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Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology (medium.com)
Chris Dixon, an American internet entrepreneur and investor in a range of tech and media companies including Kickstarter and Foursquare has written an essay on Medium highlighting some of the reasons why we should be excited about the future of technology. The reasons he has listed are as follows: 1. Self-Driving Cars: Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3-5 years they'll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
All I'm seeing in this list is "more ads, more analytics, more rent extraction through middle men and IP monopolies."
And number 11? Let me be perfectly clear: THERE WILL NEVER BE A FIDUCIARY ARGUMENT TO PURSUE SPACE EXPLORATION WITHOUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING.
These things have been around for some time now, with near ZERO effect on the world. Now I'm supposed to be excited about the future because of them? Meh.
Not the future. Low end cell phones have better specs than the Cray Y-MP supercomputer at my university.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3â"5 years they'll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
Hackable cars, easier surveillance, depressing.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
Expensive energy, depressing.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
People avoiding the real world more, depressing.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
Flying bombs and deathtraps, depressing.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
It'll enslave us all, depressing.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
NSA can process the taps locally, depressing.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
Economics, depressing.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
More know-it-alls who can't think rationally on the market, depressing.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
Soon we can kill off all the animals and plants and replace them with factories, depressing.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
Combine this with AI and VR, what could possibly go wrong, depressing.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
The rich will either force the poor up into space, or go themselves to escape the pollution, depressing.
Self driving cars being the main culprit for making things boring, but the rest of them don't fill me with excitement either. The future seems to be clean, sterilised, free from madness, politically correct and by-the-book. It also seems to be filled with capitalists who want to automate their entire business and live a life of hedonism on the bahamas while everyone else supposedly keeps working for their money.
Tl;dr? The future is a load of sh1t really
That list looks like everything that was promised at a 1950's World Fair Expo.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Someone Else's Car.
2. Clean Energy: Someone Else's Wealth.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Someone Else's data, displayed.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Someone Else's "paperless office" or "alternatively fueled car".
5. Artificial Intelligence: Someone Else's algorithm on Someone Else's CPU.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: Someone Else's data collection.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Someone Else's wealth.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Someone Else's knowledge...that no employer will ever esteem as highly as a degree.
9. Better Food through Science: Someone Else's farm.
10. Computerized Medicine: Someone Else's algorithm.
11. A New Space Age: Someone Else's patent.
at the combination of #1 & #5
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
1. Too expensive, and not even close to being able to operate in "most driving conditions"
2. NIMBYs
3. People with motion sickness and vision problems (ie glasses)
4. Dromes-too small(battery/carrying capacity); Flying cars- too expensive, airspace regulation and pilot licensing, gravity(what happens when they fail at altitude)
5. Still not close
6. So...faster youtube watching and instagramming (what about data plans to match?)
7. Lack of acceptance on cryptocurrencies and massive public failures and hacking of exchanges
8. Useless on a resume, no accredited degree=no job
9. What good are medical breakthroughs that no one can afford?
10. OK, this one actually is kind of exciting. Hopefully the commercial launch providers are able to drum up enough business before government funding gets cut even more.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You must be young. Old folks like me know that aging has been working for some time now. Now get off my lawn.
I want the opposite. Eleven reasons NOT to be excited about technology. It's MUCH more fun delivering doom and gloom than happiness to my co workers.
Aging, yes. What to do after your retirement funds run out before you can live an extra 30, 40 or 50 years? No so much.
>> High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
This has been true of libraries and the early days of the Internet as well: there's PLENTY of free material available to those who want to learn something. However, most people still spend most of their time consuming pop/political lit or playing games instead of learning or contributing anything worthwhile.
And...you'll still need a degree to get a job, and what you learn online isn't going to help there except to let you skate through a class or two at the university.
1. Please someone else should be the guinea pig before I use it. Great technology but right now not ready yet. Maybe in 10 years if there is continued development. Either way, it means more tracking and tracing, that's bad.
2. We have to do it one way or another, so either we figure it out, or lots of people will face the consequences.
3. VR? yes, please. Augmented reality? No thanks, it just allows even more tracking and tracing.
4. Flying cars are an energy waste. Most of the energy is required to keep those things in the air. Drones are too, but if they are popular enough maybe we will get a pneumatic tube like system for the smaller and mid sized things, and drones for the larger things.
5. AI is going to be one of those things that will only work in the cloud. I for one welcome our new cortana overlord.
6. Its nice but these supercomputers are sold and marketed and used as consumption devices, not as devices you really are productive with.
