1.
:
Technology is neither good nor bad
nor is it neutral.
(It certainly can’t be un-invented.)
THE FUTURE (AND|OF) TECHNOLOGY
by @patricksavalle, the 2017 version

2.
Inventor of MOBBR, one of the more
disruptive systems / startups
Author, photographer, systems
architect, coder
Full-stack innovator

3.
Why has human progress ground to a halt?
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-
human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/
Entering a dark age of innovation
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7616-entering-a-
dark-age-of-innovation.html
The great stagnation
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexc
hange/2011/01/growth_2
THE DARK AGES OF INNOVATION
We were promised flying cars, all we got was 140 chars. And batteries everywhere.

4.
3D PRINTING
Create objects by printing them, just input a
design and raw materials.
Status: typical technological innovation that
will get better, faster, cheaper exponentially.
Common in aerospace, orthopedic and dental
applications. Fast adoption in oil, gas and
military
Holy grail: Star Trek replicator, Nano-scale 3D
printing, instantiation of living things, synthetic
morphogenesis
Related technologies: additive manufacturing,
distributed manufacturing, nature’s
morphogenesis.
Status: unstoppable avalanche. Think years,
not decades.

5.
AUTONOMOUS
VEHICLES
Remove the driver from the vehicle (car,
airplane, ship).
Status: closely follows the progress in
machine learning and artificial
intelligence though it does not need to
be a ML/AI solution itself.
As with all autonomous and AI-based
technology: ethical and legal issues to be
solved, certainly when applied for
military purposes.
Requires large investments in
infrastructure.
Status: very large industry effort to get
this thing going. General-purpose full
autonomy not anytime soon but already
very useable partial autonomy.

6.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Everything connected to the internet, like a
bionic layer over planet earth.
From large industrial machines to MEMS
(micro electromechanical sensors).
Typical, predictable technological
innovation: will get faster, cheaper FAST!
Huge privacy and security issues, a hackers
paradise.
Status: unstoppable avalanche.
Think years, not decades

7.
Programs that are ‘intelligent’
(confusion right there: intelligent does
not mean autonomous or sentient).
Experts agree ‘human AI’ not anytime
soon, maybe never. No, Musk, Gates
and Hawkin are not experts.
‘By 2029 no computer or machine
intelligence will have passed the
Turing test’
http://longbets.org/1/
Status: already widespread use for
specialized tasks, first general purpose
AI (the Alpha GO) self-teaches and
outplays humans on Go and Atari-
games.
Holy grail: emotions, self-awareness
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

8.
Organisms created to genetic
specification.
Status: overhyped, little progress
since the disappointing Human
Genome Project. Big ethical
issues. We can modify plants to
grow human collagen, not much
more
Genetic determinism still just an
dream. Genomics stumbling from
one failing hypothesis to another.
Being able to decode or edit a
genome does not mean
understanding it. At all. It takes
more than CRISPR.
Greedy investment climate
because of big, patentable
promises.
DESIGNER SPECIES

9.
GENE DRIVES
Overruling Mendelian inheritance on species level. Release
molecules in the wild (the gene drives) that interfere with
natural reproduction enabling ‘evolution’ of fast
reproducing species by specification.
‘Take the malaria out of mosquito’.
‘Towards a Post-Darwinian biosphere’
- Pleistocene rewilding
- Status quo, preserve current biosphere
- Compassionated biology
- Destroy nature, replace with designs
Could open Pandora’s box, or could just be mitigated by a
much smarter nature.
Status: technologically possible, and cheap, same problems
as with .

10.
BIONICS
(mind-controlled) exoskeletons, prosthetics, body-
parts and super-senses.
Partly in realm of engineering and as such will see the
same (albeit more uneven) exponential progress (3D-
printing, materials, electronics etc). The neurological /
biological part of the tech will remain difficult.
Successful neural interfaces within a decade.
Status: successful on disabled people but won’t be
popular among healthy people soon because
mechanics still very inferior to organics.
H+ (transhumanism or ‘the augmented human’) very
real.

11.
GREY GOO, SELF-REPLICATING MACHINES
In 1986 Eric Drexler cautioned against self-replicating
(nanotech) machines in his 1986 book ‘Engines of Creation’.
Nanotech is about engineering things at the molecular level
(just above quantum-level). As opposed to biotech which is
about instructing nature to engineer them.
Nanotech is mechanical engineering at the molecular level.
The technological equivalent of nature’s proteïnes.
Status: didn’t happen. The nanotech revolution got stuck
on coatings, food-additives and cosmetics. No machinery
yet.

12.
PLATFORM IS THE NEW FACTORY
A platform is an organization that
crowdsources its resources and
coordinates crowd collaboration.
Extremely scalable. Extremely
lightweight: only a business core.
Problems: single point of control,
potentially a tool for ‘enslaving’ and
dronifying the many by the few.
Status: very mature concept,
implementations resisted by ‘something’,
will go gradually.
http://airbnb.com
http://uber.com

13.
THE COLLABORATIVE ECONOMY
An economy in which machines,
algorithms and people are producing
and sharing things without much
bureaucracy or central planning.
An ecosystem of platforms.
Task-based economy, not job-based.
Very compatible with robots and AI.
Like the industrial economy,
it too will be owned by a few people.
Status: taking over right now, resisted
big time. Think decades not years.

14.
DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATION
Any time, any place, any context collaboration
without central planning. Economic freedom.
Platform-based creation, decentrally
coordinated using stigmergic principles.
‘Just go online and add value,
you will be rewarded’
Status: immature technology and inflexible
existing H&R, fiscal regulations are limiting
success. Status quo situation for last decade.
https://github.com
https://assembly.com
https://mobbr.com

15.
GLOBAL DECENTRALISED AUTONOMY
A global base layer of decentralized
autonomous platforms that
automates and democratizes social
utility and service functions, such as
governments, banks, payment-
systems, energy grids, health-care,
transportation, cloud-services,
exchanges, markets, etc.
Based on open-source software,
distributed collaboration and
blockchain technology.
The great equalizer.
Status: needs maturation of
blockchain technology, will be
resisted by ‘the powers that be’. Not
anytime soon.

16.
BITCOIN
Cash money over the internet.
No need for banks or governments.
First application of ‘the blockchain’.
Decentralizing technology.
Status: proven, stable, secure technology. Ready for take
off. All it needs is a good old fashioned financial crisis.

17.
THE BLOCKCHAIN
The decentralized ledger. Eliminates the need for
trusted or intermediate parties when transacting.
Blockchains enable property (incl. money) to be
exchanged and assigned instantly, undisputable, secure
and internetted.
Makes any property ‘cash’ property.
“On the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a fridge”,
allows machines to become economic actors.
Status: immature technology, will be huge, but not any
time soon. Solution looking for a problem.

18.
DECENTRALISED AUTONOMOUS CORPORATIONS
Algorithmic companies that run in a
blockchain. Decentralized. No single
point of failure, control or censorship.
Bitcoin-network itself was
the first ever robocorp.
Solves the ‘single point of control’
problem that platforms can have. The
future of freedom.
Banks, payment-systems, energy grids,
governments, transportation, cloud-
services, exchanges, markets, etc.
Status: first prototypes up-and-running
won’t take-off yet.
https://erisindustries.com
https://lazooz.org

19.
ANTI-GRAVITY DEVICES
‘Electrogravitics’. Manipulating gravity like we can manipulate
electromagnetism and light.
To be able to generate, shield, store, emit etc. gravity.
Gravity is not described by quantum theory unlike all other (known)
fundamental forces. Only scientific theory is in classical physics not
particle physics.
Status: waiting for a very fundamental scientific breakthrough

20.
OVERUNITY ENERGY DEVICES
The absolute holy grail of innovation and
technology: devices that produce more
energy than they use by drawing from ‘the
zero-point field’.
Limitless, free energy.
Would instantly promote mankind to a type
I or II civilization on the Kardashev scale.
‘The legacy of Nikolai Tesla’
Status: still very much in the realm of myth
and conspiracy theory.
‘Proven in hundreds of laboratories around the world’ --
Dr. Brian O’Leary, Ph.D, scientist, author,
Princeton/Cornell physics professor, and former NASA
astronaut.

21.
SINGULARITY
The end of the anthropocene,
the beginning of the mekhanocene.
‘Machine making man obsolete.’
Not a technology but an event,
expected around 2040.
‘The church of Kurzweil’
Status: still more a meme than a
probable event, has become a license
to limitless exaggerate human
progress.

22.
BIOLOGY IS THE ULTIMATE TECHNOLOGY
Nature invented 3D printing billion years ago (morphogenesis).
Has been running an internet for millions of years (mycelia).
Is using quantum technology for millions of years (bird navigation).
Etc.
A human cell has 10 billion moving parts, more complicated than a
modern nuclear submarine. Your body has 370 trillion such cells.
Science not very successful in understanding nature because she
doesn’t fit the mechanistic paradigm. Her most common trick (self-
organization, homeostasis, anti-chaos) has no scientific explanation.
Nature is the master of exponentiality and crowdsourcing. It’s
everywhere.
For solutions, always look to nature first! Bio-mimicry.
‘The more technology evolves, the more it will become biological’

23.
THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL
MORE DECENTRALISING TECHNOLOGY THAN EVER THREATENING THE ELITE
centralized vs. distributed, control vs. autonomy, slavery vs. freedom, 1% vs. 99%

24.
THE SCIENCE DELUSION
The science crisis: our clockwork universe is broken.
The current scientific paradigm of determinism,
reductionism and mechanism has proven it’s worth
but is also failing us.
Dogma and consensus have taken over in climate
science, economics, medicine, genetics and many
other sciences. Impossible to produces true theories
(predicting models).
The problem: science has no fundamental
understanding of and no mathematical frameworks
for some of the most common phenomena in nature
such as anti-chaos (self-organization).
Status: mankind will eventual linger into the age of
holistic science till than dogma and believe are
powerful innovation absorbers.

25.
TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY
Big corporations trying to prevent self-replication of
organisms they created or patented by genetically
modifying them.
‘Life will find a way’.
No obvious advantages other than creating scarcity and
enforcing licenses.
Farmers can no longer optimize crops .
What if the trait of non-reproducibility is contagious or
inheritable?
Status: already deployed at large scale by Monsanto, for
instance in Iraq, denying farmers reuse of their own
agricultural seeds.