Most of us boomers and beyond were raised with dial phones, Kodak film cameras, stick shifts, TV antennas and Encyclopedia Britannica.
But just looky now. Today, even the most revolutionary technologies become obsolete soon after they appear.
A recent Internet article by Dr. Robert Goldman, "Predictions in Technology and Health," predicts some truly radical changes.
Dr. Ronald Klatz wrote that essay's introduction, saying: "We live in a miraculous time, due to the rapid growth of new technology ... life expectancy is increasing by three months per year. People utilizing the anti-aging tenets for health are seeing a life expectancy of 94, and that rate is also growing. Just as we predicted 25 years ago, medicine is now at last finally transforming from the treatment of illness and disease into preventative measures and the extension of the human lifespan."
Goldman predicts what we can expect and the impact on our lives, noting that in 1998, Kodak, with 170,000 employees, sold 85 percent of all photo paper worldwide, but within a few years it went bankrupt. Goldman believes Kodak's woes will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years.
"Did you think in 1998 that three years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?" he writes. "Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975." That first model, he said, only had 10,000 pixels and was disappointing, but over time its quality surpassed film.
There's lots to come, Goldman says: "It now will happen with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3-D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age."
He predicts that software will disrupt most traditional industries in the coming decade, citing the successes of Uber and Airbnb. When it comes to artificial intelligence, Goldman says computers are becoming better at comprehending the world. "This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected," he writes.
Those entering the legal field might want to reconsider, Goldman says. "Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds with 90 percent accuracy compared with 70 percent accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90 percent fewer lawyers in the future; only specialists will remain. Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, four times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. By 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans."
The first self-driving cars will be available to the public in 2018, he predicts. "Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving."
Our kids, he says, won't need to own a car or get a license, and cities will change because up to 95 percent fewer cars will be needed, and we can transform parking space into parks. Autonomous driving will also save a million lives each year.
"Most car companies may become bankrupt, Goldman says. "Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels." Goldman says the engineers from Volkswagen and Audi he spoke to are terrified of Tesla. Electric cars, he says, will become mainstream by 2020 when electricity becomes incredibly cheap and clean. "Last year," he writes, "more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025."
His other predictions:
• A relatively inexpensive medical device called the Tricorder will work with phones and will take retina scans, blood samples and let you breathe into it. It will analyze 54 biomarkers to identify nearly any disease.
• By year's end new smartphones will have 3-D scanning capabilities, and by 2027, 10 percent of everything produced will be 3-D-printed. In 10 years the price of the cheapest 3-D printer dropped from $18,000 to $400 and became 100 times faster. Shoes and spare airplane parts are just some of the items being printed now.
• Up to 80 percent of today's jobs will disappear within 20 years. There will be lots of new jobs, he says, but it remains unclear if there will be enough in such a small time frame.
• Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and could possibly become the default reserve currency.
• Four years ago, the average life span was 79, but it's now 80, and the increase is increasing. There will be a more than one year increase each year by 2036.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 07/02/2016