How Advanced Technology Is Driving the Next Evolution of Humankind
By Sandeep Kapoor
Charles Darwin made this historic statement 153 years ago, "From so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." The quote from his book, On the Origin of the Species, is quite apt today when applied to emerging technologies, such as 5G, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the digital twin.
Revolutionary inventions pave the way for future technological innovations
In 2022, the world celebrated the 75th anniversary of the well-known device, the transistor, and the 65th anniversary of another stellar device, the integrated circuit. Since then, we have evolved from a single amplifier block to a 3000-transistor wafer in the 1970s to a nanometer process that can accommodate 50 billion transistors onto a chip the size of a fingernail. In the last 35 years, the semiconductor market grew from over $30B to more than $600B, creating millions of employment opportunities.
Sixty years ago, the Mansfield News Journal correctly predicted the future in an article with the headline; You'll be able to carry [your] phone in [a] pocket in the future. Exactly 20 years after that, Motorola launched the first commercially available cellular phone, DynaTac 8000X, costing $3995, weighing around 1 kg, and providing 30 minutes of talk time per charging cycle for 1G networks.
Emerging technologies mature as life-altering advances continue
The evolution continues as 5G networks overcome design challenges to enable <1 ms latency and up to 20 Gbps speed. But progress is not about speed and latency only. Many innovations have directly impacted the development of landmark devices, including cameras, phone books, and clocks.
Today, the world has over 14B connected devices and more than 7B mobile phone users, with global mobile traffic crossing the benchmark of 100 EB (one billion Gigabytes) per month. Expect these numbers to grow exponentially for the next several decades.
For instance, we'll see the evolution of the 2 nm process, accommodating 333 million transistors in 1 square millimeter. The tech cosmos is already hooked on developing 6G mobile communication technologies, which will transform the world.
How 5G and 6G technology will impact the future of humankind
As the next technological evolution unfolds, we can expect to see technology for humanity accelerate, resulting in significant improvements in healthcare, disease prediction, education delivery, disaster management, resource management, productivity enhancement, crop protection, and much more.
For instance, expanding 5G and 6G wireless technologies in rural areas, combined with robots, temperature moisture sensors, drone aerial imagery, and GPS technologies, will significantly contribute to sustainable agriculture. Smart agriculture unlocks new ways to optimize crop production, conserve resources, and improve soil health, helping farmers reduce their carbon footprint.
These technologies will help in decreasing water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the real-time data collected by IoT-enabled drones and sensors results in more efficient and accurate pesticide spraying that could lessen overall pesticide use significantly.
The evolution of 5G and 6G technologies is a significant catalyst in implementing autonomous vehicles (AV). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.3M people lose their lives yearly due to road accidents, and another 20 M suffer injuries. Human errors cause ninety-five percent of traffic accidents. The precision technologies used in autonomous vehicles will considerably help prevent accidents and loss to humanity.
Rural healthcare has been a significant concern for all nations: underdeveloped, developing, and developed. The concept of Telemedicine has existed for decades. However, the implementation has been a major challenge due to the lack of enabling technologies. All the technological advancements are helping bridge the gap considerably and making it possible to take primary and secondary healthcare to rural areas.
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