Exponential Change Forecast. UBER & Air BNB anticipate Future Trends

Where will our space be? SHOUTING AND SCREAMING INTO THE NEXT REVOLUTION WE GO ……………………… 

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 went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. 

Did you ever think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again???  Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The problem was that the first ones only had 10,000 pixels and it took time to develop more definition in photos. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years thereafter.
The above will now start happening with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture, jobs and many other important parts of daily life. …………………. SO  …… Welcome to the 4th industrial revolution or should I say welcome to the exponential age.

Software

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.
Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

Artificial intelligence 

• Computers will become exponentially better in understanding the world.
• This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.
• In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs because from IBM Watson where you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds with a 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.
• There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain. So if you study law, stop immediately!!! EUREKA!!!

Medicine

• Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses.
• Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.
• In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Transport

• Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public.
• Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted.
• You won’t want to own a car anymore however if you do want a car then electric cars will already start becoming mainstream by 2020.
• Furthermore cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric.
• 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 only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving.
• Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car.
• It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that.
• We can transform former parking space into parks.
• Today 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide.  We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km.  That will save a million lives each year.
• Most car companies might become bankrupt.
• Traditional car companies still 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. (I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.).

A NOTE: the two images are Editorial impositions and not integral to the original essay. They have been inserted as “scare tactics’ …. in keeping with the thrust of the article. Editor, Thuppahi

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