An Author's look into the future: Economic models are changing. We must deal with it.

Tesla Forum ^

[SeekAndFind]

Into the future

By Udo Gollub at Messe Berlin, Germany

I just went to the Singularity University summit. Here are the key points I gathered.

Rise and Fall: In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became superior and mainstream in only a few short years. This will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, self-driving and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software and operating platforms will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

TRANSPORTATION

Uber is just a software tool. They don’t own any cars, but they are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice, (so far for more or less basic stuff), within seconds. With 90% accuracy, compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you are studying law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer generalist lawyers in the future; only specialists will be needed.

‘Watson’ already helps nurses diagnose cancer, four times more accurately than doctors. Facebook now has pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. By 2030, computers will have become ‘more intelligent’ than humans.

CARS

Cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will be offered to the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car on your phone; it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive whilst driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for our future needs. We can transform former parking spaces into parks. At present,1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 kms. With autonomous driving, that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Electric cars will become mainstream around and after 2020. Cities will be cleaner and much less noisy because all cars will run on electricity, which will become much cheaper.

Most traditional car companies may become bankrupt by tacking the evolutionary approach and just building better cars; while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will take the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi. They are terrified of Tesla. Insurance companies will have massive trouble, because without accidents, the insurance will become 100 times cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

REAL ESTATE

Real estate values based on proximities to work-places, schools, etc. will change, because if you can work effectively from anywhere or be productive while you commute, people will move out of cities to live in a more rural surroundings.

ENERGY

Solar energy production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but only now is having a big impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that almost all coal mining companies will be out of business by 2025.

WATER

Water for all: With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don’t have scarce water in most places; we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if everyone can have as much clean water as they want, for virtually no cost.

HEALTH

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year - a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and your breath. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any diseases. It will be cheap, so in a few years, everyone on this planet will have access to world class, low cost, medicine.

MANUFACTURING

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from 18,000$ to 400$ within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started printing 3D shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D-printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to need in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3D-printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D-printed.

BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to enter, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” And if the answer is yes, then work on how you can make that happen sooner. If it doesn’t work via your phone, forget the idea. And any idea that was designed for success in the 20th century is probably doomed to fail in the 21st century.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear that there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture: There will be a 100$ agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working in them all day. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first veal produced in a petri dish is now available. It will be cheaper than cow- produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces are used for rearing cattle. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore. There are several start-ups which will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

Apps: There is already an app called “moodies” which can tell the mood you are in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where we know whether the participants are telling the truth and when not!

MONEY

Currencies: Many currencies will be abandoned. Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the future default reserve currency.

LONGEVITY

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span was 79 years, now it is 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than a one-year increase per year. So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way beyond 100.

EDUCATION

Education: The cheapest smartphones already sell at 10$ in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means everyone will have much the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan Academy for everything he needs to learn at schools in First World countries. Further afield, the software has been launched in Indonesia and will be released it in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer.

The English app will be offered free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.

[imardmd1]

From the systems approach, how is this going to deal with human whimsy and sinfulness, that which is the tendency to do that which is wrong and hurtful, just out of sheer obstinacy? From observation, I would say that tendency is increasing, not decreasing, and affects all of human life about us. And what about behavior? Are we heading toward a Stallone-type Judge Dredd? Eh?

[Garth Tater]

3D printing cannot replace more traditional methods of manufacture and construction in all cases. For example: it’s not going to make firearms.

Firearms require tempered steel: springs and hardened parts (hammers, triggers, sears, pins etc) simply cannot be made the way 3D printers build up material in increments, to create an object.

MIT creates 3D printed graphene that’s lighter than air, 10X stronger than steel

You also need to consider that current firearm designs were designed with previous centuries' manufacturing methods in mind. New design tools and new manufacturing tools (3D printers) and new materials will lead to some new and very deadly weapons.

Much of what you need is just waiting for you to place your order.

Graphene 3D Lab, Inc.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

After reading through this list I would say half are nonsense and the other half are wishful thinking.

[imardmd1]

I see great possibilities, even to the point of not resenting subsidization to the extent that many FReepers do.

There is just so much solar energy impinging on the entire area of the map of a nation, and so far less than 50% of that amount can be converted to channelable electricity, Whatever is under the impinging rays must remain in darkness. Totally, there is not enough energy reliable and available by solar means to fuel the needs of a population.

