On a recent trip to London, it became clear that the British people are far less sensitive to surveillance cameras than we are in the U.S.

In fact, the number of cameras being installed in London is growing at a much faster rate than ever because homeowners are installing their own cheap security systems. Many people are genuinely scared and will share security camera footage on social media when the police don’t act fast enough. This is quite common.

In London, doorbell cameras and inexpensive DIY systems have become part of the overall surveillance network that is on track to exceed one million cameras by 2025.

Yet video cameras are only a small piece of the equation. Once we add sensor networks, audio recorders, sniffer tech, heat signature monitors, chemical analyzers, photoemission spectroscopy, thermal scanners, magnetometers, chromatography, and a wide variety of other forensic science tools to our street corners, flying drones, driverless cars, lamp posts, and sewer systems the amount of data we’ll be working with to better understand the nature of our cities will be staggering.

If we think of cities as living breathing organisms, where every facet of the city is expanding-contracting, flowing-trickling, inputting-outputting, and inhaling-exhaling, we begin to understand the dynamic nature of this kind of community.

There are lots of attributes that we’ll add to our wish list for the smart city of the future, but first and foremost, they will need to be “aware.” They’ll need to be aware of everything happening inside their borders. Awareness breeds responsibility and sets the stage for what comes next.

It’s all about flow. Smart cities will simultaneously aspire to be easy to live in, easy to work in, easy to travel in, and create easy ways to meet and connect with others.

At the same time, we’ll judge them by their liveliness, enthusiasm, vibrancy, spontaneity, impulsiveness, and their overarching aptitude for serendipity.

Not only will they need to offer great food and abundant forms of entertainment, but we will also want them to feel safe and free from criminal activity.

For business people, it’ll be a good investment. For talented people, it will have a way of amplifying their skills and abilities. And it will be both a great place to be a kid, and to raise a family.

Somehow a truly great smart city will not only make you feel like you’ve arrived, but it will just smell good, feel good, taste good, and have a way of exuding good karma!

Smart cities are all about the tools we have to work with!

Managing a Smart City through its Digital Twin

Cities will soon have their own fleets of drones, with scanning capabilities, to create digital models of their communities. As scanners, sensors, and resolutions improve, cities will begin creating increasingly functional digital twins of their streets, neighborhoods, and activity centers.

Having thousands of drones swarming over most metro areas on a daily basis may seem annoying at first, but the combination of new businesses, jobs, information, data analysis, new career paths, and added revenue streams will quickly turn most naysayers into strong industry advocates.

But for cities, digital twins will go much deeper than what’s viewable from above. This will mean digital twins of every power line, substation, sewage system, water line, emergency services system, Wi-Fi network, highway, security system, traffic control network, and much more. Done correctly, every problem will only be one or two clicks away from viewing on the digital twin master control center.

In short order, digital twins of cities will become treasure troves of data as the daily inflow and outflow of people, traffic, and weather become far better understood. This form of digital modeling will also give rise to search engines for the physical world.

Search Engines for the Physical World

Online search technology has framed much of our thinking around our ability to find things. In general, if it’s not digital and online, it’s not findable.

In the future, drones and sensors will replace much of the work of today’s web crawlers when it comes to defining our searchable universe.

Search technology will become far more sophisticated in the future. Soon we will be able to search on attributes like smells, tastes, harmonic vibration, textures, specific gravity, levels of reflectivity, and barometric pressures.

Over time, search engines will have the capability of finding virtually anything in either the digital or physical world.

We will soon see an explosion of smart city capabilities!

63 Examples of Smart City Capabilities

Most discussions about smart cities are masked in vague descriptions and ambiguous metaphors.

For this reason I’ve decided to put together a list of potential capabilities that smart cities could develop. With each of the items listed below, it’s easy to view them through the “too-intrusive lens” or “if this happens I’m leaving lens,” but every community will have the ability to determine their own feature sets, and how acceptable they’ll be to their constituents.

With the right kinds of sensors and technology, all of these questions can be answered.

