Strategies for innovating into the future:
Global futurist and author Jack Uldrich offers essential strategic information on nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, RFID and many other future technologies to help you prosper as exponential trends converge at this unique moment in history.
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Chapter 1: The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
The Future of Robots?
Did you know that if you could fold a piece of paper 50 times it would reach a height of nearly 62 million miles. Such is the incredible power of exponential growth. I now ask you to keep this analogy in mind as you view the future of shape shifting robots. The technology is fairly crude today but if it grows exponentially just imagine how the technology might transform robots for military and health care applications.
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The Future in One Picture
I love this picture. It is a wonderful example of how the future has a way of getting better, faster, smaller and cheaper.
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Futurist Jack Uldrich Keynotes Conference
In the past year, I have given dozens of keynote presentations to a variety of clients. Below is a short 10-minute speaking demo. If you are looking for an engaging, entertaining and informative keynote speaker for your conference or event, please contact either Mimi Hair or Ryan Foltz at Leading Authorities.
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A Million, a Billion, and a Trillion Reasons to Care About the Future
If something doubles just ten times it is one thousand (1024 times to precise) larger. This is an important concept to grasp if you want to better contemplate the future.
Why? Because no fewer than nine technological trends—semiconductors, data storage, bandwidth, genomics, gene sequencing, robotics, nanotechnology, brain scanning and scientific knowledge—are doubling anywhere from every 6 to 18 months.
To put this in some perspective, consider the following examples.
If the military is currently deploying 1000 robots in Afghanistan but the number is doubling every year by 2020 that means there will be one million robots deployed in the country. This will change warfare as we know it.
If Wal-Mart is currently deploying 1 million RFID (radio frequency identification) tags but that number is doubling every year this suggests by 2020 that there will be 1 billion RFID tags deployed. This will fundamentally transform the global supply chain management system.
And if gene sequencing equipment can today translate one billion sequences every few hours (at an estimated cost of $20,000) but the technology is doubling year year, this implies we will be able to translate one trillion genes an hour by 2020. If this comes to pass, sequencing your genome will not only take minutes it will cost pennies on the dollar. Such a change could radically transform how we treat disease and will have profound implications for both the health care and the pharmaceutical industries.
A million, a billion and a trillion might not seem that different (perhaps because they rhyme) but here’s one way to think of the change coming our way:
One million seconds was 12 days ago;
One billion seconds was 32 years ago;
One trillion seconds takes us back to the year 30,000 B.C.
My advice? Buckle up because your future is about to expand in a million, a billion and a trillion different directions.
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ZigBee’s Growing Future
Unbeknownest to most people the number of ZigBee radio chips shipped has been doubling every year in recent years, hitting 20 million in 2009. In 2010, the number is expected to reach 100 million. Soon, it will be 200 million and then 400 million—and, well, if you know how to jump the curve you’ll understanding how the technology will not only effect consumer electronics and utilities but how it may also change human behavior in unexpected ways.
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Powering Your Own Future
"Your home effectively becomes its own power station and gas station,” says Dan Nocera, an MIT chemist and co-founder of Sun Catalytix, in this short and informative video which describes his company’s innovative “direct solar fuels” or “electrofuels.”
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A Shorter Road to Our Energy Future
Michael Totty of The Wall Street Journal has a thoughtful piece in today’s paper entitled The Long Road to an Alternative-Energy Future. For the most part, the article does a good job of explaining the many obstacles that will confront this country’s transition to biofuels, nuclear, wind, and solar power. There is one key point which Totty mentions but completely overlooks and that is the fact that solar power is doubling every couple of years.
From Totty’s perspective just because solar only generates 0.1% of our electricity today it will never be more than a small, niche player in America’s energy equation. As I have done on numerous occasions, let me show you how fast solar energy could grow if it is doubling every two years:
2010—0.1%
2012—0.2%
2014—0.4%
2016—0.8%
2018—1.6%
2020—3.2%
2022—6.4%
2024—12.8%
2026—25.6%
2028—51.2%
2030—100%
Now, I don’t expect solar to meet 100% of America’s electricity needs by 2030 but it is entirely feasible that solar could meet well more than 25 percent—you just have to understand how to “jump the curve.”
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Google Wants to Bring You the Future
Google is reportedly building ultra high-speed broadband networks that are 100-times faster than those in use today. And what, might you ask, will require you to transmit one gigabit of information per second?
That’s a good question. In fact, it may take either a real-time voice translator or a quantum computer to answer it. Luckily, Google is also working on both items.
The future is racing at us at an ever faster pace (as this story about a new robotic actor in South Korea demonstrates). Soon, even “jumping the curve,” won’t be enough—we’ll all need to be capable of quantum leaps. Are you ready?
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Nanotechnology in 250 Words or Less
I was recently asked by a leading nanotechnology consultant, Rocky Rawstern, if I could say anything on nanotechnology to a wider audience but had to keep it under 250 words, what would I say. Here was my response:
To those who don’t believe nanotechnology will change the world in the near future just because it hasn’t accomplished much in the last 20 years, consider this little quiz: If a single lily pad began doubling on a pond on the first day of June and doubled each day thereafter until the entire pond was covered by the end of the month, on Day 20 what percentage of the pond would be covered with lily pads?
The answer is one-tenth of one percent. That’s right, .1%! What happens over the next 10 days is a little short of amazing--the entire pond gets covered. Such is the nature of exponential growth.
Now, advances in nanotechnology aren’t quite experiencing exponential growth but they are close and over the course of the next decade nanotechnology’s impact on material sciences, medicine, and energy are going to be--like the lily pads’ spread over pond in the last few days-- extraordinary.
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Technology Lights the Future
Today is the 130th anniversary of the installation of the first electric streetlight in Wabash, Indiana. At the time, it cost $100 to install the light. More interestingly, just a month later the city paid to have four more lights installed. The rest, as they say, is history as the electric light then proceeded to grow exponentially—like lily pads on a pond.
