Six-Chart Sunday – Hope for the Holidays
6 Infographics + 1 Video (Molly Ball on Nancy Pelosi) + Upcoming event (Scott Jennings on Trump 2.0... 12/23 at 3pm)
What will the world look like in 2050? I’m optimistic! While today’s news is regularly full of doom & gloom — bubbles potentially bursting, trust in government cratering, unemployment looming, war threatening — history suggests hopefulness is the better long-term bet. Human progress has been inexorable, if not linear. Why start betting against it now?
1. Biggest News ≠ Biggest Impact
Louis Gave observes that the biggest news any given year is not always the event with the greatest long-term impact. For example, the biggest news story in 1994 was the Republican Revolution (GOP capture of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years). But what has greater resonance today… that, or the birth of e-commerce with the first web browser? Obviously the 9/11 attacks dominated 2001 news, and properly so. But does 9/11 and its aftermath define our present world more than the extraordinary rise of China enabled by its 2001 WTO accession? The mortgage foreclosure crisis was the biggest news event in 2007, but the launch of the iPhone may prove to have a longer tail. In 2020 we obviously focused overwhelmingly on the COVID pandemic. What might we have missed?
2. “Cambrian Explosion” of Tech-Enabled Innovation
When we look back in 2050, we may regard the convergence of breakthroughs emerging in the 2020s — artificial intelligence + advanced connectivity + automation + biotechnology + new computing paradigms — as more consequential than even the pandemic. As these technologies compound and integrate across sectors, they are likely to drive step-change improvements in productivity, health, sustainability, and access to knowledge rather than incremental gains, reshaping how we work, live, play, learn, fight, heal, build, and govern.
3. Transformational Health
By 2050, biology will be engineerable — the way software is today — massively improving lifespan & health span via predictive, preventive & personalized medicine. Ongoing innovations in diagnostics (e.g. genetic sequencing, wearables, AI), delivery (e.g. mRNA, CRISPR, nanoparticles) and biomanufacturing (e.g. lab-grown organs, synthetic biology, programmable cells) should lead to game-changing health solutions. The past 25 years saw extraordinary advances in genetic sequencing cost and capability… the next 25 may prove even more impactful.
4. Autonomous Transportation
By 2050, transportation will be increasingly autonomous, electrified, and software-defined, fundamentally reshaping safety, efficiency, and urban design. Advances in AI perception, vehicle-to-vehicle & vehicle-to-infrastructure coordination, and autonomous logistics should drive an order-of-magnitude reduction in traffic fatalities, congestion, and emissions while reclaiming billions of hours of human time. (While I’m psyched for self-driving cars, I’m really hoping for self-flying air taxis).
5. Abundant Energy
By 2050, energy is likely to be far more abundant, clean, and reliable. Ultra-low-cost solar might continue scaling globally and get paired with major advances in energy storage that smooth out daily and seasonal variability. Nuclear power may regain momentum through smaller, standardized reactors that are safer, faster to build, and well-suited to industrial heat. And watch for profound advances in oil and gas discovery, extraction, and transportation as AI-driven subsurface imaging, advanced materials, and methane-management technologies significantly improve efficiency, safety and environmental performance while lowering costs.
6. AI-Enabled Jobs
In September I wrote about the raging debate over whether AI is our savoir or our damnation (Rage Against the Machine). Fierce battles continue among analysts, futurists and economists on the critical jobs question — will AI will lead to mass unemployment or create new possibilities for work, as every previous technological innovation ever has done? I’m on the side of the optimists and encouraged by a new Vanguard analysis finding:
“The approximately 100 occupations most exposed to AI automation are actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in terms of job growth and real wage increases. This suggests that current AI systems are generally enhancing worker productivity and shifting workers’ tasks toward higher-value activities.”
Upcoming Live Event
Join us live 12/23 at 3pm ET. Scott Jennings discusses his new book, “A Revolution of Common Sense,” plus the present & future of American politics & media.
VIDEO
The great Molly Ball wrote the definitive biography of one of the nation’s most important and impactful politicians, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We recently discussed Pelosi, politics & populism.
NOTE: If you don’t like Scott Jennings on Trump you will LOVE Molly Ball! And if you didn’t like Ball on Pelosi you will LOVE Jennings! To navigate this age of disruption we recommend being curious about others’ perspectives and balancing your media diet. Ball & Jennings are both illuminating, energetic & enjoyable.
Brilliant framing on the COVID question. The mRNA breakthroughs forced by the pandemic might actually be way more consequential long-term than the virus itself. I've seen researchers discussing how the platform could tackle cancer and rare diseases in ways traditional pharma couldn't economically justify. The speed and adaptability is gamechanging, but we kinda got stuck on the pandemic debate instead of seeing the bigger biotech revolutio happening underneath.
i’m interested in watching both scott jennings and molly ball — differing ideas and perspectives
keeps a mind open, curious and vital 👍