7. The banking industry had a digital revolution long overdue.
8. It has already arrived. Just take a look at wikipedia.
9. Its a good concept but we should NOT do things like giving antibiotics to lifestock so that we can put them even closer together. That just creates germ immunities, and threatens human treatments.
10. But make them secure. Current medical devices have tons of security holes. Hackers shouldn't be able to hold humans ransom.
11. Space is nice, but mostly something for dreams, and not real life.
I'd like to add 12, as it wasn't mentioned. With the invention of CRISPR, we will see lots of genetical engineering appear, and many illnesses will be successfully fought with that technique.
The First World will certainly "benefit", the Third World doesn't really get much from this list.
We're so coddled that we still only think about ourselves and the world we imagine we'd like to live in (even though the one we're in is already extremely cushy for the most part).
Let's not forget that not everyone has it anywhere near as good as we do. They may not want to live like us, but they want to live without the constant threat of hunger, violence or even just a heavy rain.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
0. Upcoming global extinction event due to meteor impact combined with the automation of the workfource, outsourcing everyone, laying off 90% of employees in the next 10 years, and paying the rest minimum wage..... US degenerating to a communist state, Hillary seizing all the guns, ISIS bioterrorists deploying global anti-human microbes, launching dirty bombs and mass-executions, and North Korea nuking us all......
May happen before we get all those cool new technologies. Not to be pessimistic about it..... just be realistic. The world is going to hell amidst other good things being worked on.
.
Under the driving forces of businesses who want to profit from the near-continual violation of my privacy, technology has become more and more of an unwelcome intrusion into my life.
If aging is resolved, why would you retire?? Slave forever!
I can't call that English
Some of us actually do enjoy driving, track/race and are quite good at it.
That's a far different thing from 99.9999% of the driving most of us do. I get to drive roughly 60 minutes per day for my commute round trip. There is nothing enjoyable about the drive and changing to an exciting car wouldn't make it more exciting. If my commute is something you would find fun then I would wonder what is wrong with you. The vast majority of my driving time is a waste of my life. It is unproductive, boring, occasionally dangerous, polluting and wasteful. Sure getting behind the wheel of a fast car on a track is a blast but very little driving even remotely fits that description.
I am unable to drive because of vision problems. Self-driving cars will be life-changing for me. The rest of it, meh...
I think Medium tries to disguise itself as not "just a blog host" through not using a subdomain per user and not offering as much customization.
Why it hasn't bought small.com and large.com is beyond me.
Spectacular lack of imagination. Good job. Keep masturbating to your 1950s space fantasies though.
I'm still waiting for my flying car and Venusian girlfriend.
"Personal flying vehicles" seem like a good idea to people who have never experienced weather and don't know how flight systems work.
They always throw in a mix of obvious things that are already happening and a few long shots. That way they can point to their awesome ability to get so many right, and occasionally they even guess correctly on something unexpected.
What, someone likes to drive?
I shouldn't jinx myself, but I've been driving since 1981, and haven't caused an accident.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
If aging is resolved, why would you retire?? Slave forever!
For most Americans, retirement is not an option. This will be glaringly obvious in 2030 when the baby boomers are retired, the workforce (tax base) is smaller, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare.
1. Self-Driving Cars: another excuse to buy a new car....
2. Clean Energy: Good, but still the production of materials needed for Solar, etc, are environmentally expensive.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: another excuse to buy a new TV.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: more "stuff" to buy.
5. Artificial Intelligence: something else to annoy me. Regular people are enough.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: another excuse to buy a new phone.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: the economy must be based on resources, not money.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Good, knwoledge is never enough.
9. Better Food through Science: Keep off my beef!
10. Computerized Medicine: Educate people not to get sick first, THEN seek new meds.
11. A New Space Age: good, as long I can get a beef on Mars....
\m/
Are you so messed up that you think that working == being a slave?
Sad. Just fvking sad.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
1. Self-Driving Cars: If the tech and legal issues ever get sorted, it can be great. But that's nowhere near happening, so the hype machine needs to continue to roll to continue bringing in new investors.
2. Clean Energy: Very expensive and requiring massive diversity of investment. Wind and solar (the big "new" players) are not for every environment. Moreover, there has only been minimal gains in the grid balancing act required to make use of these intermittent energy sources.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Porn and games. For all other applications, it would just be too much of a distraction.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Drones come with MASSIVE safety and privacy risks. Flying cars are and always will be BS.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Always just around the corner.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: If we can designate smartphones supercomputers because they're as powerful as supercomputers once were, then I am the smartest man on Earth (by comparison to pre-Enlightenment Europe).