Today, a view of America at night looks like this picture to the right. I ask you to keep in mind this analogy of how “technology can light the future” when considering how rapidly advances such as robotics and smart dust may unfold once the technology reaches a commercially scalable level.
On a different level, you might also want to consider how the electric light changed people’s behavior. For one thing, the light allowed merchants and others to stay open later. Ultimately, it lead to such things as sporting events being played in the evening.
My point is this: When considering how technology expands you also need to consider how widespread adoption of technology might change people’s behavior. For example, continued advances in robotics might allow senior citizens to stay in their homes longer and have an adverse impact on the aging services industry. Similarly, the rapid proliferation of “smart dust” could make once unsafe neighborhoods suddenly safe and lead to more people living in certain urban environments.
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iPad’s Foldable Future
Will Apple’s latest gadget, the iPad, become a commercial success? I don’t know. My personal guess is that it will be moderately successful in the short to mid-term. The applications for gaming, e-books and in the health care arena are all very promising and the developer community is sure to come up with some amazing (and yet-to-be imagined) “apps” for the device.
Longer-term, though, I believe the iPad will only be successful if it can transition to flexible electronics. Specifically, I think the device will need to be able to fold up and fit in a person’s pocket before it becomes a truly revolutionary device. Steve Job’s statement that the device fits a niche between the mobile phone and the laptop computer is correct, but he misses the broader point by not recognizing that this will soon be a false choice.
With the advent of flexible electronics, a single device should be able to morph into different objects depending upon need. (As Jobs said yesterday, “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hand.” It is but what I think people really want is the ability to hold the Internet in their hands and, afterwards, fold it up and put it away in their pocket or purse.)
I recognize that the technology does not yet exist (at least a commercially-scalable and affordable level) but it is coming as this visionary video from Nokia suggests:
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The Future of Manufacturing
In the 1991 hit movie, Pretty Woman, Richard Gere was shown using a huge, bulky cellphone. At the time, it was state-of-the-art and cost about $5000. Today, cellphones are everywhere. I encourage you to watch the video on this crude $950 3-D printer and think of it as Richard Gere’s cellphone in 1991. The technology is only going to get better, faster and cheaper and, by the end of the decade, I expect many people to own 3-D printers.
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IBM Thinks 10X
A while back, I wrote an article suggesting that to prosper in the future executives should ”think 10X, not 10%.” In other words, people need to think exponentially, not incrementally, about emerging technologies. Today, the New York Times is reporting that executives at IBM are seeking to manufacture a new lithium-air battery which will be a 10X improvement over existing battery technology.
The technology is still years off but if the company—or some other company—is successful, it will represent a major paradigm-shift in everything from how we power our automobiles to how we might store the excess electricity generated by wind turbines during the evening hours.
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The Future of the Utility Industry
Over the past year, I have addressed a great many organizations involved in the utility industry. Part of my message has focused on how technology is transforming many aspects of their business. Another part of my message focuses on how advances in solar, wind, clean coal, fuel cell technology, geothermal, marine power and demand-management technologies—which I covered in my latest book, Green Investing -- will change their business.
The biggest part of my message, however, centers on how industry leaders need to “jump the curve” and begin thinking much differently about the future.
To this end, there is a wonderful article in this month’s Fast Company entitled ”Beyond the Grid.” From my perspective, the operative quote is this one, ”Distributed energy is happening.”
Let me repeated that: ”Distributed energy is happening.” It is a message everyone involved in the utility business should take to heart—immediately. Due to politics, the regulatory environment, as well as the inertia of human behavior, distributed energy and the micro-grid won’t arrive tomorrow but innovative utilities need to begin planning now—not in 5 or 10 years—for this new future.
Many utilities will argue that due to economies of scale that they can continue to produce and transmit electricity better and cheaper. And this is true—today.
As long-time readers know, I am a huge fan of history and years ago executives in the railroad industry laughed off competition from the airline industry because their consultants argued that rail would always be cheaper than flight. These consultants failed to recognize that customers would value time and convenience more than price. In much the same way, the microgrid will yield benefits beyond price.
In much the same way, executives at Ma Bell also laughed off the idea that their exulted status could be challenged. Today, as we know, things are much different in the telecommunications arena. Could the same happen in the utility industry? Sure. Wind and solar power are not price-competitive with coal and nuclear power today, but they are improving quickly and grid-parity is on the horizon.
If one studies the trends and the technologies affecting the utility industry as I do, it is easy to imagine a much different future for the utility industry than the one that exists today.
The prudent utility companies should be planning today for how they intend to first survive and, then, how they might even thrive in this new environment.
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Jump the Curve at Half the Price with the Latest Supercomputer
Last fall, in this article (Businesses Latest Tool: The Supercomputer) I explained how a variety of businesses were using Cray’s lsupercomputer to not only fundamentally transform their business processes but also save millions of dollars. Well, in yet another example of exponential growth, Cray has now cut the price of its latest supercomputer in half to $12,000. This is still expense but ask yourself the alternative: If the device can help you save big, big money can you afford not to use it? The answer is obvious.
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Algae’s Growing Future
As a professional futurist, I spend a great deal of time reading the back sections of newspapers looking for small trends which could grow larger in the future. Yesterday, I happened across two articles suggesting that algae—for the production of both oil and ethanol—may have a promising future.
First, in an item that should have attracted more attention, Exxon announced that it would be partnering with Craig Venter and his new company Synthetic Genomics in a $600 million R&D effort to develop genetically modified strains of algae that can both suck up excess carbon dioxide and secrete oil. If the companies can pull off this feat—and I’ll be the first to admit that significant technological challenges remain—they can make money two ways. First, they could sell the oil to refineries. Secondly, in the likely event the federal government imposes some sort of regulation on CO2, they can benefit by pulling the greenhouse gas out of the environment.
