There are three upcoming technologies that are game changers. They are so transformative that every major global player is scrambling to own a piece of the future it promises. This is why these technologies have such geopolitical value.
"AI is whatever hasn't been done yet.” Great quote. Born in a University lab in 1956, this new science stumbled along until the marriage of powerful new technologies and the creation of big data enabled it to take on a mythical status. The most visible beneficiaries of AI are robots and self-driving cars – machines that can benefit from a plethora of experiential data. But as we edge toward the Internet of Things, almost everything could have embedded intelligence, from condoms to pacemakers.
Canada’s arrest of Huawei's CFO in Vancouver introduced many of us not only to Huawei (pronounced “wah way”) but to the 5G technology her firm pioneers. This fifth generation of cellular mobile communication is incredibly important and China is a leader in this space with Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia close behind. Canada and the US missed this boat. Over the years, Canada gladly tossed in enormous funds as did China for related R&D efforts at various Canadian educational institutions. Stupidly we allowed China to own the resultant patents so when the 5G cellphones soon hit the market, each of us will pay about $30 per phone to China for the use of their patents, many developed in Canada. Other than being super-fast, the 5G network has a very low latency (the time it takes to pass a message from sender to receiver). This is critical for self-driving cars and robots.
This stuff is way beyond my pay grade, but as I understand it, it uses atomic particles to perform computation. These particles are called “qubits” as opposed to the normal “bits” of our conventional computers. Rather than just being zero or one (on or off) they can have a variety of states. One of which is called entanglement (which Einstein called “spooky”). The challenge with quantum boxes is that they must operate near absolute zero – which is even colder than the recent Canadian winter. IBM and the other majors are moving quickly in this space and have developed impressive systems that can do mind boggling calculations at mind boggling speeds. So these suckers are coming but not to the computer rack in your office. They will be accessible from the huge cloud services. I use Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services and if I wish to use their Quantum Computer(s) I can. And one day I might. When I figure it out.