The new technologies coming in the years to come will surpass the imagination of many. New technologies are the consequence of innovation which, like evolution, constantly discovers new ways to reorganize and reformulate past solutions in a useful way.
The impact is not only economic: the importance that technology has had in social innovation is underestimated. We do not realize it, but technology has freed up so much of our time that our ancestors dedicated to the production of food and basic necessities and that we, a few generations later, can use for more sophisticated activities. With ever better tools available, more and more of humanity’s time is devoted to discovery and invention.
But what are the new emerging technologies that have not yet appeared on the mass market, but that will arrive soon and that will transform our way of life and even of conceiving ourselves?
The Expansion Of New Technologies
Historically, the innovations that have led to technologies such as the steam engine, electricity, internal combustion engine, computers and the Internet have led to a radical transformation of humanity globally. New inventions and technologies lead to the emergence of new industries and subsequent innovations which in turn create economic expansion, prosperity and transformation of the way of life.
When we look back into the past the technologies that turned out to be revolutionary are easy to identify, yet if you go back and read the comments that most people made at the time, you notice that the majority were absolutely unaware of the transformation that was about to take place. and many experts even though the new technology was impossible or would remain a curiosity without any large-scale application. Just think that Bill Gates declared in the mid-1990s that he didn’t believe the Internet would ever amount to anything important.
Predict New Technologies
While predicting what new technologies will transform society is not easy, it is also important to try to do so. This is in order not to become its victims and indeed to know how to ride the wave, both from a financial investment point of view, both from the point of view of professional choices, and from a personal point of view.
Based on new technological trends, investment industry experts such as ARKInvest, think that not only the era of new technologies is not over, but that indeed we are at the dawn of a new boom of new technologies that will arrive at the same time and that will make the next 10 years an era of great transformation.
Some new technologies create entire platforms on which other innovations will grow, such as artificial intelligence, genomic sequencing, robotics, energy storage and Blockchain technologies.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial intelligence is a system that uses data and machine learning to solve complex problems. Artificial intelligence will transform all sectors of the economy, especially those that have resisted the digital transformation, which bridges the analog age and the age of artificial intelligence, such as financial services and healthcare.
Artificial intelligence is already being put into practice in the field of deep leaning, which allows you to use data to create software. It is applied in the development of automation such as self-driving cars, smartphone applications such as TikTok and the development of general artificial intelligence.
The economic value of these new technologies will become greater than that of the Internet itself. Furthermore, artificial intelligence will allow to develop more powerful processors at a lower cost and to create virtual worlds in the field of video games and virtual reality.
GENOMIC SEQUENCING
The cost of mapping the entire human genome has plummeted. This will allow new innovations in the medical field, such as personalized medicine, preventive care and longevity treatments.
The time when humanity will be able to modify DNA is approaching. There are two forces at play that will allow this …
- The reduction of the costs of genetic sequencing.
- The transition of medicine from chemistry-based science to software-based science.
Low costs of producing DNA and RNA bases allow for the production of DNA and RNA chains on an industrial scale, as was not possible in the past. This allows an acceleration of the study of genomics and the development of targeted genetic therapies.
DNA can now be conceived as a software program whose “bugs” can be fixed with a small program, a fragment of DNA or RNA created and “installed” for the purpose.
The genetic origin of cancer, rare diseases and hereditary diseases can be traced using artificial intelligence, moving the search for a cure from a chemical problem to a software problem.
ROBOTICS
With increasingly advanced, low-cost software and sensors, robots will assist people in more and more aspects of life. Productivity, coupled with a lower cost per unit, will lead robots to replace people in the most repetitive and laborious tasks. On the one hand this will lead to job losses, but on the other hand it will free up time that people can devote to more meaningful activities.
Robotics is heavily supported by the development of artificial intelligence. For example, self-driving cars can be considered robots that drive themselves thanks to artificial intelligence. Autonomous driving alone will in turn lead to significant consequences. For example, not having to drive people will find themselves having more time at their disposal which they will occupy with productive or recreational activities (for example playing video games while the car takes them to their destination). Another consequence will be the increase in ride-hailing and a more efficient use of cars, which instead of being inactive for more than 90% of the time, can be inserted into an autonomously managed fleet in exchange for a share of the income. Many predict that,
ENERGY STORAGE
The main limitation in the use of electricity has always been the difficulty of storage. With the evolution of next-generation lithium batteries and solid-state batteries, electricity will be able to be stored at ever lower costs, opening the door to more efficient ways of responding to market demands in the field of electric vehicles and sustainable energy. In the transport and infrastructure sectors, electrification will be an essential new technology.
The consequences of transforming energy use will be even more transformative. Electric cars will open the doors for autonomous driving, the geo-political balances that today are not in small part based on the availability of natural gas and oil will change and the dominance of renewables, whose effectiveness depends on storage systems, will lead to a situation of overproduction of energy whose low cost will open up to alternative uses, from desalination to Bitcoin mining.
The consequences of a key new technology in the functioning of the world lead to profound chain reactions that transform entire industries and create new ones.
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES
Open-source protocols that verify ownership of an asset and its scarcity will come to financial services and remove the friction imposed by traditional financial systems. This will make access to capital more liquid and uniform. The Blockchain is a register in which every change of ownership of a resource is kept, guaranteeing the certainty of the data and the security of the system. The system is decentralized and completely digital, so it does not depend on any supervisory authority and works autonomously. In practice, the Blockchain allows the register and exchange of information in security without the need for an intermediary, for example a financial institution.
The crypto currencies are based on Blockchain technology and are popping up on the world financial stage. Crypto currencies such as Bitcoin may in the future replace more traditional systems for storing value, such as gold, and bring the use of fiat currencies, such as the dollar or the euro, to systems used purely for exchange and not for storing value. In third world and developing countries where local currencies have little value and are hit by high inflation, cryptocurrencies can have a major social impact.
The Consequences Of New Technologies
All these innovations will lead to lower costs, impact different industries globally and create fertile ground for subsequent new technologies, in the same way that the invention of the steam engine was the basis for an entire industrial revolution. What will make the next few years special is the overlap of these technological innovations that will take hold at the same time and amplify each other’s effect.
Innovation often disappoints in the short term, but exceeds expectations in the long run. New technologies do not appear out of nowhere and often a number of conditions need to be met for them to be adopted by a wide audience, but when they take hold there is no turning back and the world changes forever. Over time, we no longer even realize how much things have changed.
It is also important to note that new technologies do not come by themselves. Technology does not improve by itself on the contrary, left to itself tends to degrade. New technologies are the result of the hard work of many people who apply their intelligence to create something useful.
