One of my passion is following the trends in technology and how they are going to shape how we live down the road. This is something I made a study the last 8 years or so to the point it is an obsession. A payoff of this is that I am now seeing technologies emerging that were only in the planning or testing stage just a few years ago.
We are in a time of transition when more of our daily lives is becoming digital. This will only increase as we see the expansion of the Internet to include more devices connected. The Internet of Things is radically going to revolution how we interact with our devices and, believe it or not, how they interact with each other.
As things become digitized, they fall under the Laws of Informational Technology. For those who are unaware, this basically is made up of processing, storage, and software. This is a crucial point for people to understand since it has relevance to what we are going to be paying for things in the future.
At present these areas have a rate of doubling:
Processing :every two years (50% price decrease)
Storage: every three years (33% price decrease)
Software every six years ( 16% price decrease)
It quickly becomes obvious why things that enter this realm get very inexpensive in a short period of time. The rates of price decreases spread to the entire economy. For this reason, I believe we witnessed Central Banks around the world pumping money like crazy for a decade yet not getting any inflation. The technological pace they were up against is simply too great.
Over the next decade, we are going to see many of the basic necessities of life start decline in price. Peter Diamandis calls this"demonetization". Basically, after something is digitized, it gets very inexpensive.
Take music as an example. 25 years ago, $11 got one a CD with 12 or 14 songs. Now, if you don't want commercials, $10 a months gets you access to 30 million songs on Pandora.
Remember when cell phones were something for the wealthy? During the same period as I just mentioned, we saw phones going for a thousand dollars with rates of $1.50 per minute. Today, phones are simply a minor cost and most plans have unlimited voice and text (and some data).
The automotive industry received a ton of press the last few years with the impending introduction of wide scale electric cars followed by autonomous capabilities. I recall reading in 2014 how they were projecting that there would be an autonomous prototype available by 2025. That estimate was crushed since Waymo already has autonomous vehicles in testing on the streets of an area of Phoenix.
This is just an example of the pace that technology is advancing ahead.
We are rapidly heading for the Age of Abundance. Most of my regular readers know where I stand on cryptocurrencies, STEEM in particular. The Internet came to money. Just like music is abundant, so is information, communication, and video. This medium takes anything digital and replicates it rather inexpensively. Think if how many pictures you see on a daily basis that were taken and uploaded by people. There was a time, not too long ago, where 24 pictures cost $8 to get developed.
The Age of Abundance is going to reverse what we experienced the last 100 years.
During that period, we saw the price of goods and services increase while the value of money decreased. This is backwards since we did make great technological advancement during that time. However, now we are seeing the opposite.
Cryptocurrency goes up in value (at least compared to fiat) while our basic necessities are going to be coming down. Technology, or more specifically, that under the Laws of IT, is penetrating every area of life. This is going to result in a cost reduction.
Today, housing, medical, and transportation are probably the three biggest expenses a household has. For some, we can add education to the mix. All four of these areas are presently seeing massive digitization which will reduce the prices. Think of each of these industries experiencing what the cell phone and computer industries went through.
What is happening in each field is too cumbersome to include in this post. However, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different projects which will achieve the end I am referring to.
The housing market is starting to see strides made in Contour Manufacturing (3D printing). There have been a number of projects around the world which were already 3D printed. This will only increase as the equipment gets better and less expensive. Nevertheless, even today, full size homes are printed in 10-24 hours.
Medical is moving from reactive to preventative. Again, there are too many things taking place to list but there are a number of large firms along with startups all working on personal health monitoring devices. AI is making significant headway in this marketplace already outpacing doctors at certain things. There will come a time when you will not let a human operate on you since the robotics will be much better. Seriously, would you rather have a doctor who did 4 operations the previous week or a software network that did 3,000 of them around the country in the same period of time. Machine learning via sharing with each other is really exploding.
Transportation costs are expected to come down 90% by 2025. This is due to the emergence of autonomous technology. People pay $400-$700 a month to have a car that sits 95% of the time. Ride sharing is going to explode and the price of a trip will drop to near nothing once the cost of labor is removed.
This are just a few examples of what is going to happen over the next decade. We are seeing similar results in the areas of energy (renewables), insurance (big data), water (desalinization), and food (AgTech). Of course, most on here are aware of the impact cryptocurrencies and blockchain are having on the cost of money transfers.
If we go out past 10 years, we are going to see nanotechnology start to move to the forefront and this is where we will see the Star Trek replicator emerge. At that point, people are going to make whatever they want for just the cost of raw materials.
Get ready for a wild ride. Lots of good stuff happening.
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