Conference Presentation, Keynote
10 Year Futures (vs. What's Happening Now)
- S-curves are predicted to repeatedly replace dominant platforms, with mature "boring" phases serving as precursors to innovation that resets the market; previous invulnerable leaders like IBM, Microsoft, and Nokia fell unpredictably, a pattern expected to repeat regardless of the current narrative oscillating between "innovation is dead" and bubble concerns.
- A "super-evolved" group of four giants (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple) is expected to compete on equal terms, with founders of Google, Facebook, and Amazon likely to pursue massive acquisitions like WhatsApp without external restriction, while even seemingly dominant firms like Amazon in retail may still face a long road to true domination.
- The current S-curve landscape includes artificial intelligence in the "rocket fuel" phase with the "tower" established and new businesses being created, machine learning capable of reading entirely new data types (voice, images, video) to automate trend analysis and provide a massive multiplying effect, and autonomous driving in the initial "muddy hole" phase where technology has not yet fully worked.
- Mixed reality is transitioning from the "muddy hole" to having its structural "frame" up, comparable to multi-touch in 2006, with working prototypes close to commercial release capable of answering personal history queries and identifying objects.
- Cryptocurrencies are at the stage of having the S-curve "frame" up and working on the "facade," comparable to the web in 1994, where the technology functions to automate trust and create active records, but the market application remains undefined.
- Massive experimentation is ongoing with bots, voice, watches, and wearables, while tech companies may begin to outdo traditional content companies and cameras will evolve into "universal inputs" for counting people in cities, analyzing assembly lines, and detecting fashion trends.
- Autonomous driving is expected to fundamentally reimagine the car by removing steering wheels and internal combustion engines, eventually enabling vehicles to drive two feet apart at 150 miles per hour without accidents, which could eliminate the need for walking-distance parking and enable dynamic, real-time road pricing.
- The transformation from autonomous driving is projected to be as significant as the shifts from horses to mass car ownership and to Walmart, while e-commerce may be fundamentally changed by computers analyzing objects to answer "how do I make it" or "where do I get it" queries.
- Machine learning advancements will allow computers to see images and video as accurately as they have counted for the last 50-75 years, moving beyond early demos like trivia to enable new capabilities that address entirely new kinds of data.
- The speaker asserts that something new will always emerge to change the landscape, continuing the historical pattern of new S-curves emerging every five years to replace previous generations.