Smart air monitoring systems

1. Full spectrum air monitoring to detect new forms of pollution, disease, toxic chemicals, insects, and other airborne issues.
2. Are telecom signals reaching dangerous levels?
3. What are the most dangerous allergens currently floating in the air and when do they pose a serious danger?
4. How have oxygen and CO2 levels changed?
5. Where is the source of air-flutters or air disturbances?
6. What is the source of specific kinds of air pollution?

Smart playgrounds

7. Monitor possible surface contaminants.
8. Scan for presence of animal feces, insects, snakes, and rodents.
9. Signal alerts for emergency situations, injuries, child abandonment, etc.
10. Are surface temperatures too hot or too cold?
11. Has there been any signs of vandalism?
12. Are the restrooms in safe and working order?

Smart transportation networks

13. Continually check for animals, birds, or other irregular objects that will interfere with the flow of traffic.
14. Automatically reroute traffic around problem areas.
15. Where are the wait times the longest?

Monitoring bird flow

19. Is the overall bird population going up or going down?
20. Are they flying higher or lower?
21. How have migratory patterns changed?
22. How has the mix of bird species change?
23. What abnormalities are showing up and why?
24. What is the overarching reason for these changes?

Smart delivery networks

25. The primary objective for smart delivery networks will be to automatically find the fastest delivery route.
26. Are there any dogs, trees, steps, or potholes that will interfere with a delivery?
27. Have there been any people or kids “messing” with deliveries in the area?
28. How have delivery times changed over the past week, month, year?
29. How long do packages typically remain outside before they’re taken inside?
30. What abnormalities are showing up that require further investigation?

Smart policing, fire protection, and emergency rescue

31. Whenever an emergency call comes in, first responders will activate their fleet of drones to “get eyes on it.”
32. When someone hits the emergency button in an autonomous vehicle, EMTs will quickly respond.
33. Monitoring systems that gauge unusual ground tremors can be used to better anticipate earthquakes and volcanic activity.

Smart street lights

34. Smart streetlights will use a variety of sensors to monitor light, heat, wind, sound, moisture, pollution, magnetic pulses, harmonic vibrations, barometric pressures, and much more.
35. They will automatically change color spectrum to help people in rain, fog, full moon, etc.
36. Auto dimming will be used to let neighborhoods “go to sleep”.
37. What buildings and structures show the greatest heat loss in cold weather?

Mosquito tracking

38. Is the overall mosquito population going up or down?
39. How effective have recent efforts to control mosquitoes?
40. What new species are showing up and why?
41. What is the primary breeding source and how has that changed from year to year?
42. What diseases are they carrying and how has that changed?
43. What are the most dangerous areas of the city today?

Noise monitoring

44. Our world is filled with very distinct sounds and things like gunshots, screams, collapsing structures, and rushing water should all prompt further investigation.
45. Pinpointing the source of noise violations.
46. How has the mix of electric vs. gas-powered vehicles changed over the years?
47. Does the howling of wolves, coyotes, or other predatory animals mean that more have moved into the area? Should neighborhoods be notified?

Sewer analysis

48. Analyze urine and stool samples for abnormalities in color, consistency, volume and frequency.
49. How have people‘s diets changed?
50. What new pharmaceuticals are showing up in the sewer system?
51. Are there any traces of parasites, infectious diseases, blood, sugar, or illegal narcotics?
52. Are there any biomarkers present like urobilin, azithromycin, or sterols showing possible sewage contamination?
53. How has the volume of waste changed both seasonally & annually?

Sniffer tech

54. Sniffer tech will be used to detect the presence of a fire much like a community smoke detector.
55. Triangulate the source of toxic and pungent emissions.
56. How has the air quality changed and can it be tied to the weather?
57. Much like a bloodhound, precision sniffer tech can follow the trail of both a suspect and a victim.
58. It will also be used to track pollen levels, radon, ozone, and other forms of airborne pollution.

