Four disruptive trends will shape the next decade: 1) Distributed software systems will drive disintermediation and disrupt industries like transportation and hospitality; 2) Networked virtual reality will allow for planetary-scale collaboration and remote viewing; 3) Climate change will require adaptation of infrastructure to become intelligent, secure, low-carbon and climate-resilient; 4) Brain-inspired computing utilizing massive data and exascale supercomputers will enable emulation of the human brain within a decade and usher in an era of cognitive technologies.

1. “Four Disruptive Trends
for the Next Decade”
Briefing Organized by the Australia Post
Canberra, Australia
August 11, 2015
Dr. Larry Smarr
Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
Harry E. Gruber Professor,
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD
http://lsmarr.calit2.net

2. If You Are Planning On a Ten Year Horizon
It Helps to See What Unexpected Change Can Happen In a Decade…
One Decade
www.benphoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Facebook-User-Growth-Chart.png
From One Million to One Billion Users
In Less Than 8 Years!
www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com

3. Australia’s Citizens Now Depend on IT Companies
That Were Born Only Ten Years Ago
www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-june-2015/
50% of Australian Population

4. The Scale of the Web Today:
“You Know What’s Cool?-a Billion” *
• Facebook
– 1.5 Billion Active Users
• YouTube
– 4 Billion Video Views Each Day
• Google
– Over One Billion Searches Every Day
• Apple
– 25 Billion Apps Downloaded Per Year
• Smartphones
– 2 Billion Users
* From the Movie The Social Network (2010)

5. The Global Planetary Computer
Powers These Disruptions
The Computing Power to Make a Single Google Search
Is More Than Was Used In Space & On Earth
For the 11 Year, 17 Flight Apollo Program!
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-power-of-apollo-missions-in-single.html

6. Four Disruptive Trends
for the Next Decade
• Distributed Software Systems are Driving Disintermediation
• Networked Virtual Reality
• Climate Change and Adaptive Infrastructure
• Brain-Inspired Computing

7. Distributed Software Systems
are Driving Disintermediation

8. Software Frameworks Are Emerging
to Disrupt Prior Physical-Based Industries

9. Airbnb’s Market Cap
is Over Twice That of Hyatt
The company was launched in 2008, and has a listing of around
1.4 million various houses, apartments, rooms, and exotic
locations to rent. Since then, more than 35 million travellers
have availed its service. The company’s operations span
around 34,000 cities

10. Next Stage in Uber
Move to Driverless Cars

11. Traffic Control for Drone Air Delivery
is Under Development by NASA, Amazon, & Google

12. Networked Virtual Reality

13. Over Fifty Years Ago, Asimov Described
a World of Remote Viewing
A policeman from Earth, where the population all lives underground in close quarters, is
called in to investigate a murder on a distant world. This world is populated by very few
humans, rarely if ever, coming into physical proximity of each other. Instead the people
"View" each other with trimensional “holographic” images.
1956

14. Caterpillar / NCSA: Distributed Virtual Reality
for Global-Scale Collaborative Prototyping
Real Time Linked Virtual Reality and Audio-Video
Between NCSA, Peoria, Houston, and Germany
www.sv.vt.edu/future/vt-cave/apps/CatDistVR/DVR.html
1996

15. Collaboration Between EVL’s CAVE2
and Calit2’s VROOM Over 10Gb Wavelength
EVL
Calit2
Source: NTT Sponsored ON*VECTOR Workshop at Calit2 March 6, 2013

16. Optical Fibers Link Australian and US
Big Data Researchers

17. Next Step: Use AARnet/PRP to Set Up
Planetary-Scale Shared Virtual Worlds
Digital Arena, UTS Sydney
CAVE2, Monash U, Melbourne
CAVE2, EVL, Chicago

18. Why Would a Social Network Company
Buy a Consumer Virtual Reality Company?

19. One Year Later…
"We're working on VR because
I think it's the next major
computing and communication platform
after phones,“
-Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO
July 1, 2015

20. Climate Change and Adaptive Infrastructure

21. Rapid Increase in the Greenhouse Gas CO2
Since Industrial Era Began
Little
Ice Age
Medieval
Warm
Period
388 ppm in 2010
June 2015
CO2 402.8

22. Atmospheric CO2 Levels for Last 800,000 Years
and Several Projections for the 21st Century
Source: U.S. Global
Change Research
Program Report (2009)
2100 No Emission Controls--MIT Study
2100 Shell Blueprints Scenario
2100 Post-Copenhagen Agreements-MIT Model
Graph from:
www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments
/us-impacts/download-the-report

23. Human Induced Sea Level Rise
Will Continue for Centuries
Source: The Copenhagen Diagnosis, Allison, et al. (2009)
Meters of
Sea Level
Rise
5
3
10.2 Meter Rise
1 Meter will Submerge Over 2 Million sq. km of Land
Where ~150 Million People Live, Mostly in Asia

