Welcome to TRB Lounge! We’re thrilled to host author Bernt Erik Bjontegard today, who will be unveiling an insightful excerpt from his latest book, History Rules My Tomorrow. Dive in and get an exclusive sneak peek into this amazing book!
About the Book
History Rules My Tomorrow
A question to ponder: are we as humans pre-programmed to “follow in our father’s footsteps?” Is there something inherent in our heritage? Do we repeat what our forefathers and mothers did?
And if so, can we apply these inherited cross-generational learning methods as we invent the next generations of intelligent systems? Rather than creating AI that is artificial and intended to replace human work, can we create intelligent systems that AUGMENT the human’s work and support him or her? Can we invent intelligent systems that learn and improve themselves with the mind of creating betterment for all humans as well?
Erik Bjontegard left Norway when he was 18 to study in the UK, then moved on to California. Not realizing until later in life, his actions and behavior, his quests for new discoveries, and his desire to invent followed his father and grandfather on his mother’s side. Now an accomplished inventor, former NASA rocket scientist, deep sea robotics, and submarine explorer, he is now navigating the new Phygital realms connecting the physical and digital.
In this engaging and inspiring autobiography, Bernt “Erik” Bjontegard narrates his life filled with the stories of his grandparents’ sacrifices during WWII, his own mistakes and discoveries, and poses important questions on how to engage the listeners and their families to assist in creating and inventing better human-technology interfaces. Learning from his history, he is embarking on the journey to make his tomorrow better than today.
You can find History Rules My Future here:
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Excerpt
Chapter Five — My Story
While my own life story does not include war, Mayan Indians, Nazis, or building new countries or nations, you may start to see some interesting trends that I have only now started to understand as my hair is turning gray.
I left Norway to study in the UK at 18 instead of attending the university in Norway where my father was a visiting professor. I had been accepted, and staying in Norway would have been easier. All the education was in Norwegian. In England, they speak English a lot, even more so in the university classes.
I worked on subsea engineering and robotics. I got stuck in a submarine at the bottom of the North Sea. It made me look into space and explore other paths, which eventually brought me to the USA. So, I shifted from subsea robotics to aerospace and worked with NASA on their space shuttle at one of their big sub-contractors.
I had great success and was on the corporate ladder, supporting Boeing and Airbus in certifying their aircraft for the FAA, but I wanted more adventure. So, I ventured into a completely different realm, from deep-sea robotics, aerospace, and deep space to the equally mysterious world of make-up and fashion. As you may be able to tell, it is not a typical employment path.
From there onward, I moved into another entirely different business sector: building new homes and communities and becoming a real estate broker and land developer. Once that wasn’t exciting enough, I went onto something brand new.
Mobile technology. Another brand new frontier. I came into telecommunications, looking for new ways to connect the physical and digital worlds and build a way to enhance daily experiences.
As an American sci-fi author, Kage Baker said, “I don’t think humanity just replays history. We are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It’s instructive to imagine how they would react to different technologies on different worlds.”
You must have figured by now that I am somewhat unusual. I don’t choose the road that most take. Instead, I create new paths. While different from my forefathers and parents, we will explore some remarkable similarities.
I am a patented inventor. I have started new companies and have also gone bankrupt.I have made a fortune and have lost it all. I’ve lived in tiny apartments and huge mansions. I have had a large family to feed and have sometimes been alone with my boy with little support.
But throughout it all, I seek answers to new questions! I ask, then paint visions of the future in my head. I think outside the box. I have been recognized by the high-tech giant CGI as one of the top technology visionaries in the world and have won numerous awards and accolades, from recognition at the White House to magazine cover stories.
I choose to do things differently. I’m an idealistic inventor and fascinated by technological and scientific innovation. I have conceived and invented things that affect millions of people and more to come. The common thread between all these various industries has been my desire to do something different and deliver better outcomes. I model, recreate, build, and deploy, and then I seem to get bored and go to the next challenge!
Weird, huh?