In an agrarian society, sunshine could supply photons for food, but not in our industrialize society where we expect so much more, and for so greatly a concentration of humanity.

Stored sunshine in the form of coal, oil, and gas are now needed, with nuclear energy promising an illimitable supply. I don't think we should consider solarity as an alternative except for some special preferred purposes. It certainly will not provide heat for the Inuit population in Alaska, Siberia, or Greenland. And I don't think I want to relocate to regions like that. I don't like eating seal fat as a staple all that much.

[Garth Tater]

It's on the internet so it must be true... or fake news.

IBM Watson Health anlyzed my shop's data and came up with extremely erroneous conclusion due to errors an 8th grader would not make. It used a numerator as the denominator.

So, you're saying it's already smarter than at least half the population? I bet next years model will be at least as smart as a 9th grader...

I had an online service review our monthly phone bills back around 2008. It took them an afternoon to scan in the bills and about 20 minutes to print us out the report. Saved $20k a year. Not all new technology is ready for prime time. But a lot of cost saving tools are out there and there will be more of them every year.

[sparklite2]

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

---

Not only did I believe it, I was saying it by 1990. Although I spent my career in the industry, it took no special knowledge to see where digital cameras were going to lead us. You can bet Kodak knew it too, as they attempted to buy up or put out of business foreign-owned finishers in the US, ie, Fuji and Konisharoku {Konica).

Couldn’t have happened to a better bunch of predatory monopolists.

[RegulatorCountry]

Quoting the exceptions doesn’t undermine the utility where it’s applicable. Otherwise, hydroelectric power would have never been adopted because it doesn’t work in the desert.

[dfwgator]

“They’ll be Spandex Jackets, one for everyone.”

[Garth Tater]

Think of the implications on that. power no longer in the hands of govt and large business. Universities gone because we move back to apprentices.

Govt has been able to tax away most of the labor productivity gains achieved over the last century. The gains from this new techno-revolution may be harder for them to steal since we can keep our means of production closer to home and out of the commercial marketplace but I have faith in them. They are very good at what they do.

Universities on the other hand... they are so last century. A great education is already available for next to nothing via the internet. And if you need some hands on experience, workshops and labs like MakerSpaces and NextFab are available for reasonable fees. People with massive student loan debts are going to be very upset with themselves and their alma mater.

[L,TOWM]

Not really what I am saying at all...

If that’s how you choose to take it, carry on.

[imardmd1]

Simply speaking, only ignorant people could ever uimagine Solar energy as a replacement even of firewood, let alone eons-stored carboniferous sources. The only reasonable place to implement solar installation is the wastelands and desert, where nothing would be growing on the terrain underneath it anyway,

[RegulatorCountry]

You’ve got a mass power generation mentality, return to my original reply. What did it say? It offers the possibility of greater individual autonomy. Mass solar arrays make little sense when the land beneath it would be dedicated to nothing else. However, everybody has a roof. Everybody has or needs a garage or storage, use the support structure to create shelter rather than adding onto it. There are now standard size 500 watt solar panels. There are now solar roofing shingles. There are now complete battery banks using LiFePo4 batteries, non-volatile, very long life measured in decades. The rate of technological advance is picking up, not slowing down. There will be totally electric, mobile tiny houses analogous to current RV’s. Pick up and go, take your work and your home with you. The roof *is* a solar array. Individual autonomy, not power plants to serve hundreds of thousands, although that will come to be less and less pie in the sky as time wears on.

[Eisenhower Republican]

“Universities gone because we move back to apprentices.”

If only that were so. The requirements, both in terms of education and experience, for finding work or being self-employed are just going to continue skyrocketing upwards. A few years from now, a simple engineering degree will be considered passe the way a HS diploma is now. You’ll likely need some type of advanced degree in addition to an apprenticeship to be valuable enough to be employed/self-employed.

Also - gov’t and large businesses are the entities best equipped to rapidly scale new technology, so I wouldn’t count on their power diminishing any time soon. Any hope of decentralization would be through social or political action. Economics simply doesn’t favor it over the long haul. I found Trump’s comments on dusting off the Sherman Act intriguing. Let’s hope it wasn’t just bluster.

