We are facing a change of decade. It’s time to go over the great inventions that change our lives, not always for the better. But, wait, we’re not talking about the past decade, but the next one.
Remember 2010? There were no iPads, you could still buy a Windows phone, Google Glass didn’t exist (just like now), there were less connected devices than people, PS was PS3 and Xbox was 360, The Walking Dead was just a series of comics, thyroid cancer was not yet defeated, gay marriages weren’t as mainstream as they are today…
We were so young.
Don’t worry, we’re still young, at least at heart. So, instead of diving into nostalgia, we are going to think about the 7 greatest inventions of the decade. But not the past decade: the next one. That’s very complicated stuff.
1. New computing model.
Computers as we know them are nearing their end. Moore’s Law is probably not sustainable for another ten years, frequency is stagnated and the heat they emit is a problem. So CMOS technology will probably be replaced during this decade. What are the candidates?
- Reversible computers. These computers don’t heat up, so we could make them considerably faster. But they will probably need more than one decade to get out of universities. They require every low level instruction to be rewritten, and that’s a lot of work.
- Quantum computers. There’s a lot of talk about quantum computers these days. Some governments and some companies are putting a lot of effort -and money- into this. They also require everything to be rewritten; in fact, they demand new algorithms and new ways of thinking. If they succeed, they probably won’t replace traditional computing in the next decade; you won’t carry a quantum processor in your phone. They will be used to crack cryptography, fold proteins or predict the weather.
- Carbon nanotubes, spintronics or another promising technology. There are a bunch of technologies that allow smaller transistors and emit less heat. Probably one of these is poised to replace the old CMOS technology. They will make computers faster and, above all, more efficient.
2. Solution to climate change.
I really think this is a no brainer. If you are reading this post in 2030, you are probably wondering how I knew it. The answer is simple: otherwise you wouldn’t be reading it.
Of course there are people who deny climate change. Even if that were the case, my prediction would be spot-on, because the problem wouldn’t exist and we haven’t reached 2030 yet.
I think the warming stripes paint a compelling evidence.They were created by Ed Hawkins as a way to easily visualize the effects of climatic change. Each stripe represents a year and the different shades of red and blue mean hotter and cooler temperatures. This is the result from 1850 to 2018. Pretty terrifying, isn’t it?
3. Personal robots.
Artificial Intelligence is making a great impact in society. It will probably redefine so many areas that it’s difficult to pick just one.
One of the possibilities that AI opens is personalized programming. You are beginning to experience it everywhere: you have a personal assistant who knows what you like to buy on Amazon, a helper who completes your search in Google and a butler named Alexa who understands your speech.
Soon you’ll have a chauffeur, a house cleaner, a teacher, a personal trainer and many other things we can’t imagine yet. All of them will have something in common: they will be computer programs that you will have programmed.
That is a major strength of Artificial Intelligence: it makes everyone a programmer. Because the way Alexa listens to you and the way Google knows your habits are a program made by you. An Artificial Intelligence needs a corpus to learn how to behave; in the case of personal robots, you are the corpus. This is the biggest democratization of software in history: previously it was impossible to have so many programmers working just for you.
Personal robots are here and they will be a piece of great importance for everyone in the next decade.
4. Alien contact.
A little far-fetched? Maybe. But if we are bound to find aliens someday, why not the next decade?
Just to be clear: I’m not saying that in 2026 a ship is going to hover over the White House, an alien is going to walk the plank and say “Take me to your leader” while carrying a book titled “To serve man.”
The scope of a possible discovery is a little less ambitious, but really exciting nonetheless. We haven’t found yet a planet like Earth, so, as far as we know, Earth could be an extreme oddity. But that sounds so improbable that I’m betting we’ll soon find an Earth-like planet and we’ll detect oxygen on it. And, though oxygen doesn’t equal life, we’ll dream about it.
By the way, if you want a tour through known exoplanets, NASA has some very interesting galleries here.
5. The replicator.
3D printing has made an entrance in the world in the last decade. Though the concept existed since 1980, it was something reserved to industrial applications. 2009 marked the start of the affordable 3D printer. But today 3D printing is not for everyone; you need some technical skills and a great deal of patience to get good results. And the only material available is plastic.
Both things will probably change during the next decade. The printing process will likely improve to make 3D printing as easy as printing a document. The materials used will get more sophisticated, and particularly intriguing are biomaterials and food.
Biomaterials can be a great advancement in medicine. Organs, skin or replacement body parts that share the host’s DNA can be of great use.
Food. Will we be able to download a burger? Synthetic meat is around the corner, so why not?
6. Synthetic actors.
Have you noticed how real CGI (computer-generated imagery) has become? Explosions, landscapes, interiors, even animals in movies are computer-generated. Nowadays actors perform in front of a green screen and the department of visual effects makes the rest. One of the most extreme cases is Jungle Book (2016) in which everything is CGI except for Neel Sethi, the actor who plays Mowgli.
Hollywood feels confident to generate CGI scenarios and animals, but not humans, except for some experiments (for example, Rachel in Blade Runner 2049). Why is this? The answer lies in the uncanny valley.
If something resembles a human we accept it, but when the resemblance comes too close but not enough to fool us, we reject it. This is called the uncanny valley, and it’s a place where creators don’t want to be.Some movies have bombed because of this; the most prominent examples are Polar Express (2004) or Mars Needs Moms (2011).
But we are close to leaving the uncanny valley behind us. If you don’t believe me, watch the Unreal Engine demo.
During the next decade, some movies starring CGI actors are going to be released, and some of them are going to fool us. And, like it has already happened with Hatsune Miku in the world of music, some of these actors are going to transcend their movies and become stars by themselves.
7. Capitalism 3.0.
I don’t know how to call this trend, so let me explain it. Let’s compare two products made with two totally different production models: Linux and Windows. Windows is pure capitalism: a company who hires people to build a product, places it on the market and expects to charge for it. This model has been good for thousands of years and has brought us here.
But now let’s take Linux into consideration. Maybe you like Windows better or maybe you have a Tux tattoo on your nether parts, that’s not the issue. Linux has been made with a totally different model: no company, no hiring, no placing anything on the market. No salaries, no rewards but some obscure reputation… And we have a really complex piece of software that can compete with the good, old-fashioned capitalist products like Windows. Shall we call it capitalism 2.0?
It’s impressive how the open source phenomenon has managed to take self organization to the next level. But I think it’s lacking something: a reward system that’s not only reputational. And this is probably some cryptoasset. Ethereum is trying to build a worldwide computer, Brave is trying to redefine how you browse the internet, Steemit is trying to create a decentralized Facebook… One or some of them are bound to succeed, and they will herald a new way of making things. Capitalism 3.0?