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Until there's a means of securing cryptocurrencies in peoples' hands, they will never gain sufficient faith for widespread usage. Until then, they're just volatile niche currencies.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Online Education will be crap until you can figure out a way to use it to consistently educate the lower socio-economic ranks. Until then, we're going to continue to NEED to require them to physically show up to a classroom with humans adjusting to the needs of the students.
9. Better Food through Science: This is the past. We've been doing this for hundreds of years.
10. Computerized Medicine: Which will be useless unless our social policies surrounding the relationships between medical costs and medical profits aren't addressed.
11. A New Space Age: This is where the drones comes in. Today's governments are spending more money on keeping their populations healthier and prolonging lives. As they invest more, there will be less money for exploration (and 99% of exploration is funded by governments). It is, and will continue to be for a long time, to just send drones to do our exploration for us.
Or even better, export the elderly to give them care in foreign countries. The cheap labor will be happier as they can stay with the family, the relatives will be happier as they now have a reason to visit less often, and it will be cheaper overall.
self driving cars -- now you can work on the way to work twice as far away. I hope you didn't have a fun car that you enjoyed driving.
clean energy -- round eight of the same problem
VR -- stop going outside or enjoying other people.
drones and flying cars -- louder bigger insects, and bullshit on the flying cars
AI -- we're nowhere near computers making decisions. we still don't have voice recognition (voice analysis we have, but it can't handle the standard cocktail party effect)
pocket supercomputers -- again, stop enjoying other people
cryptocurrencies -- I've never had a problem with the money in my pocket, my mattress, nor my bank. have you?
online education -- again again, stop enjoying other people. learn from machines instead.
science food -- yeah, 'cause the farm-fresh stuff that grows in the ground is jus awful.
computer medicine -- happy to hear it. along with hearing aids and glasses, everything affects someone sometime. Look forward to living longer with machines and work, and never enjoying other people.
space -- there's plenty of space here. loads of places I haven't been. billions of people I haven't met. I'm not yet done here. I don't need to leave.
Has it? I can't remember...
Can always import cheap labor to tend to the elderly.
Or build robots like the Japanese.
Perhaps the better term OP meant to use was 'serf'. Not technically a slave, but the vast majority of resources and wealth created going to someone else, so much so that one is beholden for one's family, food, and shelter to some other 'owner class' that organizes the available jobs, housing, and economic framework, making it very difficult-to-impossible to become self-sufficient unless part of that owner class.
Like publishers say: "pay good authors enough to eat, but never enough to retire" (or something like that).
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? I'd rather see a future where more people have leisure time and enough wealth to be able to enjoy themselves without interruptions.
This list doesn't say why any of these things would be beneficial. Take self-driving cars (just because it's at the top of the pile). The benefits are not having to own your own vehicle, being able to get pissed out of your skull and still get home, better access for disabled people, not having to take a test, less congestion, sleeping on the way to work, not having to pay for the vehicle when you're not using it, not having to worry about it being broken - just send for another one.
These are what people will buy into the technology for, not simply to say "Look at me! I've got a driverless car" which seems to be the geek's motivation.
But when it comes to other items, such as AI, the benefits of raw, naked, AI are never stated. Will it really benefit Joe Average to have a computer in his / her / its pocket that is smarter than they are?
And a final point worth considering: how many of these "exciting" technologies will be centrally controlled?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Public libraries are a vastly under-utilized resource. When I was a kid, I loved spending time there, looking for exciting books to read. One of my best finds was a book on nuclear fission and fusion by Glenn Seaborg. I pored over that book, checking it out time after time after time.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Perhaps the better term OP meant to use was 'serf'. Not technically a slave, but the vast majority of resources and wealth created going to someone else, so much so that one is beholden for one's family, food, and shelter to some other 'owner class' that organizes the available jobs, housing, and economic framework, making it very difficult-to-impossible to become self-sufficient unless part of that owner class.
So... the owner class is the politicians and the Federal government?
You did see "flying car" on the list in the write-up, did you not? I did not put it there — we've been dreaming about them for decades. My point is, they would've been "here" earlier, had it not been mandatory to finance the surface-roads too.
As for the actual dangers, well, we've come a long way in the surface car's safety too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Are you so messed up you think everyone has to work in a world with such technology and resources?
To do WHAT?
Nope, the politician may be wealthy but they must do favors for the owner class in order to raise funds for their re-election campaigns.
Why do you want to build elderly retired robots?
