The Next Technological Revolution: What’s Coming?

Technology has shaped our civilization  as it grew down the centuries,   and since the industrial revolution,  each new generation seems defined by   some new technological revolution…  So what will the next revolution be? Planes, trains, and automobiles helped shape the  world we live in today, down to the very layout of   our homes and cities, and the advent of running  water, electricity, the internet, and now wi-fi   continues these trends. It's not really accurate  to say one single technology defines a generation,   sometimes it’s several, sometimes they avalanche  more quickly, and what they all seem to have in   common is they often seem to sweep out of nowhere,  while at the same time they often do seem like   they were obvious in hindsight, or even sometimes  in advance.

Everyone knew internet commerce would   become a big thing, and cell phones, but we  never really imagined the forms they would take.  As we go through today, we’ll be looking at a  couple dozen major technological sectors and   asking what they’re up to and where they're going.  I'll also give a quick definition or clarification   of the ones that might be less obvious.

We’ll  be covering them alphabetically and many have   longer sections, for instance we’ll dwell a lot on  Energy Technologies, to discuss updates on solar,   nuclear, other renewables, batteries, and so on. Here are those categories for today:   3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing,  5G and Telecommunications, Artificial   Intelligence & Machine Learning, Augmented  Reality and Virtual Reality, Autonomous Vehicles   and Electric Vehicles, Big Data and Analytics,  Biotechnology, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency,   Energy Technologies, Financial Technology, Health  Tech and Digital Health, Information Technology,   the Internet of Things, Nanotechnology, Quantum  Computing, Retail Applications and Trends,   Robotics and Automation, Smart Cities and  Infrastructure, Smart Home Technology,   Space Technology, and Wearable Technology. Like any categorization system it is a   bit arbitrary, for instance, we could have had  construction or materials on there, or looked at   consumer technology or advances in utilities, and  that would be just as valid, as would be looking   at in terms of, say, the 11 S&P sectors, but  while we will be looking at near term technologies   more today, we will also at times be jumping  further ahead in time, so phrasing everything   in modern economic contexts isn’t ideal.

And speaking of the S&P 500, it probably goes   without saying that none of our discussion today  should be taken as investment advice. Which is a   good point to expand on, because while our goal  today is to try to see what the next big thing   will be, that technological trend that defines a  decade or generation the way personal computers,   the internet, and smartphones did for the 1990s,  2000s, and 2010s, and how AI will probably do for   the 2020s, we obviously don’t have a crystal  ball. It also is never as simple as saying   ‘this decade was about this technology’,  that statement will rarely be accurate. 

Moreover, predicting general trends isn’t  that hard but predicting companies is,   nobody was very surprised by the emergence of  lots of business being done on the internet,   but predicting Amazon or Ebay specifically is a  lot harder and that’s really where investment is   at. I think we’ll see a lot more automated and  electric cars on the roads this upcoming decade,   and doubtless Tesla will be a big brand in that,  but it's harder to say who the primary competitors   will be and what the market for automated or  semi-automated freight vehicles might look like.  And any number of things change in their  economic outlooks if you encounter problems   manufacturing your devices as cheaply as planned,  or someone figures out a way to make them cheaper,   or some rival technology improves too, which is  a good place to segue into our first category.

3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing 3D printing lets us make relatively simple   items at home, which can represent a time or  convenience advantage. Generally you can produce   the same widget cheaper, better, faster, or all of  the above in some dedicated factory, which is why   I often discourage folks overhyping 3D printing  technology and its impact on the future. It is not   a star trek replicator, and as we discussed in our  episode the Santa Clause Machine, it isn’t likely   we’d ever have that technology or 3D printers  even vaguely in that zone of speed and detail. 

It’s handy for space travel for instance because  you’re a billion miles from the nearest store and   you’re looking at potentially months or years  for a delivery at a cost of many thousands of   dollars per kilogram. So if your 3D printer  can crank out a new screwdriver for you,   or some tool that you didn’t expect to need, maybe  a 1% chance, and thus choose not to pack along,   then even if it is printing out an inferior tool,  if it gets the job done and now, it’s all good.  We may one day be able to print any item as good  as a factory would and even getting nearly as good   for a few times the price is likely to heavily  upend retail and manufacturing models.

We may even   be able to print food this way, from base stocks  of some easy to grow and produce feedstock. Thus,   it really does have the potential to become  a huge technological revolution, when you can   make things at home, and the competitor there  will be advances that improve the cost and   speed of delivery. This is a great example of  how improvements to one technology can prevent   another from avalanching into a huge thing.

