The next big thing...

[Paul Sholtz]

I grew up near Detroit, and I remember reading a story once about how in the
1930s (or so) some auto exec predicted b/c autos were getting faster and
faster (first top speed was about 10 mph, then it was 20 mph, and NOW it was
a stunning 30 mph), that pretty soon there would be an exponential increase
in how fast cars could go and everybody would be commuting to work at about
300 mph..

Needless to say, that never happened - but it's the type of extropolation
that's common in the tech community. The issue is that once a technology
passes a certain "watershed" point, society pushes back on tech w/ the
"equal and opposite" force that tech exerted on society in the first place
(w/ all due respect to Newton).

There's nothing stopping you from building a car that goes 300 mph. Except
that people are going to wrapping themselves around telephone poles on the
way to work. Once enough people crash into telephone poles, the people start
to pass laws saying you're not allowed to go over 65 mph even if you can
(b/c it's a lot easier for technology to speed up a car than it is for
technology to speed up human reflexes..) Cops start pulling you over if you
try. And if you live in a state like California, you're never going to go
300 mph on 101 anyway b/c there are just too many damn cars for that to ever
work (traffic never seems to move much about 30 certain times of the day,
based on constraints completely independent of the engineering on the car).

So the same applies to our current situation..

If you plot Moore's Law out for a couple more years, you start to see a
world of increasing "pervasive" computing - where *everything* around you is
embedded/networked/seeded w/ computing/chips and (some form of)
intelligence. Refrigerators that are attached to the Internet, walls that
change color at the touch of dial, surveillance cameras everywhere and stuff
way way beyond that..

The details aren't important. What's important is that a world where Moore's
Law has run its course is a very different world than the one we're in today
(although we're starting to see more and more glimpses of such a world).
Society will have changed, and therefore will have new business needs. 

Predict what those (new) business needs will be, and you've found the next
"big thing"..

Paul Sholtz
http://www.paulsholtz.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam L. Beberg
To: fork@xent.com
Sent: 11/3/01 11:48 PM
Subject: The next big thing...

So, what do FoRKers speculate is the next big thing?

It's not tech, demand is flat, and Moore's law will zero out costs and
profits soon enough. Tech was the last big thing.

Biotech is a common speculation, but biotech is slow and hard. You can't
pick up "Learn Self-assembling Protein Design in 30 Minutes". Even if
it's
the big thing, it's for very very few people. There also just aren't
that
many diseases that we can treat (profitable) before cures
(profit-killing)
are found by idealistic academics. Once you get all the vitamins and
amino
acids into the corn and rice, then what?

Nanotech is another possible big thing, but has the same problems as
biotech, too few people will profit for at least 17 years. And both are
5-10
years out, not in time to dig us out of a recession.

So, speculations?

- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
  http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/
  beberg@mithral.com




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