The digital renaissance
It's easy to look into the gloomy future of technology as the beginning of the end; to see it as SkyNet starting their world domination. But Robert Belgrave and James Bowes, both creators of the podcast "Alexa Stop" and CEO of Wirelist and The Panoplay respectively, had a more positive outlook.
Together, they looked at the uncertainty of technology and its place in a humanitarian and morally correct world by breaking it down into three main subjects; abundance, ethics and 3D printing technology.
Abundance
Energy: The future is moving to a sustainable place. The cost of producing and maintaining effective renewable energy is beginning to become lower than fossil based fuel. Not only is this great for the environment itself, it also creates an interesting shift with some of the poorest countries in the world.
Every single day, the energy that hits the earth is 8,000x the amount we need to power the globe. As we begin to make cheaper options of capturing that energy, these poorer countries will start to have the most wealth of energy due to locations in sparse and heated landscapes.
Transportation: With innovators like Elon Musk prioritising cheap transportation for all (specifically noting he wants to make it affordable for the lower income earners first and foremost) we will see a significant boom in public transport infrastructure. Most famously, he released the plans behind the HyperLoop, a new mode of effective and fiscally efficient transport. Now in development, this will fundamentally change the way we travel, work and live.
Further, the large investment being made into the development of autonomous cars, it is estimated that by 2025 the car as we know it will be dead.
“As cars will become better drivers than people, city-dwellers will own fewer cars, live further from work, and spend time differently, leading to an entirely new urban organisation.”
If no one owns a car or a car can be summoned to your location, the need for car parks will be redundant. Roads will dramatically change as parking spaces can be utilised for more ergonomic urban design. This could include creating more foliage and nature parks to combat rising temperatures in dense urban spaces due to concrete reflecting, not absorbing, heat.
Communication and connectivity: Currently, less than half of the entire population has access to the internet. Although we take it for granted, with all the developments in internet speed, coverage has always been a problem for the wider, less fortune parts of the world. This is set to change.
Belgrave and Bowes both agreed that by 2025 at the latest, there will be 100% access to the internet across the world, from being in the centre of the Sahara Desert, to messaging in WhatsApp from the middle of the pacific ocean. How is this possible?
A new kind of space race is happening, with initiatives like SpaceX looking to be one of the first space-based telecommunication networks that could allow access to an internet connection anywhere in the world, even wherever Carmen Sandiego is. Other companies like Virgin are also trying to establish a space-based network of 300 different satellites, while some are investing in drone based routers.
In a grey area of good or bad, this will also result in a dramatic drop in the cost of smart phones. If marketeers can now literally reach you anywhere in the world, it is beneficial for them to give consumers a medium in which they can get in touch. This will mean that to get a smartphone in your hand, price stopping purchase will be a thing of the past.
Ethics
Speaking of consumers, to balance that rather negative view that everyone will soon be sold to en mass, the new trend that companies and society themselves are developing is that they no longer see people as consumers but rather citizens. With more internet access, more people will have a voice and more communities can develop together. Traditionally, we have had a mentality that the customer is king (putting one person in charge of their transactions), but in modern day this thinking has lead us to be overwhelmed with choice and we have begun to feel trapped and unable to create real change. We are starting to shift to a more participatory society, meaning we can become more informed and find more people with the same voice facilitating real change in numbers, rather than the solitary action of complaining to a company about their practices.
https://www.newcitizenship.org.uk/
3D Printing Technology
"3D printing will be just as important as the invention of the printing press"
I know it's no longer 2016, and 3D Printing isn't ground breaking news but it is still so under-utilised and its influence will be huge by 2020. I'll keep it short and specific to its dramatic impact on healthcare.
Just a quick recap on the 3D-printed process. It involves building solid, three-dimensional objects from a digital model, using additive processes building on layer on top of layer until you get the desired object. This process increases precision and removes room for error. Moreover, older manufacturing techniques usually rely on removal (by cutting, drilling, chopping, etc.) instead of addition. These waste and extraction costs add up; 3D printing gets around those issues.
3D printing is moving to be a part of mainstream medical practice and treat a wide range of people. 3D-printed ankle replacements, 3D-printed casts, and 3D-printed pills are just some of the advancements the technology is being used for. The 3D-printed cast, for example, heals bones 40–80% faster than traditional casts. 3D-printed pills allow for interesting new pill shapes that completely alter the drugs’ release rates.
You can listen to Robert Belgrave and James Bowes podcast and find out what else they had to say about the future of technology and the impact on our future.