A 15 minute review of important things in tech, for the near future. Based on my presentation at #dhpatechday, 21 may 2015

1. :
Technology is neither good nor bad
nor is it neutral.
(It certainly can’t be uninvented.)
THE FUTURE (AND|OF) TECHNOLOGY
by @patricksavalle

3. Why has human progress ground to a halt?
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-
human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/
Entering a dark age of innovation
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7616-entering-a-
dark-age-of-innovation.html
The great stagnation
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexc
hange/2011/01/growth_2
THE DARK AGES OF INNOVATION
We were promised flying cars, all we got was 140 chars. And batteries everywhere.

4. 3D PRINTING
Create objects by printing them, just
input a design and raw materials.
Status: typical technological innovation
that will get better, faster, cheaper
exponentially
Holy grail: Star Trek replicator,
instantiation of living things, synthetic
morphogenesis
Related technologies: additive
manufacturing, distributed
manufacturing.
Status: unstoppable avalanche. Think
years, not decades

5. BIONICS
(mind-controlled) exoskeletons, prosthetics,
body-parts and super-senses.
Partly in realm of engineering and as such will
see the same (albeit more uneven) exponential
progress (3D-printing, materials, electronics etc).
Status: successful on disabled people but won’t
be popular among healthy people soon because
mechanics still very inferior to organics.
H+ (transhumanism or ‘the augmented human’)
very real.

6. THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Everything connected to the internet, like a
bionic layer over planet earth.
From large industrial machines to MEMS
(micro electromechanical sensors).
Typical, predictable technological
innovation: will get faster, cheaper FAST!
Very big privacy and security issues.
Status: unstoppable avalanche.
Think years, not decades

7. PLATFORM IS THE NEW FACTORY
A platform is an organization that
crowdsources its resources and
coordinates crowd collaboration.
Extremely scalable. Extremely
lightweight: only a business core.
Problems: single point of control,
potentially a tool for ‘enslaving’ and
dronifying the many by the few.
Status: very mature concept,
implementations resisted by ‘something’,
will go gradually.
http://airbnb.com
http://uber.com

8. THE COLLABORATIVE ECONOMY
An economy in which machines,
algorithms and people are producing
and sharing things without much
bureaucracy or central planning.
An ecosystem of platforms.
Task-based economy, not job-based.
Like the industrial economy,
it too will be owned by a few people.
Status: taking over right now, resisted
big time. Think decades not years.

9. DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATION
Any time, any place, any context collaboration
without central planning. Economic freedom.
Platform-based creation, decentrally
coordinated using stigmergic principles.
‘Just go online and add value,
you will be rewarded’
Status: immature technology and inflexible
existing H&R, fiscal regulations are limiting
success. Status quo situation for last decade.
https://github.com
https://assembly.com
https://mobbr.com

10. THE BLOCKCHAIN
The decentralized ledger. Eliminates the need for
trusted or intermediate parties when transacting.
Blockchains enable property (incl. money) to be
exchanged and assigned instantly, undisputable, secure
and internetted.
Makes any property ‘cash’ property.
“On the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a fridge”,
allows machines to become economic actors.
Status: immature technology, will be huge, sooner than
later, but not on monetary applications or next year.

11. DECENTRALISED AUTONOMOUS CORPORATIONS
Algorithmic companies that run in a
blockchain. Decentralized. No single
point of failure, control or censorship.
Bitcoin-network itself was
the first ever robocorp.
Solves the ‘single point of control’
problem that platforms can have. The
future of freedom.
Banks, payment-systems, energy grids,
governments, transportation, cloud-
services, exchanges, markets, etc.
Status: first prototypes up-and-running
won’t take-off yet.
https://erisindustries.com
https://lazooz.org