The second item was equally intriguing. Dow announced its was partnering with Algenol Biofuels on the creation of a new demonstration plant to efficiently produce ethanol from algae. If successful, the ethanol will be used by Dow to make plastics.
As I am fond of saying, the future is already here ... it just isn’t evenly distributed. In perhaps five to ten years time, Algae’s potential to produce oil and ethanol could explode as fast as scum can sprout on a pond during a hot summer day.
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The Future of Manufacturing
“If you’re in the manufacturing business and you’re not worried, really concerned about what the future will do to your company, you’re not really cognizant of what’s going to be coming down the pike.” Peter Diamandis, Co-founder of Singularity University
I love the above quote. It is a message that I constantly emphasis with my corporate clients and it is why I recently put together this short 4-minute video explaining why business leaders need to unlearn their worldview. For additional information on how fast the manufacturing world is changing, I refer you to the articles below.
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The Future Will Blow You Away
Dear Readers:
I am off to enjoy this Memorial Day weekend. Here is a short video that I produced last year. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth five minutes of your time.
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Robots: The Ultimate Killer App?
P.W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” provides an excellent overview of how far robotics have already advanced in this provocative TED presentation:
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Jump the Curve to a New, Astounding View
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Twitter is Exponential. What Does it Mean?
As you can see from the chart to the right, Twitter—like Google, Wikipedia and, most recently, FaceBook—is experiencing exponential growth. I have recently become enamored of Twitter and it is why I’m sponsoring this contest.
After reading this piece in Techcrunch the other day I have, however, begun wondering more about what direction(s) the platform and the technology will head. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts—and that’s regardless of whether you are a Twitter and think it is the best thing since sliced bread or a non-Twitter and believe it is just another over-hyped, unprofitable Web 2.0 wannabe that will soon be yesterday’s news.
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Jump the Curve Strategy #2: Take a Bird’s Eye View of the World
Without question, one of the most extraordinary exponential thinkers the world has ever known was Leonardo da Vinci. In the early sixteenth century he was already envisioning helicopter-like contraptions, tanks, bicycles, calculators, and even the concentrated use of solar power.
Lesser known than many of his other works of art is a painting called The Bird’s Eye-View of a Landscape. In it da Vinci paints the Tuscan landscape as imagined from the perspective of a bird. The painting is remarkable because the viewpoint is far higher than any building in Florence could have afforded da Vinci at that time.
The painting required da Vinci to envision himself on a perch a few thousand feet high. Interestingly, if da Vinci were six feet in height, through the power of zenzizenzizenzic, he would have reached 1,536 feet--or about the perspective from which the landscape was painted. The challenge for the exponential executive is to do the same with tomorrow’s business landscape. If you do extrapolate out many of the technological advances mentioned in this blog over the next decade, the view is sure to astound you. (If you don’t believe me, I recommend this stimulating 18-minute talk by Juan Enriquez, which reiterates the theme of exponential evolution that I discussed in this recent post describing how the issue might be the next great political debate in this country.)
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Jump the Curve Strategy #1: Learn to Spell Zenzizenzizenzic
Jump the Curve Strategy #1: Learn to Spell Zenzizenzizenzic
It should be no surprise that both Google and Wikipedia, as exemplars of exponential growth themselves, have aided in the research of this book. (In 1998 Google’s search engines combed through 25 million Web pages. When this book went to print it was up to more than 25 billion Web pages, a thousandfold improvement, and the number of Wikipedia entries has increased from 100 in 2001 to more than 10 million today.)
To this end, I typed the term “exponential’ into Google, and the top entry I received back was from Wikipedia. After clicking on a related link called “list of exponential topics,” I stumbled upon a small entry at the bottom of one of the pages. It had the word zenzizenzizenzic listed.
Being curious, I decided to explore a little further. To my surprise, it brought up another Wikipedia entry. This one offered a definition of the word. Succinctly, zenzizenzizenzic is defined as the eighth power or exponent of a number. For instance, the zenzizenzizenzic of 2 is 256 or 28.
In addition to thinking it’s a cool, albeit weird, word, I realized that the concept of zenzizenzizenzic was precisely the parameter that I was hoping to put on this book.
Come with me now as we take a short walk into the future as viewed through the power of zenzizenzizenzic. (See tomorrow’s post for a number of different examples.)
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Intro to Chapter Two: The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
”Small opportunities are often the beginning of great opportunities enterprises.”
--Demosthenes
”In periods of profound change, the most dangerous thing is to incrementalize yourself into the future.”
--Kurt Yeager
Knowledge, it has been said, is the key to success. It is a statement that is hard to disagree with unless you buy into that old adage that ignorance is bliss. Proceeding on the assumption that if you believed the latter you probably wouldn’t be reading this book, I will go farther out on a limb and state that for years one of the world’s better recognized fonts of knowledge has been the Encyclopedia Britannica--a reservoir of 30,000-plus pages of information replete with titillating tidbits of data about everything from atoms to zettabytes (a term I will introduce to you later).
In the late 1990s the revered encyclopedia came under assault from a new form of media distribution--the CD-ROM. Able to store vast amounts of information in a more convenient, colorful, and vivid fashion, Encyclopedia Britannica was forced to deal with this new competitive threat and proceeded in good haste to provide its information in a similarly fresh, snappy, and visually pleasing format.
By 2001 the company was back on its feet and headed down the sweet path of profitability. No sooner, though, had that storm passed when another began forming on the horizon. But just as a hurricane begins with a single molecule and is not immediately discernible, so was this one.
