I want to add one key prediction to this fairly obvious
mix. ( obvious if you track technology –
I have not been really surprised since 1970 except to understand that someone
other than us mavens cared about information – I am more surprised at how easy
so much of it all is) It is that the
city needs to be geographically redistributed.
The reasons for urban concentration are all
disappearing. Yet linking urban clusters
to specific working land bases opens the opportunity to optimize the
development of the land and general biome.
It allows child development to be optimized and allows all members of
the social unit to contribute to the land itself.
Neither will it take very much to trigger it into motion. It will be need driven
Outline of technological expected, probable and possible
developments for the next 30 years
Now through 2021
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/outline-of-technological-expected.html
Foxconn and Heartland Robotics and other companies will be driving costs down and capabilities up for robotics for manufacturing and home usage. There should be 100 million to 1 billion highly functional robots by the end of 2021. There will be a new category of robot using smartphones and tablets as the head (processing, cameras and sensors)
Virtually every person will have smartphones and tablets by 2016 and people in the developed world will have more than one.
There will be a variety of competing quantum computer technologies. Dwave will have a 512 qubit adiabatic quantum computer next year.
There will be large scale optical computers.
Memristors, graphene and plasmonic computers will enable superfast universal memory, neuromorphic computers and terahertz clock cycles.
There are many kinds of hot and cold nuclear fusion technologies that I am tracking closely. The "cold fusion" is likely some other kind of energy mechanism. I believe that several will get commercialized in this decade. However, the real impact even if things go well will be in the next decade as society adapts and the technologies are perfected and fully deployed. Just providing clean energy that does not have resource limitations is great for the environment and takes away some worries but only will have huge impact with massive reduction in energy prices and enabling massive new capabilities like space travel throughout the solar system and making industrialization of space easy.
The latter half of this first decade will see the impact of Spacex Falcon Heavy and solar electric sails and inflatable space stations. Spacex Falcon Heavy success could see launch costs go down to $1000/kg. 2016-2022 could see success with reusability could see launch costs go down to $100-200/kg.
There will be some commercialization of gene therapy, stem cell treatments, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.
Myostatin inhibitors, SARM steroids and other treatments will combat frailty in the elderly and enable people to get more muscle mass which will burn more calories to combat obesity.
There will be early detection of cancer, immune system boosting against cancer and other diseases (new vaccines and other treatments.) There will be progress against air pollution and prevention of the 37 million early deaths in the developing world caused by lack of clean water, lack of sanitation and other relatively easily avoidable problems. There will be early stage anti-aging treatments. Several things that mimic calorie restriction which are emerging now and treatments like Stem Cell 100 (screened herbs that help fruit flies live longer). Some countries will edge over a life expectancy of 90 and anyone who takes care of themselves with exercise and diet will have reasonable chances to live to 100.
There will be growing effects of synthetic biology, DNA nanotechnology, RNA nanotechnology and protein nanotechnology.
Quantum dots for displays and electronics will get big.
Carbon nanotubes and graphene will achieve 100,000 to 1 million tons of production per year.
2022 through 2031
The energy revolution that emerged in the prior decade will disperse and have a broad impact.
Additive manufacturing will have broadened its impact to vastly speed up construction.
Broad Groups factory mass produced high rises will dominate all commercial construction.
Reusable Spacex rockets and possibly Skylon spaceplanes and other systems will revolutionize space access along with a blend of fusion powered systems.
The technologies of the mundane singularity with the energy revolution kicker will have major impacts.
1. Pro-growth Policies (variable and uncertain by region)
2. Energy Efficiency - superconductors, thermoelectrics, improved grid
3. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion
4. Additive manufacturing
5. Not so mundane - neuromorphic chips, quantum computers, photonics
6. Automated transportation (leading to robotic cars and planes)
7. Urbanization MegaCities
8. Urbanization Broad Group skyscrapers, Tata flat packed buildings
9. Robotics
10. Hyperbroadband
11. Supermaterials
12. Improve medicine and public health
13. Space
14. Synthetic biology and recombineering
15. Sensors everywhere
16. Education transformed and accelerated innovation
17. Supersmartphones, exoskeletons and wearable systems
18. Memristors and other significant computing and electronic improvements.
Zettaflop supercomputers.
