My Predictions for the Next 10 Years
05/06/2015 06:10 pm ET | Updated May 06, 2015
Pe... moreMy Predictions for the Next 10 Years
05/06/2015 06:10 pm ET | Updated May 06, 2015
Peter Diamandis Chairman/CEO, XPRIZE
SHUTTERSTOCK
Though it is hard to believe, 10 years ago...
• The first video was uploaded to YouTube.
• Facebook, then 1 year old, dropped the "the" from its old URL "thefacebook.com" after acquiring "facebook.com" for $200K
• An early prototype of an autonomous car completed the DARPA Grand Challenge for the first time.
• The term "Drone" meant a military weapon system
• Bitcoin & Blockchain didn't exist, and wouldn't be created for 3 more years.
• Android was a small startup that Google had just acquired.
• There were 6.4 billion humans on Earth, only ~1 billion were online, and none of them had heard of Uber or AirBnb.
Today...
• YouTube has more than a billion users, who watch hundreds of millions of hours of video every day. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• Facebook has 1.4 billion users from every country on Earth.
• Every major car manufacturer is working on an autonomous model, and Google's autonomous cars have logged over 1 million miles driving themselves.
• Drones are now used by children, can be purchased at prices ranging from $50 to $1500. The largest consumer drone company DJI (which was started in 2006) is valued at $10b.
• Bitcoin and Blockchain companies have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital and are poised to be potentially as disruptive as the Internet itself (see below).
• Google now has over 1 billion active Android users
• Today, there are close to 7.4 billion humans on Earth, ~3 billion are now on-line.
• Uber, which was started in 2009, is valued at over $40b, and AirBnb, started in 2007, valued over $20b.
These are only a few of the fun examples of exponential change from the last decade.
The question is: What will the world look like 10 years from now?
The World in 2025
In 2025, in accordance with Moore's law, we will see an acceleration in the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true abundance.
Here are eight areas where we'll see extraordinary transformation in the next decade:
1. A $1000 Human Brain : In 2025, $1000 should buy you a computer able to calculate at 10^16 cycles per second (10,000 trillion cycles per second), the equivalent processing speed of the human brain.
2. A Trillion Sensor Economy : The Internet of Everything describes the networked connections between devices, people, processes and data. By 2025, the IoE will exceed 100 billion connected devices, each with a dozen or more sensors collecting data. This will lead to a trillion sensor economy driving a data revolution beyond our imagination. Cisco's recent report estimates the IoE will generate $19 trillion of newly created value.
3. Perfect knowledge : We're heading towards a world of perfect knowledge. With a trillion sensors gathering data everywhere (autonomous cars, satellite systems, drones, wearables, cameras), you'll be able to know anything you want, anytime, anywhere, and query that data for answers and insights.
4. 8 Billion Hyper-connected people : Facebook (Internet.org), SpaceX, Google (Project Loon), Qualcomm & Virgin (OneWeb) are planning to provide global connectivity to every human on Earth at speeds exceeding 1 Megabit per second. We will grow from three to eight billion connected humans, adding five billion new consumers into the global economy. They represent tens of trillions of new dollars flowing into the global economy. And they are not coming online like we did 20 years ago with a 9600 modem on AOL. They're coming online with a 1 Mbps connection and access to the world's information on Google, cloud 3D printing, Amazon Web Services, artificial intelligence with Watson, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and more.
5. Disruption of Health care : Existing health care institutions will be crushed as new business models with better and more efficient care emerge. Thousands of startups, as well as today's data-giants (Google, Apple, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, etc.) will all enter this lucrative $3.8 trillion dollar health care industry with new business models that dematerialize, demonetize and democratize today's bureaucratic and inefficient system. Biometric sensing (wearables) and AI will make each of us the CEO's of our own health. Large-scale genomic sequencing and machine learning will allow us to understand the root cause of cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disease and what to do about it. Robotic surgeons can carry out an autonomous surgical procedure perfectly (every time) for pennies on the dollar. Each of us will be able to regrow a heart, liver, lung of kidney when we need it, instead of waiting for the donor to die.
6. Augmented & Virtual Reality : Billions of dollars invested by Facebook (Oculus), Google (Magic Leap), Microsoft (HoloLens), Sony, Qualcomm, HTC and others will lead to a new generation of displays and user interfaces. The screen as we know it... on your phone, your computer and your TV will disappear and be replaced eyewear. Not the geeky Google Glass, but stylish equivalents to what the well-dressed fashionista's are wearing today. The result will be a massive disruption in a number of industries ranging from consumer retail, to real-estate, education, travel, entertainment, and the fundamental ways we operate as humans.
7. Early days of JARVIS : Artificial intelligence research will make strides in the next decade. If you think Siri is useful now, the next decade's generation of Siri will be much more like JARVIS from Ironman , with expanded capabilities, to understand and answer. Companies like IBM-Watson, DeepMind and Vicarious continue to hunker down and develop next generation AI-systems. In a decade, it will be normal for you to give your A.I. access to listen to all of your conversations, read your emails and scan you biometric data because the upside and convenience will be so immense.
8. Blockchain : If you haven't heard of the blockchain, I highly recommend you read up on it. You might have heard of bitcoin, which is the decentralized (global), democratized, highly secure cryptocurrency, based on the blockchain. But the real innovation is the blockchain itself, a protocol that allows for secure, direct (without a middle-man), digital transferring of value and assets (think money, contracts, stocks, IP). Investors like Marc Andreessen have poured tens of millions into the development and believe this is as important of an opportunity as the creation of the Internet itself.
Bottom Line : We live in the most exciting time ever.
This is the sort of content and conversations we discuss at my 250-person executive mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective and has ~90 percent of the spots filled. You can apply here.
Share this email with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.
We are living toward incredible times where the only constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing.
Best,
Peter
P.S. Every weekend I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to PeterDiamandis.com and sign up for this and my Abundance blogs. less