Landfill trackers

59. How has the volume of waste entering the landfill changed over time?
60. How has the mix between biodegradable vs. non-biodegradable trash changed?
61. What toxic materials are ending up in the landfills and what are their sources?
62. Testing for urine or bladder infections.
63. Detect early signs of chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, or even highly contagious diseases like Ebola.

Our ongoing struggle to balance privacy with security and convenience continues!

Final Thoughts

Our idea of what a smart city is today will undoubtedly morph and shift over the coming decades.

To be sure, data privacy will be an ongoing issue. Smart cities are essentially radiating information and it is up to us to determine the best way to protect residents when the probing and analysis becomes too intrusive.

Data privacy and security issues are more sensitive in some settings than others, and privacy is only part of the equation. If we think of this issue as a three-legged stool, we quickly realize that we have to balance privacy with security and convenience.

Some initiatives such as coordinated traffic lights are high on convenience and low on privacy issues, making them no-brainers. Others, such as tracking people through private businesses will provoke a backlash because they undermine the need for business secrecy in private spaces.

If poisonous fruit has made its way into some of the local grocery stores, people will want to know instantly. This is the same if local mosquitoes are found carrying a dangerous virus.

Competing WITH privacy is far different than competing AGAINST privacy. When we add intelligence to our homes, communities, and our cities, we face a whole new set of decisions to determine the best path forward.

As humans, we are obsessed with trying new things, pushing the boundaries, and testing our limits just to make a difference.

In the end, every capability our smart cities have will come down to our own human-centered value systems and how it will prepare us for a better future ahead.

Read this Blog in Russian

The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage and protect human ingenuity.

For this reason, intellectual property has become a continually evolving form of public policy where the rights associated with human creativity necessarily have to change along with our “tools of creation.”

However, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, we have moved from an era of change to an era of disruption, where we now face some challenging times ahead.

It occurred to me that we will soon be able to create 3D images of any person from online photos. AI systems will be able to scan online photos of any individual and use the two dimensional information to auto-generate three digital models.

Thinking through this, these 3D models can take the form of holograms, videos, mixed reality, animations, physical sculptures, and even future algorithms for human cloning.

Making a statue will be as simple as feeding the digital model into a 3D printer to produce a physical sculpture.

Over time these models will become more lifelike and can be inserted into a variety of scenes such as playing sports, fighting battles, or something gruesome like killing people or animals.

The potential for fake news is off the charts.

That’s right, any person will run the risk of having their life turned upside down by a set of compelling images that leave all remnants of truth far behind.

The art world is filled with colorful people who are often rewarded for pushing the limits and creating shock value to sell whatever they’re selling. This could become an enormously problematic issue.

Who owns the copyright of a photograph?

The wildlife photographer who snaps the photo can claim ownership when a website publishes the photo without his permission. Under U.S. law, the copyright of a photograph is the property of the person who presses the shutter on the camera — not the person who owns the camera, and not even the person in the photo.

Yet, you can’t use someone’s likeness for commercial purposes without their express permission. This means you can’t take a picture in a public place with recognizable faces and sell it to General Motors, Pizza Hut or a stock photo company. But you can sell them to news organizations or use them for art.

This naturally brings up questions about whether or not you actually own your own likeness, and can control your own legacy?

Do you own your likeness?

In the U.S. a person can be sued for using someone else’s name, likeness, or personal attributes without permission.

The right of publicity, often called personality rights, is the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her name, image, likeness, or other undeniable aspects of their identity. Since it’s considered a property right, it can survive the death of the individual.

However, as new technology comes into play, and images of ourselves become more pervasive, we run the risk of facing an entire new set of never-before-confronted intellectual property issues.

Here are the questions creative people will be asking:

If I alter the likeness by 10%-15%, will that be sufficient to claim it’s a non-descript person?
Will it be possible to create software that can certify that a likeness has been sufficiently altered to pass the test?

Unchartered Territory for Both AI and IP

At the forefront of this transition are a number of emerging technologies, and rest assured, I’m just scratching the surface of challenging issues ahead. The technologies listed below are just a few that come to mind, and yes there will be many more to come.

