Free Lunch Future

I just blogged about the coming Leisure Society. My projection is it will be upon us no later than 2020. The current pace of change and labor disruption is happening much faster than the previous industrial cycle.

Whether we like it or not, the pace of change is going to keep increasing. Extrapolating Moore’s law in computing, we find that by the year 2020 your $1000 computer will have the processing power of the human brain, and virtual reality will be as familiar as the web is today. Biotechnology will have revolutionized medicine, and led to many unexpected breakthroughs, possible extending life far beyond current expectations. And nanotechnology will be creating its own revolution in manufacturing. Because this will in turn open up the space frontier with its astronomical level of energy and resources, scarcity will come to an abrupt end.