Digitise The World

Entertainment

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Access to movies and music used to be in the form of a VHS tape or a vinyl record. Cheap enough to manufacture but still with a price tag of £15. Then DVD’s and CD’s came with the same price tag. The content is what holds its value. So why can we stream videos on youtube and Netflix for such a low, almost zero cost? How can we search for any song we like and hear it for free? The cost to distribute music and video and even games online is almost zero. This leads to an incredible abundance of content for us to consume every day. The access and availability has never been so great.

Communication

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Can you see the stress on your father’s face as your mum continues talking on the phone with her sister well into their second hour? Sending a text used to actually cost money per text. It still does if you send a SMS. But whats app, messenger and every other platform we use offers communication at zero cost. It has never been so easy to let work colleagues know about the next meeting, to share photos from a grandson’s birthday with the family, to check with friends if anyone is going out tonight. The communication infrastructure of the internet allows us to chat with such ease and for zero cost.

Energy

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Already in so many homes people are using renewable energy such as solar and wind to power their homes. Battery technology is improving all the time to store the excess energy that is created so it can be used on days where the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Automation will soon allow the excess energy to be sold to anyone, anywhere, allowing us to share our energy production. The cost will be virtually zero, once we have set up the initial wind turbines and solar panels. Digital automation will enable us to generate all the electricity we need to power our homes, fuel our cars and even heat our homes with the use of modern air source heat pumps, rather than the gas central heating we rely on now.

Food

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Much of our food is grown and picked with machinery. Computer Vision can identify good from bad fruit and vegetables and sort them. Soon enough the whole farming process will be automated. Much will be grown in poly tunnels and factory style buildings. Animal meat will be substituted with cultivated meat, where meat is grown without a live animal. Already meat alternatives such as quorn can be factory produced which will lead to complete automation of the process. The food will be delivered in driverless trucks to local warehouses for automated sorting into individual driverless pods for each customer, which will then be delivered without driver to each house. This digitisaton of the whole process costs almost nothing once the setup costs have been met. Software can be reproduced for almost zero cost, replacing the high cost of human labour. It won’t be long until you order everything you need from your device – every year we are buying more online. No more heated stores with high rents and many workers. Here there is a scenario where there is an almost zero cost to produce, transport and sell food, not to mention many goods.

Transport

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Is there anything more ridiculous than using a 1 tonne car to transport a 300g pizza from restaurant to home? Imagine autonomous pods less than 10 kilos that will deliver to our homes everything we need. Once the purchase cost of the pod is met, the software can be replicated for zero cost, the fuel will be green energy and at zero cost, with only a fraction of the energy needed to move a 1 tonne car. Soon we will be able to order goods on our phone which will be immediately picked by automated warehouses within one mile to be delivered to us by bots in ten minutes at almost zero cost.

Services

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Websites now let us view flights and hotels so why do we need travel agents? We can research destinations, compare hotels and book the most suitable flight and local transport. This digitisation of the human worker means the cost to arrange travel is virtually zero. This digitisation of human workers will be expanded exponentially in the coming years. We are already familiar with chatbots in customer service, automating the human who would have given substantial time to help us. This reduces the cost to almost zero for customer assistance. The use of websites dramatically reduces the cost of a business providing its service to the consumer. An online supermarket does not need an expensive bricks and mortar store, with shop assistants, attractive displays, heating etc. This reduces the cost to almost zero for consumer access to a business’ service. The automated tills in many shops reduce the cost of human workers. The self checkin screens in hotels, health centres etc. are being provided everywhere replacing the cost of hiring receptionists.

Education

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Educating ourselves how to fix this and that is easier than ever before. Youtube videos, instructables and ebooks are everywhere. Entire courses can be taken online for minimal cost, even free, to teach yourself how to do almost anything. Whether a quick fix or a bigger job. Collage and University courses of the same high standard as a brick university or college are available for a tiny fraction of the cost. The material is the same and is taught by professors. It is not just the material which we need, the teacher has a huge role to play in motivating and ensuring the student is understanding. AI can check the progress of the student, with regular tests to see if there are any areas the student is not understanding. We all learn in different ways, some abstract, some practical, some visual. If you don’t get a teacher who explains a concept in a way that you understand it can be difficult to catch up. Digital teachers will monitor your progress 24/7, be available 24/7, and explain the subject material in a way to suit the learner. AI will build a profile of the student, to see how they learn, what time of the day they learn best, and what medium, to keep up the student’s momentum.

Sensors

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Sensors will improve the efficiency of everything in our lives. From health monitoring, to water leak detection, to moving everything around efficiently. Water bills are high because leaks are hard to detect until they become a major problem. Sensors will be able to detect leaks early and allow a quick repair. Sensors to detect smoke can alert the fire services to a potential problem avoiding expensive repairs and reducing the risk to insurance companies, hence lower insurance costs. Sensors will allow efficiency improvements to drive down the cost of everything. Eventually we will have automated systems in our lives run by sensors to constantly monitor and adapt to changes.

Health Care

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Increasing the use of sensors in the home will allow daily checks of blood pressure, gum health, cholesterol, heart health and many more indicators of declining health. Constant monitoring with microphones and cameras (that only a computer algorithm will be able to understand) will help to detect impairments in behaviour, mood, cognitive abilities, and many other ailments before the individual is aware there is a (usually more advanced) problem. We will be able to optimise our health using AI to constantly monitor our diet and exercise to adjust as required. This will help to prevent conditions from progressing to more serious events.

Local health centres will be highly automated for regular scans such as x-rays. We will be able to automate the process of scanning and then using AI to detect abnormalities in the scans. This will allow much more monitoring to detect conditions earlier. AI software will help doctors making diagnoses.

Manufacturing

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Millions of jobs have been lost to machines replacing workers in the factory. Now the machines have computer vision and will be able to “think” so those jobs which are still left for humans will soon be replaced.