While many of the issues listed below are not specifically directed towards AI, the overall pervasiveness of future AI will make it a contributing factor.

Driverless Technologies

Within ten years it will be common to hale a driverless car on our smartphones, much like we do with Uber and Lyft today. But the data surrounding both the transaction and inside-the-car activities have great value.
1. Can autonomous car companies sell photos of occupants, announce when famous people will be arriving somewhere, or monitor if riders may be doing something illegal?
2. How much data surrounding the trip can car companies collect? (i.e. ages of occupants, music listened to on the trip, hair colors, eye colors, style of clothing, heart rates, and how many times riders use words like “totally” and “sweet”).
3. Will riders automatically waive their rights to avoid advertisements? Do they have the right to ride in an ad-free environment?
4. With competition coming on many fronts, how much of the “ride experience” will car companies be able to protect? Will they be able to patent, copyright, or trademark the level of privacy, its sound, texture, smell, taste, or harmonic vibration of the ride?

Future Search Engines

In the grand scheme of things, search engines are still a prehistoric technology. Quantum computing will soon enable us to define, test, and search for a variety of new physical and digital attributes. These include attributes like smells, tastes, barometric pressure, harmonic vibration, reflectivity, textures, and specific gravity.
5. When it comes to definable sensory creations like tastes and smells, will we soon be able to protect them with patents, trademarks, copyrights, or something else?

6. Can other definable attributes like harmonic vibration, reflectivity, and textures also be trademarked in a form similar to “sonic branding?”

7. How long will it be before we create “attribute scanners” to log our daily experiences in a way that will also make them searchable?

8. When will we see an artificial nose more accurate than a bloodhound? How long before someone creates the periodic table of smells?

Sensor Networks

Over a trillion sensors are predicted to be collecting and distributing information over the next decade.
9. Do we have the right to control, monitor, and delete data collected from our personal sensors? (i.e. When we buy sensor-infused clothing in the future, it may already come with a built-in data distribution network that we automatically agree to with the purchase.)
10. More data means more definition. Will we soon be able to trademark our signature personality traits like our dance moves, hand gestures, ear wiggle, or laugh?
11. Once we start tagging valuable objects, vehicles, and devices that we own, how will we prevent our “ownership network” from being hacked, monitored, or outright stolen from us?
12. What exactly will ownership mean in an era where physical products are replaced by digital ones and our ability to share, distribute, assign, and license are just a tiny fragment of the options available through our constantly morphing digital rights?

Internet of Things

As I like to say, the Internet of Things is all about “devices talking to devices, talking trash about other devices, spreading rumors and lies about other devices.” Naturally this leaves us with a few questions.
13. When we own a smart refrigerator, do our health and life insurance companies have the right to monitor our diets and feed the data into their latest actuarial tables?
14. If we use “mood-casters” to interface with the buildings around us, can the meta-data surrounding our attitudes and temperaments be scraped, used, and repurposed by building owners and neighboring occupants?
15. Will my IoT devices become searchable? Yes, being able to search the contents of my refrigerator while I’m at the grocery store may be convenient, but it also has the potential for being hi-jacked by marketing companies, headhunters, and political adversaries.
16. Does my IoT pot have the right to call my IoT kettle black?

3D Scanning & Printing

With changes happening almost on a minute-by-minute basis, the 3D printing industry is on the verge of becoming one of the largest industries on the planet.
17. Who owns the rights to our digitally scanned bodies? Who else can and will have access to them?
18. Will someone who wants to buy me a pair of hyper-personalized shoes as a present have access to my foot-scans? Will this type of permission also give access to other marketing companies?
19. When I grow older and 3D printed organs, body parts, and entire replacement bodies become available, will I be buying or licensing the replacement body parts? Can they be repossessed for lack of payment?
20. Having doctors monitor our replacement body parts remotely may sound convenient, but who will have access to the data? And will there be an off switch?

