7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions About What The Next Decade Will Bring
This article by Jacqueline Howard for the Huffington Post may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Dr. Ray Kurzweil, inventor, pioneering computer scientist, and director of engineering at Google:
"By 2025, 3D printers will print clothing at very low cost. There will be many free open source designs, but people will still spend money to download clothing files from the latest hot designer just as people spend money today for eBooks, music and movies despite all of the free material available. 3D printers will print human organs using modified stem cells with the patient's own DNA providing an inexhaustible supply of organs and no rejection issues. We will be also able to repair damaged organs with reprogrammed stem cells, for example a heart damaged from a heart attack. 3D printers will print inexpensive modules to snap together a house or an office building, lego style.
Technological innovation is accelerating at an exponential pace. Fashion is already largely online and Amazon delivers within two days so the merit of 3D printing a garment which has a low incremental cost to begin with is questionable. However, printing items with high incremental value that once took days, weeks or were previously impossible is another story entirely. It is already possible to have a dental crown manufactured within an hour of scanning and advances are regularly announced in the medical field.
As 3-D printing hardware rapidly evolves tangential development of sensors, optics and software is occurring at equally rapid rates and has even more capacity to initiate change in what are now inefficient sectors.
Heathcare and bureaucratic systems on which we depend on a daily basis represents some of the greatest challenges and greatest potential for the future. Introducing a data driven approach to government might on first look to be common sense but it ignores the capacity of vested interests to have policy driven by their individual goals.
The human imagination is endlessly inventive which means we can anticipate that there will be change, that it will be disruptive but we must rely on price charts to determine how best to make money from it.
Back to top