World changing technology enables crops to take nitrogen from the air
Pretty short sighted. Mainly an extrapolation of today’s tech with an unfounded belief in renewable energy and a focus on improving the Internet. Meanwhile, I think he grossly under estimates the impact of 3D printing and consigns quantum computing to the also ran category.
bump
I was going to read it, and then I got to the last paragraph before having to go to the story. If he had to start off with solar and wind energy, the rest was going to poop out.
The differences between the United States with countries like it on one side, and North Korea with countries like it on the other is not due to technology. The real game-changer is politics, and that will be changing in the wrong direction to judge by current trends.
And when we were in high school in the ‘50s, the “futurists” predicted we’d all get around by personal back-pack aircraft by the year 2000. Instead, we sit in traffic jams all over America.
The only thing that is predictable is that the future is unpredictable.
Lotta hype and little information.
Well, dayum! Ten to fifty cents in 12 years? SIGN ME UP!
This mostly a rehash of the same old stuff with $’s attached. Advanced oil and gas recovery, 3 D printing and robotics are the only likely viable mega trends.
The marriage of the cloud/mobile internet to robotics to a polygamous 3D spouse will be the real mega change.
This administration is doing all it can to stymie fracking and other methods of oil and gas extraction.(#3 on the list)
What... like solar and wind... or the Chevy volt? Solyndra. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha that’s some funny sh!t right there!
All controlled by big brother... you behave and be a good boy...
Need + Miracle Discovery = Rapid Growth
If only I could predict the future like that.
Ping for later.
Implicit within media guru Marshal McLuhan’s seminal “Understanding Media- the Extensions of Man” is the postulate that technology is inherently democratizing. We don’t have political democracy without technology, period. The working class has all the rights, mobility, information and tools of the aristocracy of 200 years ago. In social terms, it also has access to the cognitive attributes of the aristocracy- libertine excess, moral ambivalence, egomania, a sense of entitlement and a fixation on ornament, style and status.
This is because the only exemplar for the utility of surplus wealth has historically been its only benefactors- the aristocracy, the latifundia, the oligarchy, the plutocracy. What we desperately need now is an ethics of true efficiency or long term efficiency rather than exploitive efficiency designed for short term gain.
None of these “gee wiz” futurologists have the brains of a turnip. They extrapolate from the obvious to the obvious, meanwhile the modern world turns morality into ground meat for reasons we never seem to understand. Absolutely no popularized futurologist nails the social effects of technology.
We still don’t suss how the telephone, the automobile, electronic media and the Internet have and are currently effecting our ability to control our personal destiny and model a future for ourselves. Technology brings with it cognitive changes that we miss every freaking time.
One thing you can predict with McKinsey is if your firm hires them to study productivity the first thing they will do is recommend cutting at least 10% of the staffing, and load the work on the remaining employees regardless of whether or not they have the resources to do it. Then they’ll study the operations to see how much can be outsourced overseas Of course they’ll recommend their consultants be on board for years with new efficiency projects no doubt costing the company more than the payroll cost of the employees let go. Ultimately the company loses its focus on customers and competition and goes out of business.
McKinsey is the Darth Vader of the management consulting world. Go back and look at the carcasses of American corporations that have died over the past 50 years. You’ll see the mark of McKinsey.
I’m still waiting for the jet pack the promised me back in the 60’s! :O
Look at the ones on the last page that didn’t make the cut.
http://www.realcleartechnology.com/lists/technology-hype-mckinsey/over-hyped.html?state=stop
Next-gen nuclear fission
Fusion
Carbon sequestration
Advanced water purification
Quantum computing
Included in this list imho are the two biggest world beaters: Next-gen nuclear fission and Advanced water purification
I read an ebook last year which made a number of recommendations— two of which have already been acted on. The first was that Bill Gates would jump into the thorium reactor game. The second was that an oil company would jump into the thorium reactor lftr game. (Why Oil? because electricity costs are more than 50% of the costs of in situ mining for oil shale. If electricity costs could be collapsed —then oil could be extracted competitively.)
Collapsing Water and Energy Costs: How Bill Gates [Or You!] Can Create the Inventions That Spark the Next Industrial and Agricultural Revolution [Kindle Edition]
http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y
While the list leaves out Advanced water purification—they leave in Advanced Materials — which is where the big break through in water purification are coming from. In water purification its all about cost. The lower the cost, the more things become possible.
Same with energy. (which plays comprises roughly 1/3 of the cost of desalination.)
Energy is key. If they collapse the cost of energy to 1/4-1/10 the cost of the current cheapest coal —it just explodes the economy. And also makes water desalination cheap enough for agriculture. Thereby making it economically possible to turn the deserts to agriculture in the same way the great plains around the world were turned to agriculture 80 years ago. (there are now a total 4 players in the USA involved in thorium reactor R&D and 1 in canada.)
There are a lot of predictions in the book. The most interesting thing however was the vision thing. The ebook said the path to the deserts of the moon and mars leads through the deserts of the earth.
There is a wild hair chance that one of fusion technologies could suddenly make prime time. I have been most impressed by dense plasma focus —which is easier to say than to understand.
I have seen the first generation quantum computer by a company called D-Wave but I’ll bet these are slow to develop and won’t have a major impact for two decades or more.
Carbon sequestration is a non starter but companies like Joule Unlimited which use carbon dioxide to make ethanol and diesel will form some pretty dynamic niche industries and might actually save the coal industry.
Rearden steel