The Futurist

Broadband Speeds of 50 Mbps for $40/month by 2010

In 1999, maybe 50 million US households had dial-up Internet access at 56 kbps speeds.  In 2006, there are 50 million Broadband subscribers, with 3-10 mbps speeds.  This is roughly a 100X improvement in 7 years, causing a massive increase in the utility of the Internet over this period.  The question is, can we get an additional 10X to 30X improvement in the next 4 years, to bring us the next generation of Internet functionality?  Let's examine some new technological deployments in home Internet access.

Verizon's high-speed broadband service, known as FIOS, is currently available to about 3 million homes across the US, with downstream speeds of 5 Mbps available for $39.95/month and higher speeds available for greater prices.  How many people subscribe to this service out of the 3 million who have the option is not publicly disclosed.

However, Verizon will be upgrading to a more advanced fiber-to-the-home standard that will increase downstream speeds by 4X and upstream speeds by 8X.  Verizon predicts that this upgrade will permit it to offer broadband service at 50 or even 100 Mbps to homes on its FIOS network.  Furthermore, the number of homes with access to FIOS service will rise from the current 3 million to 6 million by the end of 2006. 

Verizon's competitors will, of course, offer similar speeds and prices shortly thereafter.

The reason this is significant is that if falls precisely within the concept of the Impact of Computing.  The speed of the Internet service increases by 4X to 8X, while the number of homes with access to it increases by 2X, for an effective 8X to 16X increase in Impact, and the associated effects on society.  High-definition video streaming, video blogging, video wikis, and advanced gaming will all emerge as rapidly adopted new applications as a result. 

We often hear about how Japan and South Korea already have 100 Mbps broadband service while the US languishes at 3-10 Mbps with little apparent progress.  True, but Africa has vast natural resources and Taiwan, Israel, and Switzerland do not.  Which countries make better use of the advantages available to them?  In the same way, South Korea and Japan may have a lot of avid online gamers, but have not made use of their amazing high-speed infrastructure to create businesses in the last 2 years like Google Adwords, Zillow, MySpace, Wikipedia, etc.  The US has spawned these powerful consumer technologies even with low broadband speeds, due to our innovation and fertile entrepreneurial climate that exceeds even that of advanced nations like Japan and South Korea.  Just imagine the innovations that will emerge with the greatly enhanced bandwidth that will soon be available to US innovators. 

Give the top 80 million American households and small businesses access to 50 Mbps Internet connections for $40/month by 2010, and they will produce trillions of dollars of new wealth, guaranteed.

Related :

The Next Big Thing in Entertainment

The Impact of Computing

Why Do The Biggest Technological Changes Take Almost Everyone By Surprise?

The End of Rabbit Ears, a Billion More Broadband Users

Ultrasound Tourniquet May Greatly Reduce Troop Deaths

There was a time when America could wage wars and sustain 50,000 or more casualties without severe domestic opposition.  Not any more, as even 2000 hostile deaths in Iraq has caused many Americans to be demoralized from the seemingly immense body count.  Our technological and economic progress has caused our society to rightly place a premium on human life, but in order to preserve our society, we still need to wage brutal wars.  Thus, market forces demand innovations that reduce US troop deaths even further. 

Accordingly, the Pentagon has provided $51 million for research towards the development of an ultrasound tourniquet that can stop the loss of blood from major wounds in as little as 30 seconds, and thus reduce troop deaths from guerilla/terrorist tactics (like those in Iraq) by over 50% by 2011 (Article : MIT Technology Review). 

When the tourniquet is wrapped around a wounded limb or torso, it emits ultrasound beams that detect ruptured blood vessels and induce rapid clotting to seal them.  This buys the wounded soldier enough time to be carried to an equipped medical facility, where previously he would often have died of blood loss before reaching the facility.  Once at the emergeny room, his chances of survival continue to be higher than before from targetted sealing of severed arteries and veins.  Thus, the damage from all but the most severe wounds can be greatly reduced.