The storm was called Wikipedia, and it started in 2001 with nothing more than 100 encyclopedia-like entries drafted by a few amateurs and posted to a Web site. It seemed innocent enough. After all, how likely was it that a bunch of strangers, working for free, could someday produce an encyclopedia that would rival the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of depth, breadth, and accuracy. It sounded about as plausible as a few molecules in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean turning into a Category 5 hurricane.
Yet in late 2005 Wikipedia smashed into the Encyclopedia Britannica. That year the prestigious scientific journal Nature announced after a comprehensive study that the average entry in Wikipedia was nearly as accurate as the typical Encyclopedia Britannica entry.
The advantage is still in Encyclopedia Britannica’s favor, but how much longer will it be able to withstand the gale force winds? The answer: not much. That is because we are now living in a world of exponential advances, and the scales are tipped in Wikipedia’s favor.
To begin, the very subject matter of the encyclopedia, which is to say knowledge itself, is growing exponentially. It has been said that human knowledge is doubling roughly every seven years. If true--and given how the other forces that will be outlined later in this chapter are adding to the sum total of knowledge--it leads to the almost ridiculously sounding (but mathematically verifiable) conclusion that by 2050 everything we know today will represent less than 1 percent of the sum total of the world’s knowledge.
Even if one disagrees with this statement, it is difficult not to acknowledge that radical advances in medicine, physics, chemistry, and biotechnology are changing both the content and value of the material in encyclopedias and that the old print-and-publish method of storing and displaying such information is, if not obsolete, at least impractical.
Neither a printed encyclopedia nor even a CD-ROM can react to this volume of change. Only Wikipedia, by posting information directly to the Internet, can respond in a timely fashion.
Wikipedia also has the advantage in terms of human horsepower. Advances are happening so fast, in so many different fields, that it is virtually impossible for the staff at Encyclopedia Britannica to keep pace. The challenge is not nearly so great for Wikipedia because it doesn’t have a staff. Instead it relies on a self-selected universe of experts and enthusiasts to keep track of all of these developments.
Third, Wikipedia has a distinct economic advantage. Not only does it not need to print its material in either book or even CD-ROM format, it doesn’t need to pay an army of researchers and writers or underwrite the cost of housing any physical resources or employees.
The final kicker is this: Even if the Encyclopedia Britannica decides to put all of its content online for free, most people will still go to Wikipedia because its content consistently shows up near the top of most search engines. (A quick search on Google for the terms “atom” or “zettabyte” bears out this fact.)
What Encyclopedia Britannica is facing is a severe reaction to the exponential economy, but it is not alone. In fact, if history is any guide, a number of other companies, institutions, and organizations will soon be facing a comparable amount of change in the not-too-distant future.
Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm
According to Thomas Kuhn, the famous American intellectual and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a paradigm is defined as a set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a paradigm as “a pattern or model.” In broader terms, in today’s vernacular it is often thought of as a specific way of viewing reality.
Using the example of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the company’s first paradigm was that knowledge was produced by experts, transcribed into books, and sold to customers. In the 1990s the paradigm shifted slightly. Information was still produced by credentialed experts, but it was distributed more regularly and in a digital format.
Sometime around 2005 the paradigm lurched more violently. Information was posted by amateurs to a Web site on a continuous basis and could be accessed by anybody and downloaded for free--in eight languages (and counting) no less.
The example highlights another extraordinary aspect of the exponential economy: The rate of paradigm changes is itself advancing exponentially. According to Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, paradigm shifts are doubling every ten years. To hammer home this point, Kurzweil provides a wonderfully simple way of thinking about these changes.
For starters, he assumes that a paradigm for a business can be said to have shifted when 25 percent of the population incorporates the new technology. By this measure, it took the telephone, from the time it was invented, thirty-five years to be adopted by one-quarter of society. The radio took thirty-one years, the television twenty-six years, the personal computer sixteen years, the Internet seven years, and Wikipedia just five years.
A slightly different prism through which to view this rate of change can be found in Standard & Poor’s rating of equity risks, which ranks companies on an alphabetical scale with A+ denoting the least risky and D signifying the most risky. In 1985, 41 percent of all companies earned an A+. By 2006 this figure plummeted to 13 percent. “The future,” as Yogi Berra once said, “ain’t what it used to be.” It is becoming far more risky.
The tangible evidence that paradigms are shifting ever faster is all around us. Since 2001, 50 million (and growing) mp3 players and iPods have changed the way people listen to music. YouTube and video-sharing sites have caused the major television networks to adjust their business models, and the Internet and blogs have changed the nature of the newspaper business and political campaigns.
Ask yourself this: Three years ago would you have been able to define the terms blog, wiki, and Wi-Fi or have been familiar with the terms RFID and Web 2.0? However, there is no time to even catch your breath because vlogs, mash-ups, WiMAX, Smart Dust, social networking, grid computing, and Web 3.0 are already looming on the horizon.
Now it is not my contention that exponential advances will change everything, but I do agree with Warren Buffet’s right-hand man, Charlie Munger, who once said that since it is impossible to know everything it is important to load up on a few key insights. The exponential growth of technology is one of those key insights.
Before going any further, let me also add that I agree with Kenneth Boulding, a brilliant Oxford-educated economist, who once said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go forever in a finite world is either a madman or economist.”
Exponential growth in almost every field does have limits. But--and this is an important but--society is nowhere near the outer limits of the growth that it will experience in computers, data storage, artificial intelligence, genomics, brain scanning, robotics, nanotechnology, and knowledge.
Still, in an effort to avoid long-term prognostications this book will keep the discussion within the realm of the practical by limiting most extrapolations to no more than eight iterations--or doublings--out. Considering that transistors, bandwidth, and the number of gene sequences are all doubling every eighteen months, the number of Internet nodes and brain-scanning capability is doubling every twelve months, and the number of robots is doubling every nine months, this will limit the scope of the discussion to between six and twelve years out. As luck would have it, Wikipedia has provided the perfect word by which to frame these discussions: zenzizenzizenzic.
