Liveblogging Foresight 2011 – Paul Saffo futurist

www.saffo.com

25 years ago speculations on what nano would deliver
First science discipline that focused on the impacts of what would happen with what was being built
Thought about the consequences
Futurist – hearing the inflection point coming

Overestimate early (before infection) and then underestimate later (after inflection)

Moore’s law has been the mother of all inflection points. It an exponential but also a constant

Jim Dater -Forecasts have three things Constants, cycles and novelties
A constant has been Moore’s law, more constants that cycles

Cycle’s – business cycles, sunspot cycle, kondratiev waves, may not be here now but will come back later
More cycles than novelties

Novelties – first time more urban than rural population (first time ever)

Small novelties could set off sparks

Robotics revolution
Roomba – names for them
2004 Grand challenge – a lot of crashes
Oct 2005 – 22 out of 23 got further than the best of 2004 and 5 completed the race
Nov 2007 – another successful ace
Oct 2010 revealed that Google had been running robotic cars

Enhance the rental car experience
Have the robot car drive to the user.
Whistle car and robo-taxi
Pay for the privilege of driving google streetview cars
Have super-collision avoidance and other driving enhancements instead of full-robo cars

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