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I wish more folks would read Carlota Perez. We've had 5 tech revolutions since, and including, the Industrial Revolution. It'll probably be another 10-15 before
by jmsdnns 11y ago
I wish more folks would read Carlota Perez. We've had 5 tech revolutions since, and including, the Industrial Revolution. It'll probably be another 10-15 before something as significant as a computer kicks off the next one.
Until then, there isn't reason to think a tectonic shift will easily happen.
Steamships and canals were a powerful revolution, opening up huge parts of the country to international trade, captured well by how the Erie Canal opened the midwest up to the Atlantic.
Rail was another powerful revolution, allowing people to be in New York City and Chicago on the same day. Upon being in both cities on the same day, people observed that the cities didn't have their clocks set the same way, as that was never possible before.
Instead of a new human transportation revolution, the information age gave us a way for ideas to travel rapidly. At the speed of light in some cases. This is certainly profound, but consider how HUGE an idea this is. If we look at the start of the information age as 1971 when Intel opened its doors, then we're already 45 years into this one. A lot has been done. There's still more left, but it's probably about upgrading the rest of the planet instead of finding whatever US industries are left to be upgraded.
If I were to speculate, I might say the next revolution that could change society in a comparably profound way would be self-driving cars and other forms of automation. Perhaps around 2025-2030 society will be cool with cars driving themselves and many, many businesses will be started to explore the automation space. To compare, there were over 1800 car companies in the US between 1896 and 1930, but today there are 2 US car companies. Another comparison, there were once 500 US steel companies, but today there's basically 2. So perhaps 2030 starts with self-driving cars moving the same speed as human-driven cars and maybe by 2080 they go 300mph instead, which would upgrade humanity's transportation capabilities in a similar manner to when rail upgraded steamships or when cars upgraded rail. This would open up huge amounts of land that is otherwise inconvenient and could give rise to new housing technologies, as new houses would surely be built on this newly accessible land.
We are 45 years into the information age. It's completely reasonable that it's not blowing our mind asunder the way it did 10, 20, 30 years ago. I am VERY excited for whatever comes next.
- jmsdnns 11y agoThis is the Perez book I mentioned: http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Capital-Dynamics/dp/1843763311 http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Ca... If you follow Marc Andreeson, Chris Dixon, Fred Wilson, etc, you'll see they are all very fond of her work too.
- npalli 11y agoI totally believed Perez' thesis until the iPhone came along. So what constitutes the current cycle 1. Mainframes/Mini computers 2. PCs 3. Desktop internet 4. smart phones 5. Mobile broadband 6. Cloud 7. Machine Learning 8. AI/IoT Each one has a different investment pattern and each one is affecting industries in a different way in a different time period in different geographies. So why are all of them clubbed under "information revolution". How is clubbing Mainframes with smartphones makes sense. According to Perez' the peak investment in this phase happened during the dotcom period. This can't be right. No smartphone, mobile broadband, AI, ML, IoT existed in a investment form in 2000. I have seen some adjustments to her theory which seem more like adding epicycles to ptolemy's. Not satisfying at all.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jmsdnns 11y agoThey're all put under "information age" because all of them depend on the microprocessor. According to Perez, the peak investment phase in financial markets paying attention to tech was during the dotcom boom. This definitely happened. The amount of money invested in tech companies was gigantic compared to what we see today. The dot com crash caused a loss of $5T. If we sum up the valuations of all the unicorns that exist today, we're not even close.
- npalli 11y agoWell, if it depends on the microprocessor then investments in that field peaked in the '70s. So, we are way beyond the cycle at this point. > The dot com crash caused a loss of $5T Paper losses. Actual investment was in the 10's of billions. As a reference, investment in mobile broadband globally in the next few years alone is going to be about 10 times bigger than that.
- jmsdnns 11y agoNot literally investments in microprocessors, but all of those things above depend on microprocessors. Regarding the paper losses... sure. But Perez's point was more that a huge bubble would crash, which was the dot com, and then society would get mature about what the actual tech could do. She then follows that by saying massive companies would get created in the maturity phase, which your point about mobile broadband investment agrees with.
- marcosdumay 11y agoIf you are wiling to think all the way into 2080, don't dismiss biotech. It has much more potential than old transportation and manufacturing revolutions. It can even redefine the meaning of "wealth", although that would likely be a "demand-side" improvement and count negatively into the GDP.
- deegles 11y agoHow would life extension affect GDP? I feel that it would accelerate growth since older, more experienced people would be more productive.
- shinryuu 11y agoIt might also affect GDP in a negative way since more people lives on and maintain status quo.
- marcosdumay 11y agoIf people feel richer while consuming less stuff, that forces the GDP to go down. As specific example, if somebody gets a cure for cancer tomorrow, and it's cheap and available for everybody, it'll make the entire expensive cancer treatments go away, and won't add to as much spending. Also, people that saved money this way may choose to work less, instead of consuming something else. End result, human wealth has an incredible growth, while the GDP goes down. Do the same to all areas of medicine, and you're still only touching the surface of biotech's potential.
- jmsdnns 11y agoThat's a great point. I described the next revolution as possibly one of automation, but that might not be enough. Maybe automation and robotics is better... hmm. This particular thing from Johns Hopkins is just incredible and gives us a glimpse of what might be in 50 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOncx2jU0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOncx2jU0Q
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago