Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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INNOVATION
ii
OPENING REMARKS
iv
Magnification of an Intel Itanium processor 9500 series containing 3.1 billion transistors.
Intel
years.
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fiction.
*** MIPS is not used anymore for CPU benchmarking but it serves well
for our educational purposes.
technological progress.
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1971 counterpart!
nanotech.
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1
CLOUD
COMPUTING
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THE
THE MOBILE
MOBILE
REVOLUTION
REVOLUTION
A Xiaomi Mi 4, one
of the most popular
smartphones around
powered by Android.
Xiaomi
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3
THE SHARING
ECONOMY
Uber
The startup, founded in 2009, uses a business model
that is so innovative and brilliant that lots of people still
dont understand how it works. Let me explain.
Uber basically connects private drivers, who want to rent
their own cars on their spare time, with passengers, who
want to go from point A to B. Drivers need to register
with the company, go through a background check and
provide their bank account. Passengers need to
download a smartphone app and provide their credit
card number to use the service. Everything else is
automated.
When passengers summon an Uber car, their location is
retrieved by the phone's GPS and sent to drivers nearby,
who also have a smartphone. The first to respond wins
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Airbnb
Airbnb, founded in 2008, is a community marketplace
for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces
around the world. It provides a platform that connects
hosts, who want to rent out their homes (or rooms), to
guests, who are visiting local cities. Airbnb takes a cut
on any transactions that take place on its platform.
The startup competes directly with established chains of
hotels and is present in 34,000 cities in 190 countries. It
boasts more than one million listings, 50% more than all
rooms available from Hilton Holdings, the largest
hospitality company in the world. More than 25 million
people have stayed at Airbnb since its inception in
2008.
In terms of guest satisfaction, 95% of properties listed
on the site have an average review of 4.5/5 stars. By
contrast, properties on TripAdvisor had an average
rating of 3.8 stars. Airbnb, like Uber, supports hundreds
of thousands of jobs in the local economies. In 2013, the
Airbnb community generated $824 million in economic
activity in the UK and supported 11,600 jobs.
Instacart
Instacart is a same-day grocery delivery startup
focused on delivering fresh groceries and home
essentials quickly (sometimes in less than one hour).
Instacart has already over 500,000 items in its
catalogue from local stores and established chains.
It works like this: open the app, choose your items and
pay by credit card with one tap. Your order is then
sent to the phone of a local shopper who buys your
groceries and delivers them directly to your home.
Most of the time, Instacart groceries are delivered
using the shoppers' own vehicles.
The startup, founded in 2012 and valued at $2 billion,
does not operate any physical stores or own any
inventory. It has the potential to rival established
chains without spending too much working capital.
Instacart app
Instacart
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Others
Handy matches you with crowd-sourced cleaners,
handymen and plumbers. Scheduling, payment and
rating are done through the app.
Washio sends a "ninja" to pick up your dirty clothes using their own vehicles - and bring them back clean in
less than 24 hours. The startup rents idle time from
laundry and dry-cleaning facilities around any given city.
Munchery is not a delivery service from an existing
restaurant. It does rely on well-known and high-end
chefs who have available time before their jobs at fancy
restaurants. The startup rents commercial kitchens
where the chefs can prepare their meals. Delivery is
done in less than 30 minutes through a crowdsourced
workforce.
I could spend this entire chapter mentioning sharing
economy startups that were founded in the last five
years. There are about 200 new startups listed in
AngelList. It is really revolutionary how they're giving old
industries a run for their money.
In the last decades, we saw many jobs migrate overseas
to countries such as China, India, and Philippines. Now
theyre coming back thanks to the sharing economy
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INTERNET OF
THINGS
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Home automation
The next place to be disrupted by technology is our
home. Smarter and connected appliances promise to
make life more convenient and raise our productivity.
Korean refrigerators, for instance, already feature LCD
displays that can tell what items are inside, food that is
about to expire and even the ingredients youve got to
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Wearables
Many of us already wear computers
without noticing. Activity and fitness
trackers such as Fitbit contain sensors
that measure steps walked, floors
climbed, distance travelled, activity
time, calories burned, heart rate, and
sleep quality.
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Smart cities
With sensors and devices getting cheaper, smarter and
connected to the Internet, it would be just a matter of
time before the IoT makes our cities greener, more
efficient, safer, and smarter.
IoT devices, such as surveillance cameras, are now
widely deployed in cities such as London and Chicago.
With the help of facial recognition software, suspects
can now be identified in minutes instead of days.
Some IoT technologies are simpler. Cities use smart
meters to collect electric and gas usage data from a
home or business. This data is periodically transmitted
to utilities via a secure wireless communication network.
It helps manage the demand on the grid and increase
service and reliability.
Driverless vehicles are also IoT devices. As soon as they
are available commercially, around 2020, they'll connect
to the cloud, talk to each other, choose the best routes
and contribute to alleviating congestion in cities such as
Los Angeles or San Francisco. Best results will come
only when the majority or the totality of cars in the streets
are autonomous. It might take a few decades before
becoming a reality.
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Cow computing
Precision agriculture
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5
BIG DATA
A visual representation of
Google search volume by
language, one the
applications of big data.
Google
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6
VIRTUAL
REALITY & AR
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top device, priced at $180, looked clunky, used a lowres monochrome display, had a bad selection of games,
and also brought discomfort after extended play. It failed
miserably and tainted Nintendos immaculate brand.
The virtual reality hype continued full force throughout
the 1990s. Movies including The Lawnmower Man,
Virtuosity, and Johnny Mnemonic entranced the public
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3D PRINTING
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A 3D digital scanner.
Makerbot
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3D printed jewelry.
Shapeways
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A 3D printed sandstone
sculpture.
Shapeways
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8
BIONIC
IMPLANTS
Bionic heart
A synthetic replacement for the heart remains one of
the long-sought holy grails of modern medicine. It is
incredibly challenging to create a device that can
withstand the harsh conditions of the bodys
circulatory system and reliably pump 35 million times
per year, as the heart does.
In the last years, though, many companies and
universities got closer to replacing our second most
important organ. In December 2013 the French
company Carmat performed the world's first total
artificial heart implant surgery on a 76-year-old man in
which no additional donor heart was sought. Although
the patient died soon thereafter, another one made
history in 2015.
BiVACOR
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Bionic eye
Technology reached a point where
smart contact lenses are being
developed for a variety of uses. One
model, created by Google and to be
manufactured by Novartis, has the
potential to help diabetics monitor their
glucose levels.
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Brain implants
The brain controls our movements and our breathing,
makes sense of the world, and stores the memories that
help form our personalities. It is often referred by
scientists as the most complex object in the universe.
The human brain boasts more than a hundred billion
neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to ten
thousand other neurons, passing signals to each other
via as many as a hundred trillion synaptic connections.
Figuring out how the brain works is the largest and most
difficult scientific endeavor humanity has ever pursued,
and our progress in this field has been astonishing. In
the last fifteen years, for instance, we have learned more
about the brain than we have in the rest of human
history. This knowledge allowed the emergence of sci-fiesque new technologies.
One such technology, available since the 1990s, is
called deep brain stimulation. DBS is a neurosurgical
procedure involving the implantation of a brain
pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses, through
implanted electrodes, to specific parts of the brain.
More than 100,000 people around the world have
undergone DBS for the treatment of movement and
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9
BIOTECH
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Nanobots
Nanobots may be our medical future. These tiny robots
are capable of drug delivery inside our bodies,
detecting diseases and, in the near future, even
repairing or manipulating damaged cells. There are two
types of nanobots: biological and mechanical.
Recently-made mechanical nanobots measure about
1/50 of the diameter of a human hair. Were talking about
real micro-machines powered by micro-motors propelled
either by chemical reactions inside the body or
electromagnetism.
In December 2014, San Diego researchers published a
paper proving that mechanical nanobots can travel
inside a living creature and deliver their medicinal load
without any detrimental effects.
A mouse ingested these tiny machines and they
reached its stomach. There, the nanobots headed
outwards toward the stomach lining where they then
embedded themselves, dissolved, and delivered a
nanoparticle compound directly into the gut tissue.
Biological nanobots are even smaller, measuring just a
few dozen nanometers in diameter, the size of a typical
virus. Researchers have developed DNA-made
Genetic engineering
Genetic modification is not novel. Humans have been
altering the genetic makeup of plants for millennia,
keeping seeds from the best crops and planting them in
the following years, breeding and crossbreeding
varieties to make them taste sweeter, grow bigger, last
longer.
