Predicting the future (profitably)
Think you can’t predict the future?
Ray Kurzweil says you’re wrong, in this think piece in Inc.
What I love about this:
- his optimism
- that his optimism is built on fact, not belief
- that it rings true, given the exponential growth in technological efficiency
To that point: I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro. Ten years ago I would have been writing this on a PowerMac 6300, which had one of those cool new 3.5″ disk drives. I would be writing it, but I wouldn’t be posting it — blogs didn’t exist yet, and neither did the internet in the way we know it. Ten years before that, I would have been writing this on an Apple IIGS with a dial-up modem. Ten years before that, I would have been working on paper with an IBM Selectric II, and other paper conveyances (called “a stamp and envelope”) for distribution.
Kurzweil thinks this exponential growth in power is going to hit the energy industry. I agree. And then at some point, if indeed the war in Iraq was about oil, there won’t be a need for such interventions.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I like Ray’s essay, but I think he misses one main point–that there are forces opposed to the replacement of fossil fuels as our main energy source – the oil companies for instance – who have already shown a willingness to buy up good tech just to bury it. There is more I have a problem with but it would take more time then I have to go through it all carefully. Suffice it to say that as a member of a family of scientists I can just tell when they (scientist/engineers) are talking out of their asses .. and there is some of that going on here.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
My reading of history is this: The powers that be try to interupt science, but when they succeed it’s only temporarily. Galileo, anyone?
Moreover, I still think given the money to be made from solar technology that some very committed people are going to be determined to get their slice. Nothing like self interest to move very heavy rocks.
With regard to “buying up technology,” you are no doubt right, but that’s short-term as well. The new technology will be valuable, and increasingly moreso.
My actual intermediate concern would be not buying up technology, but “buying up government,” but that’s already happening. And, perhaps, is on the downshift.
Overall, I think we’re in for a major shift.