http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/01/oh-2022.html
"Back in December of 2016 I took a look at what the next year held in store for
us. It spanned three blog posts and ended happily in a nuclear barbecue to put
us all out of our misery: start here,
<
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/12/things-can-only-get-better-par.html>
continue with this,
<
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/12/youre-only-supposed-to-blow-th.html>
and finale: and the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth.
<
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/01/things-can-only-get-better-red.html>
It is now early 2022 and I clearly wasn't pessimistic enough.
About 15 years ago, when I was working on
Halting State, I came up with a
rule of thumb for predicting the near-future setting in SF. Looking 10 years
ahead, about 70% of the people, buildings, cars, and culture is already here
today. Another 20-25% is not present yet but is predictable — buildings under
construction, software and hardware and drugs in development, children today
who will be adults in a decade. And finally, there's about a 5-10% element that
comes from the "who ordered that" dimension: nobody in 2010 expected Elon
Musk's SpaceX to be flying astronauts to the space station in a reusable,
privately developed spaceship by 2020, nobody in 2005 expected Donald Trump to
be elected POTUS in 2015, and so on.
More recently, 2016 prompted me to rethink this rule of thumb. Global climate
change, accelerating technological developments in various fields (notably
AI/deep learning and batteries), and political instability (in large part a
side-effect of social media) made everything much more unpredictable. We're now
up to about 20% of 10-year-hence developments being utterly unpredictable,
leaving us with 55-60% in the "here today" and 20-25% in the "not here yet, but
clearly on the horizon" baskets."
Via Cass M.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
