An interesting talk by the Managing Director of Daimler Benz, Ola Kallenius, was a bit mind blowing really. He predicted an interesting concept of what could lie ahead.



In the presentation, he said Mercedes Benz competitors are no longer other car companies except for Tesla (obvious).



Google, Apple, Amazon, 'et -al' are now the competition.

There have always been the 3 constants ... Death, Taxes and CHANGE!

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool. They don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence:
Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (for more or less basic stuff, at least for now) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps doctors in diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.

In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars:

In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for
that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.



1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.



Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhoods.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health:

The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies that will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free.
Goodbye, medical establishment.

3D printing:

The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.



Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning
possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

In China, already developers have 3D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities:

If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work:

70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture:



There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surface is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups that will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you're in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they're telling the truth and when they're not. Bitcoin may even become the default reserve currency. Of the world!

Longevity:

Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long time, probably way more than 100.

Education:

The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Every child can use the free Khan academy internet programs for everything he or she needs to learn at school in First World countries. There have already been releases of software in Indonesia and soon there will be releases in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer. I can see enormous potential if we give the English app for free, so that children in Africa and everywhere else can become fluent in English and that could happen within half a year.

Expect big changes in this world in the near future.

Do you have a link to this. Thanks

I will see if my Bud that emailed this to me will send it to me.

tag

Thanks

we've got the new mercedes stadium in atlanta. it'll be the site of the SEC playoff championship on saturday, etc. all one has to do is fight one's way through the neighborhoods to get there, and back out. strange what outcomes that big money can cause to occur.

i'm surprised he didn't mention the emergence of fast-trains. maybe he's not invested in them?

tag

Lyft, Uber, et. al. will obviate the need for mass transit, including fast trains.

RS

I think some skepticism is in order. Like, is the Whole Foods crowd really going to buy petri-dish veal?

The Guy is a visionary I tell you LMFAO. I started out in IT over 30 years ago and the IBM midrange computer I worked on had 512 MB of memory..It took up a small room to run. Think about that for a second. That CEO is just stating the obvious.

Here you go:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interesting-talk-md-daimler-benz-jonathan-brathwaite

This is an interesting talk about the future of solar energy.

https://www.wimp.com/ramez-naam-on-the-future-of-energy/

I second this. .......... Something to think about: the average person today with their "smart phone" has more " computer power"
than the astronauts had when they went to the moon and back. Scary isn't it!! Cheers NC

I agree with some of it, I think other bits will be off the mark. The biggest miss is ignoring the human factor.

While on the one hand every industry and service sector us moving towards less employees that are more highly skilled, our society and education system is putting out people that are less mentally capable and motivated. Think about it, the smartphone may have more computing power than a Saturn V rocket, but the average smart phone user can't complete a sentence. Their communication consists of taking a picture of themselves with a fragmented sentence that would have incorrectly spelled words if not for auto-correct.

Color me skeptical on the green energy revolution. When alternative energy is significantly cheaper than petro based energy, then it will make the switch. The trends I see in the energy sector is for lower cost oil for the foreseeable future and technology reducing the cost of producing oil keeping those costs down as well.

He may be on the mark for urban dwellers regarding vehicles, I think folks further away from urban centers might tend to stick with traditional vehicles.

Most of all, with all those jobs disappearing, what happens with those people? Might that lead to some sort of revolution or giant wrench in the monkey works? The one constant with areas subject to civil unrest the world over is high unemployment rates. When you have large numbers of people with limited skills or skills that are no longer needed, those aren't the people that are going to be filling the slots available to highly skilled specialists.

He forgot to mention that AI will kill us all...

Excellent. Thanks

What does "MD" of Daimler Benz mean?

That is very interesting

Likely Managing Director.

There is more truth than speculation in 75% of that article. The remaining 25% that may or may not occur can have a tremendous impact on the other 75% though. That being said, the opportunities are limitless and fascinating.

Not a mondkey wrench in the works, Shoes in the mechanism! Sabotage.

There is a point where this "brave new world" will have to accomodate the masses. and someone will have to build the cell phones, erect the towers, troubleshoot the software, on and on.

Self driving cars be interesting. How will they respond to bad weather? Sure they will be programmed to avoid the easy to predict things. But a sudden ice storm, what happens then. They will get stuck sometime, now what?

Heck, Ford made automatic trannies that wouldn't allow you to choose and lock 2nd gear. That sucked driving on hardback and ice. If they couldn't understand the need for second, imagine these self drivers.

Electric combine? Not likely. Electric tractor that can run from sunrise to sunset without needing a recharge that takes longer than pouring diesel in a traditional tractor? Not likely. Electric truck to haul a cattle trailer/hay bales/etc.? Not likely. Electric truck that will drop off and pick up hunters who are in remote areas? Not likely.

Color me skeptical.

Crack head.

Agree.

Self-driving cars will be quickly programmed to adapt to more and more conditions given experience. Same as any new technology advances due to real world events.

