My family immigrated to the US when I was about 2 or 3 years old.
I find it astounding that in my parent’s lifetime they’ve seen transportation evolve from horse and buggies to self driving cars.
My dad once told me he was the first to get a car in a 15 mi. radius from his village at the age of 20. As someone who’s grown up in the US, cars were the default mode of transportation all my life.
The closest equivalent I can think of is the prevalence of smart phones. When I was younger, people still used flip-phones or keyboard phones. Today, almost everyone has a smart phone.
What excites me is the pace of technological innovation.
Here are a few things that I believe will happen in my lifetime:
- Traveling long distances in a quarter of the time. Imagine going to London for a weekend because air transportation is that accessible and cheap.
- People will live longer and healthier lives >100 y/o. Advancements in biotechnology and drug discovery will enable this.
- We’ll spend more time in the comfort of a mixed reality world than in our current interpretation of the physical world. Once the underlying technology behind AR/VR becomes better our default world will become mixed.
- Access to relevant information will increase. Although, information is readily accessible through the internet today. It’s not highly relevant and personalized to our needs. Over time, information will meet us where we are.
- We’ll spend less time holding and looking at screens and more time experiencing digital worlds through ambient computing. We’re already seeing it with the omnipresence of digital assistants.
- Education will move online. The best teachers in the world are online, the best peers are available online, the best material is available online. Classrooms are doomed.
- As we automate basic jobs, people will be able to do things that require more creativity. We’ll work a multitude of jobs based on our interests and availability.
Popular media often likes to show a dystopian view of the future. I mostly disagree with this view. I have a deterministically optimistic outlook of the future.
