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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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 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.
2. Clean Energy: Someone Else's Wealth.
How so? Buy a solar panel, mount it on your roof (or on a pole if local safety regulations make it easier), and harvest your own clean energy.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: Someone Else's data collection.
How so? If you want, you can install a Gapps-free ROM on a Nexus phone.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Someone Else's knowledge
You assume that nobody puts the course material under a license for free cultural works.
...that no employer will ever esteem as highly as a degree.
What employer? In the gig economy, a high-quality education will include a course on how to be an independent contractor.
11. A New Space Age: Someone Else's patent.
Unlike copyrights, patents expire.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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?
Because I'm too old too keep people off my lawn all by myself.
Crypto currencies haven't had much of an impact on the vast majority of people, but for criminal enterprises they've solved lots of problems.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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."
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