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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Jack Uldrich Speaks on the Future
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Don’t Incrementalize Yourself into the Future
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 blog, 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.
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. This 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. (To this end, Wikipedia now has over 7 million entries in 200 different languages.)
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.
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.
What this means is that in order to survive in the Expoential Economy, we should all heed the words of Kurt Yeager, who once offered this sage advice: ”In periods of profound change, the most dangerous thing is to incrementalize yourself into the future.”
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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What Could Be Better Than Free Money? Try Exponential Growth.
As a result of my new book, I have been asked on a number of occasions to describe what I mean by the title: “jump the curve.”
It is a fair question and when answering it I like to recall the words of that old sage, Albert Einstein, who once said that if a person—especially a scientist or technologist—couldn’t explain what he or she was working on to an 8-year old child then that person was either a fraud or a charlatan.
It’s an excellent test and because I have both an 8 year-old daughter and a 6 year-old son, I decided to put the topic of my new book to this test. Liking a challenge, I decided to see if my youngest child could comprehend the idea of “jumping the curve.”
Without using an example in the book, I asked my son, who has yet to lose any of his teeth, whether he would rather receive a single dollar for every one of his 20 baby teeth or if he would instead prefer to receive a single cent for his first tooth and then have that penny double for the next 19 teeth?
Being fairly good at numbers and knowing that his dad often likes to trick him, my son selected the second option—the penny doubling.
“Smart boy,” I proudly said. “Now, what if the tooth fairy gave you $5 per tooth?” (I was careful to suggest that I was not implying that the tooth fairy would leave him $5.) He pondered his options for a moment and, after calculating his total would come to $100, he selected the $5 option.
I asked him if he was sure and he confidently shook his head in the affirmative. “Well, son,” I replied, “I’m afraid that you have lost out on over $10,000.”
The look on his face was one of incredulousness, and that is precisely why I told him that he had to learn to “jump the curve.” Here’s how the chart reads:
1st tooth: 1 cent
2nd tooth: 2 cents
3rd tooth: 4 cents
4th tooth: 8 cents
5th tooth: 16 cents
6th tooth: 32 cents
7th tooth: 64 cents
8th tooth: $1.28
9th tooth: $2.56
10th tooth: $5.12
11th tooth: $10.24
12th tooth: $20.48
13th tooth: $40.96
14th tooth: $81.92
15th tooth: $163.84
16th tooth: $327.68
17th tooth: $655.36
18th tooth: $1310.72
19th tooth: $2621.44
20th tooth: $5242.88
Total: $10,485.75 ... or more than $500 per tooth!
To explain the concept of “jumping the curve,” I then drew him a graph and said that before a person can profit from any exponential trend he must first understand where that trend. The skill, I noted, “could be as significant as the difference between getting only $5 for a tooth or receiving $500.”
My broader point, of course, was that exponential advances are occuring in a variety of fields, including information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, brain scanning and even knowledge itself; and if he wanted to position himself for the future he would be wise to internalize this lesson now. The lesson is so important, I’d argue, that it is almost better than free money.
Interested in some other implausible ideas about the future? Check some of these past posts by Jack:
Voiceless Communication: It’s Coming and It’ll Augment Human Intelligence
The Robot Will See You Now
Operate on Yourself
57 Years is Now 41 Days
Death’s Slow Death
Self-Driving Cars
Do the Impossible
Enlarge Our Minds to a Space Elevator
Pong & The Future of the President’s Brain
Could You Really Love a Robot?
Do the Impossible: A Case Study
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.
Future Technology & the Ability to Absorb It
I spend a great deal of time documenting how exponential advances in semiconductors, data storage, bandwidth, gene sequencing, brain scanning technology, robotics, algorithms and nanotechnology will fundamentally alter the business environment in the next decade. I am, however, aware of the fact that technology is already outpacing society’s ability to adapt to it. As such, I am always careful to temper client’s enthusiam about how quickly many of today’s emerging technologies will be incorporated into the fabric of our lives. (Frequently, I need to temper my own enthusiam as well).
