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It’s not every day that someone goes on a morning TV show and talks about the technological disruption of Fortune 500 companies and their subsequent failing as a sign of good things to come. But that’s exactly what went down on CNBC’s pre-market show Squawk Box today as Peter Diamandis delivered the sobering message.
Somewhat surprisingly, the conversation was generally upbeat considering the scope that was being discussed in under 10 minutes. Comments about how banks will go away and inevitably change seemed to just skate by. Fortunately, there’s a silver lining: things are going to get better, according to Diamandis, even if there are short term pains (like taxi drivers in the wake of Uber’s growth).
Some interesting highlights:
- When co-host Andrew Sorkin questioned whether these technological changes will bring the same benefits to both developing and developed countries, Diamandis said, “What I see is our cost of living substantially reducing,” citing how technological advances in healthcare, education, and transportation, as examples, will reduce costs for consumers. He added, “A lot of the things we spend our money on will be demonetized.”
- With disruption comes instability and government regulation aims to protect industries, but these efforts can thwart progress. Addressing regulation as a dampener to growth, Diamandis point out that people still want change: “The government’s job is stability…People like waking up in the morning and knowing, ‘The world’s the same as when I went to sleep the night before.’ But we do like change if it’s 10 times better.”
- Referring to the 8 predictions for the year 2025 that Diamandis wrote about recently, co-host Joe Kernen addressed the rapid growth of computational power. He asked Diamandis if he agreed with Ray Kurzweil’s estimate that the Singularity—the period of time that technological change will be so extreme that we can’t even imagine what things will be like—will come around 2045. Of course, Diamandis who has written extensively about Kurzweil’s work as a co-author of both Abundance and Bold, agreed.”[Humans are] co-evolving with the technology we’re creating” and that we always have, he said. It was this same optimism that he spoke about moonshots last year to former President Bill Clinton.
CNBC’s Bob Pisani has more in store about their coverage of the event…or check out www.cnbc.com/future for continued coverage today and tomorrow.