We are experiencing one of the least discussed, yet most remarkable cultural shifts of all time: war, one of our species’ most abiding and defining social practices, is at its lowest ebb ever
On Wednesday 21st June, the Colombian government agreed to a ceasefire with the country’s largest rebel group. For most people, this story would have passed unnoticed, buried amongst the headlines. That’s a pity. Not only does it mark the end of a 50 year old war that has killed more than 220,000 people, it also signals the end of official armed conflict in the entire western hemisphere of the planet. It means that all of the war in the world is now contained to an arc stretching from central Africa through to Pakistan, containing less than a sixth of the world’s population. If you can tear your attention away from the 24 hour news cycle, you’ll be astonished to hear that we are experiencing one of the least discussed, yet most remarkable cultural shifts of all time: war, one of our species’ most abiding and defining social practices, is at its lowest ebb ever.
The immediate reaction to a claim like that is of course, disbelief. The brutal conflict in Syria has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and displaced millions. We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis of modern times, and terrorism is also at an all-time high. Every night our screens are saturated with images of hollowed out buildings in Fallujah and Aleppo, masked men flying black flags in the desert, and the faces of the latest innocent victims in Baghdad, Lagos, Paris, Brussels and Orlando.
But, as Joshua S. Goldstein and Steven Pinker point out in a recent Boston Globe editorial, our obsession with these stories blind us to a far greater truth. Outside the Middle East, war is effectively disappearing. In Nigeria, Boko Haram is on the retreat from many of its home terrories. In the Central African Republic, a newly elected government has brought genuine hope for lasting peace. In Ukraine, a shaky ceasefire is holding despite partial flare ups. We have short memories too. We forget about the wars that ended recently in Lebanon, Rwanda, Chad, Peru, Iran, Sri Lanka and Angola and have forgotten earlier ones from a generation ago in places like Greece, Tibet, Algeria, India, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Uganda, and Mozambique that killed millions of people.
The world was a far more dangerous place when you were born. Death tolls from wars in the 1970s and 1980s were 4–5 times higher than they are today. We are, despite reports of religious and political insurgencies, despite high-profile terrorist killings and unrest in various corners of the globe, living in the most peaceful era of our species’ existence. The world is getting less violent; we’re just more aware of the violence that happens, thanks to the mass availability of information. And unfortunately, the media and our politicians use that information to make it look as though we’re doing worse than we actually are. I’ve written about that elsewhere, so I won’t get into it into much detail. Suffice to say we have some evolutionary hangovers that leave us ill equipped to think about this stuff properly.
So what’s happening here? Why is war declining? Well the answer is complicated, but a big part of it seems to be that our institutions are getting better. After centuries of hard earned lessons, people are starting to understand that governance really matters. Democracy is more prevalent today than ever before (and despite all its obvious flaws, it’s still a hell of a lot better than authoritarianism and feudal serfdom). Since democracies don’t usually go to war with each other, the likelihood of interstate war, which kills more people than the kinds of intermittent, non-state conflicts we see today, is declining. As the world becomes more interconnected, the powerful have ever more incentives to avoid the catastrophic economic consequences of going to war too. Conflict isn’t good for your economy in a world of dense trade networks and digital flows.
An important caveat here — the data does not suggest that war is over, nor does it suggest the end of low level conflicts within states. It also feels strange, almost perverse to be writing an article entitled “The Decline of War” when we know hundreds of thousands of people around the world are still suffering and when millions of displaced people are being shunned by countries that are turning their backs on the principles they agreed to in the UN’s Refugee Convention. Our work is only just beginning. As large scale war declines, we have an opportunity to turn our collective efforts to overcoming other forms of violence such as domestic abuse, slavery, and racial, political and religious persecution. We’ve got a long way to go: from ethnic violence in the Congo, state collapse in Venezuela and persecution in Tibet, to drug wars in Mexico and Brazil and the rise of far-right extremism in Europe.
