THE ALMANACK OF NAVAL RAVIKANT

Tech Trends

Disintermediation

As you democratize information, you get rid of information middlemen. A clear example is your real estate broker. Why the heck do brokers as agents get 6% of this gigantic transaction? 90% of it is about information conveyance. Some of it is legal, some of it is habit, some of it is people don’t want to take a risk with such a big transaction, but I predict 20 years from now there will be no job called real estate agent. [12] (On 4/1/2013)

Decentralization

The trend towards decentralized, open systems is strictly one-way. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's irreversible.

Corollary: on a long enough timeline, all essential software and network infrastructure goes open-source.

Decentralized Social Media

Will decentralized Twitter take down Twitter?

That’s a good, big question. I don’t think so, because there is a strong network effect in Twitter. That said, if Twitter stumbles, and there’s an open-source decentralized Twitter waiting in the wings, that will be, I think, a really good outcome for everybody. [1]

Privacy

Ubiquitous streaming cameras with remote storage will eventually end almost all physical criminal activities.

There is no privacy in a world of ubiquitous streaming cameras. But we also lose civil lawsuits, petty crime, police brutality, and "shame".

Aggregation

Every vehicle with a commercial license plate will eventually be Uber-ized. (2012-12-12)

It's entirely possible that the world will have one taxi dispatcher. (2015-01-27)

The world will eventually trend towards a single driver and a single doctor. There are powerful, data-driven network effects underneath.

Culture

Geopolitical

As the means of production go virtual, the returns to violence, by individuals and nation states, are falling.

Political Transparency

What I really hope is we will start seeing transparency in politics. Who is going to be the first candidate who is going to say, ‘You know what? I'm going to turn this all into reality TV. I'm going to wear a camera on myself 24/7. I'm going to televise every single meeting so you know there's no corruption going on. You know every time I’m talking to donors, and what I'm saying.’

Not just transcripts, but live-streaming video on a youtube channel. Tune in to watch the President 24/7. That's what I'm looking for -- the GoPro candidate, wearing a GoPro on their head.

Now you can say that's unrealistic, it's actually not. If it's a national security issue, just delay the tape by four years, wait until they’re out office. If they have to make a decision about whether we go after Osama Bin Laden, we're still going to record that meeting. We're just going to release the uncensored video footage four years from now.

Imagine what that does -- every time some secret trade deal is being negotiated, they can't be in the backroom saying ‘we'll just do this for our constituency.’ The American people are watching. ‘What do you want me to do for just your constituency?’ Make the case to them.

So it gets rid of all corruption in politics instantly. I think we're going to see some of the populist candidates of the future running on this platform. Voters are watching West Wing and House of Cards. They want to see the revolution, they want to see it all televised, they want to know what is being hidden from them.

If you look at cops who wear body cams during stop-and-frisk searches, obviously people are better off because now the cop isn’t going to beat up some poor person. Or the cases where the cop shoots a black guy in the back when he says he's running away, but really it was set up. Now you have a bodycam that helps.

And it helps the cops too, because cops themselves have to worry about people falsely accusing them, suing them, so it makes the system better for everybody. And what is the President but the top cop?

The top cop should be wearing the bodycam, absolutely. If you give one monkey power over 300 million other monkeys, including the power to kill them, torture them, bomb them, tax them, drag them out of their homes, make them rich, make them into a living God... If you give them that power, then of course, you have to watch them. You have to watch them more carefully than you watch anyone else. [47]

Where I think this heads -- crowdfunding plus social media means no more elite candidates. You will never see another Clinton or Bush run for office in the future. They're gone. You will not see any political dynasties in the future. They're gone.

But on top of that, I hope we will have transparency. I hope we will have term limits. And I think we're going to start seeing movements and platforms emerge within the parties that are currently anti-elite policies. We're going to see anti-elitist policies becoming mainstream. And it is scary for those of us who are elites, and I’m definitely in that category. But at the same time, I think it's a fascinating phenomenon to watch: technology is taking us from being a republic into being a true democracy. And that's a tough transition. [47]

China

Comforting thought: eventually, a combo of P2P, infinite bandwidth, and continuous connectivity will overwhelm the Great Firewall of China.

Capitalism

There won’t be a post-capitalist society. Language and free exchange co-evolved and are fundamental to how our species cooperates.

Education

The Internet will obsolete the industrial education system, just like it's obsoleting every other physical purveyor of information goods.

Who needs Stanford when our children will grow up gaming, socializing, and being educated in VR?