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The Power Suit of the Future
The “power” tie is so 1990’s. What we need to bring us into the 21st century is a “power” suit. Thanks to the fine folks at Georgia Tech we now may just be a few years away from the development of a fabric that can harvest biomechanical energy.
Every time you move an arm or a leg or even lift a finger you are releasing energy. Researchers at Georgia Tech are now experimenting with how to weave nanowires directly into flexible fabrics which could then convert the energy you release and channel it back to more productive uses—such as powering your cellphone or iPod.
Longer term it is even feasible that the technology could be used to power nanoscale devices that stream through your body looking for cancer cells. The obvious advantage of this technology is that it reduces and, quite possibly, eliminates the need for batteries.
P.S. To all of the attendees of my keynote presentation at the First Annual Technology Conference in Atlanta this past Tuesday, here are links to the two articles on the future of Atlanta and Georgia Tech that I promised. Also, below is the video of a technology that may help the region better recycle waste water:
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It Only Seems Like Yesterday
Today (February 5, 2009) is the fifth anniversary of Facebook. This past January 19th was the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia and it was only last fall that Google celebrated its 10th anniversary. To put these milestones in perspective, let me share a few numbers with you. If Facebook were a country it would today be the fifth largest country in the world with a population of 150 million. At the end of 2008, Wikipedia—using only free labor—had 75,000 “editors” who had, together, written 10 million entries in 264 different languages. And Google, from its humble origins in a Stanford University dorm room in 1998, now employs 20,000 people; has a market capitalization of $110 billion; performs over 25 billion searches a day; and has transformed everything from the advertising and newspaper industries to health care. In order to become an Exponential Executive and “jump the curve” 5, 8 and 10 years into the future, it will help to keep these impressive numbers in mind because the future has a surprising way of arriving sooner than expected.
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The Future of Sticky Notes
Thanks to the fine folks at ZDNet and the MIT Media Lab for putting together this informative video on the future of sticky notes. It is very cool:
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Oops! I Was Off By 10 Quadrillion
Last month, I released a short two-minute ”Future Flash” video on the growing power of supercomputers (posted below). In it, I said that IBM was expected to release a supercomputer capable of 10 quadrillion calculations in 2010. Well, I have now come to learn that the company will double that capacity to 20 petaflops -- or 20 qaudrillion calculations—by 2012. In other words, I was off by sixteen zeros or 10,000,000,000,000,000. For those of you counting at home, it would take you roughly 16 billion years to perform 20 quadrillion calculations with a calculator—and that’s assuming you could work 365/24/7.
Interested in other supercomputer-related madness by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:
Supercomputers; Solving Problems Big and Small
Future Flash with Jack Uldrich: SuperComputers
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The Future of Telecommunications in Six Videos
On Tuesday, I traveled to Nashville to give a speech on the future of the telecommunications industry. One of the bigger (and, to be honest, not terribly new) trends in the field is the continued growth of video. In the spirit of this trend, I’d like to offer you six different videos which, each in its own unique way, offers a glimpse into the future of the telecommunications industry. The first three are very cool, and the next three are more technical but still provide some very good information.
The first video reviews how advances in algorithms and nerotechnology could lead to “voiceless” communication:
The second clip from Nokia offers an idea of what future mobile devices might look like:
The third provides an idea of how holographic information might become more pervasive:
The next three clips review how terahertz transmissions, sensors and RFID technology could lead to some cool new applications for future mobile devices:
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Why Automated Cars May Arrive Sooner Than Expected
The idea of self-driving cars may seem like a far-off dream but, as I’ve written about before, the advances in robotic cars have been amazing. Perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, I don’t think self-driving cars will simply be a matter of robotic technology “pushing” the technology to market. Instead, as customers continue to use their cellphones to do more things (call, text, email, Twitter, watch videos, etc.) they will not want to be burdened with the hassle of driving and will thus “demand” self-driving vehicles.
If you agree or disagree, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Related posts by Jack Uldrich:
Self-Driving Cars
Elderly-Friendly Cars, Sweet!
General Motors Jumps the Curve with Smart Materials
Dude, Where’s My Flying Car?
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Holograms: Coming to a Home Near You
On election night, Wolf Blitzer interviewed a reporter, Jessica Yellin, in a 3-D, holographic form. It was a little cheesy and, truth-be-told, it didn’t offer the viewer anything new. I wouldn’t dismiss holographic technology, however. As this article suggests, it could be in our homes by 2018 and, before that, it will likely find applications far more practical than Wolf Blitzer in the form of education, video gaming, medicine and entertainment.
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Jump the Curve to a $1000 Genome
Back in 1995 Reed Hastings began planning his new business. He wanted to send movies through the mail. At the time, movies were only rented in large, bulky VHS cassettes and his business model wasn’t feasible. Hastings had an advantage over his competitors, he understood that by the late 1990’s exponential advances in data storage would allow movies to be produced in a small, lightweight DVDs and that he would soon be able to execute on his plan to send movies through the mail.
Life science, healthcare and life insurance companies must adopt the same type of thinking in regard to exponential advances in genomics. Today, it is quite expensive to sequence a person’s genome (approximately $60,000). By 2013, however, the price is likely to be less than $1000 and when that happens a whole host of new products and services are going to be possible. The time to start preparing for this future is now.
