The importance of imagining the future
Nanotechnology will make space elevators viable in a few years
If you’re in technology and you don’t think about the future – like *all* the time – then something’s probably wrong with you. The future is coming at us fast. And I don’t mean that in the sense of the Sardarji who wasn’t worried about his 14 year prison sentence since, “Koi gal naieen, 14 saal tey do mintaa’n ich guzar jaan gey“. I mean it in the sense that innovation in many important and varied areas is unfolding at a far more rapid pace than ever before. You’ll understand this well if you’re up to speed with any of Ray Kurzweil’s writings, are a Hans Moravec aficionado, an Eric Drexler fan, or even a student of the wider consequences of Moore’s law.
Many of the things that will exist in future will result from parallel technological paths merging to form unique devices, technologies and environments. For instance, nano applications in battery, CPU and screen technology, combined with a software mastery of vision and speech recognition, strung together with gesture based interfaces and large-format interactive displays. What does the fusion of these imminent developments look like?
I imagine the future all the time, and I often use my conclusions about the future to make decisions in the present. Is a new product in a particular area of technology worth funding and building? It’ll take us a year to get to a stable product and another year to get the word out, but due to expected enhancements in commercial off the shelf, stock technology, 24 months down the road there’ll likely be a standardized, cheap alternative. Why even bother? If software compression is going to be good enough in two years because 80 core Intel CPUs will be available, why even go down the path of creating a compression ASIC? The examples go on and on… but the point is, thinking about the future seriously and in a “deep” way is absolutely critical to effective decision making. And frankly, even to engendering a sense of balance in yourself about larger issues concerning life, the world and humanity. In fact, the reason why I believe Pakistan has already won the “battle” it’s been waging for the past 3 years and is now on an inalterable trajectory towards greatness – a revolutionary improvement in its development indicators, economy, technology and the standard of living of its people – has to do with how I see the future materializing… not based on gut, but rather on an analysis of dozens if not hunderds of well understood and well documented variables, each with their own trajectory, all moving together in synch, pointing to a future that is almost unavoidable.
But that’s another post. And it’ll have to be a multi-parter probably.
For now, I just want to share with you some “third-party” visions of the future. Take a look and be amazed, because this is all coming to pass. Soon. Don’t let it catch you by surprise!
Microsoft’s Vision 2019
Future landscapes, energy generation, robotics and more
Nokia’s Nanotech inspired future
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
the question is, “Where does Pakistan stand in the midst of this technological revolution?”
Can we produce chips, processors, ASICs, graphics cards, or hardware? I know Palmchip opened a design/production center in Pakistan a few years ago. There isn’t much to see on the civilian side, however, I do know that there is a lot of stuff going on in the military-industrial complex. I know AWC (Air Weapons Complex) has a lot of stuff going on in hardware.
Also, do we have the software engineers that can write and develop complex software? Where do our universities stand, when it comes to quality education? NUST has the highest ranking in the Top 500, at #376. How many engineers can our universities produce? More importantly, I think we should also highlight the lack of industry in Pakistan.
Ever since Bhutto embarked on his massive nationalization campaign, Pakistan’s industrial backbone has been broken. this explains the massive brain drain our country has been going through the last 20-30 years. this explains why most Pakistani’s run away to the US, UK, and Canada, it’s because they won’t find jobs here. the previous government finally took a step to correct that problem by promoting entrepreneurship.
I can only give credit for whatever little development we have had to former President Musharraf. at least during his time, we had a clear sense of direction. Our universities had something to work towards. Now, the goverment has cut off funding to our universities, public development, and even our nuclear program. I think Pakistan needs to learn a good long lesson for what it has brought back, democracy. I haven’t even seen this government take a single step to promote the new-born IT industry.
May 24th, 2009 at 12:36 am
nautilus, there is quite a bit happening in Pakistan, but obviously, I would love to see even more happen… nonetheless, here’s a brief list:
1) FiveRivers’ Sirius handheld computer – http://www.fiveriverstech.com
2) Extensive UAV industry and associated software/electronics (civil and military) – http://techlahore.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/pakistans-growing-software-expertise-increasing-its-defence-capabilities/
3) Pakistan-owned Jointech’s Windows CE based laptop (designed in Pk) – http://www.jointech.com.hk/products_JL7200.html
4) Mentor Graphics hardware design center – Lahore based
5) As you mentioned, PalmChip’s Pakistan based design center
6) FPGA research at LUMS, SAHICS (BCCI FAST), GIKI, NUST, PIEAS and pretty much everywhere else. This is important, because if you can’t produce an ASIC, configuring an FPGA is “Second best”. If the application proves itself out and there is high-volume demand, you can always get an ASIC produced.
7) Karachi based company, DigiTek, developing FPGA based products in Pakistan – http://www.digitekeng.com/2.html
8 ) Some of the hardware research at PIEAS is yielding interesting publications, e.g. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1564771
9) There are numerous Digital Quran manufacturers HQ’d out of Pakistan with all the hardware and software development being done in Pk, and manufacturing outsourced to China. Here’s one example: http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/101163967/Digital_Quran_Idq_718_Large_2.html
10) ASIC design at CARE Pakistan – http://www.carepvtltd.com/
11) Streaming Networks based in Islamabad, where all their development occurs (video phones, video surveillance etc.) – http://www.streaming-networks.com/
I can go on and on, but hopefully this will be enough for now…
May 24th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
thanks for bringing those to my attention, although I already knew of many of these companies and projects at universities. The problem is, they have all been doing what they currently doing right now for some time. I don’t see any growth in the hardware industry, we are only continuing production of what little we have developed. I hope that our hardware industry increases in size, hopefully one day, we may even be producing chips. this may sound impossible, but there is a lot going in the military sector due to the need of electronics for weapon systems.
the key to promoting this industry is through our universities. yet when funding is cut off and there is barely enough money for R&D, I don’t see that growth taking place. I hope that the goverment gets its act together.
May 24th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
to further add, what has happened to the nanotechnology industry we were rushing to create a few years ago? how has that turned out?
May 24th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
There has been no growth in the hardware industry globally for the past couple of years. The PC industry has actually shrunk quite significantly. We will have to wait for industry growth in order to leverage increased hardware/design outsourcing opportunities.
As for local products with a primarily domestic or regional market, i.e. the e-quran or the various local GPS-based fleet tracking systems, those have all grown at decent percentages for the past 2-3 years in Pakistan, despite the global recession.