The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Diamandis and Kotler
Name: The Future Is Faster Than You Think
Author(s): Diamandis, Peter H.; Kotler, Steven
Published: 2020
The Core Problem: In an era where multiple exponential technologies are colliding and accelerating the pace of change to an unprecedented degree, how can we understand these forces to both harness their immense potential and navigate their profound threats?
The Bottom Line
- What it is: The Future Is Faster Than You Think is an exploration of how the convergence of multiple exponential technologies—like AI, robotics, biotech, and networks—is creating a future that is arriving much faster than our linear-thinking brains can comprehend.
- Why it matters: It matters because this accelerating convergence will fundamentally reshape every aspect of our lives, from business and entertainment to healthcare and finance.
- What you’ll get: From this Note, you will get a detailed overview of the key converging exponential technologies to watch, a sector-by-sector analysis of their disruptive impact, and a strategic look at the global challenges and opportunities this acceleration presents.
Time Commitment:
Disclaimer: This content is intended for educational, commentary, and review purposes only. All opinions expressed are my own and are not affiliated with the author or publisher of the book. Any copyrighted material, including quoted excerpts, is used under the principles of fair use for criticism and analysis. For further information or to support the author, please refer to the links mentioned at the beginning of this page.
The Strategist’s Briefing
This is the third book (earlier two being Abundance and BOLD) by the author duo and it builds on the concept covered earlier viz. “exponentially accelerating technology; that is, any technology that doubles in power while dropping in price on a regular basis” and posits that when exponential technologies collide with each other (what the authors call “convergence”) it leads to a result several orders of magnitude larger than the sum of the parts.
This is both good (because technology enables us to live better) and bad (because things are moving too fast and our brains are not evolved enough to make sense of it all).
The book is divided into three parts.
The first part is about convergent exponential technologies and describes how the development and capabilities of technology are growing rapidly and the pace of growth itself is accelerating.
The second part then talks about how these covering exponential technologies are going to impact our lives from shopping to entertainment to education to health to money.
The third part then wraps up the book by outlining the tectonic shifts and threats we should lookout for.
This author’s core thesis is that formerly independent waves of exponentially accelerating technology are now beginning to converge, creating a combinatorial explosion of change that is orders of magnitude more powerful than the sum of its parts. This Note applies the Strategist’s Lens to the authors’ framework, moving beyond the hype of individual technologies to analyze the second- and third-order effects of their collision. This provides a mental model to anticipate and adapt to a world where the pace of change itself is accelerating, a reality our linear-thinking brains are not evolved to grasp intuitively.
Core Frameworks Deconstructed
Citation: All text highlighted in yellow in this section is cited from – Diamandis, Peter H.; Kotler, Steven. The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives (Exponential Technology Series). Kindle Edition.
Technologies are converging
And so the speed of technological development is accelerating: Earlier technological development in a field largely used to happen because of the effort of people specifically working in that field. No more.
Today technologies crossover (converge) all the time to adjacent fields and their unique application moves the field forward.
For example, the work of a computer engineer in the development of a faster and more efficient chip can help accelerate drug discovery at a Pharma major.
Converging exponential technologies have larger impact
Like how advanced radar systems and sensors, fast computers, always-on connection to the internet can be applied to a modern car to make it autonomous that can then serve multiple families through a mobility-as-a-service company like Uber, leading to a cultural shift towards car “renting” away from car ownership that then leads to a decline in car demand which spells the demise of second and third rung car makers.
We’ve not evolved to make sense of this change. Humans are not good at identifying the power of compounding and technologies today are growing at compound rates. So, it is likely that many will be caught by surprise.
Concept 1: The Law of Accelerating Convergence
Principle: The speed of technological development is no longer linear but exponential, and this pace is itself accelerating. This is driven by “convergence,” where advances in one exponential technology (e.g., AI) become a catalyst that dramatically speeds up progress in another (e.g., biotechnology).
Application: A faster computer chip developed by a computer engineer can be used by a pharmaceutical company to accelerate the process of drug discovery. The impact is not additive but multiplicative, creating cascading waves of disruption that can wash away entire markets and the structures that support them.
Strategist’s Note: Our brains evolved to think linearly, making us inherently bad at grasping the power of compounding and exponential growth. This creates a massive strategic blind spot. The key is to actively fight this cognitive bias and learn to think in terms of exponential, converging trends to avoid being caught by surprise.
Technologies to watch out for
Quantum computing
Quantum computers are so much more faster than conventional computers and that means that we can use the extra processing power to solve more complicated problems.
It has its own version of Moore’s law called Rose’s law that states the number of qubits on a chip doubles every 18 months. So quantum computing should get mainstream in the next five decades or so.
Today though it suffers from lack of easy interface and thus remains the province of researchers, scientists, physicists and computer engineers.
According to the authors the next wave of adoption in quantum computing will come when it starts getting packaged in a more user friendly format.
Networks
Our world has become covered by networks: roads, electricity cables, telephone wires, undersea internet cables, telephone towers, RFIDs.
This means that if we want something connected and transmitting data, we can.
So, the amount of data getting generated is immense (and is only going to increase).
The authors sum it up nicely: “Within a decade, we will live in a world where just about anything that can be measured will be measured, constantly.“.
Well, good because with quantum computing and AI, we will also be able to make sense of all that data being generated.
3D printing
Is going to get more and more common as material science improves. We’re already printing entire houses with them. It has not yet entered mainstream but the next decade might see that happening as the costs of 3D printers continues to fall.
Blockchain
Till now it has mostly been in the news for enabling crypto-currencies but it has other applications too, some of the more interesting ones are decentralised identity systems, secure voting and IP protection.
Artificial intelligence
AI is coming and it is coming big as I surmised in my review of “The Coming Wave“. The authors agree and point out that, unlike quantum computing, AI is getting democratised by the day.
Robotics
So drones and factory robots are already here, what is next are personal robots.
VR/AR
Will have profound implications on whether we travel for work and how we learn things.
Biotechnology
Gene therapy helped cure SCID-X1, human genome sequencing has seen multiple orders of magnitude fall since 2000, CRISPR-Cas9 showed the first cure for Sickle Cell disease, stem cell therapy can help fix supposedly permanently damaged body parts. All of these (and more) will converge into personalised medicine which will be the holy grail of healthcare.
Material sciences and nanotechnology
We’re getting better at understanding how elements in the periodic table work/together and with the help of AI and powerful computing are able to choose the right one (or combination) to create better materials.
Stuff like semiconductors, lithium-ion batteries, graphene, carbon fibre, shape-memory alloys, self-healing materials, biocompatible materials (something I am personally excited about), nanoparticles and so on.
Nanotechnology is material engineering taken to the extreme where we work with materials at the atomic scale, we’re already seeing a few products enter the consumer market like Apple’s electronic display with nanoparticle coating to avoid reflections, stain resistant fabric and more.
And then there is the (currently) science fiction “… nanobots can pull apart any kind of material—soil, water, air—atom by atom, and use these now raw materials to construct just about anything. In this world, according to Drexler, a puddle of pond scum can be reorganized into a flawless, multi-carat diamond ring.“.
Concept 2: Key Converging Technologies
Principle: A handful of key exponential technologies are at the heart of this accelerating change, each doubling in power while dropping in price on a regular basis.
Application: The authors identify several core technologies: quantum computing, AI, networks, robotics, VR/AR, 3D printing, blockchain, material sciences/nanotechnology, and biotechnology. These are the foundational drivers of the future.
Strategist’s Note: The key isn’t just to track each technology in isolation but to look for their points of intersection. The convergence of networks (generating massive data), AI (analyzing the data), and quantum computing (providing the processing power) creates what the authors call a “hyperconscious planet”—a world of radical transparency and endlessly available information.
Better, faster, cheaper
We can expect the following general benefits from converging exponential technologies.
Saved time
Generally it takes lesser time to do things today than it did earlier: grocery shopping is faster, filing taxes is faster, applying for jobs is faster, buying stuff is faster, getting in touch with people is faster, getting to places is faster.
And this will only improve. Not just for the common man, the faster pace of things also has knock on effects on progress as subsequent innovations happen faster (for example, faster computers leading to faster drug discovery.
