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.
Computer print outs never last (photos) the photographs I keep of my family are all kodack type quality and they go back 100 nplus years....some are silver flash type photography. the new pixel crap is just that....easy to let reality fade as liberals and rinos want it....in order to teach blank slates what they want.
I have no God-given talents except computer programming, and that will be taken over by AI in 2030.
Well, I can write, and I can hit it pretty good.
So there's that.
Oh, great. I can buy socks online while being driven.
I like the concept of having a self driving car. But I like the concept of being able to choose, because I like driving. And having a car that drives you, but belongs to someone else who runs what controls the car is repellent to me.
It smells of statism.
Weird. I know your MIL.
This is a conversation from a video game released in 1999, before the World Trade Center bombing, the patriot act, Facebook, etc. It is a science fiction spy story called Deus Ex, set in the 2050s. When I first heard this, I thought it was clever dialog. Little did I know sixteen years later I would be living in that world.
Oh, come on. The government will just give us money, we won’t have to work.
“Nobody has figured out what to do with a growing surplus population.”
Robots could build and operate cities underground, undersea and in outerspace; with hydroponic gardens.
The costs of production should drop toward just the cost of materials and energy.
Driverless cars will take you anywhere the government wants you to go.
Unless your prints are dye-transfer, and they’re not, the dyes in them will fade over time and the color will end up being painful to watch. The reason black and white prints last practically forever is that metallic silver don’t fade.
And there’s no reason your digital images will go away is if you save them as files.
I remember that concept. Seemed like a good idea.
But here we are, two years later, and not a peep.
But I am trying to remember her name.
Mendacity? Nah. But close. :-)
Complicity? Nah. That makes me feel guilty.
Felicity? Nah. Too good to be true.
Necessity. That is IT! Hi Mom!
And millions starved when computerized food production and distribution failed.
We’re all going to be couch potatoes, with computers and robots doing everything for us.
IOW, the method for extinction of the human race is almost upon us.
Even Uber will be a thing of the past, since, our computer and robot overlords will do all of our errands, after they figure out what our needs are.
We’ll finally have 0% unemployment, since, nobody will need to be working, and only those working will be counted in the employment figures, but, since people will cease to look work, they will all not be counted.
I don’t think I’ll be around to enjoy “our” new future (unless somebody or some computer figures out how to stop aging), but those left behind will be happy with their Utopia.
It will come.
And the much more interesting future is almost here. Imagine the wonderful opportunities for imports with defaults of the biggest governments and fuel at $20 per gallon.
;-)
Everyone assumes that Kodak was blind...I am not one of those.
Kodak went exactly where the board of directors wanted it to. Nobody...and I mean nobody is THAT stupid at the COE level. At some point, the board of Directors decided that they were going to end Kodak. They had a pile of businesses that were successful (i.e. chemistry) and a bunch of others that were doing OK, and some that were a mess.
The sold off some of their core businesses to focus on a failing business (imaging). They had a bunch of patents that they developed, they funded research on such things while they were flush with cash, but management had no understanding of what value they could be in the out years.
Yet they members of the Board knew. How? Because they were all members of the boards of other companies who could profit from the use of those patents without paying a hefty license fee to Kodak, and so Kodak’s fate was sealed.
Eastman Chemical, Geospatial to ITT, Blood Analyzers to J&J, and on and on. Until all that was left is what was Kodak of the 20th century, in the 21st century and doomed to bankruptcy. Exactly what they wanted and their IP would go for pennies. Eastman Kodak had huge liabilities in Kodak Park East and KP in general. There is all sorts of nastiness in the ground in KP-E and a huge tax burden for KP-West... Bankrupt there is nobody left to sue and the taxpayers get stuck with the cleanup.
The thought of AI sexbots passing the Stuxnex virus to humans is terrifying!
It’s always a pet peeve of mine when I hear “Moore’s Law.”
70% of jobs vanish all while hyper-advanced, more expensive cars enter an already over-regulated, over priced market? Uhm. No. Plus, I like to drive. I like to own. “Renting” transportation is the sad, lowered expectation of an inner city socialist.
This also assumes that cities will remain, even as millineals are leaving the cities. Uber is not a small town or long distance business model. Plus, If I’m an Uber driver transporting one person to work, that is, at best, a net zero improvement over current traffic levels. It just means I’m spending $400 a month forever on a cab instead of a 36 month car payment.
Solar power? It drives UP the cost of power in every market it enters. And delivers less power. I’ve been hearing about solar fantasies my entire life.
3D printing is nice, but my wife can’t fix a paper jam. A 3D printer would piss her off. Big time.
Nope. Nope. Technology has a tipping point and the younger generation’s interest in all things that avoid technology should raise eyebrows... They sold more typewriters last year than in the past ten.
I have photographs....the negative’s of some.....digital prints do not last.....UNLESS you use PHOTOGRAPHIC quality paper(KODAK quality)....your defense of the “digital/electronic “file” is laughable as they can be altered as a negative can’t. Contrast in quality and longevity between the two is a joke.
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