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You're not looking very hard. There are three major technologies that are on the horizon: solar, AI and cryptocurrency. Solar is probably the safest bet among

You're not looking very hard. There are three major technologies that are on the horizon: solar, AI and cryptocurrency. Solar is probably the safest bet among the three. A combination of Swanson's law [0] and Wright's law [1] have solar panels dropping exponentially, halving every 6-7 years. Battery technology needs to go hand in hand with the increased solar capacity in order to actually use it and I'm a little weaker on evidence of how quickly that's dropping but I think there's some expectation that battery technology is also experiencing it's own exponential price decrease [2]. The current US average household uses about 30kWh per day and has an average yearly energy bill of around $1200. My guess is that when solar and battery technology start to be priced in the $5k range for a 30kWh system, that's when we'll see a dramatic shift to solar. I would expect this to happen in the next 10-15 years. With solar and battery technology, you have the potential to get other unforseen events, like decentralized energy grids, ubiquitous and cheap energy etc. which all could lead to new markets and innovation. My guess is that AI is coming in the next 10-15 years. The human brain is estimated at 2.5 petabytes [3] of information and using cost of hard disk space as a proxy for the compute and other infrastructure to create general level AI, with current trends in exponential decreases in hard disk cost (and exponential cost decreases in other compute) a $1000 petabyte hard drive will be here within the next 10-15 years. We can already see spectacular results from speech synthesis, deep fakes, language synthesis etc. Two minute papers is a train of incremental spectacular results [4]. Kurtzweil has been claiming the singularity would happen around 2030 [5] and I see no reason to suspect this to be substantially wrong. There are many different interpretations of what "singularity" means and when we can expect human level AI but most of the reasonable predictions, even ones based on "back of the envelope" calculations (like the one I just did) all lead to the 2030 range. Many predictions about AI haven't come true so people get soured on it but the ones that should be believed are based on evidence, give reasons why and when the singularity will happen and, of importantly, are falsifiable. Cryptocurrency give the promise providing a ubiquitous payment system, capable of allowing for near instant microtransactions outside of a single nations control. HN is notoriously vitriolic towards cryptocurrency for some reason, which I've always found disconcerting since cryptocurrency is much in the same spirit as the early internet's decentralized philosophy. Cryptocurrency also gives, in my opinion, the only viable option for digital micropayments, which is something I haven't heard since the early 2000s when it was abandoned in favor of Amazon's "1-click shopping" or Ebay's payment system. Proof of work is known to be energy intensive but the response is that there's a cost to the current banking system we're paying, sometimes in the form of externalities, so it's not clear we're doing worse with PoW. I've heard, though I still don't feel like I have enough evidence to decide one way or the other, that cryptocurrency might actually speed the adoption of solar as cryptocurrency mining is an ideal energy source (sporadic, excess energy that can be used to give a return on investment, especially in areas that claim to not be able to support excess solar energy because of legacy infrastructure). I'm focusing just on the "developed nations" consumer level benefits without touching on some of the other more fundamental issues that cryptocurrency might enable through accessible banking to portions of the population that are unbanked, providing banking infrastructure to developing nations that have troubles with the current banking infrastructure and providing a unifying currency for the world. Given the average price increase of Bitcoin, I would expect Bitcoin to be used for around 10% of the worlds commerce by 2026 (around five years time). If that hasn't happened and/or we see a price of Bitcoin in the $500k to $1M range without being used in a significant way for goods and services, I would have to start thinking seriously whether there's some credence to what the detractors are saying. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects [2] https://longtailpipe.com/2013/04/06/there-is-moores-law-for-batteries-its/ https://longtailpipe.com/2013/04/06/there-is-moores-law-for-... [3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memor... [4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Predictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Predic...