12. Programs that are ‘intelligent’
(confusion right there:
intelligent does not mean
autonomous or sentient).
Experts agree ‘human AI’ not
anytime soon. No, Musk,
Gates and Hawkin are not
experts.
‘By 2029 no computer or
machine intelligence will have
passed the Turing test’
http://longbets.org/1/
Status: very successful at
specialized tasks yet no
general AI anytime soon.
Holy grail: emotions, self-
awareness
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

13. Organisms created to genetic
specification.
Status: overhyped, little progress
since the disappointing Human
Genome Project. Big ethical
issues.
Genetic determinism still just an
idea. Genetics stumbling from
one failing hypothesis to another.
Being able to decode or edit a
genome does not mean
understanding it. At all. It takes
more than CRISPR.
Greedy investment climate
because of big, patentable
promises.
DESIGNER BABIES

14. ANTI-GRAVITY DEVICES
‘Electrogravitics’. Manipulating gravity like we can manipulate
electromagnetism and light.
To be able to generate, shield, store, emit etc. gravity.
Gravity is not described by quantum theory unlike all other (known)
fundamental forces. Only scientific theory is in classical physics not
particle physics.
Status: waiting for a very fundamental scientific breakthrough

15. OVERUNITY ENERGY DEVICES
The absolute holy grail of innovation and
technology: devices that produce more
energy than they use by drawing from ‘the
zero-point field’.
Limitless, free energy.
Would instantly promote mankind to a type
I or II civilization on the Kardashev scale.
‘The legacy of Nikolai Tesla’
Status: still very much in the realm of myth
and conspiracy theory.
‘Proven in hundreds of laboratories around the world’ --
Dr. Brian O’Leary, Ph.D, scientist, author,
Princeton/Cornell physics professor, and former NASA
astronaut.

16. SINGULARITY
The end of the anthropocene,
the beginning of the mekhanocene.
‘Machine making man obsolete.’
Not a technology but an event,
expected around 2040.
‘The church of Kurzweil’
Status: more a meme than a probable
event, has become a license to
limitless exaggerate human progress.

17. GLOBAL DECENTRALISED AUTONOMY
A global base layer of decentralized
autonomous platforms that
automates and democratizes social
utility and service functions, such as
governments, banks, payment-
systems, energy grids, health-care,
transportation, cloud-services,
exchanges, markets, etc.
Based on open-source software,
distributed collaboration and
blockchain technology.
The great equalizer.
Status: needs maturation of
blockchain technology, will be
resisted by ‘the powers that be’. Not
anytime soon.

18. BIOLOGY IS THE ULTIMATE TECHNOLOGY
Nature invented 3D printing billion years ago (morphogenesis).
Has been running an internet for millions of years (mycelia).
Is using quantum technology for millions of years (bird navigation).
Etc.
A human cell has 10 billion moving parts, more complicated than a
modern nuclear submarine. Your body has 370 trillion such cells.
Science not very successful in understanding nature because it
doesn’t fit the mechanistic paradigm. Its most common trick (self-
organization, homeostasis, anti-chaos) has no scientific explanation.
Nature is the master of exponentiality and crowdsourcing. It’s
everywhere.
For solutions, always look to nature first! Bio-mimicry.
‘If it can be made, nature already perfected, or abandoned it’

19. THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL
MORE DECENTRALISING TECHNOLOGY THAN EVER THREATENING THE ELITE
centralized vs. distributed, control vs. autonomy, slavery vs. freedom, 1% vs. 99%

20. THE SCIENCE DELUSION
The science crisis: our clockwork universe is broken.
The current scientific paradigm of determinism,
reductionism and mechanism has proven it’s worth
but is also failing us.
Dogma and consensus have taken over in climate
science, economics, medicine, genetics and many
other sciences. Impossible to produces true theories
(predicting models).
The problem: science has no fundamental
understanding of and no mathematical frameworks
for some of the most common phenomena in nature
such as anti-chaos (self-organization).
Status: mankind will eventual linger into the age of
holistic science till than dogma and believe are
powerful innovation absorbers.