Atoms, Bits, and Atoms and Bits

Atoms → Bits

The First and Second Ages of Technology.

Atoms

The first age of technology was the hardware age. For thousands of years technology helped us manipulate the physical world. Technology enabled humans to move atoms around quickly and/or more efficiently than we could without technology. This was the age of physical tools and mechanical devices.

Think of the wheel, the lever, the pulley, and the crank. Even the steam engine, the light bulb, and the telephone. These are all concrete, mechanical manifestations of technology; their function was directly controlled by physical input. You want a wheel to turn clockwise? Turn it to the right. You want the wheel to reverse and turn counterclockwise? Turn it the other way. Want to operate a steam engine? Give it an input (coal) and it will produce an output (power).

For the sum total of the entire history of human existence, until just a few hundred years ago, technology did nothing more than manipulate atoms.

Bits

The second age of technology was the software age. The era really picked up steam (no pun intended) with the advent of computers. Software technology manipulates bits, encoded information, rather than atoms. All computers do exactly one thing; they take input in the form of electronic signals (from a keyboard or a mouse for example) and output electronic signals. They perform, essentially, no important mechanical functions. Software dictates the output for a given input. Software can be changed without changing (permanently) the hardware.

Yes, computers are increasingly smaller, more powerful, and use less power, but they are essentially the same mechanically as they have always been. The internals may have changed mechanically but for all intents and purposes we can think of your Apple Watch as essentially the same hardware, from a technology perspective, as the earliest computers such as the ENIAC.

In the software age, technology was all about manipulating bits.

Atoms + Bits

Technology has now come full circle. The manipulation of bits is now driving the manipulation of atoms. Software is infusing hardware and the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes, we have seen early examples of this for decades, but only now is the marriage of atoms and bits moving into the mainstream. Think of autonomous vehicles, drones, robots, 3D printing and the internet of things. Imagine, for example, a coffee maker that replenishes itself. Well, you don't have to imagine it because it is already here.

Services like Uber, Postmates, and even Amazon’s distribution centers are great early examples of the third age. However, in each of these humans play a vital role in the delivery of goods and services. The future (from a technology perspective, at least) gets really exciting when humans are removed entirely from the process. Imagine how much faster and cheaper it will be for Amazon to deliver you fresh coffee beans when the ordering, picking, shipping, and transportation all occur without any human intervention at all. That brings us to…

The Future

Now imagine a world where all of the technology described above is commonplace. What would that world look like?

The answer is, we just don't know. The world is a complex system and the changes I've described are just too dramatic to be able to predict the impact. But let’s just look at just one example of a third age technology and how it will impact our world.

Autonomous Cars

Imagine a world where every road vehicle is autonomous. Every commuter car, FedEx truck, big rig and fire engine. All moving on their own volition quickly, quietly, and efficiently. And all, of course, running off of batteries. Big deal you say, we don’t have to drive anymore. Does that really change much? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Zero traffic accidents

That’s right, zero. Every autonomous car will be aware of every other nearby vehicle and will be able to avoid hazards with an awareness and response time that far exceeds any human’s. Fatalities and injuries from car accidents will be a relic of the past.

Imagine the reduction in pain and suffering. No more kids on bikes getting hit by cars driving through their neighborhoods. No more horrific drunk driving accidents. The tremendous manpower used to police the roads and highways could be reassigned to more important police work. Imagine how much stress will be relieved from our medical system — hospitals, doctors, nurses, paramedics all free to help other patients.

Vastly improved cities

Our roads are tremendously inefficient. Even during rush hour only a small percentage of a highway is actually used by cars. Most of it is empty space between cars, even in so called bumper to bumper traffic. When cars are aware of each other and routed intelligently our existing roads could handle an order of magnitude more traffic at the same average speed. Another way to think of this is that, with the same roads we have now, we will all get to wherever we want to go quicker.

But we're not just talking roads and highways here. Imagine your city without a single gas station, parking space or parking structure.Assuming that inductive charging is common on our roads, autonomous cars will only need to “park” when they are in for maintenance. Sure, there will need to be someplace for them to park in times of lower demand, but that space is negligible compared to the volume of our cities dedicated to temporarily storing our cars. Imagine houses without driveways or garages. Well, we'll keep the garages but finally admit that they are for storing stuff, not cars!

Cool Cars

Imagine that most cars are a single person vehicle without an engine. Think of a lounge chair on wheels! You could probably fit a dozen of these in same space as the average suv. In fact, Toyota already has a working prototype. Imagine how much fun it will be riding around in a self-driving version of this car!

Delivery services

Imagine a UPS truck that never stops. As it rolls down the road, sans driver, a small fleet of drones constantly fly in and out of the truck delivering packages to our front doors before returning to grab the next package from the moving truck. Think of how much time and money this will save. One hour delivery will be the new two day delivery, and 15 minute delivery will be the new Amazon Prime.

Lower costs

Finally, all of these combined will eliminate huge costs for our families, businesses, and governments.

Our families will no longer own cars. No more lease payments, maintenance, registration or insurance. No more meter money, parking garages, or speeding tickets. We will choose our Uber subscription tier like we choose our cell plans, based on our monthly usage.

Business see reduced costs as well. Parking will no longer be necessary for commercial real estate reducing leasing costs. Lower transportation and shipping costs will benefit all business, but some more than others.

Finally, governments will be huge beneficiaries of self-driving vehicles. Image a world where private, Uber-style services are cheaper and faster than public transportation systems. We're talking Billions of dollars a year in savings to governments worldwide. Not to mention improved service at lower cost to the least affluent. Picture the person who takes the bus (really three buses) 90 minutes each way to work, on the bus lines schedule. Now picture them taking an Uber at a lower cost and having an extra hour each day to spend with their family. That’s a world I want to live in.

Bonus time

And, of course, we will all spend our commute sipping a latte and reading the morning newspaper while our autonomous car safely, quietly, and efficient delivers us to our destination.

That just one step away from George Jetson’s commute.

What I've described is the impact that just one single manifestation of the third age of technology will have. Combine that with the impact of all of the other advances in the coming years and you have a change bigger than than the industrial and computer revolutions combined. I, for one, can't wait to live in that future.