Jack Dye

Trends Advancing Society

There are 5 major technologies with world changing consequences evolving simultaneously, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Quantum Computing, Space Exploration & Utilisation and Renewable Energy. They represent the greatest technological transition in human civilization given the timeframe they are occurring within. Some may find the following read frightening, so before you read I request that you note the following. Across human history technology advancements have never stopped unless the civilization wielding it dies out - often to be picked up by another anyway. The development of these 4 areas will not cease regardless of what regulations are placed. The change is occurring and the question should not be how to stop it - because you won’t - but rather how to build it correctly and integrate these advancements into society in the best manor possible. It is essential to note that these integrations are never perfect to start but overtime are iterated on as more opinions are explored. It is often the act of waiting for a perfect solution that leads to poor solutions, it is instead better to create and iterate - the world converges on correct solutions.

Any new technology often first appears hostile because it is foreign. If there is something new presented to you that you do not understand human tendency is to reject it, and use the existing familiar methods. Overtime however, as more people understand the technology and new generations rise with the technology presented as an initial option - instead of a change - the true value of it burgeons. The act of changing technology is moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar, however the act of initially assessing two unfamiliar technologies and deciding which one to use presents a more unbiased assessment of their true value.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence specifically Large Language Models have for the first time in civilization invoked question as to whether a machine - some other manufactured, non-biological entity - can think like a human, reason like a human, and potentially replace a human in areas of so called ‘knowledge work’. The act alone of questioning whether computers (LLMs) now possess this capability represents a shift in the ‘value proposition’ of humans as we know it. The potential for human knowledge capabilities to be of diminishing value provokes significant questions about our role in this world. Since one of the primary mechanisms by which humans interact is providing value to each other, in a world where computers provide significant amounts of the value raises questions of how we fit into society.

Blockchain

Blockchain, introduced as the first solution to the Byzantine general problem - how can a message be passed through a series of people ensuring it gets to the end untampered - has created a fundamentally different system to anything prior of transferring a record from one ‘account’ to another. It is distributed and accessible to everyone. Systems of record keeping have evolved overtime including carvings on rocks, paper and modern databases. Banks were initially built on paper record, and have transitioned to databases as a digital, cheaper form of storage. Despite banks shifts to digital databases much of the financial systems pricings reflect that of the paper era. International transfer, currency transfer and payment processing fees are simply absurd in the era of databases where the cost to update a record is negligible. Blockchain a new form of record keeping currently has a comparatively high cost compared to databases, however, new innovations continue to drop this rapidly. As the cost of transferring a record over the blockchain approaches that of a database it will be the undisputed mechanism of choice. The reason banks and financial institutions can still charge fees that may have been reasonable in the paper era, is due to their control over the database. Blockchain places no single entity in control and thus the cost to transfer a record is sold at cost, not with some inflated margin.

Note that a record can represent anything one wishes to store including: a book, some form of money (USD, AUD or Bitcoin), a property deed, flight ticket, ownership to a subscription.

Quantum Computing

The cost of traditional compute is approaching zero. The iPhone 15 can perform 2.15 trillion floating point calculations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) per second. Any problem requiring calculation that we wish to solve can be done in reasonable time using modern computers. There is an exception to that statement, ‘provided there exists a reasonable algorithm for the problem’. In computer science this is termed P vs NP. Traditional computers which under the hood simply rely on 1’s and 0’s being added, subtracted, multiplied and divided can solve problems classified as P within reasonable time (think days at most). At large scales the problems in NP cannot be solved in reasonable time by classical computers - it would take billions of years. Quantum computers offer a fundamentally different structure of computation that does not revolve around adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing 1’s and 0’s. It instead uses the rotation of a sphere, when the sphere points upwards that can be viewed as a 1, when it points down a 0 but if it points halfway between a 1 and 0 it represents 50% a 1 and 50% a 0. You do not need to understand this in its fullest to appreciate its potential, similarly not everyone understands traditional computers. What is important to realise, is that this fundamentally different structure of computation can solve in reasonable time both problems in P and NP. An example of a problem which lies in the NP category is sudoku. If you made a 10000 x 10000 sudoku board a classical computer essentially performs trial and error, there is no known algorithm to find the solution at a ‘faster’ rate. A quantum computer on the other hand would be able to rapidly find the solution to the entire board regardless of how big it is. The time difference between these grows exponentially as the board increases in size. While a sudoku board may not seem exciting, many problems lie in the category of NP.

Space Exploration & Utilisation

The cost of transporting 1 kilogram to Low earth orbit dropped 90% to $951 from 2006 to 2020. The question then follows, why is this important? How can space actually be utilised? Hypothetically even if the cost was 0 what could be put up there that would benefit society? This is a question which will be answered over decades if not centuries. The most exciting application at present is Starlink, Elon Musk’s global satellite internet service - it is the ‘perfect’ solution for global internet. Currently internet is beamed to your phone from nearby telephone towers, requiring infrastructure investment in every region. Starlink puts the infrastructure in space with the capability to beam to your phone, house or device anywhere on earth. While there are many open questions regarding utilisation of space, the exploration of space also poses questions as to who is entitled to assets in space. Is it first come first serve? Does the USA own the land in space - who decides? How should rules and regulations be put in place? Space presents the first ‘unknown land’ since earth’s completed documentation whereby modern transportation enables an individual access to any part of the globe. Countries are already fighting over the right to deploy satellites in low-earth orbit (where Starlink occupies). These questions which may seem farfetched will likely become one of the greatest concerns and debates of the next century and have the potential to provoke war or further global unity.

Renewable Energy

The cost of energy will approach zero. The cost of utility scale solar panels (100MV) fell 82% from 2010 to 2020

• Cumulative effect of sources
• Coal can only be used once, once its burned its done, renewable produces continually and is thus cumulative. New panels etc add to the total energy produced. The cost of energy will continue to decline as the accumulation increases and the cost of manufacturing renewable devices declines.

Finishing note

Humans overtime have shifted from rewards in the present to delayed gratification. As civilisations have advanced the reward cycle has lengthened, for cave men the greatest reward was catching some food in the present, maybe storing it for some short duration. In the modern era it is increasingly education and the creation of ideas with long duration reward cycles. My mind has been wired to think about how technologies evolve and it is something I find fascinating and love. If this has given you any new ideas about how technologies may evolve whether you agree or disagree, I have succeeded in my task of making you think further into the future. I increasingly believe the greatest opportunities in modern society arise from population consensuses - long term views which the population has either not considered or incorrectly judged. The world converges on correct solutions, so thinking further out and understanding the ramifications of advancements is fascinating. Solutions which other people may think are incorrect or have not even considered because they are too farfetched, if you believe they can be made reality and place some estimated timeline then you are miles ahead already.

I have tried to consolidate these themes and transfer the core value proposition or challenges they may bring. The writings while containing deep ramifications are the surface level of many of my thoughts. In future I may expand on various related aspects in more detail. I hope as a result of reading this you have learnt something new or questioned the future.

If this made you question some aspect of the future or you learned something, follow me on twitter @jackrdye.