Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

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wood
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Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by wood »


wood
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by wood »

For those who don't have access to it, here's the transcript:

Admin edit: Deleted. (I usually get into trouble later on for content that's scraped directly from other sites.)

Dragline
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Dragline »

If you make a long enough list about what will happen in the future, you'll almost certainly be right about some things and wrong about others.

But what makes these things intuitively attractive is that they create a nice narrative that dispels doubt or uncertainty. It would be more interesting if the proponent gave them probability grades and then was required to bet his/her money on them.


From Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" about the topic of when to trust experts:

“We are confident when the story we tell ourselves comes easily to mind, with no contradiction and no competing scenario. But ease and coherence do not guarantee that a belief held with confidence is true. The associative machine is set to suppress doubt and to evoke ideas and information that are compatible with the currently dominant story.” (page 239).

Kahneman is skeptical of experts because they often overlook what they do not know. Kahneman trusts experts when two conditions are met: the expert is in an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable and the expert has learned these regularities through prolonged practice.

I do not know that those conditions are met for this list of predictions, but am doubtful that they are.

sky
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by sky »

It sounds like Android is what will hold the future together.

ducknalddon
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by ducknalddon »

In the future there will be software that allows you to write paragraphs with more than one sentence in them.

jacob
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by jacob »

@wood - Seems like an exponential extrapolation of the last 5-10 years worth of history. Exponential trends usually don't last very long. If they did, we're have regular service to Jupiter Station now, Japan would rule the world, ... and personal computers wouldn't exist.

For future(*) predictions, I'd look towards domains that are currently completely underrepresented in the world-system: salvage and efficiency.

Also biotech, where humanity knows shockingly little, has a lot more potential than AI, which, like fusion, is almost maxed out unless there's some kind of yet to be discovered paradigm shift. Biotech is currently where computing was around 1960.

(*) Of course, which future are we talking about? 5 years ahead? 50 years?

In any case, the big bucks is made where demand vastly exceeds supply. In established industries, supply is limited by human capacity (e.g. intelligence, drive, charm, ... ) and is somewhat fixed. In new industries, it's only temporarily limited as youngsters eventually pile into it hoping for an easy buck only to learn that by the time they've acquired the necessary qualifications, it'll be too late because they weren't the first ones to hear about it.

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jennypenny
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by jennypenny »

Read Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable for more ideas.

Dragline
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Dragline »

He was just on the EconTalk podcast today talking about that.

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jennypenny
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by jennypenny »

Thanks, I just downloaded it. I'm curious if Roberts liked it. I did, but he can be hard to predict.

cmonkey
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by cmonkey »

Am I the only one completely turned off by Kevin Kelly and the futurists that talk about this 'holos' of all-connected, all-seeing human super organism that he talks about? It seems like just another version of the singularity faith. The more I hear about it the more I disconnect from everything. Fear of change or just plain introvertedness perhaps but it just doesn't jive with my instincts at all, especially given my understanding of energy macro trends.

Dragline
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Dragline »

No, I have similar skepticism when a futurist tries to wrap up some technical likelihoods, projections and speculations in a transcendent bow in an attempt to provide a form of metaphysical meaning. It underscores the human need to have such experiences and to think and talk about such things, despite claims of allegiance to complete rationality by some. I only get annoyed with the hypocrisy and intellectual arrogance that sometimes comes through.

But the possible configurations of new technologies do always pique my engineering brain curiosity.

For amusement, its fun to go back and look at "the future 21st century" that people were predicting in the pre-internet days. After watching that old Toynbee interview from 1961 the other day, I wonder if the US is going to have another "Sputnik moment" sometime in the 2020s when we realize that we are getting technically behind (especially on infrastructures), which will lead to new rounds of public initiatives on science and technology.

BRUTE
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by BRUTE »

Dragline wrote:No, I have similar skepticism
+1

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Ego
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Ego »

Futurists seem to be enamored with technologies that will do things for us. They are easy for the layman to understand. I get the feeling we are entering an age where the major technological innovations will be those that do things to us. If I were a betting man I would put my money on interventions that we don't even know occur. They are so complex that the layman can't even wrap his head around 1) the fact that they exist, 2) what they do and 3) why we would ever want them in the first place.

I'm hoping someone invents an adblocker for my bionic contact lenses.

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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by jacob »

@Ego - Most of what currently passes for Big Data is and does exactly that. It's 30-50 year old technical ideas now using vastly more data and faster computers being applied to obscure problems (often resulting in new and more interesting problems, as in 'interesting times'). Think mass surveillance, facebook manipulating their feed to influence user mood, algorithmic trading, facial recognition (and other kinds, e.g. gait), ...

All this could have been done decades ago. It just would have been too slow and too expensive.

stand@desk
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by stand@desk »

I wonder sometimes when a Major Financial Institution(s) sometime in the future faces too many hacks to defend itself against. This is absolutely an idea of mine and not in some article or book I have read. There are already some examples here and there but if the hacking gets so advanced could the system be in major trouble? Maybe someone can add to this point here..

I think it's really too hard to know or expect what will happen in the future. Just because someone shares some vague ideas of what can happen it doesn't make them a visionary because they can't be specific enough to act on these ideas without risk of being incorrect.

Money and trade are so up in the air in my opinion it is really hard to imagine how things could work. It kind of takes the pressure off in a way because if the system is working for you now, enjoy it because really how long can it go on for like this? Hard to say..

Toska2
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Toska2 »

I was thinking of a biotech idea. Water bears are genetically adaptable and universally found. They can take code and insert it usefully into theirs. Want to survive the cold like Wilm Holf? Find a cold water bear that has useful genes. Want to survive 20x uv radiation? Water bears that are near Chernobyl. Thirsty? Water bears that are in the dead Sea for salt tolerance.

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jennypenny
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by jennypenny »

I like Kelly. I don't think he's married to any particular dogma and he appreciates the human appetite for technology and spirituality.

I agree with him that we're heading for an information singularity. Our reaction to that will dictate future trends. I could see us returning to an oral tradition that (tries to) operate outside of that system, especially looking at the increasing popularity of things like audible books and podcasts.

For example, in the music industry, artists used to tour to sell albums. Now they make more off of touring. With the inevitability of music ending up online, I could see the model change with artists foregoing recording altogether to drive people to concerts to hear new music.

I also think a new form of communication outside of the matrix would be popular. I'm not sure if that will be new technology or the revamping of old technologies like Ham radios, but I would invest in that business.

I foresee most daily functions and interactions (even schooling and medical) becoming automated, so future hot trends would be things that brought more authentic interactions back into our lives, particularly oral/audio based. Basically, I'd invest in any business/technology that enhances or facilitates a renewed oral tradition, especially if it functioned outside of the matrix.

Papers of Indenture
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Re: Where are the big bucks to be made in the future?

Post by Papers of Indenture »

cmonkey wrote:Am I the only one completely turned off by Kevin Kelly and the futurists that talk about this 'holos' of all-connected, all-seeing human super organism that he talks about? It seems like just another version of the singularity faith. The more I hear about it the more I disconnect from everything. Fear of change or just plain introvertedness perhaps but it just doesn't jive with my instincts at all, especially given my understanding of energy macro trends.
He's fine on trends and stuff but so are thousands of other observers. I don't find most of his "big" insights particularly original or compelling. He's a pretty dedicated Catholic and I think he connects more to a Christian technophile audience. His whole thing lately is putting a Christ like applique on techno gadgetry. Personally I think he's often way out of his depth.... especially compared to techno-critic giants from the past like Mumford.

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