But, as one of my favourite statisticians Hans Rosling says — you have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once. The world is getting better. But the world is not yet good enough. It’s important to acknowledge one of the great stories of our time. We are very lucky. Fewer of us as a proportion of the world’s entire population have had to go to war than any other generation since the Roman Empire. Surely that’s something that should be celebrated as part of our public discourse? When we speak about the decline of war, we have an opportunity to express our gratitude to those who came before us, and sacrificed so much for the principles of peace, and freedom from persecution. Our relative comfort and wellbeing is a direct result of their sacrifices — and by saying that the world is getting worse, we dishonour their memories. War is not inevitable. Many brave people have fought for that belief. Our generation is starting to show that it’s possible. And the more people start understanding that, the sooner it becomes a reality.
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Thanks to Reggie Watts for this pic (and apologies for the blatant copyright infringement)
political economist, science communicator @future_crunch | community manager for @rhokaustralia | PhD from London School of Economics
Aug 114 min read
I Don’t Know What Technology Is
But I’ve got a few ideas about what it’s not
…
Some people say technology is a tool. Some say it’s a body of knowledge, or a way of using materials, or the organisation of human activities. For many, technology is a distraction. For others, it’s simply destiny. Sometimes you’ll hear someone say that technology is a ‘double-edged sword.’ Watch out for that one — it’s a meaningless phrase disguised in a silk tie and expensive shoes; the equivalent of saying that food can be either delicious or unpalatable. If you ever hear someone peddling this as a valuable insight, avoid them at all costs.
I don’t own silk ties or expensive shoes. And I’m not entirely sure I have a fixed definition of what technology is. So I thought I’d have a crack at what I think technology ISN’T.
1) Technology is NOT the cause of our problems The world faces serious issues, from climate change and environmental degradation, to economic inequality, forced migration and political and religious extremism. It’s tempting to blame our modern lifestyles for many of those problems. And since modern life is so often synonymous with technology, we blame it by association. We complain that social media is polarising, that robots destroy jobs and that drones kill innocent people. To blame social media for hateful outpourings though, is like blaming ink for venomous gossip. Yes, new technologies like robots and drones create unprecedented anxiety. But then so did the telephone, the railway, internal combustion, photography, laudanum, mirror glass, fire, television, gunpowder, the crossbow, distillation, the slingshot, and a bridge high across a foaming river. Stuff enters human lives. Some of it sticks around, some of it mutates and matures down the years, some of it is rendered redundant, some of it dissipates entirely. Meanwhile, we continue to try and limit the depradations of those whose prosperity or purpose is tied to the destruction of the planet and the misery of others. They’re the problem. They always have been. And they still are today.
2) Technology is NOT the answer to our problems We’re living in an age where the actions of a few hundred, socially anxious people from Silicon Valley are having an outsized impact on the rest of the world. Their belief in the power of technology to solve problems and improve lives has made them a lot of money, and brought some incredible benefits to the rest of the world in the process. Unfortunately, while techno-utopianism is great when you’re building digital products, it’s a lot harder when you’re dealing with crops, or transport systems, or government bureaucracies. Software companies might be eating the world, but they get serious indigestion when they ignore local politics, or are unable to differentiate between the needs of a 43 year old programmer in Oakland and a 17 year old girl in Saudi Arabia. The geeks would do well to remember that the answers to most of our problems are already here. They’re in other people’s heads. Technology helps us share those ideas, and gives us the tools to bypass many roadblocks. But it can’t succeed unless it’s combined with well designed institutions, strong movements for social change and elected leaders that are willing to take risks.
3) Technology is NOT the end of magic There’s a popular idea floating around in a lot of wealthy societies that our gadgets, tools, screens and machines have taken something away from us. They prevent us from appreciating beauty, from connecting with others and from understanding what it means to be truly human. This is a Promethean view of the world, with technology as an outside force that we discovered by accident. It brings us many benefits, but it also comes at the expense of things like spirituality, nature, or love. The problem with this idea is that it’s too mechanistic. We forget that technology is intimately connected with the story of our evolution and is as much a part of what it means to be human as our dreams, myths or belief systems. Technology has always existed side by side with the other things that matter to us. Stories sound better when you’re sitting in front of a fire. Meditation is easier with an app. Things like mystery and magic will always exist in the world. And they’re always accessible to us, if we just use a little imagination.