newyankee 5y ago
Solar and Battery I am well versed with and follow quite closely (you can check my comment history). I am actually personally sold on LFP battery tech but despite claims of 135$/kwh prices within companies I have never seen retail prices < 300 $/kwh. I guess this decade will be better in converging retail vs B2B prices but scaling production is not a trivial issue. Having said that, wonder what impacts global supply chain crisis and geopolitical changes will have on thi
- abetusk 5y ago
  $300/kWh is essentially what lead acid is at, which is maybe why you chose it, but, point being, there are already batteries out there that hit this mark. In terms of availability of LiFePO4 batteries, just a quick check on Alibaba and Aliexpress shows many options for anywhere from $100/kWh to $150/kWh (if the prices are to believed, shipping is reasonable, etc. etc.). My assumption is that this prices will keep dropping and batteries, in some shape or form, will follow their own Moore's law like behavior, becoming cheaper at an exponential pace. I'm not sure if you believe the Alibaba and Aliexpress prices or whether you consider that "consumer" or not, but the $100/kWh is essentially already here and potentially available at small scale volumes. Scaling up production, scaling up adoption, finding markets, interleaving with local regulation, etc. are all challenges of adoption solar and battery technology for use in energy, especially in developed nations where there's a legacy infrastructure to consider. My opinion is that when the cost of the hardware is sufficiently low, there is a large pressure to adopt the new technology because the potential savings are so high. With a high potential upside, impediments to adoption are overcome. In my opinion, the low cost of solar and batteries make this almost an inevitability and so the better question is when will it be adopted and what markets will spring out from it. In terms of supply chain issues, this is, from what I understand, a localized problem due to the global pandemic and I would expect this to be resolved within the next year or two. This might just speak to my own ignorance on how the whole shipping industry works and maybe this is pointing to a potential other market involving supply chains, shipping containers or some other technology, that I'm missing. Anyway, you were asking for "exciting" technology. There's kind of nothing more fundamental than energy. Solar and battery technology promise to create an abundance of cheap energy. An abundance of energy has the potential to create a booming economy, so it's not just the technology proper that has innovation, which could include things like a decentralized energy grid, smart power monitoring, etc. but also all the other side effects from energy abundance that comes with it.

newyankee 5y ago

Solar and Battery I am well versed with and follow quite closely (you can check my comment history). I am actually personally sold on LFP battery tech but despite claims of 135$/kwh prices within companies I have never seen retail prices < 300 $/kwh. I guess this decade will be better in converging retail vs B2B prices but scaling production is not a trivial issue. Having said that, wonder what impacts global supply chain crisis and geopolitical changes will have on thi

abetusk 5y ago
$300/kWh is essentially what lead acid is at, which is maybe why you chose it, but, point being, there are already batteries out there that hit this mark. In terms of availability of LiFePO4 batteries, just a quick check on Alibaba and Aliexpress shows many options for anywhere from $100/kWh to $150/kWh (if the prices are to believed, shipping is reasonable, etc. etc.). My assumption is that this prices will keep dropping and batteries, in some shape or form, will follow their own Moore's law like behavior, becoming cheaper at an exponential pace. I'm not sure if you believe the Alibaba and Aliexpress prices or whether you consider that "consumer" or not, but the $100/kWh is essentially already here and potentially available at small scale volumes. Scaling up production, scaling up adoption, finding markets, interleaving with local regulation, etc. are all challenges of adoption solar and battery technology for use in energy, especially in developed nations where there's a legacy infrastructure to consider. My opinion is that when the cost of the hardware is sufficiently low, there is a large pressure to adopt the new technology because the potential savings are so high. With a high potential upside, impediments to adoption are overcome. In my opinion, the low cost of solar and batteries make this almost an inevitability and so the better question is when will it be adopted and what markets will spring out from it. In terms of supply chain issues, this is, from what I understand, a localized problem due to the global pandemic and I would expect this to be resolved within the next year or two. This might just speak to my own ignorance on how the whole shipping industry works and maybe this is pointing to a potential other market involving supply chains, shipping containers or some other technology, that I'm missing. Anyway, you were asking for "exciting" technology. There's kind of nothing more fundamental than energy. Solar and battery technology promise to create an abundance of cheap energy. An abundance of energy has the potential to create a booming economy, so it's not just the technology proper that has innovation, which could include things like a decentralized energy grid, smart power monitoring, etc. but also all the other side effects from energy abundance that comes with it.