This coming together of these technologies at the same time is what he calls “convergence”.
The technologies he mentions are as below accompanied by my understanding/take -
Digital Payments
Along with depreciation of cash I include Blockchain as well in this category. Doing away with cash definitely has its own advantage in reducing corruption and having a trail. Benefits of digitization outweigh the cons in my view! But on top of that Blockchain technology adds its own advantages.
Having a decentralized ledger which is immutable in itself is a great step above.
Artificial Intelligence
The term has lost its significance because of how much it has been used loosely by companies and everyone. But it still doesn’t diminish its potential.
For example - A smart-assistant which can take care of things for you keeping in mind your preferences and other things seems too good to be true but that is the long term goal. Yes, it can be eerie in some aspects but will be very handy.
Drones/Robots
Great use in terms of last-mile delivery and other aspects too like medical and rescue missions excluding military uses which is their own can of worms.
Space Economy
Now it is well obvious why it’s important for humans to be interplanetary species, the side benefits are very important as well. In the course of making space travel safer, cheaper and accessible - eventually we will master suborbital travel technology as well. This can reduce the current time to fly via planes from one part of the world to the other. I think this milestone will be crossed much earlier and will have far-reaching effects.
And we haven’t mentioned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles yet! Flying taxis in layman terms.
Imagine the impact on real estate when one can commute to work 100s of miles away in a matter of minutes and then back.
CRISPR/Gene-editing
Many diseases are caused by gene corruption aka genes are the source of it.
Through this technology, the idea is to repair those genes once and for all and cure the disease. It can also ensure the disease stops being hereditary. The potential is much more than that - theoretically one can design babies by laying down their characteristics like height, IQ, eye color etc. Here it becomes a moral issue.
Worth mentioning though that silencing a gene has effects which are not well-understood yet. For ex- function of a gene is different in a liver v/s in other organs. But nonetheless, lots of companies are working on therapies and research happening on it.
5G
This one is easy to explain. Faster internet helps in so many ways especially when we are going to have Internet of Things (IoT) i.e every device working with an internet.
Also, in certain areas which are in difficult terrain it is hard to lay down infrastructure for communication. There are ambitious projects to beam the internet down to those areas from the sky (space). With that everyone is now connected and can have access to information.
Precision Medicine
This field is about designing medicines and dosage specific to every individual. The same dosage isn’t ideal for everyone. With the advent of this field, we can have medicines designed specifically. Also, also have medicines which are so “smart” that they go in your body and work only on those areas/regions which they are supposed to.
3D printing
"3D printing" can refer to a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control to create a three-dimensional object, with material being added together (such as plastics, liquids or powder grains being fused together), typically layer by layer.
It can be revolutionary as you can now customize any part and reduce the time to make any product.
Overall, all the above technologies are quite revolutionary in themselves and with all converging at the same time they are going to have a profound impact. But if I were to rank the sectors most likely to change, they are -
Transportation
Real-estate
Healthcare
Insurance
Shopping/Entertainment
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