Contour Crafting

Created as a large-scale form of 3D printing, contour crafting is now viewed as a disruptive technology poised to revamp the entire construction industry.
21. What features in a printed house will be patentable? Printed cabinets? Printed insulation? Artistic walls? Printed solar roofs?
22. What tools will designers use to protect unique features such as lighting and audio configurations, elevator styles, sensor networks, and the operational characteristics of appliances?

Flying, Driving, Swimming, Crawling Drones

While flying drones are constantly in the news, drones are robotic vehicles with far more capabilities than simply flying. They can also roll along the ground, stick to the side of a building, float in a river, dive under water, jump onto a building, climb a tree, or attach themselves like parasites to the sides of trains, ships, and airplanes. Future drones will be designed with a wide range of complex capabilities, and these capabilities will dramatically change our understanding of privacy, personal space, and proximity-based rights.
23. Who owns information collected by drones, and who else will have access?
24. Does an open window somehow mean that it’s a public place and drones can fly in? Where do property lines begin and end? Where does personal space end and public space begin?
25. Will people have the right to “shoot down” or otherwise destroy unlicensed or “trespassing” drones?
26. What are the legal privacy barriers that will protect people from drones with cameras and audio scanning capabilities as well as drones equipped with a variety of other types of sensors? Should we have a Drone Bill of Rights?

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Both VR and AR are Internet-sized opportunities on the verge of exploding around us.
27. Do “real world” augmented reality game designers have the right to include the general public as unwitting participants in their games?
28. Who owns the “reaction data” in VR simulations? How a person reacts to specific situations can be incredibly valuable data.
29. Will VR experiences be patentable, copyrightable, or protectable in any way?
30. What is the proper term for a VR creation – a video, a game, a simulation, an experience, or something else?

Artificial Intelligence

With A.I. we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. Microsoft even claims to have breakthrough A.I. technology for reprogramming cells back to a healthy state, and has announced they will be able to cure cancer in less than 10 years.
31. Will AI systems replace our need for human drivers, musicians, and doctors?
32. Can we reprogram our cells to cure most major diseases as Microsoft and others have proposed?
33. Will we “buy” the cure or just “license” it? Can we “gift” it to others?
34. Can an A.I. “entity” be copyrighted, trademarked, licensed, or sold?

Final Thoughts

Thomas Edison had enough clout to get Nikola Tesla eliminated from most history books. How many other people has this happened to?

Will people in the future have their legacy destroyed by historical revisionists with thousands of new tools like VR, AR, life-distorting videos?

How do we manage our own legacy if everything about us can be changed after we die?

Since dead people make great scapegoats, how do we protect the luminaries and past giants in our fields from having their accomplishments raided and reattributed to the living? If you don’t think this will become a problem, you haven’t been paying attention.

Yes, blockchain may be a solution, but only if it can be implemented fast enough.

While we will likely have a bright future ahead, our challenges should never be underestimated.

Russian Translation

When it comes to innovation it’s always hard to point to that exact moment when an invention, contribution, or individual caused the course of history to change.

But there’s something about the right combination of ideas, technology, and personalities that creates a new force of nature.

Most of it is driven by unsung heroes, slaving over a project or detail that virtually no one will ever know about, forsaking family and friends, working past the point of exhaustion, putting their own creativity to the test, for an accomplishment that can neither be explained or demonstrated.

But somehow it makes a difference.

It makes a difference to them and the next unsung hero who gets handed the same spark-of-ingenuity and is tasked with moving the innovation needle another millimeter along the path of progress.

That’s what happened in 1852 when Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator, an elevator that automatically comes to a halt if the hoisting rope broke. This one breakthrough opened the door for high-rise building to be erected all over the world.

That’s also what happened in 1950 when Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider devised a way of using a small cardboard card to pay their bill at a restaurant. This insignificant transaction is what launched Diners Club and paved the way for today’s massive credit card industry.

It happened again in 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee, sitting in his laboratory in CERN Switzerland, developed HTML, URI, and HTTP, some of the critical pieces for launching the World Wide Web.

