But the real issue is not these obvious points. It is instead that this technology revolution has now most likely reached maturity. We are consuming as much tech as we want. The room for iterations that will actually appeal to available markets looks small. The rate of change is bound to decline as a result. The tech revolution is not over, and I don’t for a moment suggest it is, but I also think it has ceased to be the driver of change that it was.
That leaves us in an era where things are going to be different. For example, if tech changes less often we will not be changing our IT as much to keep up. Nor will we be consuming adverts in the way we were, at least potentially. But, most of all, this is not where the focus of investment attention is going to be, and that seems like a big change.
The obvious question, in that case, is where is that focus going to be? My answer is straightforward. Money will be going towards the green economy now. That is where the money is needed. That is where the returns will be as companies have to become net zero, or cease to exist. And that is where people want to work.
Super, so we need no schemes, tax or other, to make this happen, do we?
It is instead that this technology revolution has now most likely reached maturity.
News to me. From everything I read tech is still broadly exponential with a likely singularity not far in the future.
“if tech changes less often we will not be changing our IT as much to keep up”
I wonder if Spud has ever had any dealings with the Government and NHS. Admittedly, the use of IT has improved massively over the last 5 years but anyone who has had to deal with, say, a hospital or had to register a death should be able fairly quickly to point at hundreds of things that could be automated. A teenager able to build an app could probably save the NHS millions in an hour
He thinks tech is changing less because a few things he looked at seem to be changing less. He has a complete lack of imagination. We have drones that can pick fruit and computers that can synthesise photos from natural language, to name just two possibly revolutionary things coming soon.
Not to mention the cost of putting things into orbit is about to become a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper and we’re about to have global ubiquitous reliable internet. Surely that will have some sort of effect.
And even I am only looking at a handful of things I happen to be interested in.
So futurologist is yet another job avenue not open to the Spud
Thank God noone is taking investment advice from Murphy! Hence his desire to steal our savings and pensions instead.
While I would agree most corporations are making moves towards ‘Net Zero’ one wonders how soon the shoe will drop that it’s a childish fantasy with no possibility of actual implementation unless alongside a North Korean style tyranny. That ought to give the guy a shock…
Didn’t the US parents office stop taking applications in the 1890s because we had invented everything it was possible to invent?
I can never work out,with Spud, Polly, Little Owen and the rest,whether they’re thick, ignorant or evil.
I read “The obvious question” as “The oblivious question”. I was only half wrong.
@Rowdy
The answer to your conundrum is “yes”.
It is obvious that the world needs fossil fuels, unfashionable as they are, and that investment in same is being discouraged. There should be a decent return for those willing and able to make an unfashionable investment.
Pat
I did notice that there was actually a suggestion that ‘someone’ should supply more gas to Victoria, despite their banning drilling for the stuff.
There is, of course, an election coming up.
Man’s a twat. One look at AI, quantum computing, medical advances, space exploration, energy, networks, enhanced human beings / cyborgs, and a gajillion other things tells any sensible person that we’re just on the launch pad with the touch paper lit – to a profoundly different and unknowable future. His ‘it’s mostly over’ comment will age as well as Fukuyama’s ‘the end of history’.
Rob Fisher,
“Not to mention the cost of putting things into orbit is about to become a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper and we’re about to have global ubiquitous reliable internet. Surely that will have some sort of effect.
And even I am only looking at a handful of things I happen to be interested in.”
The thing with midwits like Richie is that they only look beyond the end of their noses. These people don’t look at how things are changing and what eventually might come. Like the iPhone was about a load of things marginally improving over the years and at a certain point, it works. CPU, storage, screens, cameras, GPUs all reach a point, and Apple bundled them up. Even then, some of what we think of as part of this block were fairly recent. Like showing a QR code that someone scans for ticketing is only the last 3-4 years. That seems to have gone from no-one using it to everyone using it very quickly.
You mention global ubiquitous reliable internet, and yeah. What happens to Afghanistan if people can now run a call centre there? Or write code from there? Or from Chad or Rwanda? Or to do cheap internet at sea? We had a couple of people with proper African names on a Microsoft call recently and I had to ask, and they were in Kenya. Because there’s a Microsoft centre there, since faster undersea cables were put around Africa.
The 3 areas I’m watching are a) video. The cost of streaming is still falling and we’re going to get a lot more video competition coming as it becomes profitable (I noticed that Talking Pictures TV now have a catch-up service) b) industrial IoT. The cost/ease/power of this stuff is getting better and better. Like many parking meters have solar and a battery but that used to take a lot of engineering skill and need a large battery, but I bought a device that has all the 5G comms easily set up to go (literally “send this JSON”), and the connectors for batteries and solar cells. This makes prototyping or niche work simple, which leads to more in this space c) Rust language. Similar performance to C++ but without all the issues of garbage collection. My guess is that all large scale computing will be on it (or C++) and that’s going to cut the cost of operation by quite some level.
Like Richie talks about green, but I doubt that the fundamental stuff like turbine blades or car batteries are going to get much better. What might improve is the factories making it, or the data about where to put turbines. Which is really going to be about computing tech.
That said (and why I’m glad my daughter is doing biomed) if I had to bet only any future industry it’s health, not eco. I don’t believe Eco is that big of a job creator and a lot of it is just fashionable religious crap that could disappear overnight if people get a new doomsday idea in their heads. There’s plenty of demand for more medicines, cheaper hospitals.
“Like the iPhone was about a load of things marginally improving over the years”
Not to defend him, but in ordinary life, things are improved marginally until one gets to a certain point where improvements seem to happen organically. The smartphone is a good example, for instance. From being the rather clunky and unreliable WAP based devices to the slick all dancing media centres took a dozen years or so. In popular perception, any improvements fromnow on will take place around the margins ( ie software ) because the punter won’t recognise a faster chip’s performance or extra memory or a slightly better screen.
I’ve noticed the dramatic improvement in chemicals – especially cleaning sgents and glues over the last few years ( and not just for sniffing).
So futurologist is yet another job avenue not open to the Spud
When Windows Mobile eventually died he jubilantly declared the end of mobile IT, as if the logistics industry was relying on Windows Mobile for their solutions.
I was listening to someone talking about the next step in GPT, he’d seen what was coming but couldn’t talk detail except to say his mind was blown and he expects the way we write articles will be revolutionised within 5 years.
Spud will be safe, no self respecting AI system would pump out that drivel.
Oil, pipeline and coal stocks have done quite well recently. The notion that we’ll do away with fossil fuels very soon was always nonsense to anyone with a lick of sense.
It is instead that this technology revolution has now most likely reached maturity.
It is far more likely that this technology revolution has now most likely passed Richard Murphy by.
This is Step One in convincing us that the looming huge public expenditures in Green Dreams is actually our own choice.
In other news, the worldwide demand for computers will be either four or five, depending on whether Ford buy one.