Engineer and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis has identified five major global trends that society will develop – whether we like it or not.
A couple of decades ago, our lives were very different from how we exist today. Changes happen at such a speed that it becomes more and more difficult to navigate in the new world. According to Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize Foundation and co-founder of Singularity University, the future is shaped by global trends, which in turn create metatrends. The entrepreneur listed them at the SU Global Summit held in August 2019.
1. Global abundance
The share of the population living in extreme poverty is smaller than ever. At the same time, the average life expectancy is increasing every year. Last but not least, this increases the amount of resources. Products and services are becoming cheaper, and fewer people are in short supply due to availability. According to Diamandis, the presence of a large amount of resources forces people to produce even more – this process has already turned into a vicious circle.
2. Welfare of the population
Diamandis talks not only about goods, services and knowledge, but also about money – especially for business. Venture capital investments reached a record $2018 billion in 130, up from $84 billion in 2017, and that’s just in the US. Since 2017, the volume of venture capital funding around the world has grown by 21%.
According to the visionary, one of the reasons for the positive changes is that aspiring entrepreneurs are increasingly trying to bring unusual and sometimes crazy ideas to life. Such ideas seem absurd at first, but end up changing the world.
3. Connectivity ubiquitous
According to Diamandis’ forecasts, in ten years everyone will use the Internet. “In the next four to six years, the number of people on the Web will double. And what happens when 4,2 billion new minds come online? All of them will want to create, discover, consume and invent,” the visionary is sure.
But not only people will have access to the Web. According to forecasts, by 2030, 500 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, and smart home appliances will be in almost every home.
4. High intelligence
People will spend more and more time online, which means that they will constantly receive new knowledge “here and now”. 5G, artificial intelligence and VR will allow a person to learn at the very moment when he needs it. Well, where without a brain upgrade? Companies such as Kernel, Neuralink, Open Water, Facebook, Google, and IBM are investing billions of dollars in brain-to-computer research.
5. Long life
One of the main issues that our new powerful brain will solve is an increase in life expectancy. Even today, 40 is the new 30. In a few decades, a hundred-year-old person will feel like 60, and people will live up to 120, or even 150 years. The practical application of CRISPR technology for editing the human genome, printing organ scaffolds on a 3D printer, and then filling them with the patient’s stem cells so that rejection does not happen, is not science fiction, but already tomorrow.