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What the future holds: US futurist Peter Diamandis on the shape of things to come ("Abundance")
Gulf News ^ | February 12, 2014 | Faisal Masudi and Noor Nazzal, Staff Reporters

Posted on 02/16/2014 11:26:26 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Dubai: At a conference in Dubai this week, an American futurist painted an intriguing, at times unsettling, picture of the coming world.

As Dr Peter Diamandis went over his presentation slides at The Government Summit on Tuesday, there were plenty of raised eyebrows.

In the future, the slides suggested, privacy will be a thing of the past, robots will take over our jobs, 3D printers will pop out everything from human organs to houses, and man will mine asteroids in deep space for unfathomable mineral wealth.

The 58-year-old said hyper-tech breakthroughs are already hurtling us towards that future, today.

“The world’s no longer changing every 100 years, it’s changing year by year,” he said on Tuesday.

“Right now the only constant is change, and change is moving at an increasing rate.”

Gulf News obtained a copy of the presentation by Dr Diamandis, the scientist CEO of XPRIZE, best known for its $10 million (around Dh36.7 million) Ansari XPRIZE for private space flight.

Dr Diamandis was addressing a Summit session titled ‘The World in 2050’. That world, he conjured, will have one overarching trait — abundance.

He has dwelled deeper on the subject in a New York Times bestseller – Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think – which he co-authored.

Tuesday’s slideshow summarised just how abundant abundance can get.

“We are growing to a world of more than one trillion sensors. We can know anything, anytime, anywhere. Privacy is ending… [or is it already] dead? This will drive significant changes in government and social systems,” the presentation said.

Highlighting a US media report, Dr Diamandis touched upon how American government experts are trying to build a supercomputer that could break security codes protecting records in virtually every industry or organisation, from banking to health care.

In fact, computers are now building computers that are smarter, faster, and smaller. Indications are, his presentation suggests, we will see by 2032 the first “infinite” data memory and processing technologies.

Subsequent generations will yield Artificial Intelligence (AI) machines.

“AI can already do most tasks better than humans. 50 per cent of service jobs could be lost in 10 years,” one slide said.

And that is a good thing, Dr Diamandis maintains. He believes AI will become our “best physicians, best teachers.

“They can think better than humans, they can translate and understand 85 languages… The whole world will have the answers to every question at anytime and anywhere.”

The CEO said iPhone’s interactive Siri feature is an example of AI today that people have warmed up to and found useful.

“Robots will enter every aspect of our daily life and we are not talking about ‘in 45 to 50 years.’ We are talking about now, they already exist now and they are being used now,” he said.

And powering the transformations will be creative individuals, not world superpowers or global corporations.

“Today’s ‘exponential entrepreneurs’ are more capable, past governments and large corporations.”

Dr Diamandis said we have already entered an era where change is unstoppable. His book explorers the impact of human ingenuity at length, and seems to bestow on technology a consciousness of its own.

“But the short version is that for the first time in history, our capabilities have begun to catch up to our ambitions,” reads an excerpt.

“Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet… Abundance for all is actually within our grasp.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: beseeingyou; bigbrother; computers; datamining; economy; future; mining; privacyrights; prophecy; psychic; sciencefiction; thefuture
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
How I ZOTTED Huffington Post and made the world a better place.
21 posted on 02/17/2014 3:00:57 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
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To: Vendome
Yet, over the last 30 years and at this point today, the world consumes 50% more paper than we imagined we would.

Could the introduction of toilet paper to the masses in China, Africa and the Mideast have anything to do with it ;-)

22 posted on 02/17/2014 3:24:28 AM PST by varon (Para bellum)
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To: varon

I had thought of something hilarious regarding the switch from wiping with their bare left hand.

I decided to moderate my post, lest I learn what the smell of lightning was like


23 posted on 02/17/2014 3:42:22 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: a fool in paradise

How is any of this going to happen with the Luddite’s and Eco-Freaks on the Left? You can’t have massive change on this short a time-frame without massive economic dislocation and societal stress.


24 posted on 02/17/2014 3:46:19 AM PST by Tallguy
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To: a fool in paradise
the immediate future is anything but bright

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

25 posted on 02/17/2014 3:55:45 AM PST by expatguy (Donate to "An American Expat in SE Asia")
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To: AZLiberty

Truth is in your words. I’m done with listening to defeatists ready to dceclare the end of all things. The future is just waiting on us to catch up.


26 posted on 02/17/2014 3:57:06 AM PST by arderkrag (An Unreconstructed Georgian, STANDING WITH RAND.y)
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To: a fool in paradise

Not to mention the judgment that God is about to mete out upon the world for all the slaughtered infants; 60 million, just in the U.S. of A.


27 posted on 02/17/2014 4:03:07 AM PST by Tucker39 ("Having their conscience seared with a hot iron.")
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To: a fool in paradise

And how many gallons per mile do those 4 engines use?


