The future is cloudy

There was a popular joke when the pandemic broke out. A time traveller asks: What year is it? On hearing 2020, he remarks: Ah Year 1 of the pandemic! By that logic 2022 is upon us and it’s Year 3 of the pandemic. Who knows how long it will last? Whenever you think it is going, you hear of another spike happening in some country or another or a new strain creating panic.

One thing is clear: Most of the technological changes are becoming permanent. Mindsets have changed. People have embraced remote work, hybrid education, ecommerce, OTT and whatever no touch technologies they can get their hands on. Governments are okaying contact tracing, vaccine passports, driverless cars and whatever online tech that works for them.

Predicting the future is an arduous task and has become more so with a tech acceleration that shows no signs of stopping. All the top tech companies are embracing all the emerging technologies. That’s leading to a multiplier effect. Amazon was an ecommerce company. Microsoft was known for its OS and office suites. Alphabet started off just as Google Search. These are now the Top 3 cloud service providers.

Big Auto (run by oil) ruled. But that is falling by the wayside. Tesla is by far the most valuable company in the world at a trillion dollars. In fact, EV player Rivian after the IPO became more valuable than both Ford and General Motors despite the fact that it has sold not even 1000 automobiles while the old giants had crossed 100 million. No-one quite knows what will happen to Big Oil in 10 years. Big Retail may be swallowed up by the online world.

Huge game changers lurk on the horizon, and nobody knows where they’ll go. The metaverse: That will change our entire social network, the way we interact and the way we do business. It’s not just about online money and digital currencies. Cryptocurrency: That has the potential to supplant the entire global financial order. The cloud is already the size of Planet Earth and larger. Quantum computing: The possibilities are endless. Nanotechnology: It hasn’t even got going yet.

A super Artificial Intelligence that runs the world and maybe even merges with the human race? (The Singularity!) Robots which look and act like humans, just like the world of Isaac Asimov. Do we need the laws of robotics already? Will blockchain take power out of the hands of governments and put it in the hands of citizens or does it promise too much? Will drones of all sizes fill the sky? Will 3D printing take over the factories of the world?

The future is coming to us faster than before and yet we can’t see it any more clearly.