Thomas Frey Editor for Futurist Magazine and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute gave the keynote address “Futurists View of Manufacturing” at the Medical Device Show, Anaheim Calf. Feb 12, 2013. He covered a wide range of manufacturing topics from medical devices to 3d printing of food and concrete buildings. He made many predictions about what the world could look like in 2030.

Mr. Frey descriped people as mostly backward looking because we have experienced the past. It’s like walking backward into the future.  The future will happen if chouse to participate or not. He suggests aligning our products with the future, by asking “what does the future want?” He asked who is the most famous person who ever lived (non-religious) person ? Edison, Newton, Einstein? He felt that the most famous person who ever lived has not been born yet ! He queried and what did that person do?

It was suggested that a new way of choosing the winner of the Nobel Peace prize could be:  if we selected 4  people and held a world wide web based vote. But to vote you had to pass a basic test about each of the 4 candidates to show that you were making an informed decision. What if we did this to elect a world leader.What he has found is that on a local level people are comfortable with this application of technology, however on a global level  electing a world leader it is harder for folks to accept.

He spoke of catalytic innovation creating new industries. Past examples are electricity, airplanes, photos etc. and all industries will end. He predicted that world wide steel industry will peek in 2024, then slowly decline. Relating to original thinking he quoted Max Plank “when you change the way you look at things….Things change”

Every 60 sec huge amounts of data are added to the web (like this article) The average person is consumes the equivalent of 100,500 words worth of data a day and that is growing by 2.6% every year. One ah ha for me was the value of those words, you can get data/words for 99 cents per million words off the web or you can spend $15,600 a year for a million words by going to college ! How much are your words worth?

Slides used with permission of Dr. Frey.