I would equally ask what's wrong with you that you wouldn't enjoy being behind the wheel of an exciting car, even in traffic
Doesn't matter what kind of car it is if I'm stuck in traffic. I've owned a number of fast fun cars. Still boring as shit in traffic. They're only fun when you can actually use them to some significant percentage of their potential. What is the point in owning a fast Mercedes when you cannot drive it faster than the posted speed limit on a congested road? Drag race between stoplights? Maybe that's fun when you are a teenager. Cool looking car? That's the outside and I don't get to look at it. Great handling? Useless on my daily commute unless I'm avoiding an accident.
Would I buy a Model S or a Nissan GT-R if I had the funds? Sure. But for my daily commute there would be little entertainment value in them. They're only really fun when you can thrash them a bit and go around some bends at butt puckering speeds.
If aging is resolved, why would you retire?? Slave forever!
Not so. Technology will also replace all or most of the jobs as well. You won't so much retire as be retired!
I hate to break it to folks, there is no such thing coming.
The industrial use and production of energy is a messy business, both environmentally and financially. This will not change.
Consider the recent advent of two major "clean" energy alternatives, solar and wind. They are FAR from "clean" environmentally no matter how you slice them. Photovoltaic solar is really a horrible thing for the environment. Manufacturing and scrapping of solar cells is a messy thing and creating and operating those "let's build a huge array of mirrors to focus the sunlight to make something really hot thing is even worse as it takes huge swaths of land, has a serious issue with local wildlife and is *really* expensive. Wind isn't all that much better. It takes large areas of land, puts substantial structures on it and has a detrimental affect on the local environment too (killing birds, bats, bugs and such).
About the only real hope here is fusion, but we are a LONG way from even being able to field an operating industrial level facility so there is no way we can judge the environmental impact of such a thing. I can tell you that right now, they are pretty messy, with superconducting magnets and emitting radiation.
"Clean" energy is like "Free" food. It doesn't really exist.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
For most Americans, retirement is not an option. This will be glaringly obvious in 2030 when the baby boomers are retired, the workforce (tax base) is smaller, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare.
Quick we need to lower taxes even further. That would help because Reasons.
All of these technologies are pretty exciting, but there are a lot of disruptive things in there, particularly as it relates to displacing workers' jobs. The first item on the list is going to cause a huge shift as truck, taxis and bus drivers all start losing jobs en masse. None of them are likely to be happy about having to retrain for new, more difficult work (any more than buggy whip manufacturers were) and most will likely just be added to the millions of people disenfranchised with the new economy. This is a dangerous situation. What good is a grand new economy if there's nothing in it that I can see myself getting paid to do?
For a while I was wondering if we'd see a resurgence of co-operatives, where a community gets together and builds their own little economy, with a small farm and some skilled trades people. You'd at least be able to live a reasonably happy life. Unfortunately I can't see that happening. How would that community pay the ever-increasing land use fees such as tax, etc.? That land becomes more and more valuable to the people who have money, and they can just force the have-nots off the land.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The mention of future clean energy does not mention any nuclear energy source, which mean we either won't have energy, won't have clean energy, or we won't have a future.
Wind and solar exist in the marketplace because of subsidies. Those subsidies are possible because of fossil fuels and nuclear, they fund the market so that they can produce taxes for the wind and solar companies to stay in business. To those that claim nuclear, coal, and oil are subsidized I will concede that is true. What I will point out is that even if the subsidies go away we'd still be using coal, oil, and nuclear fission. If the subsidies for wind and solar go away then so does the wind and solar manufacturing.
In fact I'd like to test my theory. Let's end all energy subsidies and let the market figure it out. Not only do I believe that wind and solar would nearly disappear but I believe that nuclear would gain. If I'm right or wrong then we all win with a freer market and cheaper energy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
And you, sir, no doubt are a billionaire, since you've declared that you're one of those who subscribe to the idea that only lazy people are poor.
I'm terrified. Most of this tech is going to cost jobs. In most of the world your entire quality of life is based on your job. Our society simply isn't set up to desk with the sudden mass unemployment that's coming in the next decade or two. People really, really hate the idea of somebody getting paid to loaf around all day. But if there's no jobs the only alternative is mass starvation...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
USA Centric
Medicine is only expensive in the USA, the rest of the world does healthcare better and cheaper or worse and cheaper
NASA's budget is getting smaller .... but the rest of the world is spending as much or more on Space ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Dude, how long have VR and flying cars been promised for? 100 years at most? People sat around waiting for airplanes to be invented for 600 years. Stop trying to slow things down with your negativity. You guys block funding for science and then complain you aren't getting anything out of it. That's what happened to nuclear fusion research, budgets were cut by 90% in the 70s.. and then we are told fusion energy is impossible. wtf.
