Get rid of everything, just not your smart phone

Pretty amazing stuff – if you are not a learning organization, you will b dead

• ·         In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide.  Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they became bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen to a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people don't see it coming.
• ·       In 1998, did you think that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So, as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years.
•  It will now happen with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.
•   Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution--Welcome to the Exponential Age. --Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

o   Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

o   Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

o   Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world.

o   This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

o   Facebook now has pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.

o   In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

o   Autonomous cars: in 2018 the first self-driving cars will be available for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted.  You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location, and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you will only pay for the distance driven, and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license, and will never own a car.  It will change cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach, and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.  Engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla. We now have one accident every 100,000 kms.  With autonomous driving, that will drop to one accident every 10 million kms.  That will save a million lives each year. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, insurance will become 100x cheaper

o   Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil energy.  The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.
With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water.  Desalination now only needs 2 kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water.  Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he/she wants, for nearly no cost.

o   Health 

§  The Tricorder X price will be announced this year.  There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone.  It will take your retina scan, your blood sample, and you will breath into it.   It will then analyse 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease.

§  t will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

o   3D printing 

§  The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years.  At the same time, it became 100 times faster.

§  All major shoe companies have started printing 3D shoes.

§  Spare airplane parts are already 3D-printed in remote airports

§  The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

§  At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities.  You can then 3D scan your feet, and print your perfect shoe at home.

§  In China, they have already 3D-printed a complete 6-story office building

§  By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D-printed.

o   Business opportunities 

§  If you think of a niche you want to go into, ask yourself, "In the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

§  If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea.

§  And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed in to failure in the 21st century.

o   Work (this IS the real challenge of the future--not immigration nor globalization)

§  70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years.

§  There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time

-In the US, young lawyers already can't find jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far, for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

-Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer 4 times more accurately than human nurses.

o   Agriculture

§  There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future.

§  Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working in their fields all day. 

§  Aeroponics will need much less water.

§  The first petri-dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow-produced veal in 2018.

§  Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces are used for cows.  Imagine if we don't need that space anymore.

§  There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly.  It contains more protein than meat.  It will be labeled as an "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects)

o    Longevity 

§  Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year.

§  Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years

§  The increase itself is increasing, and by 2036, there will be more than a one year increase per year.  So, we all might live for a long, long time, probably much longer than 100.

o   Education 

§  The cheapest smartphones already cost $10 in Africa and Asia.   In 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone.

§  That means everyone has the same access to a world-class education.

§  Every child in the world will be able to use Khan Academy to learn everything children in First World countries learn.

§  Software has already been released in Indonesia, and will be released in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer, because of enormous potential.

§  There will be an English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within six months.