Tag Archives: future

If or When?

I haven’t had any (known) close contact with Covid, but I’ve reached the point where it has touched or is touching so many people I know… I’m starting to wonder, is it a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ it will reach our family?

Looking a year into the future, I can see the end of the ‘end’emic, with optional vaccines for a covid strain, just like optional flu vaccines today. There may even be a single Pan-Coronavirus “Super” Vaccine that truly ends this. But that’s in the far future, what lies ahead in the next 6 weeks?

I’m afraid my crystal ball gazing conjures no clear images of what’s to come in the short term. What’s my best guess? Businesses and maybe even schools closing from staffing shortages; Tougher restrictions in public (indoor) spaces; and a lot of people self-or-family isolating.

What’s my hope? Less and less hospitalization with more and more mild cases that look like a ‘regular’ flu.

Time will tell. I’m setting a calendar reminder to look back at this post in 6 weeks.

We don’t really understand

We don’t really understand exponential growth. It’s too hard to comprehend because when we look at growth, we tend to focus on what we’ve seen already, and project forward, but what has already happened is always less significant in length or size than what is still to come. So when we compare what has happened already to what is still to come, we are not comparing equal things.

Fold a piece of paper in half 6 times. How thick do you think the stack would be? Let’s have some fun and look at the folding paper challenge:

It was an accepted belief that folding a piece of paper in half more than 8 times was impossible. On 27 January 2002, high school student, Britney Gallivan, of Pomona, California, USA, folded a single piece of paper in half 12 times and was the first person to fold a single piece paper in half 9, 10, 11, and 12 times. The tissue paper used was 4,000 ft (1,219 m; 0.75 miles) long. ~ GuinnessWorldRecords.com

So she needed a 4,000 foot, (1,219 metres) long piece of paper to achieve this. It’s easy to look at this image of her folded paper and figure out how big it was at 11 folds and before that 10 folds, by halving the amount once then twice. But what if she were to fold the paper more times? How many more times would this image represent?

This image represents folding the paper just 3 more times… a total of just 15 folds.

At 23 folds this would be about a kilometre high (3,280 feet). At 30 folds, you would be entering space. 42 folds gets you to the moon. The 51st fold would get you to the sun. Beyond that it doesn’t matter because our brains won’t truly appreciate the scale anyway.

So I can see the difference that folding a piece of paper just 6 times (64 pieces of paper high) to 12 times (the first image of Brittany above) looks like, but I really struggle to extrapolate from this that 24 folds would be 2 kilometres high.

So when we look at things like technological advancements, we don’t really see well into the future. When I bought the 16k adapter for my Commodore VIC 20 computer to get me to a whopping 36k of memory, I could not fathom the idea that I’d one day be buying 2 Terabytes of memory to store photos that were 8 megabytes large. And I’ll have an even harder time imagining what kind of data I’ll be storing 10 or 20 years from now.

Watch out Metaverse here we come! What does this mean? It means that in 20 years we’ll look back at the technology we have right now in the same way someone who lived 160 years ago would look at our technology today.

That’s mind blowing!

Space Travel

If you could take a trip to the Space Station, would you go?

If there was a shuttle to an outpost on Mars, is that I trip you would want to take?

Does the idea of weightlessness, and escaping gravity appeal to you?

I wonder if leaving Earth’s atmosphere is something that will be as accessible as traveling to a distant continent in my lifetime? Pay for a ticket, hop on a spacecraft, and spend a luxurious week in zero gravity.

Part of me wonders if I’d enjoy it as much as I think I will, and part of me thinks I’d feel nauseated for most of the trip. But I want to go! I want to experience weightless and see the entire earth from space. I want to do a space walk. I want to put my feet on the moon or on Mars.

I want to holiday off planet. This is a bucket list destination. Who’s with me?

Creativity and NFT’s

I think by now everyone has heard of NFT’s.

NFTs (or “non-fungible tokens”) are a special kind of cryptoasset in which each token is unique — as opposed to “fungible” assets like Bitcoin and dollar bills, which are all worth exactly the same amount. Because every NFT is unique, they can be used to authenticate ownership of digital assets like artworks, recordings, and virtual real estate or pets. – Coinbase

Right now I think many people see this as a fad, and there are all kinds of tokens being created and sold for ridiculously high prices, which both make the news, and seem like a silly waste of money. But there is something here that is pretty special in two different ways. And when the dust settles and the fad-y-ness goes away, it is creatives who will benefit from these tokens.

