The hedgehog and the fox
ben-evans.com
ben-evans.com
* Subscription as alternative vs. reducing life on newer technology. While being wasteful works in today's "make everything in China" world, long-lasting high-quality products that consumers "rent" make more sense than throwaway products financially and environmentally.
* Mining first-world trash. Third-world countries do this manually, but isn't commercialized in first-world.
* Developing products and services that rely on greater levels of energy than currently available. Energy, propulsion, etc. advances will be made more quickly in coming years.
* Undersea and underground living: greater use of heat, heat or pressure differential as energy sources, related horticulture, and mining - but there are problems to be solved: how do we adapt things we need for overground living to deep underground and deep underwater?
* Space, the final frontier, e.g. transport: SpaceX, distribution: Blue Origin, mining: Planetary Resources, touring: Virgin Galactic, propulsion systems: Orbital Sciences, etc. - but there are many niches to fill.
* Solving world problems of hunger, poverty, unsafe water, lack of shelter, violence - e.g. agricultural transforming, fair redistribution as a service, clean water as a service in the third world, alternative building materials, guns/tasers/billy clubs replaced with net guns.
The Great Firewall of China will become the norm. It's what countries and media companies wanted with DVD region codes. VPNs will fight this but eventually get banned or constrained.
Thoughts?
Half of the humans are not on the internet.
The author addresses that literally one paragraph later.