If I can print a decent screwdriver at home   in an hour, and presumably with little effort for  me to queue that up, and for, say, an effective   cost of 10 bucks, then it has some advantage  over a delivery for 6 bucks for tomorrow,   or me running to the local big box store now and  buying it for 5 bucks. If I don’t need the tool   till tomorrow, I will order it. If I am preparing  for a project next week, it goes on the shopping   list.

If I am just restocking something I’m  running low on, then I add it to my list of   things to keep an eye out for at a discount  or used. All three options, print, deliver,   and brick and mortar store are clearly competitive  in that example and it would depend on the object   and person which won and on which occasions. Paying twice as much for a car or house to get   it a week earlier is very different from doing it  for a screwdriver or minor widget, especially one   that might be critical to a bigger project I’m  doing on a timeline.

Clearly improvements to a   3D printer could alter that decision matrix, but  so could drone deliveries that get the widget to   your house in under an hour or having a daily  delivery from your store like some upgraded   version of the postal service, and I would tend to  think the post office in its current incarnation   is living on borrowed time and this would be a way  it could adapt. Larger mailboxes with coded remote   unlocking available to you and them seems almost  certain to be more widely in use this decade too.  I think everyone knows the term 3D printing but  additive manufacturing is a little less used and   yet just as important a concept here.

Simply  form, if I’m carving a stone or whittling a   wood block to make something, that’s a subtractive  process, I’m removing things, whereas 3D printing   is additive, and generally speaking there’s going  to be a lot of different cases where one works   better than the other but at a fundamental level,  subtractive creations generate waste you either   need to recycle, use for some other task, or pay  money to dispose of. It isn’t very likely you will   find something equally profitable to do with that  material as whatever you were manufacturing, and   splitting your focus to try to make and market two  products can be troublesome too, so often you end   up either selling it to someone else to make stuff  at a discount or actually paying to get rid of it.  Needless to say, all things being equal - which  admittedly is rarely the case - additive is better   than subtractive as it bypasses the waste issue. 

You also have a much easier time doing intricate   work on the inside of an object if you’re building  it layer by layer rather than taking a big block   and trying to get in there to make changes.  This is another reason I think 3D printing,   and additive manufacturing more generally,  will play a big role in the next century. 5G and Telecommunications Of course to order things from   stores or download a printing template, you need  good communications, and given that a fairly large   portion of most folks' monthly budget is paying  their phone and internet bills, I don’t think I   have to explain the importance of this sector. 

This section is a bit of misnomer for its title   though because it's not really 5G that interests  us, or even really 6G, or Sixth Generation, but   more where it’s going in the future. , and I don’t  think there’s any huge new shifts here, we aim for   more and faster data, to more seamlessly connect  us to it, and to make those connections lighter,   longer range, lower battery draw, and maybe  more casually integrated into us, smart watches   or connections to augmented reality or so on. I think we will see a lot more shift to Zoom   style formats of casual visual options not just  audio, in your classic phone call, but nothing too   universal or massive, and I’m not seeing much  short term progress in holograms that’s going   to see you having a smartwatch that generates a  hologram walking next to you, scifi style.

That’s   likely to be in the augmented reality area and  that has its own category today, as does energy   tech for batteries and artificial intelligence,  and so we’ll bypass those improvements for more   general discussion under their own categories. If I had to guess for the nearest big technology   upgrade in communications, I would say it would  be a trend for superapps, where you only have one   streaming app that interfaces as needed with the  others and gets you that media you want under the   UI, or user interface that you prefer. Same for  social media, I don’t think you see the companies   disappear so much as apps bundling together more  or having a blanket app meant for seamlessly using   all of them simultaneously.

I think we also  see a lot more AI involvement in replying,   where it generates some suggested replies in  text, and I think we might see this emerge   with some personalized deep-fake options. Companies have an obvious motive to use   more AI in their customer service and tech support  wings, and a clear and conversational AI talking   to you is obviously a big and sought after  benchmark. But the secondary effect is going   to be folks using it for both small business and  personal applications, and as an example, if your   phone can fake your voice and is authorized  to reply to certain people on certain topics,   it might be able to take a call for you and reply  with things like “I’ll be there in 19 minutes.

