7. Mundane Singularity Technologies
• 1. Pro-growth Policies (variable and uncertain by region)
• 2. Energy Efficiency - superconductors, thermoelectrics, improved grid
• 3. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion
• 4. Additive manufacturing
• 5. Not so mundane - neuromorphic chips, quantum computers, photonics
• 6. Automated transportation (leading to robotic cars and planes)
• 7. Urbanization MegaCities
• 8. Urbanization Broad Group skyscrapers, Tata flat packed buildings
• 9. Robotics
• 10. Hyperbroadband
• 11. Supermaterials
• 12. Improve medicine and public health
• 13. Space
• 14. Synthetic biology and recombineering
• 15. Sensors everywhere
• 16. Education transformed and accelerated innovation
• 17. Supersmartphones, exoskeletons and wearable systems
• 18. Memristors and other significant computing and electronic improvements.
8. Rest of decade predictions
• Foxconn plans for massive factory robotics
– Powered by solar
• All phones will be smartphones by 2016
• Multiple types of quantum computers in few years
• Large scale optical computers
• Memristors, graphene and plasmonic computers
• Some type of fusion power
• Traction in space
• Gene therapy
• Some aging treatments
• Synthetic biology, DNA & RNA nanotechnology
19. But is progress stagnant?
• Some claim so on some supposed claim of change
significance
– Claims US has eaten its low-hanging fruit
– Many things are resistant to change, "good enough"
– Minds and bodies are basically the same for tens of thousands
of years
– Technology improves rapidly but do we and our institutions?
• Game changers?
– How are the wonderful tech advances used to improve what
really makes a difference in our lives?
– What policies and habits make real improvement difficult?
Editor's Notes
So what sort of R&D expenditures can we expect in these economically troubling times? The next few charts give some detailed expectations.BATTELLE-R&D MAGAZINE ANNUAL GLOBAL FUNDING FORECAST PREDICTS R&D SPENDING GROWTH WILL CONTINUE WHILE GLOBALIZATION ACCELERATESThe full Global R&D Funding Forecast can be found at http://www.battelle.org/ABOUTUS/rd/2012.pdf.One of the most remarkable findings of the report is that R&D funding growth will largely be driven by Asian economies—a number projected to increase by nearly 9 percent in 2012. Elsewhere in the world, growth remains strong and stable in the aftermath of the global recession. Greece is the only country among the world’s top 40 R&D spenders that is not expected to increase its R&D budget during the next year.
Aerospace and Defense: U.S. federally funded defense R&D will reach nearly $75 billion in 2012, exceeding every other country’s total R&D except that of China, Japan and Germany. The increasing importance of and reliance on unmanned and autonomous vehicles and real-time situational awareness and sensor systems continue to change the aerospace, defense and national security R&D landscape. Beyond this level of federally funded R&D, U.S. corporations also will invest $13.8 billion of their own resources on R&D activities in 2012, up 5.9 percent from 2011. Globally, aerospace and defense industry R&D spending will grow by 1.9 percent to reach $26.2 billion in 2012.These systems, by their nature and scale, provide system-level R&D opportunities that historically were limited to major prime contractors with large manufacturing capacities. These larger companies likely will dominate the R&D expenditures, but many smaller companies are also engaged both as subcontractors and primes in significant efforts in these technological areas.Early-stage R&D efforts in these technologies, along with efforts in other sensor and monitoring technologies, cybersecurity, nanotechnology and advanced materials, biofuels and medical technologies will see continued defense R&D funding, for which numerous smaller firms may see a more level playing field during the next five to 10 years.
