Technologist
Developing a healthy obsession with the tools and technologies transforming our world. Our technologist section provides insight and perspectives.
Stephen Hawking: Martin Rees Looks Back on Colleague’s Spectacular Success Against All Odds
Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke...
Everyone Is Talking About AI—But Do They Mean the Same Thing?
In 2017, artificial intelligence attracted $12 billion of VC investment. We are only beginning to discover the usefulness of AI applications. Amazon recently unveiled a brick-and-mortar grocery store that has successfully supplanted cashiers and...
How We Can ‘Robot-Proof’ Education to Better Adapt to Automation
Like millions of other individuals in the workforce, you’re probably wondering if you will one day be replaced by a machine. If you’re a student, you’re probably wondering if your chosen profession will even...
Why Hasn’t AI Mastered Language Translation?
In the myth about the Tower of Babel, people conspired to build a city and tower that would reach heaven. Their creator observed, “And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have...
In the Future, There Will Be No Limit to What AI Can Accomplish in Science
New planets found in distant corners of the galaxy. Climate models that may improve our understanding of sea level rise. The emergence of new antimalarial drugs. These scientific advances and discoveries have been in...
The Quest to Transform End-of-Life Medical Care Into a More Human Experience
In an interview at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine in San Diego, Shoshana Ungerleider spoke about the taboo topic we all eventually confront—death.
Ungerleider is an expert in the field of end-of-life care and is working...
The 10 Grand Challenges Facing Robotics in the Next Decade
Robotics research has been making great strides in recent years, but there are still many hurdles to the machines becoming a ubiquitous presence in our lives. The journal Science Robotics has now identified 10...
9 Ways You Can Use Your Devices for Advanced Scientific Research
Want to help solve world problems like finding a cure for cancer? Looking to make a global impact in 2018 with minimal effort on your part? It’s relatively easy to use your devices for...
Digitized to Democratized: These Are the 6 Ds of Exponential Technologies
“The Six Ds are a chain reaction of technological progression, a road map of rapid development that always leads to enormous upheaval and opportunity.”
–Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Bold
We live in incredible times....
How Technology Is Leading Us Into the Imagination Age
In many ways, the future is unpredictable. A report by the World Economic Forum reveals that almost 65 percent of the jobs elementary school students will be doing in the future do not even...
Why the World Is (Still) Better Than You Think—New Evidence For Abundance
Your mindset matters — now more than ever.
We are in the midst of a drug epidemic.
The drug? Negative news. The drug pushers? The media.
As I wrote in Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, we pay...
Interfaces Are Killing Us: It’s Time Technology Gets Out of the Way
You have superpowers; cybernetic superpowers that allow you to do all kinds of things.
Think about it: at some point today you Googled a fact you didn’t know, or your calendar reminded you to be...
Why Every Leader Needs to Be Obsessed With Technology
In the 1990s, Tower Records was the place to get new music. Successful and popular, the California chain spread far and wide, and in 1998, they took on $110 million in debt to fund...
6 Things Quantum Computers Will Be Incredibly Useful For
Computers don’t exist in a vacuum. They serve to solve problems, and the type of problems they can solve are influenced by their hardware. Graphics processors are specialized for rendering images; artificial intelligence processors...
These 7 Disruptive Technologies Could Be Worth Trillions of Dollars
Scientists, technologists, engineers, and visionaries are building the future. Amazing things are in the pipeline. It’s a big deal. But you already knew all that. Such speculation is common. What’s less common? Scale.
How...
7 Big Tech Trends That Are Changing the Way We Make Things
Manufacturing is dirty, dull, and outmoded. It’s a slow-moving industry stuck in the past as new technologies out of Silicon Valley threaten to upend it. Stereotypes are fun, and misleading.
Let’s not forget manufacturing is...
Watch: Where AI Is Today, and Where It’s Going in the Future
2016 was a year of headlines in artificial intelligence. A top-selling holiday gift was the AI-powered Amazon Echo; IBM Watson was used to diagnose cancer; and Google DeepMind’s system AlphaGo cracked the ancient and complex Chinese...
4 Keys to Making the Robots of Our Imagination a Reality
“The robots of reality are starting to get a lot closer to the robots of our imagination,” said Sarah Bergbreiter, an image of a fast-moving, multi-jointed search and rescue robot displayed on the big...
How to Make VR Experiences That Actually Matter
It seems like everyone is making a VR app these days. From recording concerts in VR to designing your next kitchen, brands and individual developers around the world are expending incredible amounts of effort...
These 5 Big Tech Trends Are Changing the Way We Learn
Our current education system is not fit for purpose. Student mental health is at an all-time low, and student debt is at an all-time high. Dominated by uninspiring curricula and an over-emphasis on short-term...
4 Ways Scientists Hope Nanobots Will Make You Healthier
For most people the phrase “medical robot” probably brings to mind the ground-breaking da Vinci surgical system that has revolutionized minimally-invasive surgery. Either that or the 2-1B droid from Star Wars: the Empire Strikes...
3 Exciting Biotech Trends to Watch Closely in 2017
As I start to look at the emerging trends of 2017 from the vantage of IndieBio, where we see hundreds of biotech startup applications and technologies per year, a few key themes are already emerging....
Stem Cells Are Poised to Change Health and Medicine Forever
We are at the cusp of a stem cell revolution.
Understanding and harnessing these unique cells may unlock breakthroughs in longevity and therapeutic solutions to all kinds of chronic diseases and regenerative opportunities.
Last month, I...
