Dark Trends: Not Every Technology Is the Future

 　　Do all future-oriented trends imply value or opportunity? In other words, will any emerging technology have considerable development and application in the future? If so, how long will this future take to come? 5 years, 10 years, or more than the length of our lives?

　　We generally think that the Industrial Revolution brought great changes to human society at that time rather than gradual changes; we would think that after the invention of the train, horses and donkeys should be laid off, because the ruts can only lead to Rome, and the rails extend into the future.

　　But is this really the case? Are trends really that easy to grasp? Does the predicted trend really have a bright future?

　　After human beings entered the railway age, in 75-200 years, it was the golden age of carriage transportation! It didn't die out immediately until the 19th century, when railroads led to a dramatic rise in the total volume of freight transported, but railroad tracks couldn't reach every nook and cranny of cities and villages, as horse-drawn carts could.

　　Trains, railway tracks, and stations have built logistics centers one by one, which solves the problem of long-distance transportation, but short-distance transportation does not solve the problem. The goods in the logistics center need to be dispersed, and this is obviously impossible for railways.

　　Judging from the trend of technology, it is a historical fact that the railway led the development of the engine and finally ended the carriage. Under this trend, following the trend is obviously the right way. In this regard, the American historian Pomeranz made an assumption that if you were a young man in England, you were exactly 20 years old in 1830. At that time, the railway had just been invented. You keenly grasped the historical trend, saw the bright future of engine and mechanical transportation, and even deduced that 188 years later, in 2018, you can block the two-hour evening rush hour after get off work. So, according to the future, you adjusted your business strategy at that time, sold the carriage, and changed your business. Because you think there is no future for carriages in the transportation industry, you have seen the ceiling of that industry from afar. And the reason why you are so wise is that you have grasped the trend, grasped the bright trend. However, after making that decision, history slowly tells you that it will take 100 years for this trend to become a reality, and carriage transportation has ushered in its golden age and will last your life. Because it was not until the truck was invented that the distribution problem of railway logistics was finally solved. Since then, the transportation system has achieved regional coverage, and carriage transportation has really subsided.

　　Why did this English guy seize the trend, but finally lost a huge positive opportunity? Since the person who knows the current affairs is Junjie, why is he so down? Because he overlooked a problem: grasping the trend may not necessarily grasp the future. Furthermore, not all trends in the future can come in a short period of time. Therefore, to grasp the technical trend, it is necessary to consider the application of this trend in a predictable period of time.

　　As far as the current situation is concerned, as the speed of technological iteration is getting faster and faster, the development of various technologies is dazzling. Which one represents the future? artificial intelligence? Biotechnology? Autopilot? new energy? These problems make people more and more anxious, and many people cannot see what the future opportunities are, so there are many follow-up investments and lead to waste of resources. How should investors invest, and how should product managers adjust the direction of future product development? In this regard, you can't even grasp the pulse of the times as quickly as the English guy.

　　In this era of no lack of technological innovation, the anxiety is not whether a certain technology can appear, but which one of the many technologies can be grasped so as not to step on the air. The faster the technology is updated, the more it is necessary to adjust the current behavior according to the trend. Therefore, this is not only an era of imagining the future, but also living in the present according to the future. Therefore, when we find a trend, we need to have the ability to judge the trend, that is, how a certain trend will land and how it will be used.

　　In Dark Trends, we have selected 11 categories of technologies from dozens of fields, all of which have one thing in common: either more fundamental or more broadly applicable. They involve quantum computing, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, 5G communication technology, artificial intelligence, industrial robots, autonomous driving, the era of large spaceflight, mixed reality, graphene and other new materials, and biomedicine.

　　Technological innovation has always been regarded as the magic of turning a stone into gold. It seems to change everything, and is synonymous with coolness and fashion. Because of this, anyone who grasps the technological trend and sets foot in the wind is like taking Aladdin's god. Light, will be able to achieve career success.

　　However, this is all wrong, because technology itself is worthless unless it can be industrialized and applied to products. Because of this, we advocate to study not only the trend of science and technology itself, but also the law and direction of the industrialization of science and technology. Mastering technological trends is the premise of realizing industrialization, but only by realizing industrialization can one truly grasp the technological trends.

　　From cloud computing to the Internet of Things, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology, what we are talking about is not just the technology itself, on the contrary, what we want to tell you is how these technologies are being used by humans, and their future industrialization direction .