However, each of these turning points in history were built on the work of hundreds of people, and thousands of minor accomplishments, leading up to the point of their contribution.

Once the Internet was formed, the network itself became a massive platform upon which millions of new innovations could spring to life. As a networking platform, every new application can be hung like ornaments on a Christmas tree, to add additional capabilities.

In a connected digital environment, innovation is parsed into far smaller pieces, enabling even more people to contribute.

In 2007, the introduction of the iPhone paved the way for a massive app-building community that has made smartphones an essential part of everyday living.

Today we are witnessing the convergence of technologies that are forming several new platforms, each with the potential to grow exponentially into an Internet-sized opportunity.

Meet the New Kids on the Block

Most people are aware of these technologies, having heard the buzz in the news media, but few are actually viewing them as massive growth engines with the same explosive potential as the Internet.

Many of these started long before we ever heard of the Internet, but the Internet is what’s given birth to a host of new turbo-charged offspring.

Over the coming years we will hear about things like cross-platform connectedness, interoperability, and operating system wars. But in the end everything is connected. We’re moving from a connected world to a super-connected world, and we’re just getting started.

Here’s a look at the new kids on the block.

1.) Trillion-Sensor Network

When Janusz Bryzek, VP of Fairchild Semiconductor first presented the idea of a trillion sensor summit, the prospects of growing and managing that size of sensor network seemed like a far off dream.

However, the mobile market is a bullet train for the sensor industry. With the number of sensors doubling every 4 years in smartphones, reaching upwards of 80 per phone by 2024, and the sale of smartphones projected to reach 2.5 billion annually, this one industry alone could account for more than 200 billion sensors per year in less than eight years.

As the sensors grow ever cheaper, and the network grows ever larger, the more data we as individuals, professionals, companies and governments will collect and analyze to make ever more intelligent decisions.

Sensors that measure heat, light, moisture, movement and thousands of other attributes will shrink to dust-sized particles and be imbedded in coating like paint and powder coating, planted with our crops, sewn into our clothing, and 3D printed into products to add tiny bits of information to virtually ever surface around us.

More importantly, the sensor industry is paving the way for the Internet of Things.

2.) Internet of Things

One day soon, we will wake up and wonder how we ever survived in a world of ‘dumb’ disconnected things. Our homes, including our pantries, closets and shoe racks, our offices, factories and vehicles will be full of connected devices.

The World Economic Forum estimates that the number of connected devices will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.6% over the next four years from 22.9 billion in 2016 to a headline-grabbing 50.1 billion by 2020 – equivalent to almost five connected devices for every person on the planet.

But we’re just getting started. As an industry, the Internet of Things will work closely with the 3D printing industry to make all of our products smart-products.

3.) 3D Printing

Exponential growth in 3D printing is being fueled by improvements in scanning, materials, and multi-material print capabilities.

3D printing already appeals to artists, architects, inventors and other creatives who need an easy method of prototyping or modeling.

The reach of 3D printers extends far beyond that. While the printing process today is slow, tomorrow’s machines will be designed as full production models where virtually anything can be produced cheaply and in large quantities eliminating the need for overseas manufacturing. 3D printing will support a diverse range of other applications including medicine, fashion, and even food, if you are into artistically designed highly processed meals.

The industry will continue developing. On the consumer front, lower prices will make 3D printers more attractive and improvements in quality, speed and safety will further the cause.

4.) Contour Crafting

Many people tend to dismiss contour crafting as the grown up version of 3D printing for building houses, but it ends up being a completely different industry with vastly different enablers and growth curves.

Next generation contour crafting will be far more than just printing the structure. Multi-material machines will print the wiring and plumbing in the walls, cabinets and fixtures in the kitchen, and toilets and sinks in the bathroom.

We will no longer have the need for flat walls. Every wall can be an artistic centerpiece.

Our very definition of what a house, condo, or office is will begin to change once we begin to explore the full potential of this technology.

Architects will go crazy with their ability to create freeform designs impossible to build with today’s construction methods.

