Technology Acceleration

In my post on the Black Swan event, I forgot to tell about its potential impact on technology. Since we have to practice social distancing, it behooves that most of us work from home. Only those that keeps the society going, such as medical personnel, food suppliers, etc., can go in to work but those stores or offices must design a system for maintaining social distance. The rest, if they can work from home, are asked to work from home to help “flatten the curve”.

This means technology comes into play. Videoconferencing of some sort will become big which will put pressure on bandwidth access to the internet. There may be a temporary uptick in technology sales as home workers outfit their offices. And once we’ve gone big on digital, then it may become difficult to go back to working in the office after we get to the other side. I think it will be a battle between the need to socialize with our coworkers versus getting things done from home. I don’t know which will come out stronger but remote working should increase.

I can envision the use of 3D printers becoming more prominent in developing solutions to our needs. As an example, two Italian men used 3D printers to create critical valves that hospitals in Italy were running out of. The valves usually cost around $11,000 but the two Italians were able to produce the valves for free for the hospitals. The innovators say that they don’t plan on using the valve designs for profit; they are just doing what needs to be done to save lives. Of course, the two men are being sued for infringement on intellectual property, but I’m hoping that the court system will waive this because it’s all hands-on deck to save lives.

I wonder if we can use 3D printers to create ventilators?

Artificial intelligence is now being used in the battle to find a vaccine or cure for the virus. Artificial intelligence can sift through the chemical permutations to find potential drug a lot quicker than man. Already, we have some potentials for testing which seems pretty quick so that’s a positive. Look for more “collaboration” between artificial intelligence and man to solve difficult problems.

I haven’t read anything about this but I can imagine drones or mobile robots doing more deliveries so as a way of doing social distancing. The pandemic could accelerate this automation and has the potential to negatively impact job prospects after we get past this crisis. We’re already in an economic crisis and these digital mobile robots will just add fuel to the fire. On one hand, they can protect the workers but on the other hand, they can displace the workers.

And education will be impacted as we are all working through learning remotely. Good, bad, I don’t know. I think it will be just a change in behavior and will push education sector to modernize sooner.