From the Ideas Market Blog at the wall Street
Journal:
Last month, the Review columnist Matt Ridley discussed a new book called "Abundance," by
Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, which argues that the future
will be "better than you think." (Diamandis is founder of the X
Prizes, which reward breakthroughs in technology, medicine, energy
and other areas.) One driver of progress, the authors say, is
"dematerialization," defined by Ridley as "a reduction in the
quantity of stuff needed to produce a product" (think of computers
that grow ever smaller but more powerful). Ridley largely endorsed
their vision of greater returns on improved technology, but offered
a few caveats:
[C]ertain growing problems-such as caring for children and the
elderly, or policing, or repairing freeways-won't experience much
dematerialization or deflation. And as dematerialized goods and
services like communication get cheaper, these problems will
increasingly dominate budgets, damping the acceleration.
The authors have submitted a response to that objection: "This
may turn out to be the case," they write,
but there are certainly indicators that say otherwise. Take the
DIY biology movement. The rapid acceleration in biotechnology has
dropped the cost of a state of the art lab from over a million
dollars just ten year ago, to less than ten thousand today. Taking
advantage of this fact, DIY biologists are now beginning to solve
real world problems. The winner of the 2008 IGEM competition (an
MIT sponsored synthetic biology competition) built a vaccine
against the virus that cause the most common form of ulcers. This
type of syn bio DIY innovation is certain to have serious impact on
the health and welfare of both the young and the old.
There's also the recently announced Qualcomm "Tricorder" X
Prize, which bestows $10 million dollars on the first team able to
design a handheld device able to diagnose disease better than a
board certified doctor. This will certainly help slash healthcare
costs here at home, but in parts of the world where doctors are in
short supply, this will bring a revolution in quality of care to
children, the elderly, and everyone in between.
Then there's robotics, where open source initiatives are already
dematerializing costs. With a rapidly aging baby boomer population
and nursing home price tags averaging between $40,000 and $85,000
annually, elderly care could easily bankrupt the nation. But many
experts feel that robotic nurses are a fantastic solution (check
out this Reuter's video; or this article).
Or consider Matternet, a Singularity University spin-off
attacking both of Ridley's aforementioned problems-healthcare and
freeway repair-simultaneously. Taking advantage of the fact that
military-grade autonomous drones have dropped in price by nearly 99
percent over the past decade (radical demonetization), without much
loss in functionality, Matternet is planning an AI-enabled network
of UAVs and recharging stations housed in shipping containers
scattered throughout roadless parts of Africa. Orders are placed
via smart phone. For villages disconnected from the global
transportation network, this means that everything from replacement
parts for farm machinery to medical supplies can now be shipped in
via a drone-for less than six cents per kilogram-kilometer.
There are other examples, of course, and ones that speak to
Ridley's other concerns. Dematerialization in autonomous drones has
already impacted policing (as has dematerialization in video
surveillance technology). Autonomous cars, meanwhile, threaten to
dematerialize much of the transportation industry (taxi cabs and
buses for starters). While these vehicles won't banish the need for
freeway repairs, they can be made several tons lighter than
existing gas models, so will vastly reduce roadway wear and tear
(and the need for freeway repairs).
None of this is to say that there won't be issues ahead that
will bog budgets and decelerate "official" progress, but with the
newfound power of the DIY innovator we no longer have to wait for
"official progress," for governments or large corporations to solve
our problems. We can start to solve them ourselves. Which is, after
all, the point.