”   One can imagine any number of ways this could  go wrong or offend people too, but that doesn’t   mean it doesn’t get done, and there’s nothing new  about artificial intelligence being problematic. Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Speaking of AI, this is ironically going to   be one of our shorter sections even though it is  also obviously our lead candidate for the biggest   technological revolution of this decade and  probably the next couple. We’re keeping it short   because we’re going to discuss its applications  under a lot of other headings, and on the one   hand folks are already very familiar with its pros  and cons, while on the other we could spend the   whole episode just talking about AI and not  even vaguely exhaust the topic.

Admittedly   that’s true of any of our categories today,  and we’ll run a poll on our community tab on   youtube afterwards to see which topic people  would like to see a whole episode on, but AI   won’t be one of the 4 options. It’s just too big  and too obviously an up-and-coming game changer. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Speaking of games, one of the more amusing   trends of the smartphone era was seeing more  simple types of games become popular to make them   compatible with the limitations of smartphones  compared to PCs or consoles.

Obviously the role of   virtual reality in gaming can not be understated  though I expect it to be slow to really roll out   and less cyber-punky than originally thought.  The true big role of virtual reality to me is   still a ways off, where we might see many folks  spending all their time in VR environments.   See our episode virtual worlds for more  discussion of that, but while I expect this   to keep growing and improving rather aggressively,  it’s further ahead in its main impact and I think   it’s augmented reality that’s probably the big  gamechanger of the two for the next generation. 

This is where you have glasses or contacts or  potentially even direct implants into your brain   to let you see and hear things projected into your  real world environment. In early versions, this is   wonderful stuff like an AI reading someone’s face  and pulling their name and other bio basics up as   text on your vision to see next to their head,  or maybe your phone simply querying their phone   for that information and displaying it. And in  the short term that might just be on the phone,   popping up when you take a call from someone, or  into your earbud to tell you about that person   when you shift and look at them for a minute.

As we improve display technologies, getting that   overlaid onto your glasses or contacts is more the  ideal, and this is an area that benefits hugely   from improvements to AI in almost every category.  I mentioned a watch displaying a hologram of   someone as nice sci fi style improvement to  phone technology, but this is where we would   expect Augmented Reality instead, where the person  appears in your vision as though they were there,   or maybe with a certain halo or transparency to  make sure you didn’t think they really were there.  Where AI comes in here would be to regenerate that  person’s appearance to conform to the environment.  

So they’re chatting with you from their sofa  while you’re walking, but instead of appearing   to be on a moving couch, or even showing their  actual background, the AI kicks in to alter their   image into one of them walking next to you like  a friend and maybe even dodge other pedestrians,   and possibly even with AI overrides that would  let them hijack that to have them suddenly shout   ‘look out’ to dodge traffic, or more normally,  to suddenly have your augmented reality overlay   blow a horn and start flashing a warning and  highlighting the dangerous vehicle. So too,   an augmented reality overlay could bring  up an AI showing you how to perform CPR   or summon a doctor who could tell and show you  how to treat someone who just got hit by a car. Autonomous Vehicles and Electric Vehicles Traffic injuries are a huge source of both loss of   life and long term injuries to people that damage  their quality of life, and while I know a lot   of folks hate the idea of their car driving for  them, I think most can think of some other drivers   they’d much prefer to see letting a computer take  over the wheel for.

In the end, I think the safety   issue will drive the introduction of self-driving  vehicles into the mainstream market. The form   that will take though will be as more and better  machine-assisted features, like crash warnings,   and less of an auto-pilot than an AI co-pilot who  can take the wheel while you’re distracted or for   long freeway trips to let you nap or watch a show. I think the winning tech here in the short term   will be those that focus on helping  you drive rather than driving for you,   and also on the marketing side, those that focus  on the technology’s usefulness to new drivers and   old drivers.

A lot of seniors lose the ability  to drive and often gradually, so this is good   tech for them as it lets them maintain the  autonomy of having a car at their disposal   without needing to Uber or catch a bus or ride. So too, one of the scariest things for parents   when thinking of their teenage kids, probably  right after dating and drugs, is driving, call   them the 3 D’s, plus anymore Ds on their report  card, and having a lot of safety features on   cars is probably the major reason I’ve heard  from parents as to why they bought their kid a   newer car rather than letting them get an older  junker. So self-driving or co-piloting vehicles   that have features only the owner can disengage,  like a breathalyzer or collision avoidance,   might drive a lot of purchases.

