From: The Prophetic Backbone by Robert P. Waters

Because society has become so science-dependent it seems like humanity is both product and logical opportunity upon which to model every digital system such as through artificial intel or cognitive applications or in autonomous products. Science allows our bodies to be cell-identified and as ethical and legal boundaries adapt, also to be reproducible. We possess heritable code from past generations that through genetic editing technologies like CRISPR  may enable us to understand ways to eradicate bad genes - or bad behaviors. (http://www.genome.gov/27563340)  Global data aggregators on the other hand seek to control every bit of personal data that informs the healthcare practitioner. Yet another cultural deviation is inherent in the prophetic movement, familiar and accepted: It demands adherence to only evolution theory while dismissing creationism as irrelevant. Creation has always informed that every person has equal value. And there is an even larger narrative of paramount concern: global warming - that is so worrisome to scientists that any innovative progress through the science of genetics supporting our “survivability” is worthy. One can believe that governments will soon better understand how to save the planet’s ecosystems but the daily barrage of media attention on the subject remains dire. Where is the alternative? Is it re-engineering genes for climate changes? Is it to head toward Mars as Elon Musk has stated? In all narratives engaging health and science – the context: our uncertain future. Everyone understands that, even if we could change genetic profiles today we may miss the mark when climate changes do not align to today's predictions. It would take several generations to breed in mankind the right genetic balance to survive. For the time being the question is whether science can re-engineer genetic suits of armor.  The race is on to exponentially increase the amount of biological human data for analysis. The virtuous dream inherently contained within evolution theory is ever battling to assure we survive in the present time as a species while also preparing for the uncertain future. The prophetic backbone will be that DNA-only network built with new technologies believed to be the only road by which we are to seek solutions for a troubled world and that only DNA analysis will enable humanity to provide answers about our uncertain future.

RPW@2017, The Prophetic Backbone

(excerpt from The Prophetic Backbone, available in 2018)

The Prophetic Backbone ..... contains a challenge to many grandiose predictions about future human existence declared by technologists that perpetuate even more predictions simply because it’s the in-thing as marketers compete for lead narratives about the future. Ironically, many, including this author, do not oppose innovation; more accurately, we challenge the material and universal behavioral changes promised when innovations are being introduced through marketing narratives. And, for reasons not quite clearly defined, the brain is synonymous with behaviors. In some cases the science fiction-like rhetoric ultimately causes societal anxiety, confusion or fear. Marketing has taken on a dual role in that, once a product’s key benefits are categorized for re-aligning our personal lifestyle or organization, a secondary pronouncement from some individual of importance within the firm comes to the media saying that their product will change behaviors held by all society. It’s not unusual to read and hear of such comments coming directly from a CEO or product engineer whose names are widely recognized.

The best clue to identify ideology is hearing, “we will all change our way of life." We believe that if the folks who build these technologies are that progressive then the likelihood that they have the answer as to how humans will behave in those environments is also worth our attention. To prophesy is like releasing helium balloons at a circus, like voices proclaiming a grand reformation of how people behave in the center ring all the way to the outer rings of social engagement.

Robert P Waters 2017

From: The Only Fields That Matter, chapter 7:

One movement materialized in 2011 to express just how hopeless people had become in the Great Recession as job seekers. Economic oppression was undeniable and also overwhelming the post-college demographic but as a movement, had no solution ultimately. You recall that embodied voice against the wealthiest one-percent; it was the Occupy Wall Street movement. I tracked this assembly on Twitter and across the media for their two-year run and came to my own conclusion: OWS was a counterfeit movement frayed by multi-ideologies. I believe that the counterfeit will soon be followed by another movement characteristically more aggressive; it will be validated and receive support from institutions and organizations and work in alliance with sub-cultures that demand recognition of their oppressions. The problem in America is that institutional and economic oppressions haven’t become bad enough; unemployment being the lead issue here in 2011. When they do reach bad enough an allied movement will form. Rather than competing for a stake in the debates surrounding civil liberties the oppressed will strike out as an alliance. That central economic failure targeted by OWS remains in America - but is so much deeper that pure economics.
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The next movement, on the next iteration, will certainly retain its comprehensive economic overtones concerning inequality and lack of jobs but likely carry the analogy to victimization joined by those locked in racial, immigration and sexual rights issues. Could it be possible, too, that following after President Obama, himself a promoter of activism, that America's next president distinguishes his/ her platform by a whole different set of issues? I see another movement on the move; forming, waiting. Counterfeit movements often precede authentic ones.

Robert P. Waters, Author of The Only Fields That Matter. A Narrative from the Great Recession. an eBook at amazon.com, 2014

I don’t know how this happened but during the holiday season I went back into a file on my laptop used to save articles for my forthcoming book, The Prophetic Backbone, a non-fiction about technologists who are proclaiming the future of mankind. From blogs to big online media sources -  I suddenly noticed that, on the subject of disruption, these were mostly male-written articles. I also reviewed many Fortune500 marketers and again, disruption, a tech buzzword, is proportionately greater as a male topic. Does this mean men disrupt business processes, projects, IoT advancements, artificial intelligence and robotics more than women? Not with the likes of Ginni Rometty, Sheryl Sandberg and Anne Wojcicki or Carla Hayden, the new librarian for the Library of Congress. Technology is their business, all kinds of it.

Many in the Fortune500 just can’t stop marketing disruption – even though 2016 is being compared socially and politically to the 1960’s disruptive revolutions and movements that re-wrote American culture. My thought, here at the start of 2017 is about the disruption that so many technology firms wish to advance and more critically; claim: our future. In a marketing context these big tech firms are claiming a stake on the future by upending our understanding of present day technologies.  I’m wondering if there is a sublime strategy for male dominance, of a presumed male ingenuity, of sports-like competitive gamesmanship to psych-out their competition. After all, if men don’t win, they lose.

Who is going to really make that autonomous car tick up the company stock?  Google’s Mr. Page and Mr. Brin or Ford’s Mr. Fields? Will the National Institutes of Health nail down cancer through genomics-based medicine or will it be Stanford’s School of Medicine, both led by men? When can Mr. Musk get us to Mars? But more than within academia and public entities, the whole “disruption” manifestation seems to me, a very corporate culture invention with the implicit goal to re-engineer human behaviors and human biology using personal data. And, as all prophets surely proclaim; “The world as we know it is about to change”.

RPW@2016