Employment

Tech always creates short term unemployment as it automates. Perhaps increased pace of innovation = more unemployed within a given generation.

Will accounting be automated?

I would say, like 90 percent of accounting will be automated, all the mechanical stuff, all the tracking stuff. But that’s fine, because what will happen then is the 10 percent remaining work that is creative will probably increase in size. Because there will be more time for it, and people will demand more of it. (I know ‘creative accounting’ is a bad thing, but there is creativity in accounting like there is in almost any discipline when you go deep enough.) [2]

There will come a day when all unskilled labor is eliminated and we look back in horror at the days before everyone was a skilled creator. [11]

Technology & Startups

The dominant story of the next ten years will be that of iPhones, sensors, and robotics making computing geo-ubiquitous. (2011-01-14)

The winning wearable won't need a display - but it will need a compelling package of sensors that aren't feasible on a phone. (2015-05-06)

Someday people will say, "Remember passwords?" And roll their eyes. (2015-05-29 06:04:45)

Tech companies will eventually displace the majority of the Fortune 500. Competing without software is like competing without electricity. (2016-09-08)

Future of tech innovation hinges upon whether new platforms will continue to be proprietary (iOS, Facebook, Twitter) or open (Web, Email).

Blockchain

Expect more "Minitoshis" - genius developers who design token-protocols, skip VC and launch without business teams or company structures.

Coming up: the scarcest resource in the tech industry is going to be cryptographers.

Cryptocurrency Valuations

@cdixon: I'm not disagreeing. Math-based currencies are the future. (obviously)

@naval: Agreed. Would be fun to compare notes. In the meantime, maybe we can put up a joint bet :-)

I.e. - "The total value crypto-based currencies will be > $1T within 10 years." (unless completely banned). (On 2013-04-13)

Virtual Reality

The winning VR company will be the one that lets people share snippets of their life, from their own point of view.

Virtual Reality will create another computing boom. VR is insatiable in demand for better batteries, more bandwidth, more processing power.

At some point we will have good enough VR that we will wipe our own memories in VR space to make life interesting again.

ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings)

ICO 2017 class is full of junk. But they will evolve and ICOs 2020 and later will liberate fundraising from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. (2017-09-22)

Startup Financing

Startup financings have variable terms and fixed prices. The future is standardized terms and variable prices (like public markets). (2012-05-27)

Facebook

Telecoms nationalized over stifling innovation. Bell Labs created to counter narrative. Tech monopolies face similar battle over censorship.

Do you think Facebook will continue to dominate social media?

There’s always new media; there will always be something new. It’s very rare that the previous tech giant incumbent takes on the the new stuff. Right now, people think that Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are unbeatable. But I’ve been around long enough to know that’s just not true. I know a decade from now, we’ll be complaining about another set of different monopolies that look untoppleable. [1]

Friend graphs (FB, LI) are declining in strategic value as mobile contact list takes over. Stranger graphs (IG, TWTR) maintain full value. [11]

Tesla

If @TeslaMotors gets to autonomous vehicles first, it will transition as quickly as possible out of selling cars into an on-demand service.

Google

The combined value of the mobile phone duopoly is stable at One Trillion Dollars. Feels low. (2016-05-15)

Google works on AI so much because a perfect search engine is also a perfect AI. (2016-04-20)

Spotify

I don't understand how @spotify can be worth $3.5B. Labels will squeeze margins just as Studios did to @netflix. (2012-03-24)

Google Plus+

I heard the Buzz about Google Plus. Color me skeptical, but I don't see this as the beginNing of the next Wave in social networking. (2011-06-28)

(From Eric: Did you find the easter eggs?)

Apple Watch

The iWatch seems like flawless execution of a flawed concept. (2014-09-13)

iPhone succeeded because it was the first true pocket computer. Watch implies that we need a second, but on the wrist.

The iPhone wasn't a better phone, it was the first viable pocket computer. Extrapolating from phones to watches, wallets, glasses is an error.

Future

Long Term

The distant future is small free cities with drone armies and skill-based immigration policies, surrounded by a sea of failed socialist states.

Hypothesis: On a long enough timescale, any political system without freedom of speech degenerates towards tyranny.

Loooooooong Term (Deep Future)

I think as a human race, we do have to get past this idea that we’re separate organisms and almost get in some kind of a multicellular organism situation, otherwise we’ll just destroy ourselves. It will just be too easy to blow ourselves up.

The future thriving society that we end up with, which may be a thousand years from now, will probably look like something that I would argue very strongly against today because it will have no room for the individual. [4]

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