The technology that we long believed would characterize the future has not just gotten billions in investment but there are many companies with multi-billion valuations to transform the world to future technology. There are things like quantum computers and flying cars.
Radical life extension
Open Access to space
Pollution elimination
Computer Advancement
Energy Efficiency and Pollution Elimination
Space
Improve medicine and public health and Synthetic biology and recombineering
Antiaging
Flying Cars
Electric and Self Driving Vehicles
They have either become huge industries or valuations from nothing 13 years ago or have grown over ten times.
I revisited and updated the Mundane Singularity tehcnology list several times. Notably in 2011, 2015 and 2017.
Energy Efficiency and Pollution Elimination
Those were two items on the list. Trillions have gone into wind, solar, new ultra high voltage grids and utility-scale batteries.
Solar panel production was 6 Gigawatts in 2008 and will be 200-300 Gigawatts in 2021.
New Solar Gigafactories will increase total global PV (photovoltaics) to 300GW. Using actual capacity expansion data, PV Tech’s analysis indicates only 200GW of installations in 2021 will offset a period of overcapacity. Hundreds of billions are going into the building and expansion of solar panel factories.
Solar energy is still growing at 15-25% per year.
the Lithium-ion battery market valuation was over $50 billion in 2020 There is about 300 GWh of lithium-ion battery capacity. Most of this capacity is going to electric cars but there is also utility-scale battery storage to make a more efficient energy grid. The battery transition could scale to 5-10 Terawatt hours per year by 2030.
Space
In 2017, Nextbigfuture talked about the huge impact of SpaceX. This is even more true today.
SpaceX was valued at $74 billion in its most recent 2021 fundraising round.
In 2017 Nextbigfuture predicted by 2027, we can have
* highly efficient and low-cost launch with fully reusable rockets
* water ice mining from the moon and other resources from the asteroids
* Robotic and teleoperated construction in orbits, moon and near earth asteroids
* expandable space stations
* construction of large telescope, solar power and other structures
Critical space costs could drop by 100 to 1000 times.
Lower cost reusable launches will greatly lower costs
Water and other resources from the moon will lower costs
Capabilities will ramp up and further lower costs.
This is all happening.
Improve medicine and public health and Synthetic biology and recombineering
There are many multi-billion companies developing genetic engineering medical treatments, iRNA treatments and other advanced biology approaches.
In 2020 and 2021, the messenger RNA companies (Moderna) have been critical in making antibody vaccines against COVID.
Antiaging
There are five treatments in phase 3 clinical trials and the Mitochondrial disfunction GS010 treatment seems to be at imminent FDA or European approval.
Flying Cars and Flying Taxis is Happening in the Form of Electric VTOL Large Drones
Electric and Self-Driving Vehicles
Tesla had a peak valuation just short of $1 trillion and the pure EV companies (Tesla, Nio, Xpeng, BYD, Lucid Motors-CCIV) and electric-self driving truck companies have a combined market value of well over $1 trillion.
Tesla is getting over $1 billion in annual revenue from its self-driving Autopilot service. Waymo is offering self-driving taxis as a commercial service. The self-driving semi truck companies are testing in the real world and will start or are starting full commercial services.
Quantum Computers
Trapped ion quantum computer company, IonQ, is IPOing with a $2 billion valution. Honeywell has a market value of $150 billion. Honeywell is also a quantum computer leader.
