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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
The Future is Faster Than You Think summary
Peter H. Diamandis
How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
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3.9 (44 ratings)
23 mins
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What is The Future is Faster Than You Think about?
The Future is Faster Than You Think (2020) examines how converging exponential technologies (AI, robotics, 3D printing, CRISPR, Blockchain) are reinventing every industry this decade. Starting with flying cars and artificial intelligence, it explores and predicts the future of industries including retail, manufacturing, transportation, health care, education, finance, and insurance. It also offers a vision for how these technologies can be applied to address many of the world’s most pressing problems.
About the Author
Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is a physician and entrepreneur. He has founded and cofounded numerous organizations including Singularity University, the XPRIZE Foundation, and Human Longevity, Inc. A New York Times best-selling author, Diamandis’s other books include Abundance and Bold, both of which he cowrote with Steven Kotler.
Steven Kotler is the cofounder and executive director of the Flow Research Collective. His works have been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. Kotler’s other best-selling books, which include The Rise of Superman and Stealing Fire, have been translated into over 40 languages.
Table of Contents
Key idea 1 of 7
When multiple technologies converge, they create exponential growth and innovation.
The year 2018 marked the sixth time in a row that Los Angeles, California, was voted the most gridlocked city in the world. It was also the year that Uber Elevate, the ride service’s aerial vehicles branch, hosted its second annual conference on flying cars. Hundreds of CEOs, venture capitalists, and designers gathered at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. to present their ideas. By then, aerial cars already existed. This conference wanted to figure out how to scale production and adoption so that by 2023, both Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles would have fully functional aerial ridesharing capabilities. It was exciting stuff, but it did beg the question: Why now?
Humans didn’t go straight from nothing to flying cars; there were a lot of steps in between. What makes today different from the 1920s, or even the 1990s, is how quickly new technologies have continued to advance. And when combined, they’ve sparked exponential innovations – groundbreaking developments that would’ve never been possible on their own.
Take helicopters, for instance, which have existed since 1939 but have one fatal safety flaw. If the single engine or rotor stops working, the helicopter – and everyone in it – ceases to be airborne. As flying technology improved, materials got lighter and stronger, and the converging developments paved the way for a more recent invention: aerial drones.
Drones rely on multiple smaller rotors and can carry more weight than helicopters. If one rotor dies, the others can keep the thing in the sky. But drones present another challenge: the task of constantly adjusting their many rotors at microsecond intervals is beyond the capabilities of any one human pilot. This requires yet another convergence of technologies.
Enter artificial intelligence and machine learning. In these fields, recent advances have enabled huge amounts of data to be processed in real time. So instead of relying on a pilot’s hand-eye coordination to fly the drone’s distributed electric propulsion system, or DEP, other technology can step in to fill the gap. For example, GPS, advanced visual imaging and sensors, and microscopic accelerometers work in harmony to keep everything up and running – or rather, flying.
And the result? An industry that used to be relegated to sci-fi films has started attracting some of the biggest names in the business. By 2019, 25 different flying car companies had collectively raised over a billion dollars in investments – and were already test-flying prototypes.
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Who should read The Future is Faster Than You Think
- Futurists hungry for big-picture technology visions
- Anyone interested in AI in the real world
- Innovation geeks
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