The closely watched study also predicts that overall European R&D will grow by about 3.5 percent while North American R&D will grow by 2.8 percent. Chemicals and Materials: R&D in the broadly defined chemicals and materials industry is expected to grow by 11.4 percent in the U.S. to $9.3 billion in 2012, while growing by 3.8 percent globally to $33.8 billion.Nanotechnology and its applications continue to pervade all industrial applications with biomedical applications beginning during the past two years. More than 15 U.S. government agencies propose funding $2.13 billion in nanotechnology research including DOE at $611 million, the National Institutes of Health at $465 million, the National Science Foundation at $456 million and the Department of Defense at $368 million.An emerging priority in advanced materials is a heightened focus on developing alternative sources or processes related to rare earth metals because of China’s recent export limits on supplies. In the industrial sector around the world, closed non-Chinese rare earth mines are being re-opened; however, the environmental requirements for operating these mines have increased since they closed, making additional R&D and capital expenditures necessary to develop new and improved processing programs.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT): During the past two years, ICT-related manufacturing has been particularly volatile, with leading companies experiencing commercial dynamics following the introduction of new products arising from R&D decisions. Despite these fluctuations the United States’ R&D spending in the ICT industry is forecast to increase by 9.9 percent, reaching $138.8 billion in 2012. This U.S. growth helps drive an overall global ICT industry growth of 4.1 percent to $238.5 billion.The Funding Forecast highlights several high profile companies as examples of how success in the ICT marketplace cannot be maintained simply by being the current market leader and making large R&D investments. A clear vision of long-term technology goals aligned with a competitive marketing strategy is essential.Information from The Economist’s Intelligence Unit (EIU) affirms that the U.S. remains the world’s most competitive country in ICT, but notes that developing nations are beginning to close the gap. The U.S. and Japan make up nearly 70 percent of all global ICT investments.Life Science: United States R&D spending in the life science industry is expected to decline by 5.7 percent to $73.2 billion in 2012 as pharmaceutical firms tighten their R&D budgets. Global R&D spending in the industry also is forecast to decline by 2.2 percent to $147.3 billion.This sector includes such diverse firms as multi-national pharmaceutical corporations, large medical device and instrument companies and both large and small biotechnology firms.A major change in the funding and performing of life science R&D is the convergence in public and private sector R&D toward open innovation and open source information—especially in areas needing considerable fundamental research. It is due, in part, to the pharmaceutical industry’s retrenchment from its conventional model to a more reduced internal R&D function and focuses more on collaboration and ROI. The ripple effects of impending patent expirations and the widely reported decline in productivity in the development and approval of significant new medicines are driving the strategic changes.
Experts from Battelle and R&D Magazine forecast that a 2.1 percent growth in United States R&D expenditures will be balanced against an estimated 2 percent inflation rate, suggesting that U.S. R&D investments will remain flat in real terms over the next year. That $436 billion in forecasted spending is expected to be broken down in the following way:U.S. Private Industry will spend by far the largest amount with a projection of $279.6 billion in R&D in 2012, up 3.75 percent over 2011.U.S. Federal Government spending will reach $125.6 billion in 2012, a decrease of 1.16 percent.Academia in the U.S. will spend $12 billion on research in 2012, up 2.85 percent over last year.Non-profits will increase spending in 2012 by 2.7 percent to $14.5 billion and other government entities in the U.S. will round out total R&D expenditures by increasing 2.72 percent to $3.8 billion.
Foxconn and Heartland Robotics and other companies will be driving costs down and capabilities up for robotics for manufacturing and home usage. There should be 100 million to 1 billion highly functional robots by the end of 2021. There will be a new category of robot using smartphones and tablets as the head (processing, cameras and sensors)Virtually every person will have smartphones and tablets by 2016 and people in the developed world will have more than one.There will be a variety of competing quantum computer technologies. Dwave will have a 512 qubit adiabatic quantum computer next year. There will be large scale optical computers.Memristors, graphene and plasmonic computers will enable superfast universal memory, neuromorphic computers and terahertz clock cycles.The latter half of this first decade will see the impact of Spacex Falcon Heavy and solar electric sails and inflatable space stations. Spacex Falcon Heavy success could see launch costs go down to $1000/kg. 2016-2022 could see success with reusability could see launch costs go down to $100-200/kg.There will be some commercialization of gene therapy, stem cell treatments, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.Myostatin inhibitors, SARM steroids and other treatments will combat frailty in the elderly and enable people to get more muscle mass which will burn more calories to combat obesity.There will be early detection of cancer, immune system boosting against cancer and other diseases (new vaccines and other treatments.)There will be early stage anti-aging treatments. Several things that mimic calorie restriction which are emerging now and treatments like Stem Cell 100 (screened herbs that help fruit flies live longer). Some countries will edge over a life expectancy of 90 and anyone who takes care of themselves with exercise and diet will have reasonable chances to live to 100.There will be growing effects of synthetic biology, DNA nanotechnology, RNA nanotechnology and protein nanotechnology.Quantum dots for displays and electronics will get big.Carbon nanotubes and graphene will achieve 100,000 to 1 million tons of production per year.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/global-middle-class.htmlTaking an absolute approach, a recent study defined the global middle class as those households with daily expenditures between $10 and $100 per person in purchasing power parity terms. The lower bound is chosen with reference to the average poverty line in Portugal and Italy, the two advanced European countries with the strictest definition of poverty.Today, 1.8 billion people in the world are middle class, or 28 percent of the globalpopulation. About half of these people live in developed economies, with another fifth found in Brazil, Russia, India, and China – the so-called emerging BRIC economies. Less than 2 percent of the world’s population is rich by our definition; a significant majority, 70 percent, is poor.2022 marks the first year more people in the world are middle class than poor. By 2030, 5 billion people – nearly two thirds of global population – could be middle class.NOTE- this Brookings Institute analysis from 2010 uses the World Bank 2005 PPP figures which probably understate China's PPP GDP by 27% versus updated Penn World Tables 7.0 numbers and India's by 13%. Correcting the PPP GDP figures would mean more people in China and India are middle class already and more will become middle class earlier.