I don't see "sex robots" in his list of things to be excited about. I fail to understand why I should be excited about self driving cars, but a robot GF would actually change the world.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The problem I have with some of the estimates for water include rainfall in their calculations which I don't think should be. It's been worked out that a certain plant requires a specific amount of water in laboratory conditions. I believe that only water that is added by us should be included in those calculations.
True, laboratory estimates would strictly apply only under the assumption of irrigating a desert. But rainfall isn't free: you need to rent land that receives rain.
There are plenty of immigrants who come to the US with nothing, and make it. If you don't want to work, just admit it, and stop whining that your problems are all because of the one-percenters.
The first quoted sentence makes a far-reaching claim with important implications if true. Yet you have seen fit to make that claim without any attempt at quantification. I do not doubt that there are "plenty" of immigrants who come to the USA with nothing (or very little), and "make it" - for some values of "plenty" and "make it". By the latter, do you mean a billion dollars? A hundred million? One million? Comfortable respectability? Or what?
More important by far, what percentage of those immigrants do you think "make it"? We always hear about the successful ones - even if they comprise only one in a million (as seems likely to me). Just as we hear that "anyone can become rich in America" (especially if they are born rich) and "anyone can become President" (especially if they are born very rich indeed, and into the right dynasty).
I assume that you are not actually a one-percenter yourself - or, more to the point, a 0.01%er, as they are the people who have the power and the really big fortunes. So your remarks are of interest, if only as an example of that odd phenomenon: the "Stockholm Syndrome" that causes so many disadvantaged, exploited Americans to stand up for their exploiters. See, for example, Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America": 'The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically'. (Amazon blurb).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
'Self driving cars' are not 'here today', they're a JOKE, and they will not be 'mainstream in 3-5 years'. At best they'll be allowed to be sophisticated autopilots, so don't throw away your drivers license you'll need it.
Drones need to DIE. Flying cars aren't going to happen.
So-called 'artificial intelligence' is highly overrated and they're using the wrong term for what they have now. When you come to me with a so-called 'AI' that is indistinguishable from a human being in every way then I'll call it an 'AI', until then it's just another silly limited computer program.
'By 2020, 80% of all humans on Earth will carry around personal surveillance platforms that greedy corporations, governments, and criminal organizations use to collect personal data on them that they sell, use for advertising, use to build 'profiles' of people, and use to steal your identity". That's what that line should read. Smartphones are becoming a scourge, not a help.
'Crytocurrencies' need to die. All they're good for, really, is money-laundering by criminals and terrorists.
How about we get some 'high quality PUBLIC SCHOOL education' so kids don't end up dumb and useless?
How about we get doctors to not suck instead of 'computerized medicine'? I don't want an 'automated doctor', I want a HUMAN doctor that knows what the hell they're doing!
Our 'better food through science' may yet kill us all. I've stopped even bothering to talk about it because it's all already in the wind so there's nothing we can do to stop it now. Either our meddling is harmless, or it destroys us. Come back in 20 years and we'll see which it is.
'Clean energy' may or may not catch on. We'll see if India and China get on board for real or if their mad rush to be 1st World Countries means they just keep burning coal. Also, can we get some Thorium up in this mix, please? Seriously stop being paranoid about nuclear power, damnit.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This has been true of libraries and the early days of the Internet as well
Speak for yourself. My recollection of libraries was hours going to a library, sifting through a card catalogue, getting the book you wanted if you were lucky and not having to go on the waiting list and get it in 2 weeks time, finding the information slowly if you're lucky and actually found a good relevant book, and then having to return it shortly after creating even more hassle.
The early days of the internet were much the same. God it sucked going through web-rings trying to find relevant information, hoping someone had something of interest for you posted recently on alt.i.cant.even.remember, and then searching for something on altavista only to find that the article wasn't actually about what you're looking for and the only references to it are in white text on a white background at the bottom of the page to fool the search engine.
Comparing the internet now to the level of information back then is like comparing apples to apple seeds ... which you don't have because someone else currently has them and they won't be returned for another two weeks.
And...you'll still need a degree to get a job
Yes this is infact a downside.
Work until 70-75 to pay for it. It's not a joke... if people are in fact health enough to work at 70-75, why shouldn't they? The expectation of retiring at 60 or even 55 is unrealistic...
