In traveling around China, two things are most striking: the incompatibility of architectural styles, where giants made of glass and concrete coexist alongside traditional Chinese houses, and… the speed of everything. The speed of train traffic, the rapid growth of cities, and the construction of bridges and roads. Of course the development of the economy, with pace of growth unprecedented in the history.

In the top 10 cities, with a population of more than 20,000,000, China occupies three positions simultaneously. For the period of 2016, there were 1,347,440,000 people living in the country. Every day, millions of Chinese migrate from the eastern provinces to offices on the west coast, which creates endless kilometers of traffic jams and extremely thick air pollution. …

7:30 am. 2025. The fitness bracelet on your wrist detects REM sleep, activating the appropriate sensors — Smart Home comes to life. Floor on the way to the kitchen starts to warm up, blinds are drawn, and the water in the shower is being heated to a comfortable temperature. By the time you are up, your smart coffee maker updates the functionality with a dozen new coffee recipes, your refrigerator sends an order to the nearest supermarket, and the control system is finding ways for you to cut the consumption of water, heat, and electricity…

Robotics, CPS, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and the convergence of technologies — on the verge of the 4th technological revolution, almost every household item will be connected to a worldwide network and have the prefix “smart.” Hence the question: if already today smart cars drive on autopilot and solar energy, why are our houses are still continuing to burn expensive gas? …

The speed with which mankind is penetrating the worldwide web is growing exponentially, and every action inside it leaves a trace in the form of binary code: every second, Google receives more than 60,000 search requests; and every minute, more than a billion users of the Facebook social network send 30 million messages every and watch around 3 million videos.

Add to all this the millions of bank transactions, scrolled internet pages, goods bought in online shops or even simply photos posted and opinions expressed on the net.

By as early as 2020, the file on each inhabitant of the planet will be comparable to an online library of 5,000 books. And whereas just a few years ago, data was accumulating chaotically in terabytes and zettabytes without finding any practical application, analysts today are armed with software solutions such as Spark and Hadoop. The era of big data accumulation is over, having made way for the era of processing and analysis of results. …

Technology is rapidly changing the reality around us. The world of things is becoming much smarter, and with each passing year this trend will only gather momentum. Forget about ready-made solutions; forget about multi-year strategies. The word “traditional” is no longer on trend. Everything familiar that we have known for years will very soon cease to exist and objective reality will become distorted beyond recognition. The winners in this race will be the first to recognize and accept the new and rapidly changing state of affairs — a new reality driven no longer by production, but by intellect, not by the end product, but by an innovative idea for a product. …