What is the 2020 version of "fax on the beach"?
That was 2008. More recently, a rational and critical look at 99.9% of proposed use cases for blockchain are things that nobody wants.
Another thing that literally nobody wants but people keep trying to market: folding displays.
I expect a lot of people 20 years or so ago would think that the idea you could get many, many types of things delivered to your door in a day or two for a reasonable price pretty out there.
- Call local pizza joint, tell them to make a pizza
- Pizza joint cooks pizza
- Pizza joint tells young kid/local burnout to bring me pizza
- Hand young kid/local burnout $$ for pizza, $$ for tip, have pizza.
Now:
- Tell a publicly traded company to to tell your local pizza joint to make a pizza
- Pizza joint cooks pizza
- Multinational logistics monopolist-wannabe tells young kid/local burnout to bring me pizza
- Take pizza from young kid/local burnout.
You may notice a couple insertions that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but nevertheless are taking a significant percentage of the, well, not the pie in this case. The pie isn't getting here faster nor does it taste better. Neither the pizza joint nor the young kid/local burnout are making more money. It isn't more convenient.
Taking cash out of the transaction legitimately does reduce certain risks. That is an advantage to those who aren't reliant on cash, but note that neither Uber nor Grubhub are required to do that.
So the question is, progress for whom?
Ubiquitous surveillance makes you safer.
5G will... apparently do absolutely everything some marketing director is capable of imagining other people might want.
Have you ever performed surgery on the beach?
Remote surgery. A doctor is vacationing in The Bahamas and gets an emergency message that a patient needs to go under surgery or will die. The doctor pulls out a briefcase and opens it up, where there is a screen and interactive controls where he can remotely perform a life saving surgery