1. Re-sale of art.

When an artist sells an original, they get the sale price and then they don’t benefit if the art is resold. Often an artist will take years to get popular (much less famous) and their early work is essentially given away compared to their later work when they become known. With NFT’s, artists can get a percentage of the resale value. The token can be tracked and if sold on an NFT market (rather than a private transaction) then the artist can keep a commission.

2. Tokens tied to real world rewards.

There is a DJ named 3LAU (Justin David Blau) who sold NFT’s of his work in an auction,

“The way 3LAU structured his auction was very cutting edge and the mechanics of the auction should be noted. There were 33 available winning slots in total for the auction. Slot #1 was the Platinum Tier, slots #2 – 6 was for the Gold Tier, and slots #7 – 33 was the Silver Tier. Each tier contained digital artwork, music, and physical goods (Vinyl) connected with the project. The winner of the Platinum Tier also won a custom song created by 3LAU with the winner’s creative direction, tokenized as a 1 of 1 NFT.” ~ Dennis Martin

In another auction, the top tier included lifetime tickets to every concert he does. And since this is an NFT that can trade hands, it can be sold if the buyer no longer wants this.

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So while you’ll read things like, A Rare CryptoPunk Ape NFT Was Sold for $10 Million USD in Ethereum, and wonder why? Or how this can be sustained? Or if this is just a fad? NFT’s will have value desired by others. Yes, there will be silly collectables selling for way too much. But there will also be the ability to play games and earn items of value that can be traded rather than just hoarded. And that is another way NFT’s will be used to trade items people will want to pay for.

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Collectables and video games aside, NFT’s will be a game changer for artists and creatives. And in a world where automation is making items better, cheaper, and faster; and where jobs themselves are becoming more automated, there will be more time and space for artists to hone their crafts as a way of making a living. NFT’s will be part of that future where artists can sell their work, provide experiences for their fans, and benefit from the resale of their work as their popularity grows.

NFT’s might seem like a fad to you, but they are here to stay, and some time in the near future you’ll end up owning one if you attend a live show, or buy a piece of art, or maybe even choose to pay for a song of artist you love to listen to.

Market volatility

Three years ago I put a little bit of money into cryptocurrency and then the market took a huge dive. It was hard to watch this ‘investment’ dive to 25-30% of what I put in. But it wasn’t like I put in more than I could afford to lose, and I didn’t panic and sell at the bottom. I held on… or as they say in crypto, HODL (a term started with the word HOLD being written with a typo, and now standing for Hold On for Dear Life).

Late last year my investment jumped back up to break even, and then soared, and I learned my first lesson about investing, and that is dollar cost averaging. If I had not put the investment in all at once, but instead had put money in monthly, I would have done so much better. The reality is that this strategy works better than 90-95% of investment strategies. So, unless investing is the thing you do, your best strategy is to put a small amount of money in every month, no matter what the market does. The volatility works to your advantage, and no one knows when the market is going to dip.

Last night was one of those dips. Wham, 20-25% down! It’s sad, but I bet many new investors lost a lot of money and sold out when they felt the pain of watching their investment sink. For me, I’ve seen this before, and my small investment is doing better than if I had put that money into an RRSP or Tax Free Savings Account. But I’ll be honest and say that for a couple years, it didn’t seem like this.

What’s interesting is that adoption of cryptocurrency is growing, the use-cases for them are incredible. Smart contracts (that cut out expensive bank and lawyer fees), back-end tracking of supply chains, and decentralized borrowing are a few places that blockchain technology are literally ‘taking over’. Also, while many people struggle with the idea of NFT’s (Non Fungible Tokens) these are revolutionary in the way an artist or creator can gain profit from the resale of their work. And the Metaverse is something that will grow and holds amazing potential… and huge profits in the multi-billion dollar gaming market.

What’s really going to change the crypto market is the speed of adoption. If you own cryptocurrency now, you are about 2-3% of the world’s population. It took about 12 years to get to this percentage. It will probably take less than 2 more to get to 5%. Three years ago I had to drive into Vancouver to put money into crypto, and because my investment was quite small, I had to pay a premium at over 5%. Now I use Netcoins, (full disclosure, that’s a referral link), and it’s a simple e-transfer, and a 1.5% premium on the purchase. Easy. And everyone has seen adds for Crypto.com, where you can buy, stake (lock in and earn interest), and even spend (with a prepay visa) crypto.