??..Most if not all parasite lawyers and insurance companies obsolete,.. the future looks brighter already!

btw; Was Nano-technology mentioned?...such tech. that potentially has such a broad range of applications
would change the world in so many ways.

Tiny autonomous self-assembling robots at the molecular atomic particle scale.... in medicine ,manufacturing,
biology, engineering, etc.

Thanks Butch. Some expected, some conjecture - but most of it very thought -provoking

Reminds me of all the predictions that by 1950 every garage would house a flying gyrocopter and electricity would be free because nuclear energy would make it too cheap to meter.

In short most of this is bunk.

Self driving cars by 2018? Well, it's 2017 and they need two engineers from the factory to "self drive."

And Tessa is just a big promotion. It's cars will be impractical when the government subsidies run out.

Little known today, the US Department of Transportation, in conjunction with CALTrans, UC Berkley and, several vehicle manufacturers demonstrated autonomous vehicles in 1997 in San Diego on the I-5. see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtj9J1A-PMk

Largely unnoticed were two automated buses (from Houston METRO) and a van (Carnegie Mellon University) that drove hands-off from the US Capital to San Diego. All these vehicles demonstrated full autonomous capability, but used IT technology that dated to the early 1990's; just imaging the computer power available today.

I can tell you quite emphatically that no Carnegie Mellon van drove unattended from coast to coast. It drove around a closed track for a short distance.

I get this inkling Musk is going to walk away with many billions $ stashed away that was skimmed from share holders and
gov.(tax payer)subsidies and disappear over the sunset, leaving them all in the lurch and belly up.

A guy currently valued at 20 billion mixing in the highest circles could find a decent educated good family background
woman for his life....instead chooses a 2nd hand gold digging ship jumping hollyweird skank Johnny Depp once rented.
..sorry but IMO its a reflection of him.

He found a way to cash in on the huge global climate change thing....while like a true climate change hypocrite
travels around the world in his new up graded fossil fuel guzzling private jet....

The other important thing to note about the quoted article is that it has absolutely no proven connection to the head of Daimler-Benz, and actually no provable attribution to anyone except an anonymous/unknown Facebook poster.

Thus, though it may be thoughtful in its predictions, it has no identifiable human substance/company which will be driving any of these trends purposefully. Most think that it is an anonymous philosophical user trying to create social disruption.

A lot of this conjecture is centered around land based transportation needs. Personally I believe with new energy sources and these rapid technological advancements, flying (drone) cars might be available in the not too distant future. Maybe the "Wall" will be finished just in time for us to fly over it!

Hello George Jetson!


DMc : )

Well at present Tesla gets it's funding from our tax dollars and GM's Volt is a very expensive bad joke. One is left to wonder just where all this electricity is going to come from to poser all this "Brave new World" [bleep]. It sure as hell isn't going to be from wind turbines. The solar panel industry proved to be a democrat funding mechanism and as wonderful as technology is it is still in it's infancy.

I say the driverless vehicle is going to curse the day it was introduced to my wife. Bring it on

In fact, it appears to be noted futurist Gerd Leonard speaking at a Mercedes conference Gerd Leonard so while not the GM of Mercedes, it was connected with Mercedes. That point aside, my experience after a couple of decades of listening to and pondering and seeing what comes true with some of the futurist speakers is that they are 50% right in the timeframe they say "it" will happen and generally 90% right if you double their predicted timeframe.

Like many posters here, they also tend to speak to a narrow set of use cases. As an example, for most if us 50 something outdoors sorts who reside suburban/ruraly, we will never be without a truck or truck-like vehicle. His prediction of people never owning a car or having a drivers license though is likely very accurate for the twenty somethings today that live in a urban environment and reality is that this is a very large, heck even a majority, of Americans and that segment will grow.

If you followed cell phones in the 90's the idea of a smart phone being the norm (and it is regardless of your flip phone folks) and that people would pay pretty large sums for them was ludicrous. Why would I need one? I look at my 16-25 year old nephews and nieces and most only have a phone or at most a tablet less than 20 years later and they do fine with it.

Social disruption is actually pretty important (no, not the ninnies carrying signs on the corner) but the people who create a vision of the art of the possible. They inspire and motivate the innovators. I like to joke I'm a man of the 90's, the 1890's, but reality is picking these predictions and following them, or even helping some of them become reality, is what makes this nation and some key others great (and defines a whole bunch of countries that will always be failures) . We're living in amazing times and guess what, 20 and 40 years ago were amazing times too. Vision, innovations and change never stops. You can ignore it and some of it just isn't relevant to some of our lives but to revel in the creativity, risk taking and hard work of some of these innovators really makes me glad they are there and they have more and more venues to speak out and share their ideas even if some of them are so crackpot to make our own resident KOTY candidates seem sane.

You want to see some amazing (as well as some real dreck!) stuff go watch some TED talks. 15 minute or so talks about a wide range of Technology, Entertainment and Design stuff. I download them as podcasts and listen to a couple on my commute. I disagree with some but I always learn stuff and often things I had never considered.