Weve been doing the same with pets in a process
called artificial selection. Humans choose which animals
will live based on their most desired characteristics. It
only took us 15,000 to 20,000 years to turn a gray wolf
into all of the dog breeds we see today. The same
happened with cows, horses, and sheep.
But the technique of genetic engineering is new and
quite different from conventional breeding. This
technique gave rise to the infamous genetically modified
organisms or GMOs.
GMOs are plants or animals that have undergone a
process wherein scientists alter their genes with DNA
from different species of living organisms, bacteria, or
viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to
disease, insects, or tolerance of pesticides.
GMOs are part of our life. You have probably already
Genome sequencing
In 1990, the US Congress established funding for the
Human Genome Project and set a target completion
date of 2005. The goal of the HGP was to sequence and
map all of the genestogether known as the genome
of our species. It was the equivalent in biology to the
"moonshot" of the 1960s.
At the time, many critics thought the project wouldnt be
good science. Part of the scientific community doubted
it could be finished on budget and on time, as we didnt
possess the technology to pursue the challenge in 1990.
Of course the pundits were wrong, betrayed by their
linear thinking.
Not only was the Human Genome Project completed two
years sooner than previously planned, but it also cost
less than the initial budget. A parallel project was
conducted outside of the government by Celera
Genomics, which was formally launched in 1998 and
completed just three years later.
The US governments $4 billion investment in the HGP
helped to drive down the cost of sequencing a genome
from any person. In 2001, it cost $100 million. In 2015, a
company announced a full genome sequencing for only
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Lung on a chip
Emulate
Organ-on-a-chip
Synthetic life
In the last decades, our species was able to copy life
and to modify it radically through genetic engineering.
Soon, for the first time in human history, well be able
to create artificial life that could never have existed
naturally.
Craig Venter, the entrepreneur and scientist
responsible for privately sequencing the human
genome, announced in 2010 that his team had built
the genome of a bacterium from scratch and
incorporated it into a cell to make what they called "the
world's first synthetic life form".
Dr. Venter described the converted cell as the first
self-replicating species weve had on the planet
whose parent is a computer. The single-celled
organism has four "watermarks" written into its DNA to
identify it as synthetic and help trace its descendants
back to their creator.
M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, the first
synthetic life ever created.
Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman of
the National Center for Microscopy
and ImAging Research at UCSD
J. Craig Venter Institute
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10
NANOTECH
sunscreens.
Nanotechnology used in food gives manufacturers
tighter control over what theyre producing, touching on
such areas as coloration, dimensions, and taste. Side
effects are still not very well understood and the FDA
has released some guidelines to regulate the industry.
Nanocoatings can be added to cloth or surfaces to alter
their original properties. For instance, nanoparticles of
silica incorporated into the weave of a fabric create a
coating that repels water and stain-producing liquids,
and a hydrophobic paint makes walls pee-proof. Silver
nanoparticles added to clothing kill bacteria and fungi,
preventing the nasty odors they cause.
Nanotechnology could dramatically improve energy
storage for electronics, cars, and buildings. Nanosize
batteries that are eighty thousand times thinner than a
human hair represent a promising new front.
Nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes will ignite a
revolution. These tiny cylindrical structures exhibit 200
times the strength and five times the elasticity of steel;
five times more electrical conductivity, 15 times the
thermal conductivity and 1,000 times the current
capacity of copper. Carbon nanotube fibers can also
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Quantum computers
Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics that explains
the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on
the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It states that
particles can be in two places at once; that two particles
can be related, or entangled; and that when we look at
particles we unavoidably alter them.
In the science of the very small, things get very weird
and complicated. That is why one of the holy grails of
physics has been to build a quantum computer that can
process certain types of large-scale, very difficult
problems exponentially faster than classical computers.
Rather than store information as 0s or 1s as conventional
computers do, a quantum computer uses qubits which
can be a 1 or a 0 or both at the same time.
This quantum superposition, along with the quantum
effects of entanglement and quantum tunneling, enable
quantum computers to consider and manipulate all
combinations of bits simultaneously, making quantum
computation powerful and fast. In theory, a new
generation of quantum computers could be millions of
times faster than conventional computers to solve
certain types of problems.
A D-Wave quantum
computer exterior.