Longer term, those  copiloting and autopiloting features having the   ability to seamlessly shift who is running things  is probably the key user interface angle. “Alexa,   you drive now” is all well and good but having  it be able to near-instantly snatch control   away when you start coughing or have looked  down at the console are pretty important too.  Next week’s episode takes us back into space and  the deeper future to contemplate spaceships and   battlefleets, and a point we will make there  is that our meat brain can only react so fast,   and indeed even a smarter AI will have this  limitation.

Dumb and simple is fastest to react.   Virtually all driving decisions are actually very  simple and require little brains, just a lot of   speed, and computers are very good at that. They  will come to dominate the market because of that,   and I would predict within 20 to 30 years, as  those key improvements get made and we build   up a big pool of performance data, that we will  see big social pushes to let the computer do the   driving, ranging from data-driven guilt  trips, to actual laws, for good or ill,   but probably for less vehicle deaths at least.

I think we will see it come in the co-pilot role   a lot in freight vehicles too, as those  long drives make a copilot very handy,   and yet there’s not a huge economic incentive to  remove drivers from freight vehicles, as they are   not the primary cost of transport, the fuel and  vehicle maintenance is, and they’re often going   to be of benefit on the front and back end of the  trip. I think automated freight is coming too,   but not quite as rapidly as some predict. Same for electric vehicles, they are finally   getting a non-niche role in the vehicle sector but  how much they get adopted is going to depend a lot   on how battery and energy production technologies  advance.

Expect to see more charging stations,   but I think it is likely to be ‘vehicle number  2’ for households needing multiple vehicles for   a while, especially away from cities and charging  infrastructure, rather than the only vehicle they   own. Electric vehicles have definitely arrived now  and won’t be going away, though I think it will be   quite some time before they move from a smaller  fraction of vehicles to the super-majority,   and possibly never if certain energy techs do  or don’t develop, which we’ll get to later. Big Data and Analytics We mentioned data and analysis   eventually altering public policy on autonomous  vehicles a bit ago, and it would be redundant   to say data will play a big role in deciding  our policy and laws in the future since it's   such a huge aspect of it now, but in short  form it will play a bigger and probably more   accurate role in the future.

Though doubtless  efforts to distort or manipulate that data will   grow in sophistication too. I don’t think this  will be the next big technological revolution,   but instead, like now, just keep playing  a major role in improvements to others. Biotechnology Biotechnology is so broad a field we’re separating   it from general medicine and nanotechnology  today, and for the sake of brevity I’ll limit   this to saying that I think the best pathway for  this being the next big generation dominating   technology would be to find ways to more safely  pierce the skin, so that we could have injection   ports for monitors or wires in people, or to  improve rejection-preventing technologies, so that   machines or replacement organs can be used more  easily in humans.

There are also non-human and   non-medical options to consider too. Improvements  in designing bacteria and other organisms with   desired properties will also continue being part  of manufacture of useful substances or on the   other side of the pipeline their decomposition  and recycling, what is known as bioremediation.   Needless to say genetically modified organisms  will remain a huge and controversial topic.

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Speaking of controversial topics:   While we continue to find novel ways to employ  block chain, including some we discussed years   back in our episode on Cryptocurrency and  Blockchain, I don’t think anything here,   even options like safe and secure online voting,  is going to be a big history or culture altering   tech at this time. And as we predicted in that  Cryptocurrency episode in 2016, cryptocurrency   wasn’t going anywhere and would grow in use, and  I think that’s still true, but as we said there,   I don’t see it becoming the dominant means of  moving or storing money anytime soon either.   Longer term, I don't see any big move away from  fiat currencies back to commodity currencies,   particularly the obvious ones like gold  or silver or oil for that matter, though   moving to something like energy units overall is  a decent possibility much further down the road.

Energy In physics,   energy is the measurement of how much work you  can get done, and that’s very appropriate as it   is basically the backbone of everything we do, so  we’ll give it a little bit more time than some of   the other categories. The last decade has seen  some very strong improvements in solar power,   so that it is beginning to finally get truly  competitive with other energy technologies   and further improvements to that could make  this the century of solar power in much the   same way we experienced or predicted  an era of steam-power, coal and oil,   and an atomic age. I am particularly fond of  using a mix of ground and space based solar   in conjunction with nuclear, and other opportune  renewables, depending on locations, and we’ll be   doing a deep dive of the mechanics, challenges,  and economics of space based solar later this   year as the National Space Society wraps up  its study of the current proposed systems. 