Democratised access
There are many things right now that would earlier have been the sole province of the rich (or sometimes even just national governments) like DNA sequencing, high fidelity video conferencing, high speed computing, vast knowledge banks.
All this power, now in the hands of the average Joe spurs innovation further. And the number of erstwhile unattainable things that are getting available to the common man are only increasing like at home 3D printers, DNA printers, domestic robots (though not yet in humanoid form).
New ways of making money
Indeed, who in 2004 would have thought that “influencer” would be a viable career in 2024? Right? Or that we’d be able to develop products by directly taking money from the average person completely bypassing traditional investors and banks.
The authors talk about the seven new ways making money has become possible:
- Crowd funding, crowd sourcing, blogging/vlogging and other ways to directly interface with/sell to (online) end users.
- Give the service in exchange of data (like Facebook and Google are free to use but you are indirectly supporting their ads business).
- Slap some AI, interface and connectivity on something “dumb” and sell it as “smart”.
- Take what people consider “waste” like old plastic bottles, old newspapers, old cell phones and pay them money (or something else) for them and then process those things and sell as raw materials to another company.
- Using AI and blockchain (smart contracts) create a company that can take instructions from shareholders (and management if needed) and execute automatically without relying on human employees or oversight.
- If they think their real life is too boring then you can sell them a virtual one with VR tech.
- Sell them experiences that transform their lives.
Easy funding
“Today, it is easier for innovators to find funding than ever before. And this abundance is financing even more innovation-more moonshots, more crazy ideas, just plain more.“.
More geniuses
Having a sharp mind was not a guarantee for a successful career in anything until recently because of the weight of class, creed, caste, income and other things that make a stratified society. But today, well, today it also is sort of the same. But its not as bad as it used to. Because of the hyper-connected world we live in today, its easier for genius to get recognized.
Longer lives
People are generally living longer (lifespan) and not being very disease ridden or limited while they do it (healthspan).
Furthermore futurists like Ray Kurzweil think: “It’s likely [that we’re] just another ten to twelve years away from the point that the general public will hit longevity escape velocity.”.
Not only companies in the healthcare space but also firms like Google are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into understanding the depths of the human body system and then using that understanding to put an end to the guesswork around the four horsemen of modern day death; ASCVD, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and diabetes.
People living even three or four decades longer (and healthier) has profound implications not least of which is the impact on our conventional life stages.
And once we have the key’s to immortality (or at least centuries of useful living) then the world will be a very different place.
More ideas
Because, you know, more people are connected so the world is sort of becoming a giant city this way and cities have been the melting pot of ideas where newer ideas have emerged from old ones.
Concept 3: Democratisation of Power
Principle: The collision of these technologies is leading to a massive democratization of capabilities that were once the sole province of large corporations or national governments.
Application: This manifests in several ways: innovators find funding more easily through crowdfunding; powerful tools like DNA sequencing and high-speed computing become accessible to individuals; and a hyper-connected world allows genius to be recognized more easily, leading to more ideas and faster innovation.
Strategist’s Note: This shift creates entirely new business models. The authors identify seven new ways to make money, including the data economy (exchanging services for data), creating “smart” products by embedding AI and sensors, and the rise of the experience economy. As Clayton Christensen is quoted, “To unlock the next wave of growth, companies must embed these innovations in a disruptive new business model”.
Specific impact
On modern business (esp. consumer business)
AI will be the backbone and then it will applied to robotics (robots deliver our stuff, we find them helping us in physical stores and they are in our warehouses sorting and packing stuff), IoT (supply chains become hyper efficient, need for physical interface during transactions like cashiers is eliminated and amount is digitally deducted automatically based on items in your shopping cart), chatbots (personal assistants understand you and confidently shop on your behalf, book appointments and virtual customer support agents look and sound like real humans but be better at their job at a fraction of the cost), advertising (avatars in the form of your role model speak to your exact insecurities to make you buy stuff and eventually you relegate all your buying judgement to your chosen personal AI).
VR and AR tech. obviate the need for going to a physical store by showing a high fidelity digital replica of any product we’re thinking of buying (like clothes). Our bodies are 3D scanned, plus all our physical product have a digital twin so we can mix and match what we already have with what we want to get to the perfect look. Plus 3D printing allows us to make exactly what we want and how much of it we want right at home. And the only time we go out is when we want an “experience”.
