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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.
That list looks like everything that was promised at a 1950's World Fair Expo.
Self driving cars being the main culprit for making things boring
Replacing one of the shittiest experience that people would rather not do during the day and freeing up time for me to do more exiting stuff like post on Slashdot is quite the opposite really.
Driving is a wonderful experience, through the mountains, in a convertible, wind in my hair, or around a track at speed throwing my side to side as I tear through corners. But otherwise I can't wait for literally anything to replace my commute, and I feel like this without even being stuck in traffic like many people here would be on a daily basis.
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.
>> 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.
If aging is resolved, why would you retire?? Slave forever!
I can't call that English
You missed the point, this is much more '11 dreams I hope will become true to maximise MY investments'
Or do you think 'an American internet entrepreneur' is doing his best for the health and happiness of others?
btw, several of the items are quite obvious astroturfing.
9, is downright funny, there is, by definition, less than 1 pound of water in 1 pound of beef, unless this guy thinks
cattle magically transmute h2o into something else. there is much MUCH more waste of produced food that limitation
on production.
5, is quite obviously the dream of someone who sees himself in the 'winning' side of that equation with little care for those
who will find themselves on the losing side (which will be many, unfortunately). Pop goes your knowedge-based-economies.
7, is just silly, blockchains dont in any way suddenly revolutionise anything - they are one cute solution to one specific problem.
10, is of no actual value unless the elephant in the corner of medicine is addressed - massive financial graft and inefficiency. Anyone
think that lower internal costs will lead to cheaper service? Didnt think so.
4, Mines (the exploding sort) started out as a military technology also ;) any link between GPS and Drones via military as a sign of social benifit is... tenuous at best.
But hey, he is just hoping we drink the coolaid and help out his portfolio I am sure. Good luck with that.
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.
Because I'm too old too keep people off my lawn all by myself.