Here's a picture of coal mine pollution. It doesn't show the mercury being released into the air when it burns. Do you have any pictures of solar cell pollution, or is that more a hypothetical thing?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"anyone can become President" (especially if they are born very rich indeed, and into the right dynasty).
You do realize that our current sitting president was born in poverty? Yes, Bush, Kennedy, and others were born into rich families, but you can succeed if you actually try. Working for someone else is the surest way to not succeed though. The best way to succeed is to build your own business, and when that fails, get up and try again. Persistence is the thing most people are missing that aren't successful, not being born to the wrong family.
My goal currently is around $2 mil a year, that is doable if you put forth the effort, but I, like many, am too lazy to go out and do it. Maybe one day. I have 4 more years before an empty nest, once I have that, I can start thinking about striking out on my own instead of working for a company.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How about we call it Less Dirty Energy?
The pollution to the environment from making a solar cell one time is far less that the ongoing damage done by fossil fuels.
The wildlife endangered by solar and wind farms is localized and far less than the destruction of all wildlife's habitats by climate change.
But it's your birthday, Eeyore, cheer up, have some cake.
Because I'm too old too keep people off my lawn all by myself.
including germ-line damage that will affect generations of animals in the future.
And what exactly do you think will be the result of all the radiation from the coal?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone.
In the U.S.*, operating a smartphone for a year (to say nothing of purchasing one to begin with) costs well north of $50x12=$600.
The median per capita income worldwide is something like* $2,920.
Even if the 50% of world adults above the median all bought smartphone service, he'd need to get another 30% of adults from below the median to reach his 80%. Those people would be spending something like* 20% of their yearly income on this. No way.
*To be sure, this post uses several approximations (U.S. data plan costs, Gallup's income methodology, etc.), but 80% is a still a fantasy.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone
Dont' you mean "Locked and DRM encumbered Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone"
12. Better porn, higher resolution and more realistic vr.
> Why do you want to build elderly retired robots?
Well, he said the Japanese are doing that, so that's a pretty compelling reason. It worked for selling them love-pillows with the anime babes on them, right?
We do not have the technology for flying cars. We do have the technology for those ridiculous airplanes with folding wings that then look vaguely like a car, we have propellers, as in drones, and we do have noisy, inefficient and expensive rocket technology. But we do not have the technology to develop what we all imagine when we talk about a flying car: a contraption that does look very much like a car, that hovers silently (or nearly so) in the air, and that zips back and forth over no matter what kind of terrain. Not only do we not have such a technology but, in addition, we have no clue how to develop it. There will be no such flying cars in this century.
You seriously miss my point... I'm not claiming coal is clean here.. I'm claiming that solar and wind are NOT without environmental impact when you consider the complete lifecycle of the equipment. Photovoltaic solar is incredibly messy.. Perhaps you don't care because that "mess" is located half a world away (in China) and not in your back yard? The production and maintenance of wind turbines is similar in it's environmental impact and being made from huge amounts of fiberglass will be a HUGE mess to get rid of.. Then there is all the hydraulic oil and lubricants that keep these things pointed in the right direction and the blades turning.... And that's just for starters. Surely you see that even these methods of energy production are not without their problems.
Now if you want to start making noise about what's "cleaner" then have at it with somebody else. Coal is pretty messy stuff, but it's cheap and plentiful. Natural Gas is much cleaner, just not as cheap. Solar is VERY expensive and a pretty big mess too. Wind is not without it's long and short term impacts. Just admit to yourself that "CLEAN ENERGY" doesn't really exist and never will if you are being honest about the total lifecycle of the equipment.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
How about elderly and disabled people and people afraid of driving being able to get out and go places? Not a social improvement?
1. Self driving cars for public use don't exist and I don't see this changing within the next 20 years. Effort required to sufficiently address long tail of operating conditions is greatly underappreciated.
2. Every sentence uttered about "clean energy" reflect lack of understanding by the author.
Quoting IEA EEMR 2014 "In 2011, energy savings from continued improvement in the energy efficiency of 11 IEA member countries equalled 1 337 million tonnes of oil-equivalent (Mtoe). This level exceeded the total final consumption (TFC) from any single fuel source in these countries, and was larger than the total 2011 TFC for the European Union from all energy sources combined. Energy efficiency savings in 11 IEA member countries were effectively displacing a continentâ(TM)s energy demand"
On clean energy it isn't production stupid it is storage an issue completely ignored by the author.