Interested in reading related articles on genomics by America’s leading healthcare futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:
Personalized Medicine’s Accelerating Future
The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes
A Trillion Reasons to Care about Genomics
The Coming Health Care Revolution
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The Shape of Things to Come: Foldable Cellphones
Often, trying to explain how the emerging field of flexible electronics will change future devices is a little hard to explain, but if you want to see a glimpse of what cellphones might look like in the near future watch this short two-minute video of a new Samsung prototype device:
Interested in other other articles by America’s leading telecommunications futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past articles:
The Swiss Army Phone of the Future
More Cellphones = Fewer Roads
The Future of Telecommunications in Six Videos
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Voice Recognition Technology Takes a Baby Step into the Future
Late yesterday, Google released a very cool new mobile application which employs voice recognition technology. The question is not so much what the technology can do today, the question is what will the technology be able to do in the near future—and how might it change education, health care, and a host of other daily activities?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this technology could unfold and how it might alter people’s behavior. Below are my initial thoughts:
Here’s Google’s own YouTube clip on its new technology:
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Change is in the Air
After almost two years of campaigning, it is finally here: Election Day! Change is in the air, but not for the reasons one might expect.
Regardless of a person’s preference for Obama, McCain, Nader or one of the other candidates, I don’t actually believe they (or any politician for that matter) will be the primary instrument of change in the near future. That mantle will instead belong to technology.
Let me just provide a quick glimpse from the world of technology through the lens of a single day—today.
I began my morning by reading this article on a “solar power game changer.” The piece describes how a new antireflective coating now allows for the “near perfect” absorption of sunlight. In other words, society is one step closer to solar technology replacing a number of conventional energy sources. Politicians can clamor all they want about “clean coal” and “more drilling” but my hunch is that technological advances will render their opinions and policy suggestions moot.
Next, I stumbled across this article discussing a new ”heart-patching” technology. Combined with yesterday’s announcement by a Medtronic official that the “medical device industry is done,” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that health care is quickly moving in the direction of preventative care.
Finally, over the weekend 60 Minutes ran a fascinating story describing the advances in brain-computer interface technology. If you didn’t see it, I strongly encourage you to watch it below. After you have done so, ask yourself this: How much do you think society will change by the time we vote again for president in 2012 and 2016?
Now, I believe in democracy and I believe it matters which individuals (and which political parties) control the White House and Congress, but our elected officials should spend less time promising that they will “deliver” change and more time helping society prepare for the change that is coming because it is going to be massive.
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The Future Face of Retail Advertising
“What we’re essentially doing is creating the retail environment of the future,” says Barry Salzman, CEO of YCD Multimedia, who is working with Dunkin Donuts to employ facial recognition technology to better target customers with tailored advertising.
In the infamous words of Homer Simpson, “D’Oh!”
This is both an impressive and a frightening display of new technology, but if retailers and advertisers want to “jump the curve,” they had better get a hold of how accelerating advances in facial recognition technology will change the retail advertising landscape in the near future.
Why is this? Because, according to this informative article, facial recognition is already 85% accurate and it is only going to get better. Secondly, more traditional methods of advertising—such as television ads—are no longer as effective as they once were. According to the article, it used to take only three ads to reach 85% of all women in 1996; now it takes 100! (I don’t actually know if these numbers are true, but as technology becomes more pervasive and our methods for receiving information continue to proliferate, the overall trend is clear—TV is becoming less effective.)
Interested in reviewing other future-related retail articles by Jack Uldrich? Check out these past musings:
Tesco Jumps the Curve
The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers are Jumping the Curve
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Personalized Medicine’s Accelerating Future
This past week I gave a presentation on “The Future of Genomics” to the Minnesota Hospital Association. In the course of my speech, I listed a variety of reasons why society is accelerating toward a future of more personalized medicine, including advances in DNA microarray technology; the growing wealth of genetic knowledge being facilitated by such tools as the “Wikipedia” for Genes and the new ”SNPedia;" private money (in the form of the Archon X Prize); the growing number of start-up companies who are making it more possible for people to have either a portion or their entire genome sequenced by companies such as 23andMe, DeCode, Navigenics and Knome); and the recent passage of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA).
Alas, none of these things speak to the possibility like real results. To that end, I’d like to highlight just two articles I came across this morning. The first is from the Wall Street Journal and the article discusses how an old heart drug, bucindolol, has been found to reduce death for people who have a certain genetic mutuation by up to 38%. The second article, ”Chemotherapy Get Personal,” reviews the findings of a recent study in the journal Genes and Development which explains how advanced computer algorithms are analyzing the activity of 20,000 genes to better match specific chemotherapy drugs with individual cancer patients.
The advances, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg. Many of the underlying technologies enabling these startling advances are growing exponentially and they portend a promising era of personalized medicine. In order to reach the full promise of this era, however, it is imperative that both citizens and health care officials alike begin preparing today for the wealth of genetic data that will soon be flowing their way.
Interested in related articles on genomics by Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:
The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes
A Trillion Reasons to Care about Genomics
The Coming Health Care Revolution
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Businesses Newest Tool: A Personal Supercomputer
Yesterday, Cray, the self-described “supercomputer company” officially moved into the personal computing realm when it announced it’s new personal supercomputer, the CX1.
For years, supercomputers have been considered indispensable for large corporations. For example, using supercomputers, Boeing was able to reduce by seven-fold (from 77 to 11) the number of aircraft wings it needed to physically construct for its new “787” Dreamliner before finding the right one. In much the same way, the automotive industry has used supercomputing to help it reduce from 5 years to 18 months the time it takes to move a new automobile design from the drawing board to the showroom floor.
The relevance of Cray’s news is that now a number small and medium-sized businesses will be able to similarly avail themselves of the power of supercomputers. And what might these supercomputers help businesses do? Excellent question.
The best way to answer that is by providing some recent examples of companies using supercomputing:
1. Pringle’s has used supercomputers to help redesign the shape of its iconic potato chip so that it flies off the assembly line and into the can in a faster and more efficient manner.
2. Proctor & Gamble used a supercomputer to redesign its Pamper’s diaper brand.
3. Ping used supercomputers to redesign its latest golf clubs; and
4. Whirlpool has used a supercomputer to both redesign its packaging as well as revise its forklifts so that they no longer scratch and dent the equipment.
