The Future Is Faster Than You Think
The Future Is Faster Than You Think

The Future Is Faster Than You Think

PART ONE THE POWER OF CONVERGENCE

Holden went even further: “Ultimately, we want to make it economically irrational to own and use a car.” How irrational? Let’s look at the numbers. Today, the marginal cost of car ownership—that is, not the purchase price, but everything else that goes with a car (gas, repairs, insurance, parking, etc.)—is 59 cents per passenger mile. For comparison, a helicopter, which has many more problems than just cost, covers a mile for about $8.93. For its 2020 launch, according to Holden, Uber Air wants to reduce that per mile price to $5.73, then rapidly drive it down to $1.84. But Uber’s long-term target is the game-changer—44 cents per mile—or cheaper than the cost of driving. (Location 98)

Tags: uber

Note: .uber calculate the cost per mile of each teansport option

of this shift was breathtaking, in retrospect it wasn’t unexpected. Whenever a new technology offers a tenfold increase in value—cheaper, faster and better—there’s little that can slow it down. (Location 216)

“Already, over 10 percent of millennials have opted for ridesharing over car ownership, but this is just the beginning. Autonomous cars will be four to five times cheaper—they make owning a car not only unnecessary, but also expensive. My guess, within ten years, you’ll probably need a special permit to drive a human-operated car.” (Location 242)

Tags: selfdriving, car

Note: .car .selfdriving selfdriving carsharing will make ownership obselete

Ridesharing autonomous cars price out at 80 percent cheaper than individual car ownership, and they come equipped with a robo-chauffeur. Second: saved time. The average U.S. roundtrip commute is 50.8 minutes of hair-pulling, mind-numbing drudgery that can be repurposed for sleep, reading, tweeting, sex… whatever your pleasure. (Location 251)

Tags: cars

Note: .cars

Today, the average car owner drives their vehicle less than 5 percent of the time, and a family of two adults typically has two cars. Thus, a single autonomous car can serve a half-dozen families a day. However you work those numbers, this dramatic increase in cooperative efficiency will significantly reduce the need for new car production. (Location 257)

Tags: cars

Note: .cars car owners use their cars less than 5% of the time

In a recent survey, MIT professor of urban planning Eran Ben-Joseph reported that, in many major US cities, “parking lots cover more than a third of the land area,” (Location 265)

Tags: parking, cars

Note: .cars .parking may cities dedicate 1/3 of their spce to parking

As if autonomous cars, flying cars, and high-speed trains weren’t enough, in September of 2017, speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Musk promised that for the price of an economy airline ticket, his rockets will fly you “anywhere on Earth in under an hour.” (Location 326)

Tags: transport, rocket, musk

Note: .musk .rocket .transport

This is why people have a tough time saving for retirement or staying on a diet or getting regular prostate exams—the brain believes that the person who would benefit from those difficult choices isn’t the same one making those choices. (Location 361)

Every time a technology goes exponential, we find an internet-sized opportunity tucked inside. Think about the internet itself. While it seemingly decimated industries—music, media, retail, travel, and taxis—a study by McKinsey Global Research found the net created 2.6 new jobs for each one it extinguished. (Location 373)

Tags: jobs, techchange

Note: .techchange .jobs

The educational system was an eighteenth-century invention, designed to batch-process children and prepare them for a life working in factories. That’s not today’s world, which explains why this system is failing to meet our current needs— and it’s not the only institution under duress. (Location 383)

Tags: education

Note: .education the education batch process is not suitable foor our current age

Why are divorce rates so high? One reason is that marriage was created over four thousand years ago, when we got hitched as teens and death came by forty. The institution was designed for a twenty-year maximum commitment. But thanks to advances in healthcare and lifespan, we’re now looking at a half century of togetherness—which puts a whole new spin on “ ’til death do us part.” (Location 385)

Tags: wedding, marriage

Note: .marriage .wedding

In BOLD, we introduced “the Six Ds of Exponentials,” or the growth cycle of exponential technologies: Digitalization, Deception, Disruption, Demonetization, Dematerialization, and Democratization. (Location 491)

Reading and writing are showing similar progress. Google’s Talk to Books lets you ask AI a question about any subject. The AI responds by reading 120,000 books in half a second and answers by providing quotes from them. (Location 558)

Tags: toexplore, google, ai, books

Note: .books .ai .google .toexplore

Light and durable enough to cruise the slipstreams some twenty kilometers above the Earth’s surface, Google’s fifteen by twelve-meter balloons are providing 4G-LTE connections to users on the ground. Each balloon covers five thousand square kilometers, and Google’s plan is a network of thousands, wiring the unwired, providing continuous coverage for anyone, anywhere on Earth. (Location 631)

Tags: internet, google

Note: .google .internet