Humans and their machines are doing a fantastic job of making humanity as a whole wealthier through independent initiatives. But what if we deployed, within certain parameters (e.g., concern for the environment), machines focused on a single task: increasing the material well-being of all human beings? Arguably, the arms race between intelligent trading systems is […]
There is good reason to believe that we are heading towards post-scarcity, a new economy in which, basically, anybody can have anything they want. We’ll all be rich: Post-scarcity is a theoretical alternative form of economics or social engineering in which goods, services and information are universally accessible.[1] This would require a sophisticated system of […]
How about a new kind of push prize, one just for making things faster? Just about any process can be improved by being accelerated. Doing things faster means being able to do more. Getting faster means becoming more capable. If you can read faster, you can read more books in the same time. If you […]
Webopedia cites IDC research showing that we — presumably meaning humanity, all of civilization — produced 2.8 zettabytes in 2012. (That’s 2.8 trillion gigabytes, for those who couldn’t remember where “zetta” falls on the scale of hugeness.) In what may be a corallary to Moore’s Law, IDC also says that the total amount of data […]
The relentless wave of change that is transforming our world from being one made primarily out of stuff to one made primarily out of data has a name. It’s called datafication. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed the datafication of business, of society, and of everyday life. There appear to be three major […]
Imagine when we’ll see advertisements for 3D printer supplies that look no different from ads for inkjet cartridges or printing paper that we’ve seen for years. Things like this: (hat-tip: Shawn Thuris) My immediate thought — these spools look exactly like the ones I load into my lawn edger / trimmer. I wonder if they […]