The opening keynote presentation on Wednesday, Dave Evans, co-founder and CTO of Stringify, discussed the exponential growth of technology and its role in shaping the future of humanity.
Dave Evans, co-founder and CTO of Stringify
“Exponential growth is very difficult for the human brain to understand; we’re not wired to understand exponential functions,” he said, before offering examples of how rapidly the power of technology is progressing. Using analogies to illustrate concepts such as Moore’s law, Evans projected advances in computing power and storage: in just a few years, we’ll have the ability to make microprocessors the size of red blood cells, and in 10 years, $1,000 will buy you a 1 petabyte of storage—enough space to record your entire life in 4K video.
According to Evans, these advances, combined with faster data transfer rates such as the 5G standard, hold massive potential for the future of IoT, in which everything from livestock, to water supplies, to toothbrushes will be connected and infused with intelligence. This will help immensely with potential social challenges, which Evans asserted will arise from the rapid growth of the world’s population coupled with longer lifespans and limited resources.
Evans also discussed the development of artificial intelligence and deep learning, the fastest growing areas of technology. Most significantly, this power will increasingly reside in the cloud, allowing for any connected device to harness it. “All of these abilities will become available to any thing with a connection,” Evans said. “This makes dumb things really, really smart. This is where we go from the ‘internet of things’ to the ‘internet of intelligent things.’”