The middle class can be defined in relative or absolute terms. Easterly and Birdsall and Graham and Pettinato take a relativist approach, defining the middle class as those between the 20th and 80th percentile of the consumption distribution and between 0.75 and 1.25 times median per capita income, respectively. Bhalla takes an absolute approach, defining the middle class as those with annual incomes over $3900 in purchasing power parity terms. Banerjee and Duflo use two alternative absolute measures—those with daily per capita expenditures between $2 to $4 and those with daily per capita expenditures between $6 and $10—as estimates of a lower and upper middle class in developing countries.The choice between these two approaches depends on the purpose at hand. As we areconsidering comparisons across different countries on the size of the middle class, it makes sense to take an absolute approach. Obviously, such comparisons require a common definition of the middle class in all countries. It would make no sense to compare Indians earning $2 per day with Americans earning $50 per day and claim that both are comparable in terms of purchasing power because both are middle class.In our scenario, China, which accounts for only 4 percent of global middle class spending today (enough to be the 7th largest middle class country in the world) could catapult up the global table to become the largest single middle class market by 2020, surpassing the United States. In fact, China’s middle class market in 2020 could exceed that of the U.S. today. But China itself might be overtaken in the following decade by India, thanks to that country’s more rapid population growth and more even income distribution that permits growth to be distributed across all segments of society.Using a more restrictive definition of middle class, the World Bank’s 2007 GlobalEconomic Prospects report estimated that the global middle class would expand from 7.6 percent of the world’s population in 2000 to between 16.1 and 19.4 percent of the world’s population by 2030. A recent report from Goldman Sachs found that the global middle class would expand from 29 percent of world population in 2008 to approximately 50 percent in 2030.
World Bank Projects 883 million living on less than $1.25 a day in 2015 which is a big improvement from 1.4 billion in 2005http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/world-bank-projects-883-million-living.htmlWorldBank - The number of people living on less than $1.25 (PPP 2005) a day is projected to be 883 million in 2015, compared with 1.4 billion in 2005 and 1.8 billion in 1990. Much of this progress reflects rapid growth in China and India, while many African countries are lagging behind: 17 countries are far from halving extreme poverty, even as the aggregate goals will be reached.The projections put annual global growth at about 4.5 percent in 2011 and 2012 and have decent growth through 2014
Two-thirds of developing countries are on track or close to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the World Bank and IMF’s latest update on progress toward the 2015 targets.Developing countries will likely achieve the MDGs for gender parity in primary and secondary education and for access to safe drinking water, and will be very close on hunger and on primary education completion. Progress is too slow, however, on health-related outcomes such as child and maternal mortality and access to sanitation—the world will likely miss these MDGs by 2015.On the whole, the fight against poverty is progressing well. Based on current economic projections, the world remains on track to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty. The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day is projected to be 883 million in 2015, compared with 1.4 billion in 2005 and 1.8 billion in 1990. Much of this progress reflects rapid growth in China and India, while many African countries are lagging behind: 17 countries are far from halving extreme poverty, even as the aggregate goals will be reached.
y the end of 2012, there will likely be integrated one square neuromorphic chips with about ~10 billion synapses and ~1 million neurons. In 2015, the neuromorphic chips are targeted to have 100 times more capability. The military is developing neuromorphic chips for autonomous, unmanned, robotic systems and natural human-machine interfaces and diverse sensory and information integration applications in the defense and civilian sector.If neuromorphic chips become mainstream in the 2020s,they could be a $50 to 200 billion segment.Self driving robotic cars and "temporary auto pilot" functions in cars could become mainstream in the 2016-2025 timeframe. They would be a big market for more advanced sensors and neuromorphic chips.HP intends to have a memristor alternative technology to flash on the market in sixteen months, an alternative to DRAM in three to four years and, following DRAM, a replacement for SRAM.DARPA has funded a memristor based approach to Artificial intelligence.Memristors will be used as analog synapsesCPUs and GPUs will be used for neurons (there also could be custom chips)DARPA SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) goals are :* 1 million neurons per square centimeter* 10 billion synapses (memristors) per square centimeter* 100 milliwatts per square centimeter* total power 1 kilowattThe total system would then be about 10,000 chips with a combined 100 trillion synapses and 10 billion neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. The human brain is 50 times more energy efficient than the DARPA Synapse goals
Solar electric sails - the first prototype should fly in 2012.