Had enough of the relentless negativity? We send outa fortnightly newsletterwith stories about people who are using science and technology to make things better. We sift through the best content online to discern the signal from the noise, so you can discover the things that really matter.
political economist, science communicator @future_crunch | community manager for @rhokaustralia | PhD from London School of Economics
Jun 94 min read
Karma at the Bottom of a Spray Can
Or, how to avoid international media myopia when you’re online
Bill Hicks once said that watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye. While we’re not too sure about third eyes, we do agree about the black spray paint. We spend a lot of time trying to show people that the mainstream media has a commercial logic that’s predicated on fear and innacurate perceptions of risk, and it distorts our view of the world. More recently, we’ve also been thinking about another kind of blind spot that comes from geographical bias, a form of media myopia that in some ways is even more insidious.
If you live in an English speaking country for example then a lot of the ‘international news’ you consume comes from a pretty limited range of sources. It’s mostly other English-speaking countries and a smattering from Europe, Asia and Africa. Once in a blue moon you’ll get a story from Latin America, and when you do it looks awfully familiar. Government corruption in Brazil, economic collapse in Venezuela, the escape and recapture of a druglord in Mexico.
Ever stopped to wonder what the 700 million people who live in Latin America are actually up to? They’ve got the same digital tools as the rest of the world. They’re connected 24/7 to the internet via their phones. In rural areas, they’re worried about jobs and the migration of young people to the cities and the breakdown of traditional family structures. They’re wondering what comes next after the resource boom. Their urban centres are home to co-working spaces, incubators and launchpads. They’re also having furious debates about diversity in business, class divides and fairness in politics.
In Brazil, the startup industry is booming. In Columbia, they’ve locked up a Panamanian entrepreneur for creating a cryptography app. In Argentina, womens’ groups have forced car companies to withdraw sexist user manuals, and workers in airports are going on strike over unfair payment conditions. Chile is in the midst of one of the great renewables transformations of all time. The same logic can be applied to northern India, or Russia, or Italy. When was the last time you heard something about one of the 94 million people living in Ethiopia that didn’t involve farming?
Of course it doesn’t make sense for the publications we read or the TV channels we watch to tell us genuinely interesting stories about people that live in unfamiliar places. If a story doesn’t conform to a stereotype or attract our interest then it doesn’t get clicks and views. And in an attention economy that’s a media death sentence. Unfortunately, while geographically biased, demand-driven reporting might have been okay in the old days, it’s inexcusable when more than half the world is now online.
The big conversations are global now and should be treated that way. We’re not saying you have to read La Nación every morning (although thanks to Google Translate you could if you wanted to). But perhaps the next time you’re online, move that spray can a little to the right and visit a digital only website like Quartz or Fusion, where they approach this stuff differently. Or sign up to something like Global Voices, a global online community of more than 1400 people that’s been doing this stuff since 2005.
Many of the world’s most interesting and important stories aren’t in just one place. Sometimes they’re scattered in bits and pieces across the Internet, in blog posts and tweets, and in multiple languages. These are the stories that matter, and the stories that we should all be listening to. Get out there and look for them. You might just find yourself pleasantly surprised by what’s really going on. And in the process, earn yourself a little bit of karma on the side.
I run a small, Melbourne-based think tank called Future Crunch. We send outa fortnightly newsletter with stories about people who are using science and technology to make things better. You should totally subscribe. It’s awesome. We sift through the best content online to discern the signal from the noise, so you can discover the things that really matter.
Maverick: A person who pursues rebellious disruptive ideas, behaving differently from the expected or usual way. An unorthodox, unconventional non-conformist.