On the atomic or nuclear front, we continue to  move the needle on nuclear fusion but not as fast   as we might hope. I hate when folks say it's the  technology of 20 years from now and always will   be, but I also think at the moment 20 years would  be very optimistic for fusion power plants to come   online. On the other hand folks finally seem to  be thawing out on their attitudes about nuclear   power in general, and while improvements to solar  have made it less urgent to adopt nuclear as a   replacement for fossil fuels, it still remains  a powerful option.

We are seeing Small Modular   Reactors getting built and more pushes for new  reactors, though the problem of retiring the old,   outdated, and more legitimately problematic old  reactors might have negative impacts on this.  Of our other three big renewables,  Hydroelectric, Geothermal, and Wind,   I think both hydro and wind remain sources used  mostly for where they are good opportunities,   a very windy area where people also won’t mind  giant turbines, and larger hydroelectric dams.   Small wind power units for individual homes are  likely to see a niche role with home solar for   folks who view it as a nice supplement to solar  on stormy days or night time generation, and which   they feel offer them personal independence and  security over the grid even if it might be a bit   cheaper, but it’s really geothermal that I think  of as the big growth option.

Temperature doesn’t   change much the deeper you get underground and  heating cooling are two very large uses of energy,   so I think if we get improvements in digging  and burrowing technologies, as well as material   advances that will make piping systems long-lived  and better at moving heat, that we’ll see these   begin being more common features on homes. Home battery systems seem very likely to grow   in usage too, especially if batteries make  some of the big jumps that might be possible   thanks to 2D materials. This is one of those  cases where a lot depends on how manufacturing   technologies roles out, because I could well  imagine houses 20 or 30 years down the road   all featuring a wired connection to the grid  like now but also having some solar, some wind,   some geothermal, plenty of batteries, and a big  backup generator waiting to kick on.

I would not   be surprised if we saw more motion to off-the-grid  technologies for water and sewer kicking in too,   and maybe you get your backup generator fuel  from methane produced by your septic tank.  But while we focus on moving away from fossil  fuels, this gets confused as moving away from   hydrocarbons in general, and while it takes more  energy to make a hydrocarbon than you get when   burning it, they are great for long term storage  and portability compared to batteries. In a solar   or nuclear age, we may see excess power generation  off from peak hours used to create hydrocarbons by   the Sabatier process, which would be carbon  neutral and is actually a good way to remove   carbon from air or water.

If that developed fast  enough, it might bury electric cars as it would   get around the huge cost of converting our  vehicles and infrastructure to support them.   Though unless you’re making gasoline, which is  a bit harder and costlier than making methane,   you would still have a conversion cost to  what amounted to natural gas powered vehicles. Financial Technology With the possible exception of   those of us very devoted to science fiction and  futurism topics, no area watches technological   predictions as much as the finance sector, which  needs to be ready for lots of surprises.

However,   I do not believe this area is going to produce  many civilization-changing surprises in and   of itself. That said, more seamless and  casual budgeting and investing apps, and   AI devoted to hunting for the best deals, might  really alter the way folks spend their money,   and much like the energy sector, any major change  to how folks spend money massively alters the   entire economy and civilization it’s built on. As a simple example, these days there’s a big   concern about new houses getting built fast enough  to make up for the rise in demand coupled with   folks not wanting a lot of the older houses and a  lot of older folks not wanting to sell their homes   either and living in them longer.

Lifespans also  have a big role in pension and retirement options,   and I think easier interfaces and better AI will  help folks be able to have a clearer picture of   their own options and stay more engaged  on that front. Also, how you build homes,   single-family big dwellings or large apartments  or tiny homes, all plays a big role in what   technologies folks want and which will succeed,  and so does the general availability, mobility,   and cost of money. Also it is worth noting  that a lot of our economy is based around   folks making what economically speaking  are bad decisions, impulse buys, and so on,   or recurring costs that are small and build up  unnoticed, and such apps might help cut down on   those, which might massively alter a lot of  retail or big purchases like cars or houses.

Health Tech and Digital Health Speaking of folks living longer,   it is difficult to overestimate the sheer impact  improvements in medicine have on our lifespan,   quality of life, and everything else  that hinges on them, and I would say   that while I think we have a good chance  of beating cancer and some other chronic   issues in the next generation like diabetes  and obesity, it’s really telemedicine and   digital health that are going to be  the gamechangers for this industry.  These make it easier for folks to  interact with their health professionals,   letting those health professionals do those  interactions better but faster and easier,   and letting us better collect and utilize data  from all our wonderful medical machines, including   things like personal health monitors, which we’ll  touch on more in wearable technologies at the end.   Digital health may also overlap with advances  in AR and VR allowing patients to be operated   on by the world’s best surgeons or experts on  special procedures even if they reside on the   other side of the globe.