To this end, I would like to offer this short history lesson which I pulled from Pip Coburn’s informative book, The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash:
-- The first mobile phone in the U.S. was available in 1946.
-- The first video game was played in 1961
-- The first personal computer was built in 1964
-- The first e-mail was sent in 1971.
Some of this slowness is a result of people’s and society’s resistance to change, some of it is due to legal and regulatory issues, sometimes it is a result over legitimate business concerns over the cost and the effectiveness of early versions of the technology. (For example, iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner is a great piece of technology, but many of us have a hard time coughing up $300 when a $5 broom still does a pretty good job.)
Bottom-line: Change does happen, but often it occurs a lot slower than most people generally recognize or appreciate.
P.S. Because I am a fan of thinking counter-intuitively, tomorrow I intend to write a piece that argues just the opposite—that technology adoption is actually speeding up.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future is So Clear … It’s Invisible
The Toronto Star is running an excellent article entitled ”Science has seen the future ... and it is invisible,” which profiles noted physicist, Michio Kaku—the author of the new book, Physics of the Impossible; A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel.
I’ll let the article speak for itself, but I want to highlight two quotes of Kaku’s because they fit quite nicely with the final chapter of my own new book, Jump the Curve. The chapter is entitled “Doing the Impossible” and it explains how exponential advances in technology will soon allow mankind to do a great many things which are today deemed “impossible.”
To this end, Kaku is quoted as saying ”In my own short lifetime, I have seen the seemingly impossible become established fact over and over again.”
He goes on to say that ”science is doubling 10 years.” Now, fans of Ray Kurzweil and exponential growth immediately understand the implications of this statement; but many people do not. So let me spell it out for you in more vivid terms: It’s is saying that everything we know today—about physics, biology, chemistry, the human body, etc—will represent just a fraction of what we will know in the year 2050.
(Here’s how you should think about it: Due to this doubling of knowledge, in 2018 everything we know today about science will represent just half of our future knowledge. In 2028, due to our continued accelerated understanding, what we know today will comprise only 25% of future knoweldge. In 2038, it will again be split in half (to 12.5%) and ten years after that our existing base knowledge (i.e. what we know today in 2008) will comprise just over 6% of future knowledge.
The implication of this is that as a result of all of this new found scientific knowledge, it is inevitable that we will be able to do many things which today seem impossible. Or to paraphase (and twist) the words of that 1980’s hit classic song, “The Future is So Bright, I’ve Got to Wear Shades,” the future will, in fact, be very bright but our technology—including invisible light-cloaking devices—will be so advanced no one will even need to know you’re wearing shades.
Interested in some other implausible ideas about the future? Check some of these past posts by Jack:
Voiceless Communication: It’s Coming and It’ll Augment Human Intelligence
The Robot Will See You Now
Operate on Yourself
57 Years is Now 41 Days
Death’s Slow Death
Self-Driving Cars
Do the Impossible
Enlarge Our Minds to a Space Elevator
Pong & The Future of the President’s Brain
Could You Really Love a Robot?
Do the Impossible: A Case Study
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.
The Most Significant Breakthroughs of 2007
Like so many other publications, I have decided to take a look back at the past year to determine the most significant technological breakthroughs. After a good deal of thought, here are my selections:
#10: Smaller Transistors. In January, both Intel and IBM announced that they would be using new materials to design smaller transistors. What is significant about the breakthrough is how a relatively simple advance in the material sciences can increase the productivity of existing product by 30%. In 2008, businesses should continue to stay abreast of advances in nanotechnology because I believe a host of new materials—many with exciting properties—will emerge. To understand the potential, I’d encourage you to review this post about how General Motors is employing nanotechnology to its competitive advantage.