Both the interest and access have opened up dramatically, and the adoption of cryptocurrencies is about to explode. But with this comes even more volatility. With this comes the high speculation gambles and the fear selling when the market does what it did last night. And cryptocurrency is risky. It’s not a normal thing to watch the volatility of 10-25% rises and dips and think, ‘easy come, easy go’. But I enjoy looking into the projects and investing a little bit in them. I’m not planning on taking any profits out until after I retire, and I’m not putting enough in to make a difference in my day to day living and spending habits. So the volatility isn’t much more than entertainment. Though I will admit, the appeal to put a bit more money in when I see a big dip like this is pretty strong.

One thing that I fear is that a lot of younger people, with less disposable income are jumping into meme coins (popularized coins that only serve to be traded with little other purpose). These are high risk, and susceptible to ‘pump and dump‘ schemes where they simultaneously buy causing a jump in price, and get people excited to catch the ride up, then those behind the scheme dump their coins on the market taking massive profits at the top, and leaving everyone else holding the coin at a much lower value.

A 20-year old thinking long term and dollar cost averaging, will do well. A similar person seeking massive profits will end up losing their investment 4 out of 5 times, but they will know someone who was the 1 out of 5 profit-maker and think that they can do the same. Betting on short term market volatility is risky and will cause a lot of people pain. Where as, knowing that market volatility is profitable over the long term and dollar cost averaging is what smart investors do.

It’s a simple formula where risk over a shorter time can lead to greater profits but will more likely lead to greater losses, and risk over a longer time might not get the huge gains, but it will reduce the risk of loss: Invest a small amount, repeat, and HODL. The next lesson is when to take profits… I have a strategy, but I’m still trying to learn more from people a lot smarter than me.

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(Disclaimer: I’m not a financial advisor and I don’t play one on the internet… this is not financial advice.)

The death and rebirth of alone

I’m listening to Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I’ve shared the amazing cartoon based on the introduction before, looking at the contrast of the dystopian novels ‘Brave New World‘ by Huxley and ‘1984‘ by Orwell, and “the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” I’ll share the comic again below.

But first, a thought about how we amuse ourselves with digital entertainment. I think that if Postman was alive today his fear of television as an entertainment distraction would have been exponentially magnified with the advent of the post Truth world that the internet and smartphone have propelled us into. In some ways this book feels dated, and in others prophetic. Television no longer has the grasp on everyone it did when this was written in 1985, but everything about Postman’s concerns are just amplified with entertainment and distraction constantly at our fingertips.

One thing this brought to mind is the fact that kids today are never bored, at least not bored like I was sometimes as a kid. I mean, I couldn’t contact my friends after school whenever I wanted, and I couldn’t choose something else to watch when nothing was on tv that I wanted to watch. I just got bored. Then I figured out a way to fill the time… by myself… all by myself as in ‘all alone’.

I don’t think kids today know how to be alone, but they certainly know how to be lonely. They are always connected yet feel disconnected. They are always ‘on show’ but many just feel ‘off’. They see social media of everyone’s best self, and feel like they can’t be that person themselves.

The new ‘alone’ is constantly connected, but always feeling alone.

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Writing that last sentence reminded me of a poem I wrote, ‘A Life Consumed‘.

Below is Postman’s Huxley/Orwell comparison I mentioned above.

A metaphor for meta

By now most people have heard about Facebook’s plan to open up The Metaverse to everyone: a virtual environment where we interact and engage in a digital world.

Back at the start of September I wrote Future Tech: Prescription Glasses Metaphor, and shared how wearable technology will enhance us. In it I said, “The future I shared above is a future with a metaphorical 30/20 vision. It is the ability to see and feel things that people today can not see or feel without augmentation… and this will be the new version of 20/20 vision.”

Essentially, if you aren’t augmenting your sight with added (meta) data from the world, normal vision would be like you are walking around with bad vision, missing out on what everyone else can see. The Metaverse is a bit different. It isn’t augmentation of reality, it is an alternate reality, albeit a virtual one. It is a world unto itself, with locations to visit and items to consume and purchase.