4 days ago4 min read
Want to Become a Billionaire? Solve “I want X but Y”
I’m obsessed with the future, recognition and projection of future developments and opportunities consume a vast amount of my waking time. The process I take is a meticulous one which involves rigorously understanding current technologies, impending innovations and the implications those developments will afford to the birth of new possibilities and industries. Concurrently to taking a foresightful view of future potential developments I often find value in understanding the past as well. Historical precedent is often prescient of what will come hereafter: everything old is new again, the answers lie in using the old to interpret the new. The true voyage of discovery is not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Which is how I question and analyse what I am looking at. Initially, I utilise a metaphoric method of analysis to understand while comparing. Comparisons are not always perfect but it’s more important the general premise is conveyed succinctly allowing the idea to germinate and grow. It’s about distilling the idea into its most diluted and simplistic form.
Netflix is like TV but when you want to watch it. Twitter is like blogging but only 140 characters. Instagram is like your camera but with filters. Whatsapp is like SMS but free. Uber is like other taxi companies but with an app. Airbnb is like a hotel but from other people.
What this analysis uncovers is that they are all reinterpretations of existing models in new, disruptively innovative ways. There is nothing ground breathtakingly shattering about any of them on their on, in retrospect, they all seem obvious, but that is the beauty of them all. We feel like anyone could have developed them. Their simplicity is what is so challenging, though. The general consensus is that great ideas are incredibly hard. The opposite could not be truer. The most valuable things are often the simplest, they address simple frustrations from everyday life. Repeating the above exercise marries the idea to the problems they solve.
I want to watch X but it’s not on TV. I want to blog but it’s too much effort. I want to share pictures but they’re not beautiful. I want to contact my family but it costs too much. I want a taxi but I can’t wait for it. I want a hotel but there are no free rooms.
Good businesses provide a service that customers appreciate, great services solve problems. Developing the next great business is about distilling a problem down to its simplest form. Every day we have the opportunity to address the problems we face but most people don’t even recognise them.
For years people wanted to watch a programme but had to adhere to a TV guide, On-demand and Netflix changed the game and instituted a paradigm shift in behaviour. The best businesses change how we live and how we operate. They fix the simplest problems we have which we had grown so accustomed to that we had assumed they were fixed. The best businesses re-imagine the problem within the framework of technological advances. The biggest opportunities are to meet the problems that people had grown complacent of. They had grown so used to that they have accepted them as a way of life.
Uber is the prime example; smartphone technology had been around for 3 years before it was founded, so the technology existing wasn’t the issue, people were simply incapable of imagining an alternative to the inadequate service taxi’s provided. The problem sat in plain sight for over quarter of a decade before Travis recognised the potential solution. Immediately a thriving business burst free and solved a problem everyone had and experienced but nobody appreciated. Never accept the way things have always been done as the only way they can be done.
Appreciation of a problem requires cognisance of it. Identification requires implementation. Value requires action. Next comes a few simple questions which enable you to understand the potential ubiquitousness of your market.
a) What would your company do?
b) How big is the potential market?
c) How could you achieve traction?
d) How will you make money?
If there is a clear path from A-D then the possibility is exponential.
Spotting the problem is the challenge. They stare us in the face every day. Everyone can look but not everyone can see. The next billion dollar business isn’t going to come from an unimaginable product, it will come from a simple solution to an age-old problem who’s value wasn’t recognised. It’s about looking and seeing the same things with new eyes. It’s about imagining new solutions to preexisting issues.
Problems are the heart of every potential business. They provide an opportunity to profit eventually but initially you must show how you will accomplish it. It’s not simply about solving a problem, it’s about blowing people away with simplicity and the user experience. Desperation for profit is counterproductive. Allow your business to gain traction and spread, understand the scale of the problem through expansion and keep meeting people’s needs. If you solve problems people had grown so complacent of that they ignored them,in a way that they are naturally integrated as a simplistic solution to everyday life profit will come after.
Ultimately, you want to solve a problem so easily that everyone says to you “but anyone could do that”. Precisely. If they haven’t opportunity knocks.
Solve “I want X but Y” and you will be well on your way.
