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market 5 . The African continent has twice as many mobile
phones as the United States 6 . In some areas, such as mobile
financial services, a number of African countries are global
leaders, illustrating the potential of new technologies to
disrupt older systems and leapfrog ahead of older fixed line
phone systems or traditional banking services in rapidly
growing emerging markets 7 . As digital access increases, it
is estimated that four billion people will be online by 2020,
using up to 50 trillion gigabytes of data 8 .
Meanwhile, improvements in artificial intelligence
increasingly allow robotic processes to augment or replace
tasks previously undertaken by people. Apple, for example,
is planning to install over a million robots in its China
manufacturing plants to produce the iPhone 9 . Artificial
intelligence is permeating a growing range of jobs, and
has significant implications for skilled as well as unskilled
workers. In medicine, for example, the New York Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has used IBM’s Watson
supercomputer to survey hundreds of thousands of medical
reports and millions of patient records to improve its
oncology care 10 .
Analysis suggests that automation may lead to as many
as 47% of jobs being lost in the United States and a
similar proportion in the United Kingdom as a result of
computers replacing human capabilities 11 . While this raises
major concerns regarding employment, these and other
technological changes are likely to be associated with
increased productivity and new types of employment, as
with previous technological revolutions.
If knowledge is power, digital sensors are poised to
become the data providers of the twenty-first century. In
electrical power systems, sensors that provide real time
data to processing centers and automated control systems
can reduce electricity usage and waste, improve supply
efficiency, and isolate electrical failures, thereby minimizing
the impact of blackouts. Smart grid technology was deployed
recently in London, Houston, and Singapore to streamline
traffic. Control routing centers effectively decreased average
commuting times by 10-20%, enhancing productivity for
workers. This technology is also being deployed to farming,
with real time crop moisture readings ensuring that drip
irrigation is able to maximize efficiency, a critical component
in feeding a substantially growing population.
In addition to infrastructure improvements from smart
grids and sensors, automated driving is becoming a reality.
An automated Google car has already driven 300,000
miles on American roads with no accidents. Driverless
cars have multiple benefits. They free up the would-be
driver to other tasks. This is a substantial improvement,
given that the average American car commuter spends 750
hours per year driving, while the average European car
owner spends about 300 hours per year behind the wheel.
Additionally, automation with sensors will allow cars to
drive far closer together, reducing wind drag (allowing lower
fuel consumption per mile traveled) while also diminishing
congestion without the need for additional infrastructure.
Finally, given that 1 million people die in traffic accidents per
year — with 70-90% of those caused by avoidable human
Artificial intelligence is
permeating a growing
range of jobs.
error — automation could also improve safety on the roads
substantially.
3-D printers are machines that print out physical objects
rather than words on a page. Using design blueprints, they
print out a substance — currently most often a plastic
—with layers upon layers that eventually form a tangible
object. The scale of these items is no longer small. A Dutch
firm is currently in the process of creating an entire house
from specialized 3-D printers. 3-D printing is also being used
to produce a car, the Urbee 2.
3-D technology is transforming a variety of processes in
product design, development, and manufacturing. It rapidly is
becoming easier for both established companies and startups
to produce prototypes for new items, reducing design
costs and allowing better testing and design tweaking before
products come to market. Moreover, products can easily
become customizable to the specifications of individual
consumers at low-cost. UPS, for example, is introducing 3-D
printers to several of its stores in the United States, allowing
consumers the option of creating their own objects easily.
Technology is also emerging that gives scientists the
ability to 3-D print living tissue, with printers emitting cells
rather than ink. The possibilities of this nascent technology
are wide-ranging; already, custom-made cartilage has been
printed that might be used to repair damaged knees, and
there is the possibility that eventually doctors will be able to
3-D print customized organs.
This technology, while impressive, also presents perilous
new frontiers. With production passed onto consumers
easily, there is substantial opportunity for counterfeit
products, lack of quality control, and safety issues. For
example, a 3-D printed gun has already been produced and
successfully fired. Piracy is also a major concern.
Nanotechnology refers to products and properties that
exist and emerge at scales of less than 100 nanometers. For
comparison, the average human hair is 100,000 nanometers
wide. In nanotechnology, the basic building blocks are
individual molecules and atoms. The potential economic
impact of this is far reaching.
Nanotechnology could be used to create disposable or
digestible wireless devices, for example, with applications
including the fabrication of digestible transmitters attached
to tablets to monitor the use of prescription medicines.
In health care, nanotechnology is being applied in a variety
of ways. Researchers have developed ways to use gold
nanoparticles as cancer “sniffers” that are not only able to
detect cancer before visible symptoms or tumors exist, but
also can pinpoint exactly which kind of cancer is present in
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