Doctors may also use AR  as a guide similar to drivers using GPS – indeed,   that is how doctors testing prototypes of  this technology described the experience. Information Technology Handling information is   obviously important but not flashy, and in many  ways, while I think the so-called information age   was overhyped decades back, it’s understated now.  We won’t spend long on this one today because we   already gave some of its sub-topics like VR, smart  homes, or Quantum Computing bigger treatments,   but it is blanket area with lots of interesting  developments like Edge & Cloud Computing,   cybersecurity and privacy improvements, or  challenges, but it remains a vital but non-flashy   field that tends to be a bit arcane to folks, and  I’m not expecting that to shift any time soon.

The Internet of Things One exception to that is   the Internet of things, which while I tend to feel  has gotten a bit overhyped itself in recent years,   is still a big emerging and life-shifting  category of technologies. The basic notion   remains that a lot of devices you use would  be interfaced to your phone or computer   and able to trade data and work together  in ways that personalize things to you   better and minimize waste, cut down  on irritations, raise productivity,   and generally make life more pleasant. I think  this is going to be the natural evolution of   personal technologies for the next decade or  so but that it is also an area still trying to   find its equivalent to the smartphone or iphone or  windows 95 equivalent that really brings it fully   and overwhelming into daily life for everyone. 

And when it does, I think that will be one of   those technologies or interfaces or inventions  that historians note as a big game changer. Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is absolutely a big   candidate for revolutionary new tech, as it holds  the potential keys to radical life extension and   nigh-immunity from injury, ailment, or disease,  but while I feel we will see major progress on   it continue this century, I do not feel it’s  the big one for the 2020s or 30s or even 40s. Quantum Computing The same remains for quantum computing,   it was massively overhyped some years back and we  talked about that in its own episode back then,   along with its many genuine uses, and it has  indeed made some big improvements since then,   but I don’t feel this is going to  be the area we point at and say   ‘this changed civilization in the 21st  century’, at least not the first half.

Retail How we shop and sell things is pretty critical   to civilization and you can't really discuss our  recent history without talking about the impact   of places like Walmart or the rise and fall of  the American Mall or the impact of Amazon or   Ebay or even Facebook Marketplace. I think we will  see a continued push for faster and cheaper home   delivery, and as I was saying pre-Covid, I think a  lot of folks will shift to shopping for groceries   online and having them delivered, and the effect  of Covid in my opinion is only hastening that,   much as it pushed faster developments in online  and remote work and teleconferencing options.   I would also guess that our increased use of  personal devices tracking us and talking to us   and each other will see the introduction of a lot  more tailored and customized clothing and apparel. 

Your phone will likely soon always know  how much you weigh, how tall you are,   if one of your legs is a bit shorter  or longer than the other, or an arm,   your very exact shoe size and state of the arches  in your foot, what kind of walking you do and   how long you stand a day, and so on, so that you  will never be ordering for sizes for yourself,   you’ll just order a shirt style or shoe style  and either get the closest mass-produced match   rapidly delivered or some robot tailor is going to  perfectly make you a suit jacket, or chat to your   washer and dryer and tell you it's time to replace  a piece of clothes or have your pants let out or   taken in, or the robot cobbler is going to make  you a great shoe fit based on each of your feet,   your medical profile and personal activities,  and general lifestyle. Rapid mass production   of general sizes or categories of widget isn’t  going anywhere, but more customized personal   gear that can be ordered without lots of time or  effort strikes me as the big growth area for the   next couple decades… as will probably be more  personalized and more prevalent advertising. Robotics and Automation Much like Energy,   Artificial Intelligence, and IT; robotics is  a giant sector where major improvements are   occurring constantly and making major changes  and improvements in our lives.

Two I’ll mention   though that strike of big note are soft robotics,  and the impact those would also have on recycling   and inventory in conjunction with object  identification by AI. Soft robotics is all   about robots that are made with softer or more  flexible materials and can have lighter touches,   to more easily interact with humans for instance.  Its role in agriculture, producing food for us,   is a big one too, since it lets you mass harvest  things like fruits and vegetables at lower cost,   letting them be more affordable like  staple crops such as wheat, corn, or rice. 