3. VR is a toy for playing games with some niche industry uses (training, simulation, design). This quote about sums it up "People sometimes think VR and AR will be used only for gaming, but over time they will be used for all sorts of activities. For example, weâ(TM)ll use them to manipulate 3-D objects"
I personally think VR as a toy can be a lot of fun which is great. To the extent it "transforms the world" will have more to do with technology addiction. (Like Facebook and cell phones)
4. Flying cars and back to the future quotes.. I'll leave this speak for itself.
5. I wish the author would have provided useful information and context to support "rapid advances" headline. Instead we got van gogh cats and something about Google saving energy.
6. Our first world bullshit is amazing. Here are some other quotes. "More people have a mobile phone than a toilet"... "Every 90 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease".
7. Why should the reader care? What benefit does the user derive? .. Oh fuck it... "Protocols are the plumbing of the internet" and "Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols".
8. God I hope so if people can't even learn shit over the Internet that would be really embarrassing.
You seriously miss my point... I'm not claiming coal is clean here.. I'm claiming that solar and wind are NOT without environmental impact when you consider the complete lifecycle of the equipment.
Walking out your front door is not clean, mate.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He's fine with people who come here legally. That's always been his thing. He's never once said anything about skin color.
For somebody who's supposed to be at the forefront it is very odd to miss the revolution that quantum information processing will bring.
I say bullshit to your comment. I know for personal experience about the selling of crap cars to our young people. They are just trying to get to work and are being exploited to the max. I know that they will pay more than twice what I pay for a vehicle since I always have enough money and they must borrow. I will pay far less for insurance since I do not need full coverage. I know that there are a lot of police out there just trying to generate income by generating fines. Half of which are not even close to fair and the other half could just get a warning but for the need to keep the income flowing. Just watch John Oliver's Last week and one will see how the one per centers are exploiting the poor in this country. They are charging a lot more to the people who have a lot less. So why do both China and Russia believe that they must steal all they can from their neighbors? So why do our rich feel that they need to steal all they can from the average person in this country? If everything is going to be great than why demand that we can not afford heath care and demand that we burn dirty coal and produce all the gas and oil that we can? Please tell the republicans about all the good things that are going to happen because they are trying to scare us about all the horrible things they claim are going to happen.
Retirement as we know it is a very modern phenomena. As recently as 1880 78% of men over the age of 65 were still working, compared to around 20% today. We are already starting to see a trend towards the end of retirement since this number was closer to 10% in 1980.
The initial driving force which created our retirement system was the idea old people are worthless and need to get out of the way. It wasn't some kind of reward for years of hard work, it was only marketed that way. Our economy is already finding uses for older workers and by the time all baby boomers are retired I would be surprised if usage of older workers doesn't ramp up. Advisory or mentoring roles working 500 hours per year would be a great fit, for instance, and could give some supplemental income for those who didn't save enough money. And then there is the likely possibility medical technology improves so that 80 year old's can still function as 50 year old's (or even younger) in the workplace.
There will probably always be a form of disability insurance for those who cannot work for physical or mental reasons above a certain age. But for the rest of the elderly they may take long sabbaticals from time to time but full retirement will probably be a rarity.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
No one wants to beat up their 6 or 7 figure airplane duking it out with rusty old Chevys. The invention of the rental car desk at the airport is the end of flying car dreams. Or...maybe you DO want to spend weeks or months and $50,000 getting a parking lot ding fixed by an FAA certified carbon fiber repair shop.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
The haven't worked enough perhaps, but they have absolutely been working. Energy intensity, the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP has been falling everywhere, and the best economies far out perform the lagging ones (like the United States) so even just implementing proven existing techniques would have great impact. And energy efficiency technologies are making rapid progress - automated control, LEDs, etc. The bang-for-the-buck in energy efficiency is almost always larger than in energy production (i.e. the cheapest energy is the energy that you didn't use). Going forward, emphasis on energy efficiency will be fully as important as changing modes of energy production.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
And clean up after the cows. Every barn everywhere uses a lot of water to wash out mud/waste/dirt/food/etc
Have you ever been in a barn? There isn't a lot of washing going on. Generally, there is a bunch of manure and hay on the floor, once in a while it might get shoveled out but seldom, if ever, gets washed out.
Enigma
Not everyone is capable of doing without new income, not everyone is capable of working for themselves and having their own "business", and even if you do have business you're still a slave to it instead of a slave to a boss that gives you benefits and vacation days. Working for yourself is often more grueling overall. Unlike a slave you can actually opt out, but doing so means your income will drastically drop and now you're competing with other homeless people for the best sleeping spots under the overpass.
