The Future

Someone sent me the following article. Something to read while you ponder whether to buy or sell BRN. Me? Wouldn't dream of selling as BRN is in the right place at the right time IMO.

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. What happened to Kodak will happen to many industries in the next 10 years - and most of us won't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but they followed Moore's law. So, as with all exponential technologies, they disappointed us for a long time, before they got way better, going mainstream in only a few years. That will now happen with artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers became 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 US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far, the basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by people.

So if you study law, stop immediately! There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future and only specialists will survive. This may be The Best Extinction since the Dinosaurs.

Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer, 4 times more accurately than nurses. Facebook now has pattern recognition software that recognizes faces better than humans. In 2030, computers may be more intelligent than we are.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for public use. Around 2020, the complete industry will begin to shrink. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up where you are and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you'll only pay for the distance driven and you can work while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.

This will change our cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars. So, we can transform parking spaces into parks. 1.2 million people die worldwide, each year, in car accidents. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles  (100,000 km). With autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That may save a million lives every year, thus increasing  populations, around the world.

Most car companies will probably go bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build better cars, while tech companies
like Tesla, Apple, and Google will be revolutionary and build computers on wheels.

Many Volkswagen and Audi engineers are terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have big problems because, with few accidents,  insurance will be many times cheaper. The car insurance business model (for example) will disappear.

Real estate will change, because if we can work while commuting, we will move far away to live in cheaper and more beautiful neighborhoods. No need for a two car garage either??

Electric cars will go mainstream about 2020. Cities will be quieter because new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will be amazingly cheap and clean because solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but we can now see the coming impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil energy.  Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will curtail that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2 kWh (kilowatt hours) per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if we can have as much clean water as we want, for almost no cost.

Health: Tricorder X prices will be announced this year. There are companies who will build medical devices called "Tricorders" (from Star Trek) that work  with your phone, take your retina scan, your blood sample and you will breathe into it.

It then analyzes 54 bio-markers that will identify most diseases. It will be so  cheap that in a few years everyone on this planet will have world class medical analyses, nearly free. Goodbye medical establishment and their absurd fees.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 in 10 years. And, they became 100 times faster. Major shoe companies are already printing 3D shoes.