Thoughts on Industries of the Future

This was the most important book that I think I’ve read ever.

The author, Alec Ross, worked for Hillary Clinton, basically traveling around the world, learning about innovation and political/economic structures as they relate to development and preparation for the future within just about every country.

He put together this book that discusses what he has found as the most important industries and changes that are coming in the future. It came with trends, rational reasons as to why the world is moving in the directions he claims, and he kept things in laments terms.

Given that it was a relatively short book, he did not dive super deeply into the specifics of the industries, nor did he totally cover the economic impacts that they might have. Nonetheless, it was amazing as a general overview of where things are likely headed.

I learned so much and would super recommend this book to everyone.

Someone I remember mentioned this idea to me of buying one book in bulk that he resonated with a lot and he gave it out to a bunch of people. I think this might be that book for me.

Different industries

Ross talked about robotics, genomics, currency and markets, cyber security, big data, geography of future markets, and globalization.

I won’t dive into each too much, but for a glimpse.

Robotics

He looked at the widespread use of robots and their already rapid growth.

For example, right now, 25% of the Japanese population is 65+ and in 2050, that number will be 40%. They will need an additional 2.6M workers to help these people with living. But, they are the leading producer of robotics, and Ross thinks that robots will help care for many of these people. The tech is coming along to the point in which they could help with entertainment, hygenic care, and almost everything else.

You could also look at all of the service and industrial industries, where having robots take your orders and help in factories will dramatically reduce costs.

There are of course ethical and philisophical arguments behind all of this, but I believe that robots will get to the point where they are high-quality enough and cheap enough, that it will make a lot of financial sense to impliment them more.

The next question becomes, what happens with all of those jobs? Ross doesn’t answer it too much.

Genomics

The gist is that we will have some very important ethical questions to ask ourselves in regards to changing our genome and pre determinism and so forth.

This rise in bio-related things will also have dramatic health benefits. They are working on planting human organs in other animals (like pigs), so that we can use those organs when needed, which is crazy. They have also been doing tests to catch cancer earlier on.

A huge thing that stuck out was that 95% of stage 1 cancer is treated, while only 5% of stage 4 cancer is treated. There is a new genome test that catches 47% of stage 1 cancer. It is not, yet, cheap enough for widespread use, but the idea is that it will eventually be taken every year when we have our check up with the doctor. That will dramatically increase the chance that we find cancers.

The ethical questions about gene sequencing and editing provide an entire different discussion.

Currency & markets

He talks about how online payment systems can help eliminate corruption across the world.

One interesting thing he pointed out was this huge rise in use of cell phones in Africa. The percentage of people using them has risen to 80% by the time of his writing. Even in communities where they struggle to find food and shelter, they have mobile phones. At first, you’d think why?? But he points out that when family members leave the town to go find food or for another reason, then without a mobile phone, they sometimes will not be able to find their family. Especially the case when people are being displaced.

He also talked a bit about cryptocurrency.

It was in this section that I saw more of the benefits of online payment systems and the ways that markets are going to adapt to increase quality of life in third world countries.

Cyber

This was a scary section because of how serious the threat is of cyber attacks.

The market for cybersecurity was $3.5B in 2000 and it is expected to be $170B by 2020. There are $400B worth of cyber security attacks each year.

Ross talks about the types of cyber attacks that exist, the impact that they will have and which countries have been on the giving end of many of these attacks (Russia and China).

Something I did not know is that China is attacking major US corporations for Intellectual Property information. Ross said that there is $300B worth of IP damage from China each year!

There are very few laws in the cyber space and of course China denies wrongdoing here. Given how connected all of our lives are going to be to the internet (from cars to houses to factories) in the future, these attacks could have real scary consequences. Plus, they can come from anyone/anywhere. While only 10 countries have nuclear power and we can see who they were, anybody could initialize cyber security attacks and even pretend like it was coming from a different place.

This made me also realize that any young person that is interested in it should totally pursue cybersecurity because there is so much job opportunity, chance to work on meaningful problems and lots of $.

Big Data

He looked into how big data and algorithms are going to dramatically help us feed our growing population (with more efficient agriculture), how they will change the banking space, and he dove into many other cases.

This is the stuff that will begin to transform industries, but we have to be very careful with the models that we use.

Globalization

He looked at what different countries are doing to prepare for the future and encourage or discourage innovation.

He asks whether innovation will stay with the largest hubs like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, or whether it will spread to many different places. He offers both sides of the argument.

He briefly talks about most regions across the world and their economic/political potential.

Overall

Super thought provoking book that I loved.

Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)

Full reading list here