Back to the Future

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." 

- Oscar Wilde

    While reading Rajlakshmee's post about Paul Graham's idea of thinking yourself in the near future and building from it, I couldn't help remembering an old post by Kevin Kelly titled You Are Not Late:

In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet. The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. If we could climb into a time machine and journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2044 were not invented until after 2014.

    I believe this to be the case. In our overcrowded social media landscape everybody seems to be thinking of how to create the next big app. While there still might be room for new social app such as dubsmash  making it big in social media, it is like a Beatle-like rock band in the early seventies. The most probable is that the next Instagram WON'T be like Instagram. Continuing with the music analogy, the people that today are playing "Punk" are probably exploring new territories and doing things out of passion: kids playing with bacteria genome, DIY entrepreneurs in Africa, artists exploring new user interfaces and many other examples.

    It is probable that by 2050 the world will have changed as much as in the last 300 years. The big markets we should really be paying attention are the basal stones of humanity: food, energy, social organization. Not only is it desirable but we have no choice: unless we radically change our behavior, we are heading straight ahead into a collision with the earth's ecological balance.

    However, to be fair, Silicon Valley, has and is taking the lead since the 1950's. While it may be true that there is a lot of herd mentality in many of today's startups, Silicon Valley is able to constantly correct its course: PC's in the 1970's and 1980's, internet in the 1990's, Web 2.0 in 2000's. Today, with blockchain promising to be as big as the internet and new companies that promise to revolutionize transportation, space and energy, among others, there is still wide room for radical innovations. As Tom Werner, CEO of SunPower, says in The Purpose of Silicon Valley:

Are there too many social-­networking and app companies out there right now? Probably. But what makes you think it’s going to stay that way for long? We have always undergone corrections. It’s the nature of who we are … But we’ll come out stronger than ever, and in a whole different set of markets and new technologies. This will still be the best place on the planet for innovation.

    In twenty years time we will look back at our Social Innovation class of 2015 and we will realize how much potential there was in this time. Hope that when we do, instead of biting our lips, we will say how lucky we were to have taken the leap. In case you are still not convinced, Don Tapscot points in the same direction in Best Advice: Leave the Executive Fast Track and Become an Entrepreneur.