The growth cycle of a exponential technology (Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, the cloud, advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles...) can be divided into six phases and all six begin with the letter "D".
Understanding them can help us see what phase each of the exponential technologies is in and the radical changes they are about to bring about throughout this century.
The six D's
- Digitization: takes place when technology moves from using atoms to using bits, from matter to long strings of zeros and ones. This allows speeding up thanks to the Moore's Law (power and/or speed doubles every year, and/or cost is halved) and Rose's Law (in the case of quantum computing).
- Disappointment: in the first steps of exponential growth, the jumps are short and, given the publicity that has been given to the new technology, people begin to become disappointed and think that it was not that big of a deal or that it will never be like what happens in the movies. Science fiction. For example, we had already accepted that we would not have flying cars flying over cities, but that's going to change soon.
- Disruption: the real impact on society takes place, suddenly and profoundly modifying products, markets, services and economic sectors. A good example of this has been the mobile phone, which has transformed the world so much that even is lifting Africa out of poverty.
- Demonetization: Money disappears from the equation, which is why many Google services are free. The marginal cost is also reduced to almost zero, like what happened to photography when it went digital.
- Dematerialization: products disappear from the market; For example, Wikipedia has dematerialized encyclopedias, the smartphone has dematerialized GPS devices, iTunes the record store, Netflix the video store...
- Democratization: occurs when all social strata can access the service or product. The richest person in the world can buy the most powerful smartphone on the market, but so can middle and even lower class people. The massive open online courses or MOOCs have democratized education.
An easy-to-use interface also marks a turning point in a technology (for example, when we go from complex computers to Windows, and later to iOS and Android. All of which will eventually make us live a science fiction life in very few years. A striking example of this is the so-called affective technology either affective computing, which will allow our technology to tune in to our mood (first of all) but also influence it to make us feel better.
An example of what will happen when you get home after a difficult day at work and let yourself be guided by affective technology can be seen in the following video, taken from The future goes faster than you think of Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler:
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The news
These are the 6 phases that an exponential technology goes through and that predict a fascinating 21st century
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.