#9: The Paper Battery. In August, a team at Rensselaer unveiled a small piece of paper that can store and discharge electricity. What is so exciting about this technology is that it could soon be used to construct products that use the heat from the human body to power the device—say goodbye to having to recharge your cellphone! (The technology can also be used to power medical devices inside the body. The advantage of this is that pacemakers and other medical implants won’t have to replaced.)
#8:The Human Microbiome Project. There is still a great deal that doctors and scientists don’t know about the human body. One such area that is only partially understood is the role that microbes play in immune function and nutrition. As a result of the HMP, however, this could soon change and the implications for understanding and treating disease could be huge.
#7: Multi-touch Computers. I have written about Jeff Han’s work with multi-touch computers in the past and in 2007 companies such as Microsoft also got into the act. As this technology continues to drop in price and improve in functionality, look for potential applications to explode. I am especially excited about how the technology will transform the advertising and educational industries.
#6: Brain-Computer Interfaces. The ability of researchers to read neurons and translate brain waves into electrical signals which can then be read by computers is nothing short of revolutionary. While I believe that it will be some time before the technology becomes mainstream, the first commercial products will likely soon be seen in the gaming industry.
# 5: Progress in the Field of Robots. There were a number of noteworthy breakthroughs in robotics this year. In November, a team from Carnegie Mellon constructed a robot-driven vehicle that successfully navigated an unrban environment; in Israel researchers built a robot the size of a dragonfly that could fly into a cave; and just last week, researchers announced that they developed an I-Snake robot that could patrol the human body. All of this tells me that society is just at the dawn of the age of robots.
#4: A Carbon Dioxide Catalyst. Thanks in part to Al Gore—who won an Academy Award and the Nobel Prize this year—the issue of climate change has finally seeped into public consciousness. This is a good thing but, at heart, I’m what some people would call a “techno-optimist” because I believe technology will ultimately solve the issue of carbon dioxide contributing to global climate change. One reason for this optimism is because scientists are already tinkering with the idea of using solar power to convert CO2 into fuel. If successful, the “problem” of CO2 could become an opportunity.
#3: Wireless Energy. This year physicists at MIT demonstrated how to transfer energy wirelessly. It is only a matter of time before this technology becomes a commercial reality, and when it does not only can we kiss goodbye to electrical cords, a host of new product applications will likely emerge.
#2: Genome Transfer. In June, reseachers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced they had successfully transplanted the genome of one species into another. I have written before about the emerging field of synthetic biology and explained how it could revolutionize everything from the pharmaceutical industry to agriculture and energy. This breakthrough suggests that these revolutions may just be a few years away from reality.
#1: Stem Cell Research. In December, researchers in Wisconsin and Japan announced they had successfully demonstrated how to use a virus to reprogam skins cells into stem cells. As I explained in this post, there are still a number of factors that could limit the overall effectiveness of this breakthrough but, at this time, it is hard to argue that this breakthrough will provide a huge boost to the whole field of stem cell research. And, to the extent that it does, it could usher in a great deal of progress in the treatment of a variety of diseases over the coming years.
All told, these breakthroughs provide further evidence that the pace of change continues to accelerate. Almost regardless of the industry you are in, one or more of these breakthroughs will impact your business. If you hope to stay ahead of the game and “jump the curve,” the time to begin contemplating what these developments mean for you and your business is now.
Related Posts
Don’t Incrementalize Yourself Into the Future
Dangerous Curves Ahead
Exponential Evolution
10 Reasons We Will Live to 1000
Top Ten Tech Trends
The Future of Health Care
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Dangerous Curves Ahead
On a daily basis, I’m impressed by the accelerating pace of technological change, but I have to admit that some days the dizzying pace leaves even my head spinning. Today is one of those days. I began this morning by reading an informative article in the Washington Post describing how faster supercomputers are accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. These supercomputers are poised to transform everything from drug discovery to the computational design of next-generation materials, automobiles and airplanes.