On entertainment
Everyone is a creator these days since the tools of creation have been completely democratised.
Monetisation is still controlled by the platform but blockchain will “… artists to create unchangeable digital records of their work (making piracy impossible), and because its transaction costs are negligibly low or nonexistent, blockchain is bringing us to that fabled land of content creation: micropayments.“.
Also, entertainment has become more “active” i.e. the viewers get a chance to interact with the content and influence its development. And with the help of AI “content is about to become much more collaborative, immersive, and personalized.“.
Collaborative in how we live-stream and co-watch our sports matches and stuff. Immersive because of expected display tech. advances such as the ones from Light Field Lab and of course the entire VR deluge now that Apple has released the Vision Pro.
The ultimate in immersive will probably be brain-computer interfaces and will also have massive implications on privacy.
Personalised because all of us will get very personal with AI (indeed it is expected that we will have at least one if not several AI confidantes in the coming decade), and that AI will know not only our likes and dislikes but also how we feel that moment, if we had a fight with our spouse that morning, how the weather impacts our mood (affective computing) and so the content recommendations will be more relevant.
On health and longevity
Tech. companies are getting into healthcare and supercharging monitoring with their watches, rings, patches and so on.
Plus a bunch of startups are working on making traditionally bulky, expensive and complicated machines into essentially wearable devices for the average Joe.
And as always AI (chatbots) will make quality healthcare advice universally accessible.
Also, AI makes drug discovery and the specific understanding of bodily processes much faster. Immunotherapy is also seeing rapid development with techniques like CAR-T.
So in the coming years we will feel good more, get sick less, know when we are about to get sick and have a decisive plan to heal ourselves if we do get sick.
BTW literal robot doctors and more specifically, surgeons are coming – it is known that a robot can perform surgery with greater dexterity than a human surgeon if guided correctly like the DaVinci line of robots, the next frontier will be completely autonomous robot surgeons.
On learning
A lot of what is coming in entertainment also has application in the classroom (virtual classroom if you will). AI will make learning truly personalised (and possibly bring out the best in each student) by creating a customized learning path with targeted content, exercises, and resources.
This ensures students focus on areas that require more attention and don’t waste time on concepts they already grasp. VR will make it much more engaging and increase understanding. 5G (6G) will make learning location agnostic.
On insurance, finance and real estate
“Three major changes are under way. First, by shifting the risk from the consumer to the service provider, entire categories of insurance are being eliminated. Next, crowdsurance is replacing traditional categories of health and life insurance. Finally, the rise of networks, sensors, and AI are rewriting the ways in which insurance is priced and sold, remaking the very nature of the industry.“.
Finance is getting democratised and dematerialised with the emergence of Fintechs, crypto and so on. Real estate is being more transparent (and finding the right home more relevant) with the help of AI and visiting properties is easier because of VR.
Food
Sourced from hyperlocal vertical farm fruits, veggies and lab grown meat; pedigree verified using blockchain delivered fresh to our homes. 3D printed food (and cutlery; that you can also eat because it’s printed out of the same raw material). Food prepared by personal robot chefs.
Threats along the path to the future
Climate change
Climate change will make many move to newer places in search of stability. A lot more people will start living in cities.
Solar energy is currently considered the cheapest form of electricity in many parts of the world, for a technology that is only a few decades old this is truly exponential reduction in cost.
Wind energy is also getting cheaper, so is geothermal. Coal is dying and renewables are taking its place. Fast enough, I think not, but at least it is something.
But there is consensus that a large portion of our energy needs in the second half of this century will be met by renewable sources. Efficient energy storage: More Li ion batteries, flow batteries.
Water access and quality
“Technology has begun converging on our water woes, with thousands of players working on an enormous range of approaches.“.
Biodiversity loss
Drone reforestation, reef restoration, aquaculture reinvention, agricultural reinvention, closed-loop economies.
Technological unemployment
AI, robotics, automation will make some current jobs obsolete. But the authors invite us to think about how in previous revolutions when certain jobs were made redundant, newer jobs came up to take their place. This time with AI it may be different because AI can potentially span the entire skill tree to which the authors propose collaboration at various levels to up/re-skill the workforce.
