Global gigabit connectivity will connect everyone and everything, everywhere, at ultra-low cost: The deployment of both licensed and unlicensed 5G, plus the launch of a multitude of global satellite networks (OneWeb, Starlink, etc.), allow for ubiquitous, low-cost communications for everyone, everywhere–– not to mention the connection of trillions of devices. And today’s skyrocketing connectivity is bringing online an additional 3 billion individuals, driving tens of trillions of dollars into the global economy. This Metatrend is driven by the convergence of: low-cost space launches, hardware advancements, 5G networks, artificial intelligence, materials science, and surging computing power.
This is one of twenty examples. One of them, number 7 on his list, restates Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of the singularity by the end of this decade. We’ll see.
So, what is Diamandis’ batting average? If we look back to 1990, 2000 and 2010 how are things going for his actual / forecast ratio?
From a U.S. consumer perspective, 5G is a yawner. LTE is plenty fast.
One of my friends recently picked up a 5G iPhone.
When I ran a speed test on LTE, I got 50Mbps. He ran on 5G and got 11Mbps. Even if he got 110Mbps it would be ‘nice to have’, not really a game changer. My understanding is that only mmWave is impressive and it’s hard to provide consistent and widespread access to it.
Thanks! I too am a fan of speed tests, but in all honesty, I tend to prefer the much more subjective UX (user experience) rating. How does my cell phone experience subjectively compare to what I can get on my laptop on home WiFi?
2g -> awful
3g-> getting closer, but definitely not the same
4g (including LTE) -> cannot tell the difference at all. I’m done and I’ll upgrade to 5G when my phone goes bad.
That said, maybe 5G does better in high traffic areas like on the train home after work?
Arnold, thanks for attempting to share your optimism with us. I read PD’s call to join him in paradise. I laugh at it but because earlier today I read Tyler Cowen’s nonsense comment on the Chilean pension system and I was upset by his idiocy and malice.
I don’t know PD but I assume he sells tickets to Heaven. His Metratrends (1) and (4) made my day: “continued increase in global abundance” and “an age of capital abundance will see increasing access to capital everywhere”. The end of scarcity is around the corner –he’s talking about the next decade. By then, I’ll be 90, and my life expectancy will have increased by 9 or 9.5 years! Since I’m eating my savings and I don’t have any plan to join Tyler’s masters in stealing other people’s savings, I wonder if when being 90 someones will be ready to lend me enough money to live those extra years. To make things worse, there will be no demand for my expertise on how to deal with scarcity!
Totally off topic:
One of Arnold’s early Covid predictions appears prescient: viral loads matter. “SARS-CoV-2 viral load on admission is associated with 30-day mortality.”
https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofaa535/5952472?searchresult=1
Covid, off-topic but techno-optimistic: Dolly Parton’s $1 million gift helped fund the Moderna vaccine:
“As Dolly Parton tells it, her first-ever car accident in October 2013 was minor, but left her bruised and sore enough to seek medical advice at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
That’s where she met Naji Abumrad, a physician and professor of surgery. Abumrad knew next to nothing about the beloved megastar with big, blond hair, but he soon befriended her because he deeply enjoyed their talks about current events and science.
Their bond of nearly seven years received worldwide attention Tuesday after it was revealed that Parton’s $1 million donation to Vanderbilt for coronavirus research, made in honor of Abumrad, partially funded the biotechnology firm Moderna’s experimental vaccine, which a preliminary analysis released this week is nearly 95 percent effective at preventing the illness.”
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Dolly-Parton-helped-fund-Moderna-s-vaccine-It-15735754.php
If techno-optimism is good enough for Dolly, then it’s good enough for me.
Re’ the notion of ubiquitous and cheap connectivity. From the perspective of the average citizen of the wealthy industrialized world, have the remarkable advances that have ultimately led to the smartphone and the apps they enable really made him/her better off? If happiness is a measure(subjective as it is), I would have to say the jury is out. For that matter, beyond indoor plumbing, central heat, refrigeration and basic electrification, which were widely available and affordable in 1950, what advancement in consumer household technology has really moved the needle in terms of human well-being?
