In between all of the presidential tweets, catastrophic rain storms, fires and hurricanes, sexual harassment scandals, and Bitcoin mania, it is sometimes hard to remember that technological change is accelerating and, as it does, the world continues to evolve. Over the past year, a number of developments have occurred but below are ten which I…

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…

Engaging, entertaining, energetic and enlightening healthcare keynote speakers are difficult to find. As my own speaking schedule has expanded, I have found myself in the unpleasant position of having to turn away a number of speaking engagements. As a consequence, I’m frequently asked for other speakers I’d recommend. One person I now strongly recommend is…

Back in 2008, I encouraged experts in the health care, pharmaceutical and insurance industries to “jump the curve” and begin contemplating the consequences of being able to sequence the human genome for $1000. This future appears likely to arrive by the end of 2012 — a year earlier than I originally estimated. Alas, the future…

“The scope of what you can do is expanding as the cost of sequencing is dropping like a rock.” The above quotation is from Andrew Paterson who led the sorghum sequencing project. Sorghum might not sound all that exciting but it is the number two biofuel crop in America after corn. If sorghum can be genetically manipulated…

“Students don’t buy a copy of the book—they buy lifetime access. The plan is for the textbook to serve not only as a reference for the class but as a pointer to further knowledge. Instead of publishing revised editions, Savkar’s team will keep the book up to date.” — A New Chapter for E-Books Imagine never…

1. Genes That Fit—Finally! (Genomics): The price of sequencing a gene has plummeted 100 million-fold since 1998 and, amid continued exponential progress in sequencing technology, the field shows no sign of abating. This suggests that the cost of sequencing the 3 billion genes in an individual’s genome will drop from $10,000 today to less than…

Over the past few months, I have delivered a number of insurance oriented keynotes and, later this week, I’ll be addressing the LOMA Conference on Emerging Technologies for the Insurance Industry. While I cover a wide variety of trends in the information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology sectors, here are five trends already impacting the insurance…

Twenty-two hundred years ago, you needed to work 50 hours to buy an hour of light from a sesame oil lantern. Today, to purchase an hour of an even cleaner and brighter light, it takes the average person about half a second. Such is the nature of technological progress. Yet, I think we can all…