There’s been a lot of disruption that has occurred over the last two decades and even more that’s happening now. In the future, technology is going to be reshaping every industry at a faster and faster pace.
However it’s often very confusing for most people to know which industry, and what technology is going to impart the biggest and most drastic changes in their lives. Will drones really change everything? How about AI? What about the always buzzword worthy IoT!
Over the past 20+ years of intensely following virtually all technology it’s become very clear to me which industries and what technologies are important. So today we’re going to look at the biggest disruptive technologies out there and find out which ones will contribute to the biggest changes in your future day to day life.
The Core Pillars
A while ago I performed a massive overview of future tech and narrowed in on a number of critical industries as well as their sub categories that were important. The results of this research can be seen most clearly in the Technology Forecaster Spreadsheet which is divided up into these core pillars or industries.
You’ll also notice it when reading The Tipping Point as I usually try and cover at least one major news event from each of the core pillars. So what are these pillars?
- AI
- Computing
- Crypto
- Energy
- Medicine
- Nanotechnology
- Robotics
- Space
- Transport
These 9 industries I believe represent the ones that will most change our lives over the next 10+ years. They’re the ones that are not just developing the fastest, but that also have the potential to really change how we go about doing things day to day.
Inside each pillar are certain technologies or sub categories that the Technology Forecaster really calls out and focuses on. Things like Mobile, GPU’s or VR inside the Computing pillar. Others are more generalised like with AI or Drones.
The Top 3
While these 9 core pillars and their associated sub categories do help narrow the field a lot, there’s still a ton of information out there. As such I also wanted to go deeper and recommend my top 3 specific technologies that I think will change peoples day to day lives over the next 10 years.
Things that will cause substantial, visible changes to everyday life hopefully in a positive way. These 3 technologies are:
- EV’s + Fully Self Driving Cars (also called TaaS)
- AI + AGI
- Bitcoin + The Crypto Era
EV’s: In 10 years time you will not want to buy a fossil fuel car. They will be more expensive to buy (than an EV equivalent), more expensive to run and maintain, have worse performance, pollute more and be less safe.
To be frank, you probably won’t even want to own a car at all as it’ll be more of a headache, less flexible and much more expensive than using one of the many Fully Autonomous ride sharing or “TaaS” services.
This will obviously serve as a major change in everyone’s life from what is now considered “normal” today. As a result, transportation will be an order of magnitude cheaper, an order of magnitude safer not to mention run on fully renewable power. An excellent upgrade to today’s world.
AI: In 10 years time AI and especially AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will have permeated through almost everything in our lives. It will drive the autonomous cars, it will be our virtual personal assistant booking things and organising our lives better.
It will be built into every system so it can learn, advance and improve everything from crop deployment and management to how our fridge cools our food. We will talk to them and they will keep us company.
While it’s hard to imagine now, AI and computer software has a very quick way of suddenly being 100% fully accepted and “normal”. If you don’t believe this, just try and remember 5 years ago when asking your Google Home Mini (which costs like $50!) to set timers, answer questions, play music, calculate metrics and so on was considered impossible technology. Now it’s 100% totally unimpressive and boring.
AI is capable of generating images and art, writing news pieces, fully engaging in conversations, predicting patient outcomes, diagnosing diseases, helping with physiological problems and more. Within 10 years it will be like electricity is now, a core part of everything and everyone.
Crypto: I have already gone into great detail about the importance of cryptocurrencies and how this will affect the Internet and thus, our day to day lives. If you haven’t read it I’d highly suggest you do as it’s another huge disruption that is coming at lightning pace. If you’re wanting to get a beginners primer on it all though, we highly recommend this piece on What Is A Bitcoin?
Over the next 10 years it’s highly possible that we’re going to see yet another huge shift in how everything is done online. From changing the way we purchase goods online (from fiat to crypto) all the way to what platforms take over from Facebook or YouTube.
At the moment things are still a bit up in the air as to how this will play out. This is because the players involved (banks, governments and huge tech companies) are pretty much the biggest ones out there and obviously they’re not going to just give up and roll over.
If it does result in crypto and trustless systems fully taking over though we can expect a big and very welcome change to how we do everything online. This would obviously once again hugely change how we live day to day.
Other Technologies
Even though those are my top 3, there are a few other big technology upgrades we’re also going to see over the next 10 years. These represent huge advances, however you won’t really “see” them day to day.
Think of them kind of like water. We’ve upgraded the quality, reduced it’s cost and improved how it’s delivered over the years… yet it pretty much goes unnoticed day to day.
These technologies will cause change… but not really change how we do things day to day in a big way. These are:
Drones: These have the potential to change how things are delivered. Not just your next pizza, but medication, blood, defibrillators and even people like what Uber Air is planning on starting in 2023. That being said it’s still not 100% certain that we’ll be delivering everything by air in the future just yet.
Solar + Batteries: This will bring about a huge transition to fully renewable energy with huge amounts of houses running entirely on solar and their batteries only. Like water though, you won’t really “notice” it much or do anything different to how you use energy today. It’ll just be much cheaper and 100% renewable.
Clean Meat + Plant Based Meat: With companies like Impossible Foods and others getting multi-hundred million dollar investments the global replacement of traditional meat is happening astonishingly quickly. It’s looking like these technologies will utterly crush the existing meat industries as we know it. However just like with renewables, even if this is 100% successful and in 10 years we’re all eating meat alternatives… we’ll still be eating meat that tastes like meat. As such you again won’t really “notice” any changes. The planet and animals most certainly will though!
Medicine: There will be huge breakthroughs especially in the field of fighting the ultimate disease causing issue: Ageing. As medical therapies take so long to discover, confirm and get approved though this will only just be getting started even after 10 years.
Space: SpaceX and their Starship rocket is the focal point of this industry. If all goes well, two Starship rockets could be landing 100’s of tons of cargo on Mars by 2022. Even if that’s delayed a few years it’s still well inside our 10 year time frame however once again, this won’t really change how you live day to day. Other interesting developments will be in huge satellite networks providing global Internet and potentially mining of asteroids.
A Fantastic Future!
As you can see, “disruptive technologies” shouldn’t be feared or resisted. Disruption more often than not occurs because something is cheaper and/or better than what we have now.
No one should be scared of electricity now being clean and renewable as opposed to burning polluting and damaging coal. As such I hope like me, you’re looking forward to the future and how it will make your life better.
If you are a bit concerned that your job is in the firing line of one of these disruptive technologies though you can always check out our in depth course: How To Stay Employed In The Robotic Future
In it you’ll learn about what types of AI, Robotics and Automation currently exist and the effects they’ll have on the workforce. What continuous learning is and why top performers do it. Plus a step-by-step strategy for setting up and monitoring emerging technologies so you can recognise when your job will be made redundant and instead pivot and take advantage of the change instead. Meaning you’re never unemployed again.
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