At any decision point, 100% of the information we have is based on the past, while 100% of the value and consequences of the decision we make lies in the future, which is inherently probabilistic and unknown. This is also the best definition of risk: that more things may happen than will. Those who can better assess what may happen next have an advantage over those who can’t, and as a consequence they will make better decisions, choices, and investments. (Location 162)
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The richest, most robust, and deeply researched histories oft come from analytical academics and obsessive historians, but the best guides to the future don’t. (Location 168)
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the scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and founders of high-tech, high-risk ventures who have a conception of the way the world ought to be and endeavor to make it so—and those who are investing in the future. (Location 170)
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HUMANKIND’S STANDARD OF LIVING EVOLVED VERY SLOWLY over millennia, until the Industrial Revolution—the first one, in the second half of the eighteenth century—set in motion a spiral of extraordinary innovation that has not stopped. (Location 183)
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The application of technology to production creates opportunities and generates wealth. (Location 194)
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The entire history of civilization is all about change—and, more than that, about technological change. (Location 220)
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What is remarkable about the current technological changes we are experiencing is that they are sitting at the intersection of a set of extraordinary advances: faster microprocessors, cheaper digital storage, ubiquitous access to information, efficient algorithms, and an increasingly better understanding of the laws of nature. These ingredients, decades in the making, are some of the key enablers of the Deep Tech Revolution. (Location 223)
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Deep Tech is where science meets technology, where PhDs and subject matter experts are able to apply their knowledge and transform it from intellectual achievements and academic papers into systems, devices, prototypes, products, and methodologies. Deep tech companies are the ones effectively building the future of the world economy, one technology at a time: robotics, biotech, nanotech, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, energy, aerospace, agritech—the list goes on and on. (Location 226)
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I try to focus on the advances that are created to address “inevitabilities” in the making: longer human life spans; population growth; an increasing demand for energy, mobility, and food; and ever more complex systems fed by unimaginable amounts of data flowing through a vastly interconnected infrastructure over space, air, land, and sea. (Location 231)
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“people tend to overestimate what can be done in a year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.” (Location 252)
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the Third Industrial Revolution—the Digital Revolution—swept the planet, ushering in the era of digital electronics and the so-called Information Age. (Location 265)
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the Fourth Industrial Revolution or what I like to call the Deep Tech Revolution. New technologies are enabling ideas once confined to science fiction to gradually build a more present future: integration between artificial and biological systems, learning techniques for communication between machines and their parts, and the extension of the physical reality into virtual reality (VR). (Location 278)
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How will advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, power generation and transmission, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, smart materials (like polymers that change their volume when exposed to an electrical current), telecommunications, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles— (Location 301)
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If we can look to the past to see our future, then we will be witnessing extraordinary changes over the next few decades. (Location 305)
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no field of knowledge will be immune to transformations in processes, models, implementations, methods, and results. (Location 307)
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The clearest and most consistent rankings over the recent past point to the prominence of brands connected to technology— (Location 325)
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In one of the biggest ironies in the history of business, the first digital camera was actually invented at Kodak in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer who was only 24 at the time. The patent obtained in 1978 earned the company billions of dollars until it expired in 2007, but executives were not willing to sacrifice a business model based on the sale of film, which had been working for decades. (Location 332)
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Adapting to changes from new technology is imperative in the global business setting. (Location 338)
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What impact will the large-scale adoption of electric cars have on the price of a barrel of oil? (Location 387)
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Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics have accelerated research efforts toward an autopilot function in cars—already an old acquaintance in airplanes. (Location 406)
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In July 2008, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that the cause of more than 90% of road accidents is driver error. (Location 438)