Do not ponder the future; prepare for it!

Do not ponder the future; prepare for it!

The FUTURE is approaching faster than most of us can even handle. 

1. Auto-repair shops will disappear.

A petrol or diesel engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical motor has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and a are repaired only by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric motor.  Faulty electric motors are NOT repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with ROBOTS.  Your electric motor malfunction light goes on... so you drive up to what looks like a car wash, and your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee. Then your car comes out on the other side with a new electric motor or component.

2. Gas stations will disappear...

Parking spaces will have meters that dispense electricity.  Companies will install electrical recharging stations. In more and more parts of the world, this has already started.

3. Major auto-manufacturers have already budgetted money to start building new plants that build ONLY electric cars... The "Coal Industries" will go away. Gasoline/oil companies will go away. Drilling for oil will gradually come to an end. So say goodbye to OPEC. The Middle East is in trouble!

4. Homes will produce and store more electrical energy during the day than they use. It will be sold back to "The Grid". The Grid will store and dispense it, to the industries that are high electricity users. Just take a look at the Tesla buildings via google.

5. In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide... Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt... Who would have predicted that ever happening within 3 years after 1998? What happened to Kodak and Polaroid will happen in a lot of industries in the next 5-10 years, and most people don't even see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later, you would never take pictures on film again? With today's smartphones, who even has a camera these days? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels but followed Moore's law. As with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment in the beginning, before it became superior and mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence (AI), health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

6. The book, "Future Shock" was considered revolutionary in the 1960s.

The 4th Industrial Revolution is dwarfing what was seen as amazing progress and change 60 years ago. Software has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5 to 10 years... For example, UBER, is just a software tool (they don't own any cars!), and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Ask any taxi drivers if they imagined that only 10 years ago!  AIR-BnB is now the biggest hotel company in the world, and they don't even own any properties. Ask Hilton Hotels or the Marriott if they saw that coming!

7. Artificial Intelligence (AI):

Computers become exponentially better at understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the USA, many young lawyers already don't get jobs because of IBM's WATSON, from which you can get legal advice within a few seconds so for the basic stuff, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you're studying law, THINK AGAIN! There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future. Only omniscient specialists will remain. WATSON already helps nurses diagnosing cancer. It is 4-times more accurate and many times faster than human nurses! 

8. Facebook now has a 'face recognition' software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans. And now you need to get ready for and learn all about METAVERSE.

9. Autonomous cars: A baby born today will only see "personally-driven cars" in museums.

In 2018 the first self-driving cars were already here. In the next few years, the entire auto industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car any more as you will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination.

You will not need to park it, you will pay only for the 'driven distance' and you can be productive while travelling. The children of today will never get a driver's license and they will never own a car.

10. This will change our cities because we will need 90% to 95% fewer cars. We can transform former parking spaces into green city parks. About 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents (worldwide). That includes distracted or drunk drivers. We currently average one accident every 60,000 miles driven worldwide. However, with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in about 6 million miles. That will save a million plus lives, worldwide each year.  Most traditional car companies could become bankrupt unless they rapidly adapt. Some will try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car year on year, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. Volvo already stopped manufacturing internal combustion engines in their vehicles starting with their 2020 models. They are using all-electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models in the near future.  Engineers at Volkswagen and Audi are terrified of Tesla. Many other companies are beginning to offer all-electric vehicles. That was unheard of, only a few years ago.

11. Insurance companies will have massive trouble too, because without accidents, the costs of insurance will become cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear. Real estate will change too. Because if you can work while you commute, or you can work from your home as the Covid pandemic has already proven, people will abandon their office towers to move far away to more beautiful and affordable properties. Electric cars will become mainstream by about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run ONLY on electricity. Cities will have much cleaner air. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean, eventually free.

12. Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact, and it's just starting to get ramped up.

13. Fossil energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid, to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue. Technology will take care of that strategy in the not too distant future.

14. Health: The Tricorder X will be launched this year.

There are companies who will build a medical device called the "Tricorder" (from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, a sample of your blood, then you breathe into it. It then analyzes 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. There are already dozens of phone apps out there right now for health.

SO, WELCOME TO TOMORROW!

And to think, I used to complain about my parents and grandparents being "out of it."

PS.

And what about the Church and the clergy and religious. How will the 4-IR affect us? 

Some are already talking of having robots to celebrate mass, hear confessions, even pray and meditate in place of or on behalf of ordained and consecrated persons! God help us!