2. Proof has to be demonstrated on two very fundamental levels before there is reason to think that time travel is truly possible. The first is to be able to communicate across time, and the second is to be able to view things across time. If we cannot first communicate across time, or view real life images of another time, how can we possibly imagine sending people across time?
So the ‘viewing things across time’ technology that I think most promising is – viewing the past. Think in terms of setting up sensors around a room and being able to replay images of past events, as much as 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
3. Disassembling matter. Imagine a technology capable of breaking all of the molecular bonds in any given material. As an example, place a rock on a table, focus a beam on the rock and visualise all the molecules in the rock separating and falling in a pile onto the table.
Now imagine being able to selectively disassemble the rock. All of the molecules separate except for a piece in the middle that looks like a rocking chair. Suddenly we would have the ability to sculpt solid-rock rocking chairs whenever we wanted to.
This is probably a poor example but I think you get the idea.
What are today’s most prominent technologies that you believe will have no takers in the future?
Thomas: Some of today’s technologies that are on their way out include fax machines, the checking industry, traditional television, invasive surgery and regular AM-FM radio.
Also, RFID technology will quickly come and go as we develop search technology for the physical world that works without the chips. You can understand this better only through a detailed example, and this example is necessary because RFID is considered by many as a promising technology.
Technology is going to play a major role in driving us towards the future -- what would be the structure of enterprises or businesses going ahead?
Thomas: Running a solo (one person) business in the past meant that you had a one-person practice, most often offering a professional service, well suited for lawyers, accountants and doctors. However, a new breed of solo business has emerged that allows people to leverage the power of the Internet and control a vast empire from their home office or wherever they happen to be. Across the world, thousands of people are giving birth to what I call an ‘Empire of One’.
Most ‘Empire of One’ (an Empire of One business is a one-person (sometimes married couple) business with far-reaching spheres of influence) businesses require an affinity for working in the online world. The Internet is an unparalleled communications tool, growing organically in ways few could have imagined, and in ways that are difficult to manage. Unlike putting a product on a store shelf and counting the number of sales, feedback loops for gauging influence and making good decisions online are not always intuitive. Quite often, the mention of a product online today will yield results several months from now, and the establishment of an online brand is far different than traditional corporate branding.
Few people can run their ‘Empire’ business without good relationship-building skills. While it is commonly thought that online businesses isolate people, and owners end up being quite insulated from their customers and vendors, successful businesses are far more sustainable if they are built on a foundation of good will and solid relationships. Relationships can be as weak as an e-mail exchange or a voice at the end of the telephone, or as strong as lengthy face-to-face meetings. But, a person’s ability to build endearing forms of communications between affected parties, has a direct correlation to the likelihood of success.
Typically, the business outsources everything – information products marketed and sold online, or products manufactured in Asia, sent to a distribution centre in Europe, with customers in the US, UK and Brazil. Manufacturing, marketing, book-keeping, accounting, legal and other operations are all out-sourced to other businesses around the world.
Yes, much of this has been done before, but a person’s ability to leverage people and products across country lines in a below-the-radar fashion, and still maintain control of a vast and virtual empire, is refreshingly new.
Virtual Citizens are already out there -- what do you think about a 'real' virtual world in the future? How would people interact or commute, transfer money or buy things in that age?
Thomas: The world presently being created on Second Life already has much of what you are talking about. I see Second Life as the next generation of social networking, but so much more.
It has its own currency, land to buy and sell, and free enterprise systems that allow entrepreneurial-minded people the ability to build new countries and new kinds of business.
What is the future of laboratories or inventions?
Thomas: In the past, computer programming has been focused around architecting the flow of electrons. In the future, nanotechnology will be focused around architecting the flow of matter.
Laboratories in the future will be akin to thought factories where the outputs will be visualisations with several million permutations. Inventions will happen so quickly that few people will understand the line between what is real and what is still only imagined.
What would the PC of tomorrow be like? Will the PC even be around or is it just going to be 'ubiquitous' computing in the full sense of the word—every object being a computer, the whole environment being the user interface, etc?
Thomas: Our goal will be to make the interface between information and our brains as seamless and as invisible as possible. Presently, the PC is a rather clunky way of making that connection.
PCs will go away within the next 10 years and a variety of devices will be created to take their place. But we eventually would not want to be bothered by physical devices.
I like to think in terms of information swarms – invisible particles that hover around us, communicating with our minds whenever we desire to ‘plug in’. While much of the information swarm will communicate directly with our minds, we will also have visual interfaces that float in space in a way that is only viewable by us.
ET: Patents – are they a hurdle in the way of inventors or do they provide the protection they are meant to? Do they slow down our journey into the future in any way?
Thomas: I often say that the next big thing was always invented over 25 years ago. This is usually a pretty good rule of thumb for cutting-edge technology because the adoption curve is typically a generation (25 years) or more.
So if we want to know what the next big thing is – it is already in existence. There will be income streams coming in, and analysts following it, waiting for the market to crystallise.
However, part of the slow adoption curves are because of the patents and other forms of intellectual property. We have gone from a time where patents were designed to reward the ingenuity of the inventor to today, where patents have become more of a game for people who use their thought exercises to lay claim to some future income stream.
In my mind, patents are only useful when they move the state of the art forward. Too much of what is going on today is nothing more than corporate gamesmanship.
As an example, a typical cell phone will touch on as many as 200-300 patents. If every patent required a $5 royalty, our cell phones would cost a fortune. Many of our emerging technologies will not be able to make it to market because of too many demands on the revenue streams. Once the patents expire, the products become affordable.
ET: On a lighter note, by when do we expect the DaVinci Institute to have its branch on Mars (read: migration to other planets)?
Thomas: Travelling to Mars will be measured in decades, but colonising other planets will likely begin close to a century from now. The first human colony on another planet will be called – Colony 42, because 42 is the meaning of life. |
