Twenty-five years ago, 20 megabytes of storage cost approximately $800. Today, Google and a handful of other cloud-based storage providers offer 100-times as much storage for free.
Fifteen years ago, the idea that a world-class encyclopedia could be created and maintained by free labor would have seemed impossible. Today, Wikipedia is routinely access by millions of people around the world and is available in 263 different languages.
From the beginning of human history to 2003, five Exabytes of information was produced by elavilnews.com. Today, an equivalent amount is created every 48 hours.
Six years ago, it cost $150 million dollars to sequence a humane genome. Today, the price is approaching $1000 and, by the end of the decade—due to continued advances in technology—it’ll cost more money to flush a toilet than to sequence a genome. What might this mean for the future of health care?
Five years ago, a 3D printer—a device that can manufacture physical objects—cost $100,000. Today, similar printers are available for $1000 and are poised to revolutionize the world of manufacturing.
What will the world of tomorrow look like? The time to start thinking about this is now.