Over the coming months we’ll see headlines lauding the worlds first “printed” post office, hospital, school, hotel, and baseball stadium.

5.) Virtual and Augmented Reality

References to VR go back over 80 years, and AR about 50 years, but the term “virtual reality” started making its way into modern culture in the 1980s due to Jaron Lanier, one of the modern pioneers of the field.

However, it wasn’t until Facebook bought Oculus in March 2014 that the entire world started taking notice.

While VR itself is a technology platform, it has taken many years for all the necessary pieces to come together to create the exponential explosion that is about to happen. The enabling tech convergence is being driven by our growing bandwidths, networks, and VR equipment that is both reasonably priced and sufficiently high resolution to create a mass consumer market.

VR and AR applications are about to touch every industry today including architecture, gaming, education, physical therapy, entertainment, sports, communications, and much more.

6.) Flying Drones

When I wrote my column on 192 Future Uses for Flying Drones in 2014, it was intended to spark people’s imagination.

At the time I hadn’t really given much thought to the driving, swimming, climbing, rolling, jumping, surfing, and digging drones that have begun to dot the emerging technology landscape.

Any combination of movement and automation can be used to develop of whole new range of capabilities for next generation robotic vehicles.

By 2030 the drone industry will have splintered into multiple new industries with abilities impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point.

7.) Driverless Technologies

Imagine stepping out of your house 15 years from now and using your smartphone to summon a driverless vehicle. Within 2-3 minutes a driverless vehicle arrives and whisks you off to work, school, shopping, or wherever you want to go.

A form of on-demand transportation is already happening with companies like Uber and Lyft. If we eliminate the driver, costs will plummet.

Once the technology is perfected, on-demand transportation companies will crop up in most metropolitan areas with large fleets of vehicles poised to meet consumer demand.

There’s a significant difference between a driverless car and a fully autonomous vehicle. We already have a number of vehicles on the road today with driverless features, but that’s only a small step towards the no-steering-wheel type of driverless car many are imagining.

As we move further into the fully autonomous car era, we also need to understand the distinction between “user-operated” and “completely driverless” vehicles. Because of regulatory and insurance issues, user-operated fully autonomous cars will come to market within the next five years, while complete autonomous driverless autos will remain further off.

As I’ve said many times, driverless cars will change transportation more dramatically than the invention of the automobile itself.

8.) Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has a magical element to it because we still don’t know where its capabilities end.

As example, AI music is coming. We won’t need musician to write new music, AI can do it all by itself.

Very soon we’ll have all-AI music stations on the radio and AI background music playing at parties. ASCAP can try to collect all the royalties they want, but they’ll soon be out of business.

In much the same way, computers have beaten chess, Jeopardy, and Alpha Go champions, AI will soon out-write writers, out-art artists, and out-produce movie producers.

That doesn’t mean we’ll all rush to buy AI produced products, but at this point we don’t know.

It does mean that AI will be entering our lives in thousands of different ways, and it will eliminate tons of jobs along the way.

Final Thoughts

So if these eight technologies are driving the next wave of innovation, what comes after them?

Rest assured there are a large number of equally transformative technologies already percolating their way to the top. Some may even grow faster and more explosively than the list above.

Keep an eye on things like blockchain technologies, synthetic biology, quantum computing, super materials (graphene, stanene), tube transportation (ET3 & Hyperloop), bioengineering (CRISPR), DNA sequencing, chatbots, neuroengineering, quantum computing, atmospheric energy harvesting, near-earth satellite tech (project Loon, Aquila, Titan), robotics, neural user interfaces, and mass energy storage.

The next generation of transformative technologies may be exponentially larger, possible 32 or 64 of them happening simultaneously.

Going back to the Christmas tree analogy, tiny improvements will be hung like ornaments on each of the new platforms, causing them to scale far faster than ever before.

If you think we’re going to run out of work anytime soon, think again. We’re about to enter a period of severe talent shortages. But since, future jobs will bear little resemblance to our jobs today, only the super adaptable need apply.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions Transforming Your Future