Next, I read this article about the creation of a new shape-shifting rubber. Among the products it might create are new biomedical implants and “smart” labels that can inform customers if their milk—or any other product—is about to expire or has otherwise encountered a change in temperature or humidity that might have an adverse affect on it.
The third article I persued was this interesting piece on Techcrunch highlighting a new company called iMedix. In its simpliest form, the company is a combination of WebMD + Facebook + Wikipedia. More importantly, however, iMedix could transform how people obtain medical information as well as which medical procedures they choose to utilize.
Finally, Technology Review had a fascinating article about a new technology that could turn carbon dioxide into fuel. Imagine being able to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to create fuel! Not only could we ween outselves from foreign fossil fuels, we could potentially curb climate change. (Note: The technology is still a long way from commercial viability, but if you “jump the curve” and extrapolate where the technology is headed, you can understand how we may soon be able to “do the impossible” and reverse global climate change.)
Related Posts
The Week in Innovation (December 2)
The Week in Innovation (November 26)
The Week in Innovation (November 19)
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Survival isn’t Mandatory
The late, great management guru W. Edwards Deming once said, ”It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” I couldn’t help but think of this quote when I read last week that newspaper sales plummeted another 3% last year and that e-mail usage among teenagers was down more 8 percent.
The lesson for newspapers as well as for businesses (and individuals) who rely heavily on email is that they had better change or they could be out of business a lot sooner than they expect.
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Future Technology and the Ability to Absorb It
In my forthcoming book, Jump the Curve, I spend a great deal of time documenting how exponential advances in semiconductors, data storage, bandwidth, gene sequencing, brain scanning technology, robotics, algorithms and nanotechnology will fundamentally alter the business environment in the next decade. I am, however, aware of the fact that technology is already outpacing society’s ability to adapt to it. As such, I am always careful to temper client’s enthusiam about how quickly many of today’s emerging technologies will be incorporated into the fabric of our lives.
To this end, I would like to offer this short history lesson which I pulled from Pip Coburn’s informative book, The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash:
-- The first mobile phone in the U.S. was available in 1946.
-- The first video game was played in 1961
-- The first personal computer was built in 1964
-- The first e-mail was sent in 1971.
Bottom-line: Change does happen, but often it occurs a lot slower than most people generally recognize or appreciate.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
Enjoy this post? Bookmark at the following sites.
Top Ten Tech Trends
The editors at The Futurist have recently released their top ten forecasts for the future. I don’t agree with everything on the list, but the forecast is thought-provoking and I’d encourage interested readers to give it the once-over because the first prediction is this dozy: “The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.”
Now, a million dollars in the future won’t hold the same cache as million dollars today due to inflation, but I’d argue that if you want to be a member of the millionaire’s club of 2025 it would behoove you to understand some of today’s trends in technology because they have the potential to either help or hinder your path to future prosperity.
With that short introduction then, I’d like to provide my personal list of top ten technology trends:
#1: Nanotechnology. I have previously expressed my opinion why I believe nanotechnology will represent a $2.6 trillion market in new products and services by 2015, but a quick review of the impressive progress many nanotech companies such as IBM, H-P, Intel, GE, Arrowhead Research and Nucryst are making due to nanotechnology offers compelling evidence that the field is ripe for explosive growth.
#2 Robotics. No less an authority that Bill Gates has indicated that the robotics will be the basis of a $50 billion industry by 2025. Add to this prediction reports that the Defense Department wants to have at least one-third of all military trucks being driven by robots by 2015 and it is clear why companies as diverse as Toyota, Oshkosh Trucks and John Deere are all investing heavily in robotics.
#3 Rapid Prototype Manufacturing. In the coming years, 3D Systems, Stratasys, Z Corporation and Desktop Factory are all hoping to radically lower the price of rapid prototype manufacturing equipment. If they are successful, it is possible that such 3-D printers—which can print out physical objects such as cups, plates and assorted spare parts—could become a household appliance as common as the dishwasher. If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, I’d encourage you to check out this past post entitled: ”