2032 through 2041
True molecular nanotechnology will finally emerge (possibly could happen in the 2025 timeframe, but I am certain it will happen by this time). Diamondoid, nanofactories etc... the real deal.
SENS and nanomedicine will pay off with radical life extension.
Diamond-nitrogen vacancy quantum computers.
The main cognitive enhancement that I would prefer to focus upon is the enhancmement of the capabilities of civilization to solve problems. Quantum computers and quantum algorithms will enable far more efficient solutions. Quantum computers for pattern recognition and superior database searches by many orders of magnitude will expand capabilities.
Expanded technologies will enable open the implementable solution space.
Additive manufacturing, factory mass produced buildings and large structures with molecular technology enhancement will enable rapid upgrades and expansion of world infrastructure and development of the solar system.
Whatever AGI and cognitive enhancement that comes from super charged neuromorphic systems and million or trillion zettaflop systems with optical computer and quantum computer coprocessing will be very interesting. I look forward to seeing it unfold with the radical life extension of molecular nanotechnology enabled SENS.
World Economic Trends through 2100 and Quadrillion dollar economies
Currently the world economy is $74 trillion on a purchasing power parity basis. the IMF is forecasting about 6% per year growth through 2015 for a world economy of $99 trillion.
A world economy ten times larger will be a quadrillion dollar economy. Inflation and using future dollars will accelerate that milestone.
This would be a forecast for the third column in the table below where there is 6-18% worldwide GDP growth. However, corruption and really bad decisions would cause the world to underperform.
Foxconn and Heartland Robotics and other companies will be driving costs down and capabilities up for robotics for manufacturing and home usage. There should be 100 million to 1 billion highly functional robots by the end of 2021. There will be a new category of robot using smartphones and tablets as the head (processing, cameras and sensors)
Virtually every person will have smartphones and tablets by 2016 and people in the developed world will have more than one.
There will be a variety of competing quantum computer technologies. Dwave will have a 512 qubit adiabatic quantum computer next year.
There will be large scale optical computers.
Memristors, graphene and plasmonic computers will enable superfast universal memory, neuromorphic computers and terahertz clock cycles.
There are many kinds of hot and cold nuclear fusion technologies that I am tracking closely. The "cold fusion" is likely some other kind of energy mechanism. I believe that several will get commercialized in this decade. However, the real impact even if things go well will be in the next decade as society adapts and the technologies are perfected and fully deployed. Just providing clean energy that does not have resource limitations is great for the environment and takes away some worries but only will have huge impact with massive reduction in energy prices and enabling massive new capabilities like space travel throughout the solar system and making industrialization of space easy.
The latter half of this first decade will see the impact of Spacex Falcon Heavy and solar electric sails and inflatable space stations. Spacex Falcon Heavy success could see launch costs go down to $1000/kg. 2016-2022 could see success with reusability could see launch costs go down to $100-200/kg.
There will be some commercialization of gene therapy, stem cell treatments, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.
Myostatin inhibitors, SARM steroids and other treatments will combat frailty in the elderly and enable people to get more muscle mass which will burn more calories to combat obesity.
There will be early detection of cancer, immune system boosting against cancer and other diseases (new vaccines and other treatments.) There will be progress against air pollution and prevention of the 37 million early deaths in the developing world caused by lack of clean water, lack of sanitation and other relatively easily avoidable problems. There will be early stage anti-aging treatments. Several things that mimic calorie restriction which are emerging now and treatments like Stem Cell 100 (screened herbs that help fruit flies live longer). Some countries will edge over a life expectancy of 90 and anyone who takes care of themselves with exercise and diet will have reasonable chances to live to 100.
There will be growing effects of synthetic biology, DNA nanotechnology, RNA nanotechnology and protein nanotechnology.
Quantum dots for displays and electronics will get big.