New Space AgeThe 7 page IFTF 2021 document did not mention Spacex but Spacex is likely to have a huge impact on space access. Spacex is developing reusable version of their rockets. If Spacex is successful they will reduce the cost of getting into space to $50-100 per kilogram. A Spacex Heavy will be 3 to 10 times cheaper than competing launch systemsThe initial success of the Falcon 9 and the introduction of the Falcon Heavy are revolutionary enough. If over the coming years, however, SpaceX is able to successfully transition the Falcon to a fully reusable launch vehicle, then the stage on which the entire arena of space exploration is cast would be radically redrawn. Simply put, with the advent of a fully reusable Falcon series of rockets, a heretofore unforeseen level of space exploration becomes not simply more affordable, but in all likelihood, unavoidable. Once a permanent human presence on Mars is within practical reach, failure to pursue it, many will argue, becomes a moral transgression against humanity itself. To be sure, Musk’s vision of thousands of émigrés to a new world will have to wait on new, even larger rockets, but his company has a plan for that as well, beginning with a large staged combustion engine it wants to begin building next year.While “within reach” does not mean “within grasp”, it certainly bears serious consideration from a space establishment about to consume the better part of a decade and plow, at an absolute minimum, the equivalent cost of 144 Falcon Heavy flights at 53 tons each into a single 70-ton launch by 2017. With a projected launch rate of no more than once per year, and the 130-ton super-heavy version of the SLS expected no earlier than 2032 and sporting a price tag almost certain to exceed $40 billion, it is not a stretch to believe that SpaceX has a better chance of achieving reusability with the Falcon than the Senate has of achieving orbit with the heavy version of its “monster” rocket.Other space technology by 2021 should beSolar electric sails - the first prototype should fly in 2012.
I doubt this very much in many areas as we are going gang bursters in communication, computation, medical innovations including longevity, biotecthOn the other hand space exploration/exploitation is woefully stagnant. The speed of social change also seems surprisingly slow, especially in the evolution of social and political attitudes. Economist Tyler Cowen makes the case that the pace of innovation has slowed, and that we are now on a "technological plateau" that makes further growth challenging. There is a detailed review by Chuck Crane. The USA has eaten low hanging economic fruit since the 1700s.1. Free land (Homestead Act, etc.)2. Technological breakthroughs (electricity, motor vehicles, telephone, radio, television, computers etc.)3. Smart, uneducated kids (who were made productive through excellent public education).4. Cheap fossil fuels. In his book The Great Stagnation Cowen says Tyler says his grandmother saw greater changes. She lived during the birth of airplanes, skyscrapers, suspension bridges, radio and television, antibiotics, atomic bombs and energy, interstate highways, jet travel and a moon landing.In contrast, a child born in 1970, a year after the first moon landing and the Boeing 747’s first flight, has seen the personal computer, biotechnology, cellphones, Web browsers, search engines and nanotechnology (the current weak version of nanotechnology and not full blown molecular nanotechnology).ote that we have layers of technology (civilizations technology and solution stacks) that exist from different times which make up the stack of technology that we use today. This can be thought of the way archeologists will dig through layers of history, except this is the layers of living technology. This can also be related to the stack of hardware and software that exists in a computer solution (an example is LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP).We have the bodies and minds from evolution that have existed for tens of thousands of years.We have clothes, agriculture and language that have been around for many thousands of years.We have electricity, engines, cars, planes, television and highrises from the time of our grandparents.We have computers and the internet and biotechnology. Usually when new technology comes along there is some shift from old technologies and some other technologies are adapted. We collectively will resist changing technologies and structures that are deeper in the stack. Many older ways and processes have been perfectly adapted into how people live. There is no desire to change. This can be seen in the regulations in France or in Palo Alto, California to changing buildings and landscape. The owner may want to change something but the neighbors or the workers resist change. There is also the resistance to changing anything that is "good enough" with anything different.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_93CXTt2K7cSo progress should not just be measured by how powerful is the next layer of technology that we add on top. We also need to look at how well we can innovate and upgrade the heck out of the older layers. Also, the best versions of the older technology may not be distributed to everyone to enable maximum productivity.Some examples are:the creation of $40 android smartphones that should enable everyone to have a very powerful computational device.South Korea and Hong Kong have affordable (about $40/month) gigabit per second internet and there is technology to get to tens of gigabits per second and even terabits per secondFactory mass produced deep burn nuclear fission reactors with 100 year lifespans could bring the cost of energy to less than one cent per kwh. It would not be energy too cheap to meter but we can work and coordinate and enable energy to be five times cheaper even without a "super breakthrough". We also need to work towards super-breakthroughs.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ROrUea0gLlY Peter Thiel "Back to the Future"Tyler Cowen http://marginalrevolution.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_93CXTt2K7chttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ed6gNSZRawY (at Singularity Summit)