This could radically change our diets and farming  practices, especially as it makes alternatives   to open air agriculture like poly-culture and  mass-greenhousing much more viable, which could   then let us support vastly more people on vastly  less land than we do now, with major advantages   to preserving or restoring the environment.  There’s way more applications of soft robotics,   especially in the home environment, but in a  broader ecological and environmental context,   our ability to manage our waste is a big one  here, and recycling gets so much easier if   you have some soft robotics working with AI to  pick through garbage in the home or on conveyors   belts and move them to the right waste bin. So I think improvements to soft robotics will   be a big one for the next generation, if  not necessarily very flashy.

I would say   sexy but sexbots would actually be an example  of soft robotics, and as with more adult uses   of Virtual Reality, while we’ll not dip into  that topic further for the sake of keeping the   show family friendly and tasteful, those would  also tend to have major impacts on civilization. Smart Cities and Infrastructure Civilization is a word that originates   from the idea of cities themselves and citizens  trying to live together in larger quantities   without tripping over each other or murdering  each other. So you can't really talk about   civilization-changing technology without talking  about how cities themselves will change, but we   did give this an extended treatment in our episode  on Smart Cities in 2023.

I think we will generally   see a lot more use of robots and automation  for creating and maintaining green spaces of   parks and gardens, along with improvements  to traffic management and air quality,   which while that might sound minor, is likely  to have a huge impact on the folks living there   and their personal happiness and stress levels. Also expect to see minor features like apartment   buildings with shared facilities that would let  you know how many washers and dryers were free   in the laundry room or reserve one, or know  how many seconds the elevator will be before   arriving. I’m also expecting at some point to see  the neighborhood watch idea that was pretty big   when I was a kid see a resurgence in activity  and presence as more smart cities and internet   of things features pop up.

This is likely to  include a lot of first responder roles too,   though only supplementally assisting  the professionals by, for instance,   beeping the five nearest people with CPR  certification to let them know someone is   in need right nearby and give them directions  and information about the situation. Another   aspect of smart cities is management itself and  that might be the sort of program a city council   enacts and supports by giving tax credits  to those who volunteer or free training too. Smart Home Technology Smart home technology is very tied   into the internet of things and data analysis, and  I would say the big advance is going to be when   someone develops the equivalent of Windows for  your home.

Everything is ready for this next step,   but a good and universal user interface isn’t  really there yet, though we have some good   initial candidates. Ultimately this leads to  the house that knows every resident’s preference   and habits and can query guests' phones for any  preferences they have and are willing to share.  This is the technology that  seamlessly alters temperature,   humidity, and lighting to your current  preferences, not just something general,   so it knows to dim and redden the lights and to  play some of your favorite light classical for   a headache and to send the robot drone over with  some water with a slice of lemon.

This is going to   be big area of gradual and major improvements, and  also includes your lawn and garden, and we’ll see   a lot features of home and garden shift with these  improvements too, like more elaborate gardens as   they get pruned and watered automatically  by robots who monitor the weather too,   who also go wash and wax your car and make sure  it gets recharged or refueled or even parked   after it drops you at your doorstep. Speaking of  lawns and gardens, this is the same sort of tech   that could give you a heads up that things in  your garden are making you react or warning you   that an apartment or park you were interested in  had a lot of plants you were allergic to nearby. Space Technology We get a lot of Ages suggested,   Age of Sail, Age of Steam, Atomic Age, Information  Age, and the Space Age, and as you might guess I’m   fond of that one but to me it's an age that  doesn’t begin till at least a couple percent   of the human population doesn’t live on Earth  anymore, and then it continues forever on.

We   spend a lot of time talking about space travel  here so it’s not a big topic for us today,   and while I think we will see our first  Moon base, first crewed mission to Mars,   and maybe even our first asteroid mine  in the next generation or two, I don’t   think the big revolutionary new tech of this  generation is going to involve space that much.  I think we will see some militarization of  space, some more space stations, some niche   space tourism, and a lot more satellites, but  I’m not expecting a space elevator or orbital   ring to be built in the next couple decades  or anything else that would totally alter   that landscape. With the possible exception  of space-based solar, if that did get itself   going and competitive, which would be introducing  a multi-trillion dollar economic sector to space.

Wearable Technology We’re going to close out today with our   last topic, wearable technology, not just because  it’s alphabetically last but because I do think   it’s a zone that’s likely to be one of the biggest  life changing areas. It already is in many ways,   we don’t actually wear our phones but we  carry them, and glasses, hearing aids,   and clothing themselves are amongst our most  useful and important technologies. Smart watches,   more comfortable earbuds or wearable cameras  and microphones, glasses with augmented reality,   and various health monitors all offer  not just convenience but greater safety. 

