More Evidence Of Empowering Creative Individuals

We are living in wondrous times as far as technology goes. Here’s some reasons why…

• In my pocket I have a smartphone which gives me better access to more information than the President of the United States had access to 30 years ago.
• 3d printing is opening up manufacturing to almost anyone.
• A Billionare is creating a new Titanic.
• The first space tourist wants to go to Mars.
• The price for self driving cars may have just dropped by an order of magnitude.

It used to be that in order to do truly great things you often had to involve government. These days, the governments around the world seems incapable of doing much of anything but wallow in corruption. Despite this, I remain an optimist. I think that the human species has a certain inevitable drive which will propel it past this time in history, where the economic and social models of the last century finally collapse and are replaced by the next model (whatever that is). Many people (especially in government) think you need a top down directed model to do anything amazing anymore. I disagree. There has never been a time in history where individuals are more empowered by disruptive technology than they are today, and it’s only just beginning.

This is the stormfront of disruptive innovation heading towards us.

Here’s a nice video talking about how 3d printing will radically transform manufacturing. Note at 10:00 the presenter talks about a company that wants to make a factory in the US but can’t do it fast enough.

In China you can go from nothing to a fully functional factory in 3 months. In the US, the government would just kill you in years of red tape. The Keystone XL pipeline has been studied for more years than it would have taken to build it. And so it goes. Still, I remain optimistic.