I have traveled the world and met key political figures across the globe, from 10 Downing Street in the UK to the White House in the USA, from Abu Dhabi to Norway, and from Hong Kong to Thailand.
As I look to the future, I wonder what we can learn about the past. Can we look at my family’s history and see how this can be used to improve the algorithms of augmented intelligence systems of the future? Is this my next destination? I am building solutions that connect the physical and digital, creating new worlds—Metaverses and Phygital spaces.
During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I discovered my interest in the lost art of storytelling. My family, our four kids, and my fiancé had conversations around our dining table and shared ideas. I have observed my kids’ changing use of technology over the years. Now, we sat down and talked about it instead of using it. This made me realize that technological advancement has challenged the human transfer of knowledge and experience. Before, it was the tech that enabled us to talk. Now, we sat down at the table and spoke.
It was as if we had rediscovered something powerful. The COVID pandemic made us pause and observe how we had become dependent on tech for tech’s sake. We had lost the art of storytelling.
Personally, as you may be able to tell, I’ve always been driven by the challenge of combining science and innovation in ways that improve our lives. This is especiallysignificant in today’s ever-changing digital world, but we must keep the human elements.
It’s about taking advantage of the latest communication innovations delivered to everyone’s hand, wrist, and pocket. We all walk around with these connected “supercomputers” —our mobile phones. They are far faster and superior to those my grandfather used at UCLA or those my father used to find oil. Better than those used to build and used to operate the Space Shuttle to deliver people to space and back! Vastly more powerful than those I used to ensure we are all safe when we fly commercial airliners. We have enabled businesses and organizations to drive dynamic marketing, services, and communications. The result is the ability to easily bring real-time, relevant experiences to people in places like convention centers, universities, airports, medical centers, hospitals, events, office buildings, and tourist destinations. We even use these computers to play games when in the restroom! With my patented platform, we even deliver a layer of contextual intelligence to communications, turning engagements into relationships. Today’s norm was crazy science fiction only a few years ago. Imagine what we will consider normal 5 years from now?!
An excerpt from Yuval Noah Harari’s book, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow, reads, “If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it can know what made you laugh, what made you sad, and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them.”
This is possible today. My platform can do this and more… much more. Even when shopping, stores can read people’s reactions to products and ads served on shelves in real time. Creating experiences like those in the SciFi movie “Minority Report” with personalized ads and offers to those in front of the signs is quite easy with my platform. We can even do more. We can send that offer to your phone there and then, and with a single button, ship it to your home! Why is it not everywhere yet, you may ask? Sometimes, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The creepy factor of these interactive AI displays is rather high. But soon, this will be common. Imagine a flight display at an airport changing the flight and gate information to your flight as you approach it and then sending the gate information to your phone’s indoor navigation system so the phone will tell you where to go. This is possible now with contextually intelligent signage systems, integrated indoor navigation, and hybrid mobile app interfaces. It’s all part of a Contextually Intelligent Communication Platform ecosystem.
Nowadays, technology is all around us; as we fast forward deeper into the territories of intelligent computers and brain interfaces, the question of whether technology isneutral or not arises. One can argue that no moral value can be accredited to technology.
Technology is blind, is the thought. Thus, tools only have value when a person with their value system applies them, and thus, the technology is dependent on the value system of that individual.
Hence, this outlook advocates that the operators are responsible for the ethical use of technology. This argument is used all over. Crypto itself doesn’t cause terrorism. Terrorist do. Another such argument is that we shouldn’t blame guns for killing people. It’s not the gun that kills in and of itself. It’s the person pulling the trigger. Guns are neutral; people aren’t. But isn’t the fact that the gun enabled the killer and that crypto enables terrorists to do their horrible acts of violence? So, then, the tech enables actions. In fact, in a way, with this mindset, the technology augments the human’s actions.