Also more concerns of privacy but technological  change isn’t not identical to technological   improvement, and we’ll talk about privacy concerns  in depth next month. And while that is a downside   I think we can manage, it also comes with  a vastly greater safety from accidents and   quicker emergency response to fewer crimes. It’s  just hard to make a career out of mugging people   if everyone has health, positional monitors,  and cameras on them constantly, which can not   only alert authorities of crimes against them but  also switch on to track that fleeing criminal as   they flee past other people or local traffic  cameras.

It also means if you suddenly have   a heart attack first responders know right away,  and that same tech might let them instantly ping   anyone nearby with the necessary skill sets. But more importantly it means your health   monitors already knew your health conditions and  heart rate and blood pressure and knew how much   risk you were at and warned you well in advance  and also could tell you to sit down and relax   before the actual attack while they patched you  through to medical services. It’s the tech that   lets you know you’re dehydrated or more drunk than  you think you are, or that several of the things   you’re allergic to are present.

It’s also the alternative to cybernetics and   augmentation, that many of us look forward to but  many others do not. Technologies implanted into   you worry many folks, and may never be necessary  if wearable options can achieve similar results,   or even just modest equivalents. So this can be  your augmented reality or extended reality goggles   or glasses, this could be your jacket that has  some batteries in it that wirelessly charge all   your widgets and recharges itself whenever you  sit down.

It could be a jacket that heats and   cools you, or even performs CPR on you, or the  exoskeleton that lets you lift bigger objects or   walk if you have spinal damage. Many technologies  can change your life but those you incorporate   into yourself or wear certainly have an advantage  in that respect when it comes to proximity. So that’s our overview of major technology types  and how they might change and revolutionize our   lives in the upcoming decade or two or three. 

If I had to pick the biggest game-changer,   I would put my money down on AI, but that’s  probably not a very big gamble or a surprising   one. Wearable Technology, Smart Homes,  and the Internet of Things are my loose   blanket category for second place, at least  in terms of major personal life impact the way   smart phones and the internet and PCs were. Let me know what your runner ups are in the   comments on this episode, or candidates you think  we missed, or if you think something besides AI,   robots, and automation in general should be in  there instead as number one.

But above all else,   almost all of these offer great  improvements to our lives,   and even if only a few develop in the  next few decades with even half the   promise they often get hyped to have, I think  it means an improvement in life for all of us. As we saw today, it’s hard to guess what the  next technological change will be, and there’s   always a chance it's going to bring about the  apocalypse. But Armageddon doesn’t have to be   all doom and gloom, and if you’re looking for a  fun way for you and your friends to enjoy the end,   let me suggest Doomlings, a delightful card game  for the end of the world, and an easy to play,   fast game that I, and my family, loved.

Somewhere on a doomed and distant planet,   life has emerged, competing for dominance until  the world’s inevitable destruction. Score points   by playing traits for your Doomlings’  species, making them more adaptable,   resilient, and mischievous as the new ages  occur and catastrophes befall. As you know,   I love board games and card games, especially  ones you can enjoy with adults or with kids,   and my kids took to Doomlings as fast as  they did Uno, Pokemon, or Exploding Kittens. 

Doomlings is a lighthearted, cheeky, goofy,  funny card game that is easy to learn and still   focuses on strategy. Enjoy yourself while  world ends, find out more at doomlings. com So that’s it for today but join us next week  where we’ll jump into the distant future and   the topic of space warfare to explore the role  and makeup of Battlefleets, on August 22nd.

And   speaking of jumping around in time, the week after  that we’ll examine the idea of retrocausality and   how events could proceed their causes under known  science and theory. Then we’ll finish August up   by journeying to the Gardens of the Moon, to  explore a period of early lunar settlement.  If you’d like to get alerts when those and other  episodes come out, make sure to hit the like,   subscribe, and notification buttons.

You  can also help support the show by becoming   a member here on Youtube or Patreon, or checkout  other ways to help at IsaacArthur. net. You can   also catch all of SFIA’s episodes early and  ad free on our streaming service, Nebula,   along with hours of bonus content like Jupiter  Brains & Mega Minds, at go.

nebula. tv/isaacarthur.  As always, thanks for watching,  and have a Great Week!