D-Wave Systems
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ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
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12
ROBOTICS
would have had Yen Shi executed on the spot had not
the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot apart to
let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out
to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and
lacquer, variously colored white, black, red and blue.
Examining it closely, the king found all the internal
organs completeliver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen,
kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again,
muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth
and hair, all of them artificial... The king tried the effect of
taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could
no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes
could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the
legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was
delighted.
The Greeks had imagined many similar creatures. My
favorite is Talos, a giant and handsome bronze man,
created by Zeus himself, who patrolled and defended
the island of Crete against pirates and invaders around
400 B.C.
Leonardo da Vinci, the most talented human being who
ever lived, also gave his contribution to robotics. The
sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer,
inventor, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer,
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Industrial Robots
Industrial robots are the most important
category of robots in existence and for
more than 50 years they have helped
humans to weld, paint, assemble, pick
and place, inspect, and test products.
One point six million industrial robots
are active in factories around the
job soon.
A r t i fic i a l i n t e l l i g e n c e a n d
advances in robotics are giving
birth to a new generation of
extremely versatile industrial
r o b o t s t h a t a r e r e d e fin i n g
automation. These robots are
safer, cheaper, easy to program,
and are designed to work side by
side with humans.
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Consumer robots
In the 1960s, the animated sitcom The Jetsons promised
us a future with flying cars and Rosie, the robot maid. 50
years later, how close are we to the futuristic utopia
imagined by the cartoon? Well, at least weve got flat
screens, vending machines and videoconference right.
Flying cars already exist but robots definitely are not our
servants, yet.
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Consumer drones
In the last five years, there was an
explosion in popularity of smaller multirotor drones. They captured minds and
hearts around the world because of
their versatility and affordability. Drones
are now the most visible faces of
robotics in our society.
Most of them are equipped with a highresolution camera that allows operators
to see the action in real time through
their smartphones or tablets. Brands
like DJI, for instance, are having a big
impact in industries such as real
estate, news coverage, extreme
sports, and professional filmmaking
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The Gimball
drone, made
specifically for
search and
rescue missions.
Flyability
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But the real stars of Air Forces around the world are the
lethal drones like the Predator models used in Iraq,
Yemen, and Afghanistan. Predators can stalk and kill a
single individual on the other side of the planet much the
way a sniper does, and with total invulnerability. Even
Bin Laden feared them.
However, nothing compares to the latest weapon in the
US arsenal, the incredible X47B manufactured by
Nor throp Grumman. The stealth bomber flies
autonomously and has the capability to takeoff and land
from a carrier. It reaches subsonic speeds of 900 mph.
In the next two decades, it is expected that most of the
US military aircraft fleet will be composed of
autonomous drones. Some of them will be able to carry
nuclear weapons and others may fire without the
supervision of a person. By 2030, hypersonic suborbital
autonomous drones, capable of flying at speeds of up to
13,000 mph, might be among us.
Like them or not, drones are changing the way warfare is
conducted. Some organizations fear were making the
world more dangerous and are demanding the ban of
killer robots before it is too late. The Terminator rise of
the machines" scenario is beginning to look more and
more realistic.
Military robots
Military drones are scary, but real life terminators can be
much scarier. The US is leading the world in the
development of robots to aid and eventually replace the
soldier in the battlefield. The Robocop scenario where
machines patrol the streets is not far from happening.
Companies like Boston Dynamics, recently acquired by
Google, developed a myriad of military robots that are
impressive. You must watch the videos to understand
how advanced their technology is.
Spot, an electric four-legged robot the size of a large
dog, can walk autonomously, climb stairs, follow a
human, and never loses its balance. Spot is a very
sophisticated piece of machinery that, in theory, can
help soldiers in the battlefield or help us to patrol our
cities. It doesnt have guns installed on it, yet.
WildCat, a gas-powered cousin of Spot, was developed
to run fast on all types of terrains. On flat surfaces, it
reaches speeds of up to 16 mph using bounding and
galloping gaits. Another model, Cheetah, would win a
competition with the fastest man alive. Big Dog is
designed to carry heavy equipment for soldiers.
Finally, we have Petman, a humanoid robot that is
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DARPA Atlas, the most sophisticated humanoid robot ever made. Boston Dynamics
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13
ALTERNATIVE
ENERGIES
Shanghai's
sunset with a
clearly visible
smog line.