Some of us may get functioning brain-computer interfaces and maybe one-day “upload” our consciousness into the cloud and thus attain digital immortality or even a collective consciousness (hive mind).
Many will also start spending more time in virtual worlds than they do in the real one.
Some of us will may go to the moon or Mars and stay there.
Concept 4: Sectoral Transformations
Principle: The convergence of exponentials is not an abstract concept; it is actively and dramatically reshaping every major industry.
Application:
- Business/Retail: AI-driven personal assistants, robotic logistics, AR for virtual try-ons, and 3D printing for hyper-personalization.
- Entertainment: Democratized creation tools, immersive VR/AR experiences, and hyper-personalized content recommendations driven by affective computing.
- Healthcare: Always-on monitoring via wearables, AI for diagnostics and drug discovery, and robotic surgery.
- Insurance/Finance: Entire categories of insurance are being eliminated by shifting risk (e.g., autonomous cars), while FinTech and crypto dematerialize traditional finance.
Strategist’s Note: The common thread across all sectors is a shift toward a more personalized, automated, data-driven, and on-demand world. Incumbents who fail to adapt to these new models will be rendered obsolete.
Real world examples of Exponential convergence
- 3D printed houses from SQ4D
- Next gen entertainment at Dreamscape
- Holographic displays at Light Field Lab
- Martine Rothblatt’s incredible journey
- Openwater and Exo bringing ultrasound and MRI to your home
- Soft Tissue Autonomous Robot, a robot that can already outperform surgeons on the specific task of suturing soft tissue
- Bionaut – Microscale robot for hyperlocal surgery and targeted drug delivery
- Insilico – Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery and Aging Research.
- C. elegans – A worm whose lifespan we were able to increase 5x by knocking out risks-1 and def-2 genes.
- Floating cities – Proposed solution to: rising seas, skyrocketing populations, threatened ecosystems.
- Plenty Unlimited – Vertical farming firm
- Skysource – Making water from air
- NASA Sentry System: List of asteroids that are expected to collide with Earth over the next 100 years.
High-Signal Quotations
Citation: All text in the following section is cited from – Diamandis, Peter H.; Kotler, Steven. The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives (Exponential Technology Series). Kindle Edition.
- The new news is that formerly independent waves of exponentially accelerating technology are beginning to converge with other independent waves of exponentially accelerating technology.
- Solitary exponentials disrupt products, services, and markets—like when Netflix ate Blockbuster for lunch—while convergent exponentials wash away products, services, and markets, as well as the structures that support them.
- … within ten years, you’ll probably need a special permit to drive a human-operated car.”
- “If you built a version of today’s smartphone back in 1980,” explains Omkaram Nalamasu, the chief technology officer for Applied Materials, Inc., “it would cost something like $110 million, be fourteen meters tall, and require about two hundred kilowatts of energy… that’s the power of advances in materials [science].”
- Even though gene therapy faded from sight, research continued. And continued. Then, on April 18, 2019, it burst back into view with a staggering announcement: Bubble Boy disease had been cured. Ten babies born with the condition, born, technically, without immune systems, had been treated. It wasn’t that their symptoms were better. It wasn’t that their condition was manageable. Before treatment, they didn’t have immune systems; afterward, they did. The disease was gone.
- Currently, there are only a handful of approved stem cell therapies in the United States, but this doesn’t account for the incredible amount of work being done in labs all over the globe. Researchers are pioneering treatments for cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, macular degeneration, skeletal tissue repair, pain management, neurological diseases, auto-immune conditions, burns and other skin diseases, blindness, and much more.
- Most [organizations] think the key to growth is developing new technologies and products. But often this is not so. To unlock the next wave of growth, companies must embed these innovations in a disruptive new business model. – Clayton Christensen
- How many of us die before we’re done?
- It’s ironic that as we reach our later years, when we have the most knowledge, the sharpest skills, and the greatest number of fruitful relationships, old age takes us out of the game.
- It’s going to become increasingly difficult for store owners to justify human workers who call in sick, show up late, and can easily get injured.
