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Editor - Perry Kinkaide Visit KEInetwork.net |
INTRODUCING 2026: Thinking Forward. Preparing for change. As we open 2026, the KEI Network is launching a new year-long inquiry shaped directly by what we as Canadians—especially youth—told us throughout 2025: 1. The future is arriving faster than many of us feel prepared for. AI, quantum breakthroughs, genetic medicine, fusion, and automation moved from theory into daily life. Many saw opportunity—many more felt uncertainty. 2. Institutions are struggling to adapt as quickly as the world around them. Personalized information ecosystems, rising polarization, economic disruption, and technological acceleration all signaled the same thing: We must think further ahead. 3. Young Canadians in particular are concerned with the future of work and want straight answers and clearer pathways. They are creative, ambitious, and eager—but navigating a future that looks very different from the one their parents entered. |
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Conversations about the forces and sources of change will continue to be a prime focus of our newsletters and webinars. By the way, should you be resolving to diet in 2026, you might want to consider the option cited in our Fact or Fiction feature HERE. Your views are always welcome. So please consider sending us an article to share and joining our Justa Chat webinars every Thursday. - Editor |
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INTRODUCING 2026: Thinking Forward. Preparing for change. The clash of public and personal interests continues unabated reflecting the prevalence of chaos and uncertainty so typical during times of change. We strive for leadership and vision but are fed fear, phrases, and platitudes. Few demonstrate a grasp of the environmental, socio-demographic, and regulatory issues confronting society world-wide. Even forecasters citing "more of the same" display uncertainty and a shrinking time horizon. None of this should come as a surprise given the breadth and depth of the impact of emerging technologies on our sovereignty now and into the future. Beyond personal sovereignty itself, humans consistently value three things above all else: energy, life, and knowledge. (Money matters too as discussed later in the article.) Energy determines what societies can build, protect, and sustain. Life defines what we seek to preserve and extend. Knowledge shapes how we understand reality—and how power is exercised. Today, all three sit at the center of trillions of dollars in global research and investment, and all three stand on the edge of profound breakthroughs. Artificial intelligence is accelerating discovery at a pace that challenges human comprehension. Biology is moving beyond healing toward redesign—reprogramming cells, extending health-span, and altering inheritance itself. Energy, long defined by scarcity and conflict, may soon approach abundance through technologies once thought unreachable. Continued below
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84258596166?pw.. Continued from above Over the coming year, through our weekly newsletter and associated webinars we’ll be monitoring several anticipated breakthroughs and discussing their impacts: 1. AI, quantum computing, and technological convergence 2. Personalized medicine and stem-cell therapies 3. Democracy in an age of algorithmic personalization 4. Fusion energy and the clean-power transition 5. Automation, creativity, and the new world of work 6. Genetic editing, neural interfaces, and human potential 7. Regenerative environmental technologies 8. Algorithmic markets and autonomous systems 9. Predictive health, privacy, and data dilemmas 10. Global technological competition and its impact on Canada. These advances promise liberation including new source of wealth. They also carry warnings. History shows that capability almost always outpaces wisdom. Fire warmed and destroyed. Electricity transformed life and warfare. Nuclear power promised peace and delivered existential risk. Each leap expanded human agency while amplifying consequences. What makes this moment different is convergence. Intelligence, biology, and energy are no longer advancing separately; they are reinforcing one another. Decisions in one domain cascade rapidly into others. The question before us is not whether these breakthroughs will arrive—but whether we can guide them without surrendering responsibility, dignity, and human agency. We will continue to engage forward thinkers whose work helps illuminate what lies ahead. Pause - money matters. The warning should also extend to financing. It would not be rhe first time that matket exuberance was financed on credit. Hope is not bankable. Patience is not forever. The sources of credit have extraordinary leverage should the expected ROI fail to materialize. Where Sovereignty Fits. Sovereignty—personal, institutional, and national—will continue to frame our journey as a reminder that our ability - and also that of Canada, to choose our future depends on understanding the forces shaping us. Why This Matters Now. 2025 showed us that we want clarity, not comfort. We want foresight, not fear. And we want to be ready—not reactive. Thank you for joining us as we begin a new year of inquiry, curiosity, and conversation - thinking forward together. SPECIAL PROJECT. That's the foreground. In the background is a special project. Many of you are aware and participated in activities of the Alberta Council of Technologies Society. ABCtech was the predecessor of the KEI Network. During it's 15-year tenure 2005-2020, it amassed a network of over 10,000 contacts with a focus on Alberta's economic diversification and the commercialization of emerging technologies through SMEs. KEI picked up where ABCtech left off, shifting focus to the broader socio-economic impact - on our Sovereignty, of emerging technologies. With AI as an aide, we have been able to rapidly assemble the hundreds of articles, webinar videos, event proceedings, and reports comprising the entire libraries of both the KEI Network and ABCtech. An analysis of those works and the contributions of hundreds of you is underway as a 2026 Special Project. Stay tuned. |
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