[Garth Tater]

Also - gov’t and large businesses are the entities best equipped to rapidly scale new technology, so I wouldn’t count on their power diminishing any time soon.

That would sort of depend on which direction you're scaling, wouldn't it?

And it's really not so much the govt and large businesses' capabilities that are important here as it is the fact that smaller entities are now capable of doing with these new technologies what only large scale enterprises were previously able to do. New tools, new methods and new materials, when priced as cheaply as these are, favor the nimble and the imaginative not the large and the bureaucratic.

[BikerTrash]

bumpmark

[Eisenhower Republican]

"And it's really not so much the govt and large businesses' capabilities that are important here as it is the fact that smaller entities are now capable of doing with these new technologies what only large scale enterprises were previously able to do. New tools, new methods and new materials, when priced as cheaply as these are, favor the nimble and the imaginative not the large and the bureaucratic."

In the very short term, yes. In the medium/long term, these technologies get coopted and scaled by large corporations, giving them even more pricing advantage over smaller players. This leads to more centralization over time, not less. Who benefited in the end from the digital/PC/internet revolution? It wasn't local/small businesses.

Hobby-level 3D printers are cheap, but not good. Ones that can produce usable mechanical parts are not inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination. I'm currently having to use 3D printed parts from a $1,200 machine for a project I'm working on. This wouldn't be possible if we didn't also have a full machine shop because the printer can't hold usable tolerances for placement or dimensions of things like clearance holes. All features other than the bulk shape have to be added the old-fashioned way on a drill-press, lathe, or knee-mill. Quite frankly, it wouldn't be economically feasible compared to standard machining out of aluminum if I counted my hours in the project costs. The only real advantage I get is some small weight savings.

But eventually where all of this (3D printing) is going is that most if not all of the small independent machine shops that now dot the countryside will be replaced by whoever ends up being the "Amazon of 3D printing". Anybody who needs a part made will just upload their file, and it will show up on their doorstep 1-3 days later for about 1/4 of what a local company would have to charge to keep the doors open. Alot of draftsmen will be put out of work as well, because after the part is drawn once -anywhere- it will be available for download from that same "Amazon of 3D" or some other place for free or next-to-nothing. That's where I see it going anyways, and it's pretty hard to imagine that's not going to happen because corporate "printer farms" using this model are already starting to pop up and put smaller players out of the 3D business.

[Valpal1]

I’ve been saying this for at least ten years. The future of solar (and wind) is not in commercial application but in individual consumer and residential applications.

[RegulatorCountry]

I’ve been saying this for at least ten years. The future of solar (and wind) is not in commercial application but in individual consumer and residential applications.

I agree. The power as well as the cost of solar continues to decline. An installation sufficient to run an average house is still a lot of money, though. If it's built into new construction designed for it, it's not quite so daunting. If you're in a reliably windy location with average windspeed above 8 mph, you'd be a fool not to put one up if you can afford it and it's not prohibited. Couple hundred bucks, run your well pump at least. Bigger budget? There are 2000 watt models at Home Depot for $2400. Nice backup for power outages or supplement to solar. I hate to see the automatic hostility to these things here. Yes, the big subsidized power plants have been a boondoggle. That does not mean that it can't work for you personally. It can and does.

[RegulatorCountry]

That CAD is intellectual property just as surely as music, video or anything else is. It’s not going to be given away, not by the creators and not by the owners. Small businesses will both create and own intellectual property for use in the distributed 3D printing economy.

[Eisenhower Republican]

"That CAD is intellectual property just as surely as music, video or anything else is. It’s not going to be given away, not by the creators and not by the owners."

People in the music/video biz are already feeling the sting from things like netflix, youtube, and pandora. Draftsmen can't trade on celebrity the way they do. Some starving person in India using pirated or open source software can produce/reproduce that content just as easily as somebody here. That's already becoming a cottage industry in its own right. Also, a significant portion of 3D printable objects are already open source or very low cost. Take a good long peek at thingiverse.com, or shapeways.com some time. Might open your eyes.

The only entities really equipped to fight frequent/prolonged court battles over IP are large corporations. They can defend "their" IP, and alternatively, if they really want something you've got in terms of IP, they'll eventually get it by hook or by crook. Once again, this doesn't favor decentralization. I wish I was wrong, but I don't see anything at all trending that way at the moment.