Futurism  

Futurist Vivek Wadhwa predicts change "at a scale which is unimaginable before," thanks to advances in technologies like robotics and 3D printing. "New trillion dollar industries will wipe out out existing trillion dollar industries," he says. "This is the future we’re headed into, for better or for worse."

According to technology expert Vivek Wadhwa, "One of the things that has begun to worry me is the fact that I'm seeing change happening at a scale which is unimaginable before and that it's impacting industry after industry after industry."

"Every industry I've looked at I've seen a trend of major disruption happening," says Wadhwa in a new piece for Big Think.

Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University.

 Wadhwa tells how manufacturing will be dramatically changed due to robotics and 3D printing. "As of this year, it is cheaper to manufacture in the United States than it is in China, he says.

Robots, like Rethink Robotics' Baxter have become very sophisticated with a cost of operation is less than the cost of human labor. "Give it five years and these robots will become ever more sophisticated. They'll be doing many, many more jobs, which means that the manufacturing industry is going to be disrupted in a very big way," says Wadhwa.

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By the end of the decade you're going to see major upheaval in manufacturing, opportunities and problems. Wadhwa also goes on to say that the robotics revolution will be as short-lived as it is disruptive. Within 15 to 20 years we'll be able to 3D print electronics, he states. "Move into the next decade, these robots will probably go on strike because we won't need them anymore."

Wadhwa also talks about the impact of technology on the financial services industry, from Bitcoin to crowd funding. "We may not need the banks anymore. We may not need financial institutions the way we do right now," he says.

One of the biggest changes will be in the field of healthcare.  He talks of how Apple is focused on health and medicine. "They want all of this data being uploaded to the Apple platform. Do you think Google will be left behind? Do you think Microsoft will be left behind? Do you think Samsung will be left behind?" asks Wadhwa.

In healthcare the impacts will be truly profound, especially with near zero-cost genomic data. "We will have AI based physicians that can advise us when we're about to get sick, that can advise us on what we need to do to get healthy."

"We're going to now upend the entire healthcare system the way we know it all in the next five to ten years. People don't seem to understand this."

"The cost of human genome sequencing has dropped to $1000 over the last 15 years. At the rate at which we're going, the cost of sequencing will be practically zero, which means that we'll all have genomes done. Combine that with the medical sensor data, combine that with the data that we have in the cloud and you've got a healthcare revolution," says Wadhwa.

"We're going to now upend the entire healthcare system the way we know it all in the next five to ten years. People don't seem to understand this."

In energy other huge changes are already underway.  From the US adoption of fracking technolgy, to the rise of solar power. "Solar has dropped about 97.2 percent over the past 35 years in price. At the rate at which solar is advancing, by the end of this decade we achieve grid parity in the United States," claims Wadhwa. Grid parity means it's cheaper to produce energy at home on your solar cells then buy it from the grid.

"Move forward another ten years. It costs you 100th as much to produce your own energy then to buy it from the grid, which means that we have these grid companies now in serious trouble. This is why you have the utilities fighting solar."

The author of the new book, Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology, continues: "It's going to eclipse the fossil fuel industry. And solar is one of maybe a hundred technologies that are advancing, which will change energy industry."

"I can go on and on and on but every industry I look at I see a major disruption happening. So the world ten to 15 to 20 years from now is going to be completely different. We're going to be disrupting industry after industry after industry...This is the future we’re headed into, for better or for worse."


SOURCE  Big Think

By 33rd Square

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 Solar Energy  

Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years and the price has been falling dramatically. The technology is now set to dramatically change the world.

Some experts say today that solar power does not present any realistic chance of becoming a major source of energy for the world.  As Vivek Wadhwa points out in a piece for the Washington Post, this 'expert analysis' is similar to what some analysts were saying about cellular phones in the 1980's - in that case the report from McKinsey & Company was dead wrong.

After decades of development, solar power presently barely supplies one percent of the world’s energy needs.  Critics claim that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies.

As anyone familiar with exponential growth is aware, one percent means halfway to 100 percent. Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years and the price has been falling dramatically.

New advances using graphene and other nanotechnology methods hold the promise for even more extreme gains in solar collection and power storage.

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According to Ray Kurzweil, solar energy is less than 14 years away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.

In places such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the Southwest United States, residential-scale solar production has already reached “grid parity” with average residential electricity prices.  In those areas it costs no more in the long term to install solar panels than to buy electricity from utility companies.

The prices of solar panels have fallen 75 percent in the past five years alone and will fall much further as the technologies to create them improve and scale of production increases.  By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy generated from fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world.  Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what fossil fuel-based alternatives do.

The average cost of solar panels has gone from $76.67/watt in 1977 to just $0.613/watt today according to PVinsights.

As Wadhwa explains, there is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free clean energy.  This has profound implications.

The disruption will affect of the entire fossil-fuel industry, starting with utility companies. Countries such as Germany, China, and Japan are leading the charge in the adoption of clean energies.  Solar installations still depend on other power sources to supply energy when the sun isn’t shining, but battery-storage technologies will improve so much over the next two decades that homes won’t be dependent on the utility companies.

Today, the batteries needed to store a sufficient amount of solar energy are far too large for mass adoption by residential home users. However, Solar City and Tesla are now rumored to be working together to dramatically scale down the size of batteries.

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind both companies, recently said Tesla is using SolarCity’s customers as a base to discover how to make battery packs that are small enough, light enough and powerful enough that they might one day sit comfortably in your garage, a mere four inches from the wall.

"The 'we have done it like this for a century' value chain in developed electricity markets will be turned upside down within the next 10-20 years, driven by solar and batteries."

Major companies like Walmart, IKEA, Google, Apple, Facebook, Costco, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Staples, and many others are starting to go solar in a big way.

A UBS study said it well: "Our view is that the 'we have done it like this for a century' value chain in developed electricity markets will be turned upside down within the next 10-20 years, driven by solar and batteries." The report also states that:

By 2025, everybody will be able to produce and store power. And it will be green and cost competitive, i.e., not more expensive or even cheaper than buying power from utilities. It is also the most efficient way to produce power where it is consumed, because transmission losses will be minimized. Power will no longer be something that is consumed in a 'dumb' way. Homes and grids will be smart, aligning the demand profile with supply from (volatile) renewables."

The environment will also benefit from the vast reduction of fossil fuels, which will also boost most sectors of the economy.  Electric cars will become cheaper to operate than fossil-fuel-burning ones, projects Wadhwa:

We will be able to create unlimited clean water — by boiling ocean water and condensing it.  With inexpensive energy, our farmers can also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables in vertical farms located near consumers.  Imagine skyscrapers located in cities that grow food in glass buildings without the need for pesticides, and that recycle nutrients and materials to ensure there is no ecological impact.  We will have the energy needed to 3D-print our everyday goods and to heat our homes.

Solar energy has the potential to be a central driving factor in creating a world of Abundance, written about by Peter Diamandis.  Perhaps more importantly, as Diamandis points out in the video below, solar has the promise to be a great force for global democratization, because the countries that presently have the least economic power, have the most sunshine.

By 33rd Square

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