Of course, these are but a few examples. Oil and gas companies are using supercomputers to improve their search for hidden deposits and reserves; and financial services are using the tool for more comprehensive asset planning and wealth management.
But even these applications are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Supercomputing technology is rapidly moving downstream. If you want to “jump the curve,” you need to consider today how a supercomputer can help you remain competitive tomorrow.
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A MAV-erick Defense Policy
At present, the United States government spends hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to keep this country safe at home and defeat its enemies abroad. Much of the money is well spent but, often, I can’t help but feel we are wasting precious resources fighting “the last war.” As I argued in this piece a few weeks ago, we should instead be ”studying the first six months of the next war.”
To end this end, I’d like to introduce you to a revolutionary new technology which could, in the words of the chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force, be a real “game-changer.” The Air Force calls the technology Micro Air Vehicles (or MAVs) and they are small, robotic drones (roughly the size of small birds) that could conceivably follow a terrorist back into a cave in Afghanistan and eliminate him.
The Air Force claims the drones will be “unobtrusive, pervasive and lethal” and they could be ready for action as early as 2015.
It, perhaps, goes without saying that the technology also poses some legitimate civil liberty concerns here at home, but the future seems to be moving inevitably in this direction and I’d much rather have the U.S. government aggressively pursue this technology than our enemies.
It also seems to me that this is the type of technology the Pentagon should be investing more in than, say, the new $500 million next-generation F-35 jet fighters or yet another $5 billion aircraft carrier.
For, in the end, it is not how much we spend on defense that counts, rather it is how wisely we spend our money that really matters.
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A Sens(or) of the Future
Technology Review has an interesting article entitled ”Self Surveillance” describing the activities of a new start-up, Fitbit. The company has developed a small, unobtrusive sensor that tracks a person’s movement 24 hours a day.
To many people, the idea smacks of “Big Brother” and, undoubtedly, it does raise a number of privacy-related issues. However, I’d encourage people to think through where sensor technology is headed. Fitbit claims that the information it collects from people’s personal sensors will be used to monitor physical activity and thus help people control their weight, but there are boundless other applications as well.
For example, as America (and the world) continues to age, I can envision more and more elderly people wearing sensors to both monitor their health and help their loved ones know that they are safe. Similarly, if more people begin to wear sensors, future mobile communication devices—in partnership with sophisticated algorithms—will be able to more accurately determine traffic flow in everything from stores to our highways. (They will do this by aggregating the data from all of the sensors in a manner that doesn’t necessarily violate a person’s right to privacy). In turn, this wealth of information, can be used to increase productivity by helping people know when stores and freeways are crowded. It could also help retailers keep their stores fully staffed and allow traffic managers to employ better traffic congestion pricing policies.
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The Future of Telecommunications in Six Videos
On Tuesday, I am traveling to Florida to give a speech on the future of the telecommunications industry. One of the bigger (and, to be honest, not terribly new) trends in the field is the continued growth of video. In the spirit of this trend, I’d like to offer you six different videos which, each in its own unique way, offers a glimpse into the future of the telecommunications industry. The first three are very cool, and the next three are more technical but still provide some very good information.
The first clip from Nokia offers an idea of what future mobile devices might look like:
The second offers an idea of how holographic information might become more pervasive:
The third video reviews how advances in algorithms and nerotechnology could lead to “voiceless” communication:
The next three clips review how terahertz transmissions, sensors and RFID technology could lead to some cool new applications for future mobile devices:
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Say Good-bye to the Courtroom Stenographer
Intel recently released details of a new generation “multi-core” chip. One implication of these powerful chips is that they will soon help users bridge the physical world with the virtual world. One possible application is that the chips—in combination with improved voice recognition technology—will allow small mobile devices to accurately and seamlessly record witness testimony in courtroom proceedings. In other words, we will soon be saying good-bye to the courtroom stenographer—provided, that is, the legal community can unlearn its long-held reliance on courtroom stenographers.
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Jump the Curve with Living Legos
Imagine a diabetic being able to grow pancreatic tissue in order produce their own insulin again. Or envision a dialysis patient growing a new kidney from their own cells. Such things are impossible today, but they could soon become a reality thanks to advances researchers at Harvard Medical School are making in the field of tissue engineering. To this end, I’d invite you to read this informative article on “living legos”—or self-assembling tissues—from Technology Review. If successful, the treatment of diabetes and kidney failure will never be the same.
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Robots Advance
Last week, I explained how humans might soon be learning things from robots. Today, I’d like to explain why robots might become a more integral part of life faster than most people expect.
Yesterday, Technology Review published an interesting article entitled: ”Robots Learns to Use Tools.” What is really intriguing about the article, which describes a new robot called the UMass Mobile Manipulator or UMan for short, is that the robot is employing sophisticated algorithms to teach itself how to deal with unfamiliar objects.
One of the major barriers to date with robotics is that programmers have had to write complicated software code to help robots deal with almost every contingency that it might encounter. For example, for a household robot to be effective, it needs to recognize every item that might conceivably be in someone house—everything from a pair of scissors to a flower vase. This is no easy chore.
In the near future, however, robots need not necessarily know how to handle every object; they merely need to learn how to deal with that object in an
appropriate fashion. Using the scissors as example, UMan can study the device and then can tinker with the blades until it understands how they are connected and how the object operates. Presumably, the robot will then know that it would be inappropriate to “run with scissors.”
The implications of self-learning robots could be quite profound—especially if they can learn faster than humans. For instance, if they can recognize and learn how things operate, they might be finally able to practical household servants—ala Rosie the Robot in the Jetson’s. They could also become more practical instruments in the agricultural industry if they can determine between which fruit or vegetable is ready to be picked or whether it needs to stay on the vine a little longer. Similarly, robots will become more effective warriors in battlefield situations if they can rapidly adapt to the enemy’s changing behavior; and there is no reason why they can’t soon be used in a variety of other fields, including the construction industry and the health care industry.