Carbon nanotubes and graphene will achieve 100,000 to 1 million tons of production per year.
2022 through 2031
The energy revolution that emerged in the prior decade will disperse and have a broad impact.
Additive manufacturing will have broadened its impact to vastly speed up construction.
Broad Groups factory mass produced high rises will dominate all commercial construction.
Reusable Spacex rockets and possibly Skylon spaceplanes and other systems will revolutionize space access along with a blend of fusion powered systems.
The technologies of the mundane singularity with the energy revolution kicker will have major impacts.
1. Pro-growth Policies (variable and uncertain by region)
2. Energy Efficiency - superconductors, thermoelectrics, improved grid
3. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion
4. Additive manufacturing
5. Not so mundane - neuromorphic chips, quantum computers, photonics
6. Automated transportation (leading to robotic cars and planes)
7. Urbanization MegaCities
8. Urbanization Broad Group skyscrapers, Tata flat packed buildings
9. Robotics
10. Hyperbroadband
11. Supermaterials
12. Improve medicine and public health
13. Space
14. Synthetic biology and recombineering
15. Sensors everywhere
16. Education transformed and accelerated innovation
17. Supersmartphones, exoskeletons and wearable systems
18. Memristors and other significant computing and electronic improvements.
Zettaflop supercomputers.
2032 through 2041
True molecular nanotechnology will finally emerge (possibly could happen in the 2025 timeframe, but I am certain it will happen by this time). Diamondoid, nanofactories etc... the real deal.
SENS and nanomedicine will pay off with radical life extension.
Diamond-nitrogen vacancy quantum computers.
The main cognitive enhancement that I would prefer to focus upon is the enhancmement of the capabilities of civilization to solve problems. Quantum computers and quantum algorithms will enable far more efficient solutions. Quantum computers for pattern recognition and superior database searches by many orders of magnitude will expand capabilities.
Expanded technologies will enable open the implementable solution space.
Additive manufacturing, factory mass produced buildings and large structures with molecular technology enhancement will enable rapid upgrades and expansion of world infrastructure and development of the solar system.
Whatever AGI and cognitive enhancement that comes from super charged neuromorphic systems and million or trillion zettaflop systems with optical computer and quantum computer coprocessing will be very interesting. I look forward to seeing it unfold with the radical life extension of molecular nanotechnology enabled SENS.
World Economic Trends through 2100 and Quadrillion dollar economies
Currently the world economy is $74 trillion on a purchasing power parity basis. the IMF is forecasting about 6% per year growth through 2015 for a world economy of $99 trillion.
A world economy ten times larger will be a quadrillion dollar economy. Inflation and using future dollars will accelerate that milestone.
This would be a forecast for the third column in the table below where there is 6-18% worldwide GDP growth. However, corruption and really bad decisions would cause the world to underperform.
Increasing growth every 20 years
Year flat 6% 6-11% 6-18%
2015 100 100
100 (trillions of dollars,
World GDP PPP)
2020 134 134
134
2030 241 241
241 2.5 times energy
30K per cap
2040 431 474
571 3-4 times energy
50-70K per cap
2050 770 940
1390 5-10 times
80K-140K per cap
2060 1380 2000
4300 10-20 times energy
140K-430K per cap
2070 2500 4500
13700 15-40 times energy
250k-1.37 Million per cap
2080 4400 11600
56000 20-80 times energy
440K-5.6 M per cap
2090 8000 30000
230000 35-200 times energy
800K-23 M percap
2100 14000 86000 1200000 60-500 times energy
1.4M - 120 Million per cap
1 comment:
I would feel some sort of confidence in this article if I could read the same personal predictions from the 1970s.. Otherwise its all dreaming and guesswork!
As for 6% growth... that would be a FIRST for a lot of the world, never mind an average. Give a decade for the West to bleed out its GFC debt, something that will slow China down for that time, and we might get up to 4% again if we're lucky!
"Growth" in a third-world emerging econcomy full of young people is not the same as growth in a mature Western economy full of retired baby-boomers.
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