When evaluating technologies and what to invent, should we consider why and what they can be used for? Surely, the invention of the atomic bomb had these diabolic considerations—if you drop one bomb, hundreds of thousands will die. But if you don’t drop the bomb, the war will continue, and many more will be lost. Is it our values that determine what technology to build? It’s the consideration of what is good and what is right. If a choice to invent something may be used for evil and wrong reasons versus not inventing it at all, I would suggest that it’s better to invent and then invent ways to control it. Someone else will eventually invent something similar and may not have the same moral considerations as you do!
While the actual value for the technology users will determine how the technology is used, the fact that it only exists because of our values makes them inseparable. Thus, we can debate that technology can be maneuvered. It can add choices or improve processes that point in a specific direction.
In addition to that, when we get too used to how things are, it takes a greater struggle to see how things could be different. It takes a more creative mind to see it in any other way. As time passes and familiarity grows, the technology and its functions become so entrenched as to be hardly thought about or questioned.
In 1986, Robert J. Welchel wrote in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine:
“This moral neutrality is based upon viewing technology purely as a means (providing tools for society to use) with the ends (the actual usage of technology) lying beyond and outside the realm of engineering; this position also assumes that available means have no causal influence on the ends chosen. If technology truly is only a means, then engineering is a second-class profession since we are the mere pawns of the real power brokers. We buy our innocence at a tremendous cost: To be innocent, we must be powerless.”
A vital impediment here is our inherent acceptance of the failure to predict the future. If no designer, inventor, or company can foresee the future benefits and costs of what they build, how can they ensure they embed good values?
So, using the information we have, we must find the best explanations or predictions we can. We can learn from our mistakes and make better decisions if we consider how different technologies progress and their consequences.
This is important, as future technologies will likely be much more powerful and consequential than today. Can we find ways to ensure these systems are based on knowledge of what works elsewhere? What worked before? Is there a way to learn from this transfer of knowledge that passes from generation to generation when the ages cannot physically meet? Naturally, I cannot meet and talk with my great-great-grandfather; he passed away long before I was born. How am I following his path so closely?
So, we are heading into a future where it is important to start asking strange and new questions. When intelligent machines make their own ethical choices, it will make no sense to say that technology is neutral, and aligning our values will be tremendously important.
Now it is getting interesting, isn’t it? There is much more to ponder and think about. We all know that there are consequences to our actions. Now, we must consider that there are consequences to our thoughts, dreams, and visions.
About The Author
Bernt Erik Bjontegard
Bernt “Erik” Bjontegard is the inventor of the patented, award-winning Spark Compass™, a Contextually Intelligent™ communication platform used globally to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time and place. As founder and CEO of Total Communicator Solutions, Inc., Erik has led innovative deployments at events like Wimbledon and America’s Cup, for brands like Puma and Coca-Cola, and even for public health initiatives in the UK. He holds multiple pioneering patents, many of which have been cited by industry giants, including IBM, Apple, Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm.
Originally from Norway, Erik began his journey as a snow shuffler and windsurf instructor, later earning a full scholarship to the University of Salford in the UK. He became a mechanical engineer, designing deep-sea robotics before working with NASA on the Space Shuttle program—something he proudly recalls with his favorite phrase: “I used to be a rocket scientist!” He later certified aircraft designs for Boeing and Airbus and has contributed to technologies that are now part of 5G infrastructure.
Erik’s career path has been anything but conventional, spanning fashion, real estate, and advanced telecommunications. His time with Qualcomm’s Corporate R&D team saw him contribute to emerging platforms like Vuforia and Gimbal, and it was there he learned to write patents and began his deep dive into innovation. Erik is also an honorary Fellow at the University of Salford and serves on advisory boards for several universities, sharing his visionary insights with future generations.
In his autobiography, Erik reflects on his life journey, his family’s sacrifices during WWII, and the inherited spirit of innovation that connects generations. He explores how human experiences can shape the development of intelligent systems that enhance rather than replace human work.
Through personal stories and big-picture questions, Erik invites readers to imagine a better future—one where technology supports humanity, not the other way around.
You can find author Bjontegard here:
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