Posted on 06/08/2016 6:21:13 PM PDT by SamAdams76
In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85 percent of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went 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 way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age.
Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now 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 percent accuracy compared with 70 percent accuracy when done by humans.
So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90 percent less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain. Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.
Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for 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 with 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 can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95 percent less cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.
Most car companies might become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.
Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.
Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.
Electric cars will become mainstream until 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.
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 anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.
Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.
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 3D printing 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 have 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 already 3D printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.
Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.
Work: 70-80 percent of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.
Agriculture: There will be a US$100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day in their fields. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30 percent of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).
There is an app called “moodies” which can already tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.
Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.
Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it’s 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more that one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100.
Education: The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70 percent of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries.
We have already released our software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer, because I see an enormous potential. We will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.
Ping for Later
Even the robot maid won’t be safe from Arnold. ;-)
People are not going to wholesale abandon that freedom and security and joy.
But taxi's with drivers, or buses or long haul trucks will be gone in 10 years, max.
Completely gone.
Same with tractors and most farm equipment...robots. Trains. Probably airplanes. Cargo ships.
And I don't believe we'll ever get rid of lawyers.
“I have used AirBnB a fair amount, including for travel in Europe. Sometimes great, sometimes just fair, but never had a bad experience.”
My son’s friend booked an AirBnB for an out of town bachelor party for my son and four friends. The place was advertised as being able to sleep five. They arrived to find out three of the beds were children sized.
Funny you mention Slovenia. That’s a place I’d like to visit, along with Venice. If I ever set foot on an airplane again.
How will people buy the stuff that gets produced if they have jobs and therefore no money?
Why would stuff be produced if most people do not have the income to purchase it?
How will people buy the stuff that gets produced if they have jobs and therefore no money?
How will people buy the stuff that gets produced if they have NO jobs and therefore no money?
Ho hum. Would be nice if this mythology was true. Pie in the sky stuff written by a high school student in a Third World country.
“Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean.” Goof ball.
“Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years.” Dream on, buddy.
No mention of three American technologies that should be used today in order to help families globally and clean the environment:
Plasma recyclers (even recycles nuclear waste)
Boron engines (cars can run for years on a trunk full of boron)
Integral Fast Reactors (God’s gift to humanity from Cal Tech.)
People will give up driving cars eventually— it will only be a matter of when— no accidents and no death is a pretty good motivator, as well as the other benefits.. As processing speeds increase, it will be like saying that someone today would multiply 20,584 x 13,567,450 manually instead of using a calculator..
As technology increases, energy is already getting cheaper (see fracking)..
But spell-check and grammar-check will still be sub-standard.
Regards,
For the sake of argument, let's assume this will be true. If most people don't have jobs, they will have no income from their labor. How will people buy stuff with their primary source of income gone?
Who cares what the 99.9% of the population consisting of poor shlubs can't buy? The 0.1% of the population that are multi-billionaires will consume enough for everyone!
Regards,
I am not gonna have computer algorithms determine my car is the one to crash for it estimating it will save the most people. And they have damn well talked about this.
You are assuming no glitches or power failures or computer failures or mechanical failures or algoritm flaws can occur in this utopian system.
We ain’t nowhere until we have flying cars.
Been waiting for that since 1965.
I’m holding out for a job at Spacely Sprockets.
When I try to multiply large numbers like that, all I get is a bunch of numbers followed. a large E.
So I have to get a piece of paper to figure it out
I wonder How student Sharapunda would deal with it?
With Kodak gone I wonder what has happened to the cattle bone industry.
Kodak used to be a huge market for chemically liquified cattle bones as the base to their film.
“Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free. “
There was something on the news yesterday about AT&T creating some Internet-of-things health device company, down in Texas.
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