There are a lot of movies about people being trapped in a virtual world or a video game, this is a space people choose to go to. It has all the trappings of the present world, but without the crowds, pollution, and effort to commute to different places. But while I haven’t read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash that first coined the Metaverse, from what I understand it’s quite dystopian, with capitalism reigning supreme and the rich controlling the virtual world. Sure, it will produce some new winners, the early adopters who understand how to build and capitalize in this new frontier. However, the rich will also do very well, and be the early buyers who build the infrastructure for profit. Facebook will profit the most, with a younger generation that was a demographic that they were losing.

It’s going to happen. It’s going to be a space everyone finds value visiting. From moviegoers, sitting in a virtual theatre with the biggest screen they’ve ever seen right ‘in front of’ their eyes. To birthday parties of friends in other parts of the world. To business meetings. To music concerts and live performances. To actual video games where you spend both time and money living in an alternate reality.

Except it won’t just be a vacation land and escape. It will be a temporary happy pill for some, and a permanent place of work for others. It will not bring happiness for most, it will only extend the rat race of the physical world into a virtual world.


if this feels like a dystopian outlook, it’s not because of the inability for this new Metaverse to be a great place, but rather because those who build it and first explore it won’t be there to make it an ideal place to enjoy, they will be there to make it a market to gain profit and power.

Welcome to the virtual rat race.

The future is on the blockchain

I know that there is a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about the future of cryptocurrencies, but the reality is that the future will be recorded on blockchains.

Here are 3 ways that transactions will be tracked ‘on chain’:

1. Smart contracts.

When you make large purchases like a house, that includes a loan, the paperwork needs to be handled by lawyers or a notary, because the handing over of debt has to handled correctly or the transaction could leave both the seller and new owner holding the same debt at the same time, or the debt not being owned by either. Smart contracts recorded on the blockchain eliminate this by having the necessary transactions happen simultaneously only after all parties agree.

2. Decentralized finance.

If you have collateral for a loan, you won’t need a bank to borrow. These loans will provide opportunities for people who tend to only be able to access high interest loans to find more appropriate financing. And, the door will be open for loans slightly larger than micro loans, in many countries where this is currently challenging. When finance becomes decentralized regulations become a challenge, and the limits of borders and centralized control break down. There will be a Robin Hood effect where people with small amounts of equity can be both lenders and borrowers, taking the the decision-making and profit-making out of the exclusive hands of the rich.

3. Artists profit.

NFT’s – Non Fungible Tokens are baffling to many people and there are a lot of uses cases that seem silly. But usually when an artist sells a piece of work, they don’t get any value in the resale. NFT’s allow an artist to get a percentage of resale value. This is a game changer for creative people and NFT’s will be a way to track both digital and physical works of art in the future.

There are many other reasons to record transactions on a blockchain, but I think these three uses will be paramount.

We live in a time warp

When you are 10, 5 years is half a lifetime. 10 years is half your life at 20, and 20 years is half your life at 40.

By the time you hit 40, your first 20 years are a distant memory, and you remember choice moments, but you don’t remember those years like when you were younger. The distance in time causes you to lose your ability to hold on to old memories. You can’t hold an ever accumulating amount of memories, and so some fade away. So time stretches the past into a distance too far to see everything.

Meanwhile, 1 year at 10 used to be 1/10 of your life. A year at 20 is 1/20th of your life and a year at 40 is 1/40th of your life. Each year, the lengths of a year as compared to the rest of your life diminishes. So time also shrinks the future while it stretches the past. We live in a time warp, and time goes by faster every day.

Sometimes it’s good to reflect on this, if only just to appreciate the fleeting moments in a day, and know that unless we appreciate the time we have, we can only appreciate the memories that we know will fade away.

Dropped calls

I live in an old house, and rather than traditional drywall, we have plaster with wire mesh in it. This makes our house a bit like a Faraday cage. Some days when reception is bad, I have to find a spot that works and stay still to keep the call from fading in and out, and sometimes I even have to go outside.

But I notice it’s not just at home. I have bad zones in my school too, and will even tell someone I’m talking to on the phone, ‘You might lose me for a couple seconds as I walk through this hallway.’

My running joke is: iPhones are amazing, they can do so much, it’s too bad they don’t make good phones.

I do find it odd that I’m better off on a Zoom call or WhatsApp, streaming a video call on wifi, than I am making a simple phone call. As the world slowly moves towards global wifi, I think we might see an end to traditional phone calls. We’ll still carry phones with us (one way or another), we just won’t be tied to a phone network and locked into phone company contracts. And we won’t be dropping as many calls.