The implications of this are immense.  In Iraq, the majority of US troop deaths are from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), where shrapnel often inflicts fatal wounds.  Additionally, for each troop killed, eight are wounded.  This device could reduce such deaths by half or more, and even help the wounded return to action in a much shorter time.  At the same time, none of our opponents would have such a technology, further widening the power gap between an elite US force and a terrorist cell.  Eventually, this could become a medical device available in hospitals for civilian use, reducing the deaths from automobile accidents and gunshot wounds significantly, provided an ambulance arrives in time. 

Such a tourniquet will not be available to the US military in an easily usable form for another 5 years, but when it is, US military effectiveness in the War on Terror will be increased dramatically, as will the willingness of the US public to engage in continued military activity.  When our troops become harder to kill from mere IEDs and gunshot wounds, non-uniformed terrorists and insurgents will be blunted even further.

VietNam or Korea, which was better in the long run?

America fought two major conflicts in the second half of the 20th century, within the greater Cold War campaign.  Both the Korean War and the VietNam War each resulted in over 50,000 US troop deaths and 2.4 million total deaths on both sides.  The conventional wisdom in America is that VietNam was a 'failure' and Korea was a stalemate or even a success.  However, both assessments may be untrue when viewing the long-term evolution of both theaters through to 2006.

To this day, the US and most of the world worries about North Korea, where a maniacal despot has attained nuclear weapons, and where human development is at African levels.  North Korea is a nuclear-armed hypermilitarized prison camp, and a resolution to the current situation may yet prove even more costly than the first Korean War.

VietNam today is a rapidly modernizing nation with a GDP growth rate consistently in the 8% range.  While it still is a communist state, it is not belligerent and it does not appear to be at risk of being headed by someone like Kim Jong Il. 

The world is extremely fortunate that VietNam, with a population of 85 million, or 4 times that of North Korea, has not become a nuclear-armed state run by a despotic madman, 30 years after the fall of Saigon. 

Think, for a moment, about how bad that would be. 

In the context of whether the US should have fought either war, it is true that after the end of the Korean War, no further hostilities took place on the Korean Peninsula, whereas after the US withdrew from VietNam, 2 million more people will killed in Cambodia and Laos over the next 5 years.  Yet, 31 years later, VietNam is relatively benign, and makes one wonder, in hindsight, whether the same would have happened anyway without US involvement.  53 years after the Korean War, the ripple effects of that are a danger to the world even today, and leads one to think, in hindsight, that the US should have pushed further, sustained more casualties, and unified the entire Korean Peninsula.

One more dimension about the Vietnam War merits consideration - the indirect role it had in turning China away from belligerency.  China invaded Vietnam in 1979, possibly lured by the belief that VietNam was greatly depleted at the time.  But the Vietnamese had learned many advanced military tactics after 13 years of fighting American forces.  China lost 30,000 soldiers in just the first month of their incursion, after which the Chinese army hastily withdrew.  Prior to 1979, China had conducted several acts of military aggression, including wars on the Korean Peninsula, the annexation of Tibet, a border war against India (1962), and against the Soviet Union (1969).  But after 1979, the PRC has been substantially less willing to conduct expansionist aggression, with no comparable wars occurring since then.  Perhaps the Sino-Vietnam War was what induced this change in the PRC's behavior. 

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, and is particularly malleable when given decades of time to look back upon.  This is why any judgement on current US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be settled for quite some time, and those who are quick and eager to brand it a failure reveal a lack of knowledge of historical process (as well as simply fashionable anti-Americanism). 

I believe that the US will achieve a distinct victory in Iraq by 2008.  I also believe this will force many surrounding nations to change for the better.  But the US should learn from the past and not let success in Afghanistan or Iraq lead to an incomplete job at the fringes, and the creation of another North Korea even despite the short term view of success.  The plan has to be in the scope of decades, not just months or years.

Stock Market Capitalization in Developing Countries

An interesting table in The Economist compared the market capitalizations of stock markets in developing nations.  The first surprise is that the top seven stock markets are so close to each other in size.  The next observation is that stock market capitalization has less to do with the GDP of the country than one would expect.  China, which has the largest economy by far among countries on this list, has a smaller market cap than India or Russia.  That Hong Kong and Taiwan approach China in size despite vastly smaller populations makes China look even more surprising.  The large and wealthy diasporas of India and Han Chinese of Taiwan and Hong Kong are also a reason why these countries have market caps larger than their GDPs would suggest. 

