrive in the Next Decade), sought-after speaker who has spoken in 32 different countries, and professor of public speaking and persuasion at Georgetown University.

Rohit touts himself as a non-boring speaker — and we think you’ll agree — and he defines the term ‘non-obvious’ as ‘seeing the world a little bit differently by paying attention to the details that other people aren’t.’

He believes the future that we imagine is the future that we make and loves to teach people to look at things in a new normal, non-obvious way for themselves.

Our conversation covered a variety of topics, including:

• Artificial Intelligence: ‘Technologies that allow us to automate things by extrapolating information that exists and generating new results out of it.’ While it’s hugely disruptive, Rohit doesn’t place himself on the doomsday side of the spectrum when it comes to artificial intelligence. Instead, he believes the generative AI platforms have huge potential — kids are using them to do their homework, people are writing and generating new images — and there’s a tremendous amount of learning going on, discovering what they can do and can’t do.
• Energy: Culturally, what would happen if we could use a similar model with energy that we currently use with locally grown food (which has the benefits of lower transportation costs and supporting local communities)? Would it change how people use electricity when they know it was made by their neighbors? Would people be less likely to waste it? These cultural questions are going to become as important as energy technologies.
• Food Research:
  • Manufactured food — ‘fake’ meats
  • Cultivated meat — ‘real’ meat grown from cells (similar to a lab-grown diamond)
  • Currently under-consumed items — such as kelp and insect flours (not necessarily for human consumption, but possibly to feed livestock)
• Health:
  • Biometrics — Metabolic monitoring (glucose monitors, fitness trackers) has the ability to impact our behavior in real time. The impact of these tools to better track and pay attention to what’s happening in our bodies will grow exponentially.
  • Psychedelics — Research is finding enormous benefits with the closely monitored use of psychedelics, and showing the ability to actually rewire the brain’s pathways. In the process, this is also debunking some of the myths people believe around psychedelics. Treatments for long-term conditions, such as clinical depression and PTSD, are showing extremely promising results and the body of research is hugely transformative.
  • Loneliness — This was a challenge even pre-pandemic and the very human solutions include communities based on intergenerational living where community members commit to spending time with each other and building their communities. On the technological side of solutions, there is virtual companionship, used to provide relationship support. For many people this may be a step too far, but the interactions could be hugely beneficial; we’ll need to find the right balance.

For more insight, watch our full interview with Rohit here.

We also invite you to view our recent blog post and video: Glassman Tackles Artificial Intelligence

And other videos in our one-one-one speaker series, including:

• Chris Sidford, MD: Tips for Safe International Travel in a Post-Pandemic World
• Peter Diamandis, MD, Founder of the XPrize: Imagining Our Post-COVID World: An Optimistic View