Suicup
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Fuel cells
Unlike batteries, fuel cells convert the chemical energy
from a fuel, such as hydrogen, to cleanly and efficiently
produce electricity with water and heat as byproducts. It
is an extremely clean energy source.
The first fuel cells were invented in 1839 and NASA has
been using the technology for decades to generate
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Solar power
Every hour the sun beams onto Earth more than enough
energy to satisfy global needs for an entire year. After
many decades of unfilled promises, we finally start to
harness the cleanest and most abundant renewable
energy source available.
The report also confirmed that the reach of the U.S. solar
market is continuing to expand, with the utility,
commercial, and residential sectors all delivering over
1GW of new capacity for the first time.
The Ivanpah
solar farm
provides
electricity to
more than
140,000 homes
in California.
Bright Source
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Nuclear fusion
Humans have discovered nuclear fission, the technology
that powers atom bombs and nuclear power-plants.
However, something much grander is awaiting to be
mastered: nuclear fusion.
Fusion is the nuclear reaction responsible for
heating stars across the universe. It was invented by
nature and is the ultimate form of energy: clean,
powerful and abundant.
So far, humans have successfully produced an
uncontrolled and extremely destructive fusion reaction in
a hydrogen bomb. Creating a controlled fusion reaction
inside a reactor has proven to be very difficult.
The greatest challenge faced by scientists is the
extreme temperature required for the reaction to take
place: six times higher than the surface of the sun. No
material known to man can withstand such heat without
melting, so the reacting elements must be suspended
without touching the walls of the reactor. In order to
achieve this, scientists must use gravity, inertia, or
magnetism, all of which are very challenging to create
and control, given the state of our current technology.
If we're able to overcome these obstacles, a nuclear
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14
BITCOIN
15
DIGITAL CRIME
Today, any smart 15-year old kid can learn how to inflict
a lot of damage from behind his computer. In the near
future, well very likely witness cyberterrorists trying to
destroy entire corporations or vital infrastructure
remotely, in a matter of hours. The Sony hack,
supposedly done by the most backwards country on
Earth, North Korea, was just the prelude to what is
coming.
Cybercrime
The JP Morgan, SCEA, and Target cases illustrate the
limitations of corporations running their own internet
infrastructure and data security teams against black hat
hackers. Personal details and financial information of
hundreds of millions of people were compromised.
The Internet became a fertile ground for crime. One can
easily buy drugs, arms, and stolen credit cards in the
dark confines of the web. From underground
marketplaces to prostitution, criminals are migrating in
droves to the digital world, stimulated by the large
rewards and the low preparedness of the police forces
to tackle cybercrime.
It looks like there are no boundaries for criminals. In
Mexico, the powerful drug cartels built their own shadow
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The best way to predict how the world might look like in
2035 is by simply extrapolating the trends already set in
motion in the last few years.
A new generation of fans will idolize computergenerated characters in the same way they worship
flesh and bone celebrities. The future of entertainment is
inside a computer, for sure.
By 2035 we'll have finally cracked battery issues so
smartphones may be bendable, foldable, and wearable,
some as thin as a sheet of paper. Smartphones will
measure all our vital signals by communicating with
wireless nanochips implanted in our skin.
Every inhabitant of this planet will have one. A
smartphone more powerful than an iPhone 6 will cost
less than $1 by 2035. They'll be the devices that
integrate the poor with the modern world, where new
opportunities for studying and learning become cheaper
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Final Thoughts
Predictions are cool to make and everybody loves them,
including myself. But rest assured, they generally reflect
what we want to happen instead of what is really going
to happen. Thus their importance to serve as a moment
of reflection on who we are and what we want.
The fact is the world is moving in a direction that has no
turning back. It is a unique moment in history. In my
opinion, it is useless to resist modernity.
Exponential technologies will soon penetrate traditional
markets that were once immune to them, and will affect
us and our descendants in ways that we haven't
imagined could be possible.
If the majority of ordinary citizens like you and me
cannot understand technologies that are widespread
and part of our lives, how would we ever grasp
sophisticated concepts such as bionic implants, reverse
engineering the brain, synthetic creatures, robots the
size of atoms, quantum computers, nuclear fusion, and
machines more intelligent than humans?
This is a complex conundrum that prevents most people
from accepting the trends listed in this book, no matter
how real and unstoppable they are.
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