In any event, these numbers are dwarfed by the United States, which has a total stock market capitalization of $20 Trillion, or 30 times greater than that of South Korea, India, or China.  One company, General Electric, if placed on this list, would be between Taiwan and Mexico to take 9th place.  And the US market cap grows at 8% a year (without assuming acceleration), which would bring it to $130 Trillion by 2030.  If China or India want to match the US market cap in size by 2030, that means they have to grow at 25% a year for the next 24 years straight. 

This tells you how far any other country is from surpassing the US as an economic superpower.  This will be worth visiting again when one of the countries above crosses $5 Trillion. 

Related :

The Stock Market is Exponential and Accelerating

Why the US Will Still be the Only Superpower in 2030

Terror Attacks hit Mumbai

Terrorists have struck the commuter trains in Mumbai, a city in which Iive at least 200 people that I am related to.  The attacks are very similar to the Madrid and London attacks. 

This is also the third attack by terrorists in India, after the Dec. 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and the attack on a Delhi market on October 29, 2005. 

It is vital for America to act quickly and re-affirm our support for India as an ally in the War on Terror.  Of all the world's countries, this is the most valuable alliance for the US to cultivate in the 21st century. India is already the most pro-US country in the world, and is the only country where George W. Bush is more highly regarded than in the US. 

The fifth-column in the US will try everything to undermine the War on Terror and help the terrorists.  This includes trying to prevent a tighter Indo-US alliance.  If this event helps draw America and India closer, we will have scored a victory against the enemies of freedom and democracy, both in terrorist organizations and in the US itself. 

The US Job Market is Booming, For Those Who Can Admit It

The US economy continues to glide along in an optimal 'goldilocks' trajectory.  GDP growth, consumer confidence, service sector growth, and unemployment levels continue to proceed at robust, but not overheated levels. 

The June unemployment report confirmed this.  A quick glance at the historical unemployment rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the current rate of 4.6% is lower than it has been for 32 of the last 35 years, the only period of lower unemployment being the bubble era of 1998-2000. 

This also shows something else that is interesting.  Let's examine the average unemployment rates over the last 14 years, during which there were two Presidents.  For simplicity, we shall ignore the notion of inheriting an economy, whether good or bad, from one's predecessor. 

Clinton : 5.3%

George W. Bush : 5.3%

So Clinton and GWB have had the same average unemployment rates during their terms, and only 3 of Clinton's 8 years had a lower rate than the 4.6% it is today.  Imagine that. 

People who suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome just cannot accept that the economy could possibly be doing well.  Their memorized arguments are :

1) They will say that those who have been unemployed for a long time are no longer collecting benefits and do not get reported in the statistics.  This is untrue, as consumer confidence continues to be high.

2) They will say is that these jobs are all lower-skilled jobs that pay poorly.  This directly contradicts their claims that all the gains of US economic growth gravitate to the top of the income ladder while the rest received no benefit.  It also ignores the basic statistic that average hourly earnings are, in fact, rising.

3) Their final argument will be that 150,000 jobs a month are needed to keep up with labor force growth.  This is untrue, as the US workforce is 140 million people, growing at 1% a year, or 1.4 million new entrants a year.  Divide this by 12, and it comes to 116,600 jobs needed per month to accommodate the new entrants.  Furthermore, the US now has 1 million people who earn a living through entrepreneurial Internet activity, such as eBay trading, blogging, Google Ads, domain investing, etc.  They are not captured in the traditional employment statistics.  Ten years ago, these people would otherwise be working at traditional employers, but have voluntarily left the workforce.  Soon, even video games may provide a viable form of self-employment for some people(see item 6 here).

Behind this lies a deeper observation.  The angry Left has so much cognitive dissonance about the fact that the economy is currently strong, that they are probably inhibiting their own chances of success in this economy.  Their pessimism leads to risk aversion, negativity, and other behaviors that preclude success.  It also leads to a tortured logic that Bush supporters can be incredibly 'dumb' yet unfairly 'rich' at the same time. 

Here is an example of an extremist anti-Bush blogger, someone at least two standard deviations from the middle of political ideology, desperately trying to believe that the economy is doing poorly. 

It is true that jobs continue to be lost at the bottom of the skill ladder (like in manufacturing), while a greater number of jobs are added at the top of the skill ladder.  This is a boon for highly-educated workers, but a problem for workers with lower-level skills.  Those who can upgrade their skills will prosper, and those that cannot will see declines in their standards of living.

This pattern of workforce evolution has been the norm for centuries, ever since Ned Ludd and his 'Luddite' followers destroyed cotton looms that put handweavers out of business.  The accelerating rate of economic growth, however, now means that while a person could once spend their whole life at one skill level, they now have to continuously upgrade their skills every decade or so. 

Independence Day and Patriotism

On this Fourth of July, the birthday of the greatest nation in the world, let me provide some reading material. 

A Gallup poll on which demographic groups are proud to be American and which are less so.  The numbers are still at safe levels, but the low patriotism of 18-19 year olds is worrisome. 

Why the US will still be the only Superpower in 2030, with newly added bonus content.

Who hates America?  Not as many countries as you may think.

An easy way to expose anti-Americanism in a debate.  After today, the anti-American fifth column (8-10% of the population) will come out from under their beds again.

Enjoy!

The Demographics of Happiness

I happened to stumble across a report from the Pew Research Center on the demographics of happiness.  The report was interesting, but very little was actually surprising. 

The report finds that income corelates to happiness, as having one's basic needs met can remove some of the most common causes of misery.  However, the survey puts all making above $150,000 a year into one bucket, thereby not providing any insight into whether there is incremental probability of happiness upon making $300,000, $500,000, or $1 Million a year.  I believe that it is quite possible that there is virtually no marginal increase in happiness beyond an income of, say, $200,000 a year or so, because nearly all material needs are met at this threshold.  Additional income can bring only more power, prestige, and fame, but material consumption and the resultant gratification saturates as this point.  In other words, if someone making over $200,000 a year is still not happy, it is probably for some reason other than money. 

The next question that arises is that of relative vs. absolute wealth.  If a person earns more than 95% of the members of his society, he is rich in whatever era he lives in, but even a person of average income today has many technological luxuries that were unavailable to the wealthiest person 50 years ago.   This, combined with the rapidly growing ranks of the wealthy as a share of the total population and the tendency of prosperity to move people up the ranks of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, could lead to a very slow but steady migration of happiness away from increasingly accessible material consumption and towards more self-actualized forms of human fulfillment. 

Beyond wealth, one's worldview has an influence on happiness.  When happiness is categorized by political leanings, Republicans have had a stark advantage over Democrats for the last 35 years.  This is even during the Clinton years, when Democrats had the most reasons to be cheerful than at any other time, and President Clinton himself had a contagious optimism that contributed towards high consumer confidence and a strong economy.  The most obvious explanation for why 'liberals' are perpetually unhappy is that the realities of the real world continue to deliver outcomes contrary to what theoretical 'liberal' beliefs lead them to expect. 

Additionally, one particular strain of 'liberalism' departed from the genuinely liberal goal of improving society, and mutated into a religion of hatred towards those who are happier than they are.  'Tax the Rich' might really be intended to mean 'Tax the Happy, because we are jealous of them'.  There was a time when the 'left' and 'right' merely disagreed on which approach was more suitable to cause improvements in society, as opposed to today when many on the 'left' have no interest in improving society at all, but merely feign altruism while engaging in a hateful campaign to obstruct or distort the pillars of traditional society from which most non-leftists derive happiness (such as marriage, faith, children, or entrepreneurship).  This causes great conflict between their leftist religion and the natural urge of human decency still faintly present within them, and thus leaves them twisted and tortured in self-contradicting misery.  The same is probably true of suicide bombers, for that matter.

Since happiness is a natural condition, present when natural needs are met, what does it tell us about which belief systems, activities, and behaviours are more 'naturally' suitable for human life?