Interested in some other future-related posts about robots? Check out these recent posts:
Learn from Robots
Meet Your Future, Shape-Shiting Robotic Butler
Hospitals Robotic Future
Will Robots Have Tails?
Is the Future of an ATV a Robot
The Robot Will See You Now
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A Million, a Billion, and a Trillion Reasons to Care About Genomics
I speak to a great many student groups and I am often struck by how few of them appreciate the difference between one million, one billion and one trillion. (In the name of fairness, the same is true of many adults). Perhaps, it is because the three figures are all large numbers that most people don’t think there is an appreciable difference. Perhaps, it is because the words—million, billion, and trillion—the rhyme; or maybe it’s just because they’re dumb—or have had poor teachers. I really don’t know.
One way I have tried to convey the difference between the numbers is by explaining the figures in a different way. To wit:
One million seconds was 12 days ago;
One billion seconds was roughly 30 years ago;
One trillion seconds was approximately 30,000 years ago—28,000 B.C.!
My point with the analogy is that one trillion of anything is a really BIG number, and it is much, much different than one billion.
This analogy is important because on January 17, 2006 the Wellcome Sanger Institute announced it had archived it’s one billionth DNA sequence. It was an impressive accomplishment.
Well, today, Wired magazine reported that the prominent genetics institute sequenced its trillionth base of DNA. This is a one thousand-fold improvement in just over two years.
In my most recent book, Jump the Curve, I asked my readers to think of the first billion DNA sequences like a book that could shed some light on how genetic information might help deliver better health outcomes for all of society. Today, we have an additional 1000such “books.”
My broader point is that society is still in the early stages of understanding all of this genetic information; but as researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs continues to sequence an ever larger amount of genetic information it is a reasonable to expect that some of this information may just revolutionize how we diagnose, treat and, ultimately, cure a wide range of diseases.
Related Posts
The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes in the Future
The Coming Health Care Revolution
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Learning From Robots
When contemplating the future, people need to keep a very open mind about what might be possible. Consider this article which describes how researchers at UC San Diego are developing facial recognition technology that can recognize if a person is having trouble understanding an educational lesson—say in mathematics or biology.
As the technology continues to improve, one possible implication is that smart devices and robots will become better and more effective teachers because they will be able to pace lesson plans to an individual student’s ability to comprehend the information which is being presented.
Longer term, it is possible that robots and other smart devices will become more effective teachers than even human teachers because the machines will understand each student’s learning idiosyncrasies and then present material in a manner which is optimized for that individual student’s learning style.
Now, I understand how discomforting the idea that a robot might be a better teacher than your old favorite third grade teacher, Mrs. Hubbard, ever was; but, as that wise American philosopher Yoggi Berra once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
For a more contemporary look at how technology is transforming education, I’d invite you to read this article which explains how Nintendo DS is helping Japanese students learn the English language.
Related Posts
The Future of Education is Now
The Future of Education: Is It About to Be Rekindled?
The Future of College
The Future of Reading
The Exponential Educator
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Jump the Curve to a New Way of Understanding the World
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, has written an excellent article entitled ”The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes Scientific Method Obsolete” in which he convincingly argues that massive amounts of data, in combination with sophisticated algorithms and super powerful computers, offers mankind a whole new way of understanding the world.
Anderson believes that our technological tools have now progressed to the point where the “old way” of doing science—hypothesize, model and test—is becoming obsolete. In its place, a new paradigm is now emerging whereby scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs simply allow statistical algorithms to find patterns where science cannot.
If Anderson is correct—and I believe he very well could be—this will take science in a whole new direction. In short, instead of modeling and waiting to find out if hypotheses are valid the scientific community can instead rely on intelligent algorithms to do the heavy lifting.
Before this vision can be achieved, however, it will require a great many brilliant scientists to unlearn the idea that their “model-based” method of trying to make sense of today’s increasingly complex world is the only way to search for new meaning.
The implication for a field such as biology which, as Anderson points out is actually becoming more difficult to model as learn more about it (due to our limited understanding of how genetics, microbes, personal behavior, the environment, and a host of other factors work in partnership to determine a person’s health), could be profound. More specifically, we will be able to analyze data without allowing hypotheses (which are, perhaps, wrong) to cloud our view of what the data is really showing us.
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BMW Jumps the Curve
The German automaker BMW, in introducing its new “Light Visionary Model” prototype—which it dubs GINA (Geometry and Functions “N” Adaptions")—writes this: ”The key to affecting the development of tomorrow’s mobility lies in our readiness to challenge what is established and in the ability to present new options.” In short, BMW is jumping the curve and embracing the future.
Watch the short video below and notice how doors and hoods no longer open (they fold and zip open) and how the lights do open (much like human eyes), I think you’ll agree that the benefits of jumping the curve could give BMW a very distinct competitive advantage as it boldly moves into the future.
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Get Prepared to Unlearn at Warp Speed
IBM recently announced that it has developed a new supercomputer capable of performing 1,000 trillion calculations per second. It is a little hard to wrap your brain around such mind-boggling numbers, but last year I wrote an article discussing an IBM supercomputer that was capable of performing 70 trillion calculations per second. In the piece, I noted that if you had to perform a similar number of calculations (and assuming you could work 365/7/24) it would take you roughly 60 million years to perform what that supercomputer could do in one second.
Well, with this latest advance, it would now take you—theoretically speaking—about 800 million years. Of course, such a comparison is slightly ridiculous. What is not ridiculous, however, is what these supercomputers are doing and learning. With their immense electronic brains they are now designing new materials and products; creating new drugs; and helping us better understand everything from the human body and brain to how mankind is impacting the environment.
One implication of these new findings is that all of us will need to unlearn at a faster rate.
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