24. If Greenland Melts, Sea Level Rises 6 meters
If Antarctica Melts, Sea Level Rises 60 meters Further
66
Future Potential
Sea Level Rise
If Greenland and
Antarctica Melt
6
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html

25. The Disruptive Transition to Intelligent, Secure,
Low Carbon, and Climate Adaptive Infrastructure
• The First Wave:
– Infrastructure Will Gradually Become “Intelligent”
• The Second Wave:
– From High to Low Carbon Emissions
• The Third Wave:
– Climate Change is Now Occurring on a Time Scale
Commensurate With the Lifetime of Infrastructure

26. Buildings Are Becoming “Internets of Things”
Key to Reducing 40% of U.S. CO2 Emissions
• Microsoft Collects 500M Data Points/Day from its Campus
• Estimated to Become ~$200B/Year Industry by 2016
Source: Jim Young Realcomm

27. A Critical Component of Adding Intelligence to Infrastructure
is Keeping it Secure

28. An American Business Plan
for Moving to a Low Carbon Economy
www.americanenergyinnovation.org

29. The Transition to Climate Adaptive Infrastructure:
“Rising Currents” Exhibit at Museum of Modern Art
New York City's Harbor &
Coastline -- How it Could be
Restructured to Deal with
the Rising Sea Level
www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/rising-currents#description
New Ways to Occupy
the Harbor With
Adaptive “Soft”
Infrastructures

30. Brain-Inspired Computing

31. Reverse Engineering of the Brain:
Large Scale Microscopy of Mammal Brains Reveals Complex Connectivity
Neuron
Cell Bodies
Neuronal Dendritic
Overlap Region
Source: Rat Cerebellum Image, Mark Ellisman, UCSD

32. Using Nanotechnology to Read Out the Living Brain
Is Accelerating Under the Federal Brain Initiative
www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/brain-initiative

33. The March to the Exascale Supercomputer:
As Fast as One Billion Smartphones

34. The Exascale Power Conundrum:
Why We Have to Turn to Brain-Inspired Computers
• Straightforward Extrapolation Results in a Real Time Human Brain Scale Simulation
at 1–10 Exaflop/s with 4 PB of Memory
• A Digital Computer with this Performance Might be Available
in 2022–2024 with a Power Consumption of >20–30 MW
• The Human Brain Runs on 20 W
• Our Brain is a Million Times More Power Efficient!
Horst Simon, Deputy Director,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

35. Realtime Simulation of Human Brain Possible
Within the Next Ten Years With Exascale Supercomputer
Horst Simon, Deputy Director,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
Fastest
Supercomputer
Trend Line
Tianhe-2

36. Massive Public Private Partnership
to Accelerate Brain-Inspired Computers
Jan/Feb 2014
Over $100 Million

37. Brain-Inspired Processors
Are The Start of the non-von Neumann Architecture Era
“On the drawing board are collections of 64, 256, 1024, and 4096 chips.
‘It’s only limited by money, not imagination,’ Modha says.”
Source: Dr. Dharmendra Modha
Founding Director, IBM Cognitive Computing Group

38. Contextual Robots With Neuromorphic Processors That
Can See and Learn Will Tie Into the Planetary Computer
April 2014

39. Cognitive Computing
Is Beginning to Assist Medical Professionals

40. Massive Amounts of Data Combined With
Planetary-Scale Computing Leads to Deep Learning
April 2013

41. A New Generation of Human Body Sensors
Will Provide Continuous Readouts
Startup MC10 Working With UIUC
UC San Diego

42. A Vision for Healthcare
in the Coming Decades
Using this data, the planetary computer will be able
to build a computational model of your body
and compare your sensor stream with millions of others.
Besides providing early detection of internal changes
that could lead to disease,
cloud-powered voice-recognition wellness coaches could provide
continual personalized support on lifestyle choices, potentially
staving off disease
and making health care affordable for everyone.
ESSAY
An Evolution Toward a Programmable
Universe
By LARRY SMARR
Published: December 5, 2011

43. The Defining Issue in IT for the Coming Decades
May 5, 2015August 25, 2015

44. This Next Decade’s Computing Transition
Will Not Be Just About Technology
"Those disposed to dismiss
an 'AI takeover' as science
fiction may think again after
reading this original and well-
argued book." —Martin Rees,
Past President, Royal Society
If our own extinction is
a likely, or even possible,
outcome of our
technological development,
shouldn't we proceed with
great caution? – Bill Joy
Success in creating AI would be
the biggest event in human
history. Unfortunately, it might
also be the last, unless we learn
how to avoid the risks.
– Steven Hawking

45. Should We Give Robots Autonomy?

46. For Further Information: