The Futurist

Endings and Reincarnations

Today is exactly 15 years after the start of this website.  Since that time, just about every blog that was active then, has been discontinued, unless it is the blogger's full-time career now.   On top of that, futurism is a very exclusive niche, as surprisingly few people are curious about the future beyond superficial information.  However, the accelerating rate of change, and ever-growing size and power of the ATOM, mean that the trends we discuss here are appearing in more mainstream topics.  Among the many technological changes since then, that was an era of 4:3 screens instead of 16:9, and of blogging rather than social media (let alone video-based social media).  Even converting this website to 16:9 messed up the old articles, and when faced with a choice of reformatting all of them manually, or leaving them as is as a relic of their time, I chose the latter.  Note that the more recent ATOM publication is 16:9.  

A lot has come and gone in the elapsed 15 years.  Consider the case of Singularity University.  It began in 2009 on the reputation of Ray Kurzweil, who at the time was easily the most high-profile Futurist in the world, with a respectable track record of predictions.  However, detached from Kurzweil's direct involvement, the institution quickly migrated away from any actual futurism, and built itself around a model of low-tech, in-person learning, where a single one-week program costs $15,000 (which is even more expensive than nearby Stanford University).  A few famous critiques outline how that operation practices virtually none of what it preaches, and even this was before a spate of scandals did further damage to its reputation.

Hence, there is now a vacuum in this niche, even though the rate of change continues to rise, which naturally means more organic demand for futurism.  Furthermore, if the ATOM has enabled a medium that is more flexible, far reaching, and monetized to reach full maturity, it would be appropriate for me to produce content there, under simple ATOM principles (again, in contrast to Singularity University, which is in fact the whole point of embodying one's futurism).  High-traffic YouTubers have an income stream that is very ATOM-efficient in terms of taxes, location independence, affiliate marketing, and network effects among YouTubers.  This, combined with the structural decline in the university model of learning, as we often discuss here, makes the window of opportunity obvious.  

I believe I have the material here, as well as through my experience teaching at Stanford University and speaking at large conferences worldwide, to singlehandedly create the premier YouTube channel devoted to this subject.  Over the recent holiday period, I just brainstormed a list of video topics for which I already have 10-20 minutes of tight content in my head, and the list quickly grew to over 300 titles.  The list is a superset of what is written here, since there will be more current, mainstream topics interspersed along the way.  On YouTube, all existing content is either very simple and caters to average people, or is just a recording of an esoteric talk at a conference, and not made for YouTube.  The chasm in between is unpopulated.  The YouTube channel has a better chance of being synergistic with my other professional activities, which this website was not able to rise to, traffic-wise.  

This is one of those things where I am surprised and bit annoyed that this did not occur to me years sooner.  When this website began, I was 32, whereas now I am 47.  While YouTube wasn't established in 2006, suffice it to say that for video purposes, a 32-year-old is always going to be more telegenic than a 47-year-old.  Or at least I should have began in 2015 when I was writing the ATOM publication, or in early 2016 when I posted it.  Then again, almost all of the best instructional videos on YouTube about how to undertake each aspect of creating a channel all seem to have been posted in the last 12 months, and I might not have thought it was easy to do, until recently.  It is definitely not too late, certainly for this niche. 

My goals for the channel are simple.  Among those are that I would like to eventually reach 300,000 subscribers, and 1 million hours of cumulative view time.  There will be little traffic until after the first 100 videos are posted, after which traffic rises exponentially.  I will have to put in over a thousand hours of work, and $4000+ in sunk costs before seeing anything, but as this replaces many other activities, including a lot of to-and-from transit, perhaps the net is less.  

The other factor is the greater 'immortality' of video.  Since we expect a Technological Singularity in about ~41 years (give or take), a large body of video has a greater chance of still being watched by people around at that time, even if I am gone, and even if Google/YouTube is not the platform then.  I absolutely think it is essential that people at that time know who the early leaders in this subject were.  

I still have to learn the first thing about editing videos, which is necessary even for hiring other editors, but I am to begin uploading videos in February.  

The future of this website will be determined at a later date.  To keep comments active, Typepad charges $60/yr, which is trivial, but I have to see how relevant this website remains in relation to the YouTube channel.  The high-quality, page-length comments that some contribute are more suitable here than on YouTube.  

Let's see what happens.  I hope all readers over here migrate to the channel when I post the details of it.  

Until that time, see you in the future!

 

ATOM Award of the Month, January 2021

It is time for another ATOM AotM.  This one, in particular, goes retro and ties into concepts from the early days of The Futurist, back in 2006.  This award also dispels the misinformed myth that 'we can no longer send a man to the Moon like we did in 1969-72' or, even worse, that 'human progress peaked in 1969'.  If anything, progress in space-related advancement has been steadily on an exponential trendline.  

The first man-made object to be placed into orbit and send back information from orbit, was Sputnik in 1957.  Since that time, satellites have risen in number and complexity.  But the primary cost of a satellite is not the hardware itself, but rather the cost of getting it to orbit in the first place.  While the early data is sparse and the trendline was not easy to discern, we are now in an inflection point of this trajectory, enabling a variety of entities far smaller than governments to launch objects into orbit.  If the trendline of a 10x reduction per decade is in fact manifested, then a number of entirely new industries will emerge in short order.

(image from https://www.futuretimeline.net)

The emergence of private enterprises that can create profitable businesses from space is an aspect of the 21st century that is entirely different from the capital-intensive government space programs of the second half of the 20th century.  From geospatial data to satellite-derived high-speed Internet, the era of commercial space is here. 

SpaceX has already begun the Starlink program, which advertises 1 Gbps Internet access for rural customers.  It is not yet apparent how SpaceX will upgrade the hardware of its satellites over time, but if the 1 Gbps speed is a reality, this will break the cartel of existing land-based ISPs (such as Comcast), where the gross margin they earn on existing customers is as high as 97%.  Needless to say, high-speed access available to the backwaters of the world will boost their economic productivity.  

Other efficiencies are on the horizon.  3D Printing in space is very pragmatic, as only the 3D Printing filament has to be replenished from Earth, and finished objects are simply printed in orbit.  As the filament never has an awkward shape, it is far less expensive to send unprinted filament into an orbiting 3D printer.  Asteroid mining is another, and is an extension of the fundamental ATOM principle of technology always increasing the supply of, or alternatives to, any commodity.  The prices of precious metals on Earth could collapse when asteroid mining reaches fruition, to a much greater extent than oil prices plunged from hydraulic fracturing.  

But the falling cost of launch per unit weight is only half of the story.  To see the second exponential, we go all the way back to an article from April 22, 2006, titled 'Milli, Micro, Nano, Pico'.  The point here is that the ability to engineer smaller and smaller (integrated circuits with 5 nm transistors), at greater and greater scale, comprise a double exponential of technological intricacy and integration.  Surely, this has to result in a modernization of the electronics sent up into space.  

Consider that the major unmanned spacecraft that NASA has launched, such as the Pioneer, Voyager, and Cassini probes.  These were electronics from the 1970s, with designs that are not being updated to this day given that the New Horizons probe (launched in 2006) was still the same size.  We know that an electronics design, from 1975 to 2020, is expected to shrink in both size and cost by a factor of over 1 million.  If a supercomputer the size of an entire room in 1975 is less powerful than a 200-gram Raspberry Pi system in 2021, then why is NASA still launching one-ton devices that have incorporated none of the advances in electronics that have happened in the last 45 years?  The camera and transmitter on Voyager 2 are surely far less powerful than what exists in 2021 smartphones.  

Given the continued shrinkage in electronics and decline in launch costs, it is long past time for thousands of Voyager-type probes, each the size of a smartphone, to be launched in all directions.  Every significant body in the Solar System should have a probe around it taking pictures and other readings, and the number of images available on the Internet should be hundreds of times greater than exists now.  This will happen once someone with the appropriate capabilities notices how far behind the electronics of NASA and other space agencies are.  

Hence, this ATOM AotM makes use of up to three exponential trends at once.  But the decline in launch costs per unit weight alone has immense implications.  

This will be the final ATOM AotM posted on this website as an article.  Future instances will be on my new YouTube channel, which I hope to inaugurate in February.  

 

Related ATOM Chapters :

3.  Technological Disruption is Pervasive and Deepening

12. The ATOM's Effect on the Final Frontier