28 posted on 02/17/2014 4:06:27 AM PST by Tucker39 ("Having their conscience seared with a hot iron.")
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To: Right Wing Assault
Print tens of thousands of these.

It'll look like Russia when you are done.


29 posted on 02/17/2014 5:13:15 AM PST by a fool in paradise ("Health care is too important to be left to the government.")
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To: Swordmaker

Idle hands will mean more free time for community agitators and occutard class envy rallies.


30 posted on 02/17/2014 5:15:07 AM PST by a fool in paradise ("Health care is too important to be left to the government.")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Ther will be no abundance of anything but misery if enviromentalists have a
say.


31 posted on 02/17/2014 5:20:42 AM PST by beef (Who Killed Kennewick Man?)
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To: a fool in paradise

It’s going to take someone to make all of the power to run those robots and 3-D printers.
It’s going to take someone to service all of those robots and 3-D printers.
It’s going to take someone to source, transport, and refined the resources used by those robots and 3-D printers

Skynet!


32 posted on 02/17/2014 5:38:49 AM PST by jimmyo57
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To: jimmyo57

Or the Matrix!

My friend and I were discussing the future. He thought it might turn out like “1984”. We certainly have the sort of technology where the state could watch you 24/7 and employ jack-booted tactics. However, I think it will be more like “Brave New World” where everybody will be hyped up on pharmaceuticals and the state will try to control you with “Scoobie Snacks”.

I am still waiting for my Jetson sky car. Maybe they will become widely available when I am done with my pick-up.


33 posted on 02/17/2014 5:56:40 AM PST by 3Fingas (Sons and Daughters for Freedom and Rededication to the Principles of the U.S. Constitution)
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To: beef; Revolting cat!
Ther will be no abundance of anything but misery if enviromentalists have a say.

You'll get nothing and have it in abundance!

34 posted on 02/17/2014 6:56:19 AM PST by a fool in paradise ("Health care is too important to be left to the government.")
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To: beef
Ther will be no abundance of anything but misery if enviromentalists have a say.

There will be a surplus of permanently unemployable people. When these human pets lose their cuteness or become unaffordable, like other pets many will be put to sleep.

True environmentalists, sans socialism, are actually conservatives. The original Sierra Club members until recent times were overwhelmingly Republican. John Muir was a country conservative. Environmentalism was hijacked by the communists as a mask to hide behind. With some finagling it could be hijacked back. The Democrat base lives in cities that are environmental disasters, typically 5 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside and full of pollution and disease.

35 posted on 02/17/2014 7:14:12 AM PST by Reeses
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To: Perdogg; Kevmo; AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ...

> In the future, the slides suggested, privacy will be a thing of the past, robots will take over our jobs, 3D printers will pop out everything from human organs to houses, and man will mine asteroids in deep space for unfathomable mineral wealth.

He was speaking in Dubai; so much for the future. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.


36 posted on 02/17/2014 7:55:40 AM PST by SunkenCiv (http://www.freerepublic.com/~mestamachine/)
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To: AZLiberty; Reeses; 3Fingas; beef; Tucker39; arderkrag; expatguy; Tallguy; Vendome; varon; ...
Not so. Our future is so bright we both need to wear shades. We just have to get big government out of the frickin' way. Besides Diamandis's book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, I also recommend George Gilder's latest, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capiltalism and How it is Revolutionizing Our World. Both books provide hope that America's experiment with Obamunism will be erased, with much greater things to come.

The technological door of opportunity is huge. We just have to pry it open.

.......................

Another good ebook on this subject is Collapsing Water and Energy Costs: How Bill Gates [Or You!] Can Create the Inventions That Spark the Next Industrial and Agricultural Revolution

This ebook was written two summers ago. So far two of its recommendations have been followed. The first is that Bill Gates team at Terrapower take an interest in lftr Thorium reactors--which they did last year. The second is that an oil company take an interest in lftr thorium reactors. In this case shell oil created an investors contest and sat on the panel that judged that an MIT lftr company called Transatomic had the best technology.

Collapsing Water and Energy Costs makes several more major recommendations and many minor ones--which by the look of it, will likely be followed in the next several years.
37 posted on 02/17/2014 2:22:44 PM PST by ckilmer
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To: a fool in paradise

I think the ones I put up were in Russia. Kind of fancy for them, though.


38 posted on 02/17/2014 2:23:40 PM PST by Right Wing Assault
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I predict Peter Diamandis’ prediction will never come true. Society will break first. In my opinion, humans will not even want to live in the world he describes.

But, then, maybe that’s just me. I do know that I, at 66 years (because of my family history) am one of the last of the depression generation. Born after, but mentally of that generation.


39 posted on 02/17/2014 5:01:43 PM PST by RobinOfKingston (Democrats--the party of Evil. Republicans--the party of Stupid.)
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