Some candidates of recent basic domestic technology improvements, important, needle moving maybe a little, but not often appreciated:
1. The plastic 5 gallon bucket – 1960s ( https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/the-5-gallon-bucket-cornerstone-of-growth/ )
2. Tyvek house wrap (April 1967)
3. Cross laminated timber (90s)
4. Arsenic free pressure treated (since 2000)
5. Automatic teller machines (1970s)
6. Cordless power tools (70s?)
7. Home food vacuum sealer ?
8. Advanced mildew killing chemicals (spray and forget)
Non-stick pans too. Some of the modern non-stick pans are amazing.
Microwaves make life easier.
For those That Grew Up in Smog Town, a truly competitive electric vehicle, which may be on the cusp, is also a game changer.
If you look in the developing world, where things like electric lighting, refrigerators, indoor plumbing, and central HVAC are not taken for granted, it seems like many people choose to pay for a smartphone before they choose to pay for those things. That seems like a pretty powerful testament.
“Human happiness” is not measurable in any universal way. Perhaps in another decade or two our iBody will measure our cortisol and serotonin levels, and we can start to say objectively how happy I (a rich white American barely middle-aged male) is on average compared to a farmer in Nigeria or a single mother in government housing in the Bronx.
Smartphones in developing countries are a means to manage your money through online banking or other schemes and my guess would be used to save income in a hard or e-currency, versus saving in a local currency that could be devalued at the whim of local government. With the ability to save or mange money, all the cool electrical gizmos that we take for granted everyday can be purchased.
“One of them, number 7 on his list, restates Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of the singularity by the end of this decade.”
Kurzweil predicted AI will pass a Turing test in 2029 and that there will be a singularity in 2045.
My prediction in 1984 based on extrapolating computer speed I jotted down into this century was that we were headed into a computer based ‘black hole’ that would occur between 2040 and 2060 unless something slowed or stopped the acceleration. I also thought strong AI was easily possibly by then but not necessary – just ultra fast computers from a 1984 perspective.
What I want is a mansion that I can afford with a McJob. That would be real material
abundance. Though a nice steak and some fish that are nearly as affordable as rice and beans would be nice as well. Sushi grade tuna from a lab, yum! Driverless cars sound good too, but I am skeptical that current machine learning technologies are up for the task. Maybe better machine learning technologies will be invented, but to my knowledge there hasn’t been any recent breakthroughs.
Largish homes are already quite reasonably priced, but only if you don’t care where they’re located. Homes in the most desirable areas will always rise in price (on average) faster than wages.
Victor Davis Hanson has an observation somewhere about human nature being relatively unchanging. He compares it to water.
He has a pump that pumps more water than his father or grandfather could do. It’s cheaper, it’s faster, it has greater power. But the water is still water.
Communications and computation will change some things a lot. In the end the human nature may stay the same
I won’t feel that we have true abundance until a median wage earner can afford to reenact the battle of Jutland with full size, AI-captained ships.
Historians say they know someone is mad when he begins to talk about the Templars. Aeronautical engineers know the same when someone brings the flying car. Piloting in three D close to the ground in the middle of Venturi currents between buildings and convection currents from the ground without years of training and stupefyingly complex control systems? ” Laws of physics? We don’t need no stinking laws of physics. We’re libertarian economists!”
Until I see & hear some good AI “teaching English Language”, I’ll be strongly suspicious of any big AI advance.
I now suspect, tho, that machine learning will be moving towards simulating intelligence, and fooling any test into thinking the AI “is intelligent”. And it won’t be clear if that’s not actual intelligence. It will include quick internal google/ DDG searching for answers of fact, as well as various people’s opinions.
Chess is already being played by human-AI combos, with better chess than ever. But chess, while beautiful, is a heavily bounded and full info game. Most situations are NOT full info. Which also allows more excellent pattern matching Mach Learn algos to become better at probabilistic estimation than most experienced experts – if there is enough test material for the Law of Large Numbers to work.