The Future Is Faster Than You Think

Studies done with fMRI show that when we project ourselves into the future something peculiar happens: The medial prefrontal cortex shuts down. This is a part of the brain that activates when we think about ourselves. When we think about other people, the inverse happens: It deactivates. And when we think about absolute strangers, it deactivates ev

in “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” Ray Kurzweil did the math and found that we’re going to experience twenty thousand years of technological change over the next one hundred years.

Convergence

“The Hyperloop exists,” says Josh Giegel, the cofounder and chief technology officer for Hyperloop One, “because of the rapid acceleration of power electronics, computational modeling, material sciences, and 3-D printing.

The human brain evolved in an environment that was local and linear. Local, meaning most everything that we interacted with was less than a day’s walk away. Linear, meaning the rate of change was exceptionally slow. Your great-great-great-grandfather’s life was roughly the same as his great-great-grandson’s life. But now we live in a world that is

The bad has less to do with what’s coming and more to do with our (in)ability to adapt to change.

In a ridesharer’s marketplace, the companies that collect the most data and assemble the biggest fleets are the ones that will offer the lowest wait times and cheapest rides. Cheap and quick are the two biggest factors impacting consumer choice in this kind of market.

In simple terms, we use our new computers to design even faster new computers, and this creates a positive feedback loop that further accelerates our acceleration—what Kurzweil calls the “Law of Accelerating Returns.”

“Uber’s goal,” explained Holden from the stage, “is to demonstrate flying car capability in 2020 and have aerial ridesharing fully operational in Dallas and LA by 2023.” But then Holden went even further: “Ultimately, we want to make it economically irrational to own and use a car.”