- By replacing premade ingredients with premade experiences, the experience economy is a new kind of disruptive business model satisfying a new kind of need.
- We’re heading toward a future where AI will make the majority of our buying decisions, continually surprising us with products or services we didn’t even know we wanted.
- Batch processing children is both an industrial hangover and an educational disaster because of basic biology.
- When it comes to healthcare, the system itself is often sicker than the patients.
- … a future of always-on health monitoring and cheap, easy diagnostics.
- KPMG predicts the car insurance market could shrink by an astounding 60 percent by 2040.
- The food on our plates begins its journey some 93 million miles away, in the solar portion of solar-powered photosynthesis.
- In a few years, humans will become the first animals that get their protein from other animals without any animals being harmed along the way.
- … since 1988, 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions can be backtracked to just a hundred fossil fuel companies.
- Our innovations may have caught up with our problems. Collaboration is the missing piece of the puzzle.
- … major consultancies … have all issued reports saying technological unemployment is unavoidable.
- … evolution shaped our time horizons to see about six months into the future.
- … one distinguishing characteristic of our species is the ability to delay gratification beyond the limits of lifespan.
- Modern ideas about government emerged about three hundred years ago, in a post-revolutionary world, when a desire for freedom from tyranny went hand in hand with a desire for stability. Thus, modern democracies are multi-house systems, a redundancy created to provide checks and balances. To fight tyranny and instability, these systems are designed to change slowly and democratically. Our exponential world demands much faster reaction times.
- Sometime over the next few years, someone, somewhere, will jack themselves into the Matrix and never look back. Welcome to the strangest mass exit yet encountered: our migration from normal reality into virtual reality.
- … hikikomori, the lost generation, the invisible youth, the nearly 1 million teenagers who have locked themselves in their rooms and only venture out online.
- To be clear, there will still be terrorism, war, and murder. Dictatorship and disease won’t go away. But the world will quietly continue to get better.
The Takeaways
The Future is Faster than you think is an optimistic book, it talks about the challenges that we will face but never seems defeatist in its approach.
Whatever the challenge, we have the solution – through our technology, our ability to collaborate and our ability to think.
Given how technology is moving so fast, this is practically an “old” book even though it was published in 2020. Many of the innovations mentioned have already been realised like Apple Vision Pro in AR/VR (consumer tech.), Gemini and ChatGPT in AI (consumer tech.), Symbiotic in robotics (warehouse ops), Medivis in robotics (surgery), Viz.ai in AI (health).
I have started noticing overlap in books belonging to this genre (predicting the future of tech. and its impact on humanity); AI, robotics, biotech., VR/AR, 3D printing are themes I have read in other books too. What does this mean? The definitive answer or hype?
Oh BTW, “AI this, AI that” – everything is going to get revolutionised because of AI it seems.
And multiple authors seem to agree from Suleyman to Mollick to Schmidt. Time will tell.
That said I do love me some good science and technology and to stop and think about the progress we’ve made over just the last two hundred years gives me a feeling of awe. It is an exciting time to be alive.
Overall, a good book to get up to speed on the technological progress and impact expected over the coming decades.
Your 3-Point Action Plan
- Invest in Adaptability and Lifelong Learning. Recognise that the skills required for success are changing at an accelerating rate. Prioritise personal and organisational agility, and dedicate time and resources to continuously learning about these converging technologies, as the biggest threat is not technological unemployment, but strategic irrelevance.
- Train Your Exponential Mindset. Actively fight your brain’s linear bias. When evaluating a new technology, don’t just ask what it can do today; ask what it can do after five doublings in power. Look for points of convergence between technologies to anticipate second- and third-order effects.
- Re-evaluate Your Business Model Around Convergence. Stop thinking about adding a single new technology to your existing model. Instead, ask: “How can the convergence of AI, robotics, and 3D printing allow us to create a completely new, disruptive business model that makes the old one obsolete?”.
The convergence of AI and biotechnology is a central theme in this book. For a deeper look at the specifics of each, see the Field Note on All-in On AI by Davenport and Mittal and the Field Note on Lifespan by David A. Sinclair.
–
Aviral Prakash
Leave a Reply