How the Most Successful Leaders Will Thrive in an Exponential World
We live in challenging times. Geopolitical turmoil, local and national social unrest, cycles of deadly natural disasters, cyber hacks, rising distrust of media and tech companies—many recent disruptive events have taken us by surprise.
Nearly...
10 Tech Trends That Made the World Better in 2016
2016 was an incredible year for technology, and for humanity.
Despite all the negative political-related news, there were 10 tech trends this year that positively transformed humanity.
For this “2017 Kick-Off” post, I reviewed 52 weeks...
The 6 Ds of Tech Disruption: A Guide to the Digital Economy
“The Six Ds are a chain reaction of technological progression, a road map of rapid development that always leads to enormous upheaval and opportunity.”
–Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Bold
We live in incredible times....
8 Ways AI Will Profoundly Change City Life by 2030
How will AI shape the average North American city by 2030? A panel of experts assembled as part of a century-long study into the impact of AI thinks its effects will be profound.
The One...
The Astonishing Healthcare Tech of the Future Is Arriving
This week in San Diego, Singularity University hosted its annual Exponential Medicine conference. The conference aims to connect the dots between healthcare disciplines and cutting-edge tech by convening medical practitioners, technologists, entrepreneurs, and over...
Massive Disruption Is Coming With Quantum Computing
Next year, we may see the launch of the first true quantum computers.
The implications will be staggering.
This post aims to answer three questions:
What are quantum computers?
What are their implications?
Who’s working on...
3 DNA Technologies That Will Forever Change Your Home Life
You’ve likely heard that the DNA revolution is here, but we’ve yet to see it manifest in our daily lives and homes.
Speaking at this year’s Exponential Medicine conference, Raymond McCauley talked about how our...
Designer Babies and the New Technology of Having Children
Recently, we looked at how exponential tech impacts sex and dating.
In this post, we'll look at:
Reproduction without sex
Freezing your eggs to extend your reproductive timeline
Designer babies
Making babies without eggs
Imagine a...
5 Tech Forces That Will Change Insurance for Good
Massive reductions in insurance costs are coming, along with a wave of disruption.
Traditionally, insurance premiums are determined by actuaries, a function of big numbers, statistics and probabilities.
That's what you have to do when you...
Cultured Meat Will Remain a Distant Dream Unless We Do These 4 Things
In 2013 the world’s first cell-cultured hamburger was cooked and tasted live on air.
Following that event, there have been many mentions of cultured meat in the media. With all this discussion and publicity, it’s easy...
3 Big Trends Shaking Up the Energy Industry
We are at the cusp of an energy revolution.
This post is a look at how three technologies — solar, batteries, and electric vehicles (EVs) — are poised to disrupt a $6 trillion energy industry over the...
7 Key Factors Driving the Artificial Intelligence Revolution
Under, behind and inside many of the apps we use every day, a revolution is underway. It's a revolution that started decades ago but today is empowering companies to deliver better, smarter services with greater ease...
8 Takes on the Rise of AI and Its Implications
In recent years, it's been exciting watching advances in AI like IBM's Watson smashing humans at Jeopardy and Google’s AlphaGo AI beating champions at the game of Go a decade earlier than expected. But the...
This Is the Tech That Will Make Learning as Addictive as Video Games
The way we learn today is just wrong.
Learning needs to be less like memorization, and more like…Angry Birds.
Half of school dropouts name boredom as the number one reason they left.
How do we get our kids to...
Exponential Finance 2016: How Tech Is Transforming Finance as We Know It
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance. Watch live as hundreds of the world’s leading investors, entrepreneurs and innovators gather in New York to define the future of...
Nanorobots: Where We Are Today and Why Their Future Has Amazing Potential
This post is a status update on one of the most powerful tools humanity will ever create: nanotechnology (or nanotech).
My goal here is to give you a quick overview of the work going on in...
These Five Exponential Trends Are Accelerating Robotics
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing summit.
If you've been staying on top of artificial intelligence news lately, you...
Solar Power Is Ready to Dominate Energy Thanks to New Tech
In the next 20 years, between 50 percent to 100 percent of the world's energy production could come from solar.
Today, the global oil and natural gas industry is about a $4 trillion business. It's big...
Ray Kurzweil Predicts Three Technologies Will Define Our Future
This is the last in a four-part series looking at the big ideas in Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near. Be sure to read the other articles:
Will the End of Moore’s Law Halt...
Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating — Because It Actually Is
This is the second in a four-part series looking at the big ideas in Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near. Be sure to read the other articles:
Will the End of Moore’s Law Halt Computing’s...
Robot Revolution: These Are the Breakthroughs You Should Watch
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once. This post (sixth in a series of seven) is a look at robotics. Be sure to read the first five posts if...
Will the End of Moore’s Law Halt Computing’s Exponential Rise?
This is the first in a four-part series looking at the big ideas in Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near. Be sure to read the other articles:
Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating — Because...
How 3D Printing Is Transforming the Way We Make Things
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once. This post (five of seven) is a look at 3D printing. Future posts will look at other tech areas, and be...
Drones Have Reached a Tipping Point—Here’s What Happens Next
Unexpected convergent consequences...this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once. This post (four of seven) is a look at drones. Future posts will look at other tech areas, and...
The Near Future of VR and AR: What You Need to Know
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.
This post (the third of seven) is a look at virtual and augmented reality. Future posts will look at...
Where Artificial Intelligence Is Now and What’s Just Around the Corner
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.
This post (the second of seven) is a look at artificial intelligence. Future posts will look at other tech...
When the World Is Wired: The Magic of the Internet of Everything
Unexpected convergent consequences: This is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.
An expert might be reasonably good at predicting the growth of a single exponential technology (e.g.,...
