The Days of Wine and Roses

 

 

"What is coming could be the best of days, or the worst of days..."

 

Saw a very uplifting show on one of the Science Channels last night. One of the segments was about computing. Today, in 2014, we have super computers which can conduct billions of operations every second. If I had written that 30 years ago, people would have laughed or thought I had gotten into science fiction. Because Moore's Law is still in effect (in fact, we are doubling out computer speed now every 13 months), the awesomeness of 2014 will appear not so much in 2015.

 

The real amazing fact is this - assuming Moore's Law continues, and we don't really wreck things here on Terra Firma, in ten years the computing speed will be hundreds of times faster than it is today. I dare say the world ten years from now will look quite a bit different.

 

Now I am not one to say that technology will save us from all ills, but I do think the next generation of super computers will allow us to solve the stubborn puzzle of cancer. It will show us the way for unlimited, cheap, clean energy. It will allow us to send human like robots to our Moon and to Mars to set up the foundation for future colonization. It could put an end to education as we know it as every home would have smart terminals that will teach each at his or her own speed and level.

 

That is the up side to the upcoming days of wine and roses. The down side is dire. Our technology is racing far ahead of our own social and economic evolution. Instead of training people for the jobs of 2025, we are trying to resurrect dead industries. Most of manufacturing will be done by robotics or the next generation of 3D printing. More and more manual labor will be done by smart machines. Because of the next generation of CAD, CAM, and CAL, quality will continue to improve. Mean time between failures on most items will be astronomically high. Failure of any kind will become a rare term.

 

So where will the jobs be? What new industry will emerge that will employ hundreds of millions of people in the United States? I have written an article last year where I thought the biggest opportunity for new jobs would be building things that build things. And that takes a type of education and training that we don't have a lot of these days. The nation which will lead the world into the next decade is the one which will stay ahead of the curve. Focus on tomorrow and leave the yesterdays for the history books.

 

To lead us in the next decade we need new kinds of leaders. We have had it will sophism, charlatans, and liars. No more economic false flags. We need visionaries, not Walter Middies. Trail blazers, not Pied Pipers. Doers, not talkers. With the right leadership we will once again guide the world. However, with more of the present type of leadership, we will be standing on the sidewalk, watching the parade pass us by.