Category: Change around us

radical changes taking place around us now

Privacy issues with cheap drones

Previously discussed the amazing stuff that little drones can do.

This week’s issue of The Economist has several great articles in the Technology Quarterly section.  One in particular that caught my eye – Unblinking eyes in the sky.

The article says drones that police might use for their operations will fit into the trunk of a car and can be had for the price of a police cruiser. Quite a bargain for surveillance in a crisis situation when you might otherwise need a helicopter which costs $1.7M to buy (according to the article) and require 1 pilot & 1 observer at operating cost of $5k or $10k an hour (my wild guess).

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U.S. energy independence on the horizon? Maybe soon.

An article from NPR, Is U.S. Energy Independence Finally Within Reach?, explains the impact of all the new drilling could be making theU.S. energy independent soon.

The article says:

Energy self-sufficiency is now in sight,” says energy economist Phil Verleger. He believes that within a decade, the U.S. will no longer need to import crude oil and will be a natural gas exporter

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Autonomous drones

Farhad Manjoo describes what a team at the University of Pennsylvania is doing with autonomous drones – the team calls them quadrotors – I Love You, Killer Robots

The drones are very small, autonomous and extremely nimble. They can determine location of nearby drones.

Check out the drones as they fly through windows at various angles:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=MvRTALJp8DM]

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As you laugh at those ridiculous predictions from 50 years ago, ponder how today’s predictions will look 50 years from now

Everyone knows those silly predictions from the 1950s are so ridiculously wrong.

There’s the old line about the world only needing a few computers. The quote as it usually provided is mentioned by friend John Bredehoft in his post Why Bad Predictions Happen (the ‘five computers’ prediction).

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

John questions who actually made the comment and whether it may have been made in the ’50s instead. Regardless, the point stands.  Do we really need more than 5 of those machines?

Since there are at least five computers in just my home that are more powerful than what was available in the 1950s, we can all chuckle away.  How silly he was.

John suggests we pause for a moment in our merriment:

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Here’s another cliff – volume of first class mail

Although not as impressive as the graph of newspaper ad revenue illustrated earlier, the graph of first-class mail processed by USPS is still a fairly imposing cliff. Wall Street Journal has the graph in their article Postal Cuts Are Dead Letter in Congress.

Peak in about 2001, slow decline through about 2007 and rapid decline since. Volume is about the same as in ’85 or ’86.

Check out that graph and you will see why the USPS has revenue problems.

Another description of change taking place – dematerialization

Dematerialization –stuff that used to take up physical space no longer needs physical space.

Matt Ridley summarizes a large component of the radical change surrounding us in terms of dematerialization. In his WSJ post, The Future Is So Bright, it’s Dematerializing, he says:

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Here’s what falling off a cliff looks like – inflation adjusted newspaper ad revenue

As usual, Dr. Mark Perry has the best graphs.

In Newspaper Ad Revenues Fall to 60-Yr. Low in 2011, he graphs advertising revenue for newspapers on an inflation adjusted basis from 1950 through 2010 (actual) with projection for 2011 through third quarter.

Wow.  So that is what it looks like for an entire industry to fall off a cliff.

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We can see the contours of the revolution in higher education

Transformation of the music industry is old news. Retail, publishing, and newspaper industries are changing before our very eyes.  The Wall Street Journal described that Target stores are now working to deal with the ‘showrooming’  factor in their stores. That’s the trend that is devastating big box electronic stores (Best Buy) and booksellers (remember Borders?).

Up next?  Well, maybe not next but soon, will be higher education.

Here’s three articles that paint the picture:

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Putting North Dakota oil production into perspective

Here are a few stats on energy production in North Dakota from Mark Perry’s post, North Dakota Sets More Oil Productions Records in November; Above 500k Daily Barrels for First Time:

I will rearrange his comments. All of the following are quotes:

Let’s look at oil production in North Dakota:

…doubled from 246,000 barrels per day two years ago

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Smartphone sales are looking like a Shuttle takeoff

Don’t quite know how to get my head around this.

Remember the view when the Shuttle engines and rockets lit off?  Millions of pounds of spaceship are up and outta’ here.  

In a flash it’s clear of the pad and a few moments later it’s miles high and hundreds of miles downrange.  Smartphone sales are on that kind of curve.

Mark Perry, at Carpe Diem, points to this article by E.D. Kain at Forbes:  Smartphone Shipments Top PCs For The First Time Ever.

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Fourty percent of U.S. military aircraft are drones

A report by Randy Nelson, Drones now account for one third of U.S. warplanes, says:

According to a new Congressional report, the country’s military now has 7,494 drone aircraft in use, compared to 10,767 traditional, manned planes.

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Yet another description of the exciting overall change surrounding us

An Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal describes yet one more view of the radical change surrounding us and the tremendous opportunities in our near future.

Mark P. Mills and Julio M Ottino discuss The Coming Tech-led Boom.

The causes of the transition and the reasons we should be optimistic about the future are familiar to me, and I hope to you as well if you’ve been reading this blog.

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Reshoring – huge opportunity if we want it and a skill-set challenge we can overcome

Manufacturing jobs keep coming back to the U.S.

Mark Perry points to an article in Financial Times, Business returns to US as Asia loses edge (free registration required).

Rapidly rising wages in China are changing the equation on where it makes sense to locate plants.  Here’s what that picture looks like, in a comment from Mr. Bruce Cochrane, who opened up a furniture plant in North Carolina. The FT article says:

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Fighting against overwhelming change is like taking a stand in quicksand

The change around us, in media, the flood of information, book publishing, nanotechnology, education, the economy in general, and even awareness of bad effects of poorly done international aid, is overwhelming.

In his post When the world changes… , Seth Godin says:

The history of media and technology is an endless series of failed rearguard actions as industry leaders attempt to solidify their positions on a bed of quicksand.

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