I'd rather be an engineer as a hobby than as a profession, but having it as a profession pays better even though it means that most of my day is filled with grunt work, answering stupid quests, helping others get their work done, office politics, pointless meetings, etc.
You have a strange definition of a slave. By your standard anyone who has to do anything to survive is a slave. I think slaves would beg to differ.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Are you referring to his autobiography, Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington ? https://www.amazon.com/Adventu...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We already import cheap labor to care for the elderly.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Are you so messed up that you think that working == being a slave?
A lot of corporations thing that way. Without those evil unions, that's pretty much the way they would treat all of us.
Although old people have trouble working for a variety of reasons. Some of them you can't relate to because they involve things like muscles.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The next step in evolution of the human race is uploading our minds and leaving these frail organic bodies behind.
I guess I'm imaginary, because I retired at 47. The trick is not spending all the money you earn. Most people seem to spend on unnecessary luxuries. It may make them feel better *now*, but they will pay for it later by having to work more.
For cars, phones, my camera....
Where are my graphene nanotubes batteries?
It's a metaphor, and it's been around forever. You're not bound by literal shackles but you're still bound.
TPM does one thing and one thing only: it records the boot process. An operating system can just ignore the TPM entirely and still work.
You mentioned UEFI Secure Boot. Desktop and laptop PCs with an x86-64 CPU that come with Windows 8 or Windows 10 are required to support it. Those certified to run Windows 8 must give the user a way to turn off Secure Boot or change the keys it uses. Microsoft relaxed this in Windows 10, allowing manufacturers to ship PCs with Restricted Boot (FSF's term for Secure Boot that the user cannot alter). In practice, how common are PCs with Restricted Boot?
App Stores: Let me know when Microsoft eats its own dog food by putting Visual Studio in Windows Store as a UWP app.
So many people here posted negatively about online education (expect 1 post I think).
I think you are all wrong. Online information and education is way better than what you can find in books. It's nearly unlimited, more balanced (less biased due to more sources and counterpoints), recent (updated regularly), multi-media (text, video, audio), easily translated, less expensive, less time consuming, cross-referenced and searchable.
I use the library all the time. But I am finding more and more information online that is better, educates me on new ideas faster and without expense of time and money required for traditional methods.
If you don't see this value, then either you are not actively trying to educate yourself today, or you have already invested in an expensive traditional education and do not like the idea that your time and money has been wasted... or at least was not as efficient and thorough as it could have been today.
But more important than how this change will effect you personally... think of the developing countries. Those children do not have the same options as you and online eduction will make a huge difference in the number of children who have the ability to learn at their fingertips. Think of the children (ha ha).
I will grant that some employers still look for traditional certifications for some jobs or to limit the stack of resumes to sift through... but this will change.
There are a lot of brains in the world right now. Allowing them to think harder and work better will make a huge difference. You think India and China are stealing your jobs now? Just you wait until the poor all over the world have access to all the information and tools you get for free and take for granted.
8. High Quality Online education - ONLY If you have good quality internet. So not everyone. Smartphone+1 year's Internet = ($600+12*$30) = $960 Not far off the $1,400 for Encylopedia. OR go to the library and use their facilities.
Ha. I guess you are the type of person who claims that an encyclopedia set is better than wikipedia. It is quaint to see some people still believe that a limited set of proprietary ideas coming from the top down can compete with the whole world working together to collect and distribute information.
And if you actually go to the library, you will see that they are becoming the doorway to the Internet for the poor. Just go into a library, count the seats that are now assigned to shared desktops and designed for laptop usage.
Libraries of the future = online education.
We need to get rid of this thought. It's not going to happen. I'm a pilot and I can tell you the sky is already way over crowded. The last thing we need are a bunch of vehicles in the sky to further crowd it. It would also slow stuff down. Jets would take longer to get to where they are going, just like when you have too many cars on the road it slows down. Sometimes to a crawl.
Popular since the 1950s, it's just not going to happen.
You can always drive on private property or go to a track like other people who want to engage in dangerous activity for entertainment.
If you really like driving, just put on your virtual goggles while on your way to work and pretend your driving anywhere else in the world. You will probably enjoy it more. The simulation can even spew out pollution, squeal tires and make outrageous noise just like you like it.
I think the number 1 reason people don't like to lose driving, is because it is the only time during the morning, that they are required to be fully engaged... and therefore have an excuse to not answer calls and texts for their employer. It isn't control of a car they desire, but rather control over their own time.