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Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology
“The strongest force propelling human progress has been the swift advance and wide diffusion of technology.” — The Economist
In the year 1820, a person could expect to live less than 35 years, 94% of the global population lived in extreme poverty, and less that 20% of the population was literate. Today, human life expectancy is over 70 years, less that 10% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, and over 80% of people are literate. These improvements are due mainly to advances in technology, beginning in the industrial age and continuing today in the information age.
There are many exciting new technologies that will continue to transform the world and improve human welfare. Here are eleven of them.
1. Self-Driving Cars
Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3–5 years they‘ll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.25 million people die from car-related injuries per year. Half of the deaths are pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists hit by cars. Cars are the leading cause of death for people ages 15–29 years old.
Just as cars reshaped the world in the 20th century, so will self-driving cars in the 21st century. In most cities, between 20–30% of usable space is taken up by parking spaces, and most cars are parked about 95% of the time. Self-driving cars will be in almost continuous use (most likely hailed from a smartphone app), thereby dramatically reducing the need for parking. Cars will communicate with one another to avoid accidents and traffic jams, and riders will be able to spend commuting time on other activities like work, education, and socializing.
Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven’t worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
Due to steady technological and manufacturing advances, the price of solar cells has dropped 99.5% since 1977. Solar will soon be more cost efficient than fossil fuels. The cost of wind energy has also dropped to an all-time low, and in the last decade represented about a third of newly installed US energy capacity.
Forward thinking organizations are taking advantage of this. For example, in India there is an initiative to convert airports to self-sustaining clean energy.
Tesla is making high-performance, affordable electric cars, and installing electric charging stations worldwide.
Tesla Model 3 and US supercharger locations
There are hopeful signs that clean energy could soon be reaching a tipping point. For example, in Japan, there are now more electric charging stations than gas stations.
Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
Toybox demo from Oculus
People sometimes think VR and AR will be used only for gaming, but over time they will be used for all sorts of activities. For example, we’ll use them to manipulate 3-D objects:
Augmented reality computer interface (from Iron Man)
To meet with friends and colleagues from around the world:
Augmented reality teleconference (from The Kingsman)
And even for medical applications, like treating phobias or helping rehabilitate paralysis victims:
VR and AR have been dreamed about by science fiction fans for decades. In the next few years, they’ll finally become a mainstream reality.
4. Drones and Flying Cars
“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need… roads.” — Dr. Emmet Brown
GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokémon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
For example, drones are being used to inspect critical infrastructure like bridges and power lines, to survey areas struck by natural disasters, and many other creative uses like fighting animal poaching.
Flying cars use the same advanced technology used in drones but are large enough to carry people. Due to advances in materials, batteries, and software, flying cars will be significantly more affordable and convenient than today’s planes and helicopters.
5. Artificial Intelligence
‘’It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go — maybe even longer.” — New York Times, 1997
“Master of Go Board Game Is Walloped by Google Computer Program” — New York Times, 2016
Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
AI can be applied to almost any field. For example, in photography an AI technique called artistic style transfer transforms photographs into the style of a given painter:
The broad promise of AI is to liberate people from repetitive mental tasks the same way the industrial revolution liberated people from repetitive physical tasks.
“If AI can help humans become better chess players, it stands to reason that it can help us become better pilots, better doctors, better judges, better teachers.” — Kevin Kelly
Some people worry that AI will destroy jobs. History has shown that while new technology does indeed eliminate jobs, it also creates new and better jobs to replace them. For example, with advent of the personal computer, the number of typographer jobs dropped, but the increase in graphic designer jobs more than made up for it.
It is much easier to imagine jobs that will go away than new jobs that will be created. Today millions of people work as app developers, ride-sharing drivers, drone operators, and social media marketers— jobs that didn’t exist and would have been difficult to even imagine ten years ago.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today’s smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
Internet-connected smartphones give ordinary people abilities that, just a short time ago, were only available to an elite few:
“Right now, a Masai warrior on a mobile phone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile communications than the president did 25 years ago. If he’s on a smart phone using Google, he has access to more information than the U.S. president did just 15 years ago.” — Peter Diamandis
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains
“If you asked people in 1989 what they needed to make their life better, it was unlikely that they would have said a decentralized network of information nodes that are linked using hypertext.” — Farmer & Farmer
Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps.
Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
Protocols based on blockchains also have capabilities that previous protocols didn’t. For example, Ethereum is a new blockchain-based protocol that can be used to create smart contracts and trusted databases that are immune to corruption and censorship.
8. High-Quality Online Education
While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
Encyclopedia Britannica used to cost $1,400. Now anyone with a smartphone can instantly access Wikipedia. You used to have to go to school or buy programming books to learn computer programming. Now you can learn from a community of over 40 million programmers at Stack Overflow. YouTube has millions of hours of free tutorials and lectures, many of which are produced by top professors and universities.
The quality of online education is getting better all the time. For the last 15 years, MIT has been recording lectures and compiling materials that cover over 2000 courses.
“The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone.” — Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering
As perhaps the greatest research university in the world, MIT has always been ahead of the trends. Over the next decade, expect many other schools to follow MIT’s lead.
Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef.
Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
For example, entrepreneurs are developing new food products that are tasty and nutritious substitutes for traditional foods but far more environmentally friendly. The startup Impossible Foods invented meat products that look and taste like the real thing but are actually made of plants.
Their burger uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and produces 87% less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional burgers. Other startups are creating plant-based replacements for milk, eggs, and other common foods. Soylent is a healthy, inexpensive meal replacement that uses advanced engineered ingredients that are much friendlier to the environment than traditional ingredients.
Some of these products are developed using genetic modification, a powerful scientific technique that has been widely mischaracterized as dangerous. According to a study by the Pew Organization, 88% of scientists think genetically modified foods are safe.
Another exciting development in food production is automated indoor farming. Due to advances in solar energy, sensors, lighting, robotics, and artificial intelligence, indoor farms have become viable alternatives to traditional outdoor farms.
Compared to traditional farms, automated indoor farms use roughly 10 times less water and land. Crops are harvested many more times per year, there is no dependency on weather, and no need to use pesticides.
10. Computerized Medicine
Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
For example, just fifteen years ago, it cost $3B to sequence a human genome. Today, the cost is about a thousand dollars and continues to drop. Genetic sequencing will soon be a routine part of medicine.
Genetic sequencing generates massive amounts of data that can be analyzed using powerful data analysis software. One application is analyzing blood samples for early detection of cancer. Further genetic analysis can help determine the best course of treatment.
Another application of computers to medicine is in prosthetic limbs. Here a young girl is using prosthetic hands she controls using her upper-arm muscles:
Soon we’ll have the technology to control prothetic limbs with just our thoughts using brain-to-machine interfaces.
Computers are also becoming increasingly effective at diagnosing diseases. An artificial intelligence system recently diagnosed a rare disease that human doctors failed to diagnose by finding hidden patterns in 20 million cancer records.
Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA’s budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
The good news is that private space companies have started filling the void. These companies provide a wide range of products and services, including rocket launches, scientific research, communications and imaging satellites, and emerging speculative business models like asteroid mining.
The most famous private space company is Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which successfully sent rockets into space that can return home to be reused.
If successful, asteroid mining could lead to a new gold rush in outer space. Like previous gold rushes, this could lead to speculative excess, but also dramatically increased funding for new technologies and infrastructure.
These are just a few of the amazing technologies we’ll see developed in the coming decades. 2016 is just the beginning of a new age of wonders. As futurist Kevin Kelly says:
If we could climb into a time machine, journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2050 were not invented until after 2016. People in the future will look at their holodecks and wearable virtual reality contact lenses and downloadable avatars and AI interfaces and say, “Oh, you didn’t really have the internet” — or whatever they’ll call it — “back then.”
So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2016 is the best time to start up. There has never been a better day in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/ risk ratios, better returns, greater upside than now. Right now, this minute. This is the moment that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh, to have been alive and well back then!”
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