98 | theceomagazine.com
T
echnologies change the world. In the past
40 years, three have done so: the PC,
the internet and the mobile phone.
If you are to pick three technologies
that will really change the world in the decades
ahead, you will take several steps. First,
eliminate the technologies that are already on
the verge of changing it: autonomous electric
vehicles, solar and wind power with battery
storage, improved crop yields, artificial intelligence.
Discard, too, those that seem to have strictly limited
application, like blockchain, and those that seem
likely to change it only slightly: graphene,
electrified air transport, zero-carbon building
materials, small modular nuclear reactors,
cancer vaccines.
That leaves a small group of technologies,
of which three stand out. They represent, in turn:
a huge leap in responsible consumption, a huge
leap in manufacturing, and a huge leap in power.WORLD-
CHANGING
TECH
DAVID WALKER LOOKS
AT THREE PIECES OF
TRANSFORMATIVE TECH
THAT ARE SET TO REALLY
CHANGE THE WORLD.Lab-grown meat
could radically reduce
human pressure on the
natural world, while
cutting water use
and greenhouse gas
emissions.