Tech questions pondered on sleepless nights
I’ve had a fun run of insomnia lately. As far as I know it’s unrelated to anything, but we’re at about two weeks where I’ve been laying in bed pondering a few things that may be on the horizon or already here. The following is futuristic musings by someone who really just hasn’t had enough sleep.
Also may be the product of not talking to adult humans much lately.
How long until we can fake DNA evidence?
Ancestry, 23andMe, and several other websites offer services where you can spit in a tube and find out what your genetic makeup is as well as locating some common genetic health markers.
We know your data’s going to get hacked. It’s just a matter of time. These companies keep working at security but you’re either going to find a data breach there, or maybe your local computer’s going to get taken over and someone downloads your genetic makeup.
We’ve got DNA printing now as well.
So how long until DNA evidence can be manufactured on a home printer and be next to useless in court?
Has anyone used a photograph to make a fake fingerprint yet?
How long until we move beyond bodies?
You lose a leg you get it replaced, bad heart get it replaced, brain eventually can live in a fake body, how long until we offload a dying brain to a computer?
Is a significantly complex simulation of your organic material enough to be you? Would it be if you modified it later to get rid of petty monkey brain hangups?
What’s going to happen when self operating machinery just works?
Replace every item below with “millennials” for most of today’s headlines. These are using US statistics at the moment.
Self driving cars will kill the auto insurance industry. No wrecks, very little use for insurance. 2.5 million people employed in the insurance industry currently.
Self driving cars will kill the auto industry as you’ll now be able to carshare and coordinate with a phone and a service. Why own and insure when you can tap a button and a clean car shows up to deliver you somewhere? ~2 million jobs.
Self driving trucks could eliminate 3.5 million truck driver’s jobs in the name of making a safer/cheaper delivery service. Retrofitting a truck can be done for … wow, a lot less than I thought.
Drone/autonomous delivery can eliminate most human delivery driver needs.
That’s eight million people out of a job just from a fully adopted working self driving auto setup.
This would also save ~32K lives a year assuming no crashes.
What is the next profession?
Nashville saw a glut of coding boot camps pop up as that was the career of the future a couple of years back. Two friends of mine boot camped it, one of them dropping out of work for six months to learn how to code from the ground up. At two years since, one has a job working in the industry, the other gave up as there’s a glut of cheap coders willing to take on projects for low pay.
There’s such an overabundance of programming skilled people that getting a decent well paying job was wiped out in a matter of a couple of years. Not everyone needed a custom-designed application for their business as there already are a host of premade software solutions. Most of the jobs were reinventing the wheel.
Is there a future for millions of programmers?
What’s the next thing once the professions start becoming automated and even the Lettuce Bot becomes self aware?
What happens when the future is here?
Enough solar panels and wind farms and there’s no need for fossil fuels or that industry except for boutique uses.
AI farming machinery is poised to be cheaper than humans within a few years.
Crops and yards may no longer need pesticides as insects can be targeted and eliminated from areas with low powered inexpensive computer-directed lasers.
Medical advances to make dying from a disease a rare thing.
Diagnostic apps with sensors that connect you with a medical professional or answer without a doctor needing to be in your house. Maybe without even needing a human on the other end.
Non-drug pain management.
All of this stuff is coming sooner than you expect
I read an article that read somewhat similar to this, except it was apocalyptic based as opposed to the future is here/coming. It suggested you purchase gold, silver, other stock minerals. Well, guess what you can make given enough energy? Yup.
Imagine we’ve solved energy shortly by way of above wind farms and solar and I don’t know, harnessing the energy of a four year old or something. Those precious metals have no value other than what we place on them. They can also be created using other more common elements and a particle accelerator. They can be filtered for by gold panning robots in a stream. The terminators will be wearing wading boots and panning for gold if gold has any real value in the future.
So do I have something to sell you? Yes, I think.
I’m selling the idea you keep flexible mentally. Don’t look at the upcoming changes as much other than a problem to be solved or an answer to be embraced. Be kind to the people who haven’t been able to, or just can’t adapt. It’s not the end of life as we know it, but the beginning of a society we’ve never known and it’s always been coming.
Alternately I guess we could all start attacking anything automated as a threat to our continued existence.
This article powered by Insomnia, the thing that makes it seem like I’ve dropped LSD and can taste the future.
