What will be the next economic revolution, after the industrial age & the current information age?
I don’t want to pour cold water on the other suggestions made here, but there are many who believe that within the next 50 years or so, we will experience a revolution that will be quite the most significant event to face humanity. Since the start of the Information Age that you mention, development has been aimed at machines that were faster, bigger, and above all, smarter. This trend continues, and encompasses all the other advances: better operating systems; more memory; faster CPUs are all, ultimately, designed to produce computers that behave as if they’re smarter. Compared to actual brains, home or business computers are really pathetically stupid, but this isn’t much of an indication of what can be achieved by machines that are specifically designed to work like brains. True Artificial Intelligence research has been going on for a long time, and progress is being made – slowly, because the best ‘thinking’ machines have to be purpose-built, and duplicating the functionality of mi
