Comments on live “Steve Jurvetson”
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
What is one thing about the future you believe in but very few others agree with you on?
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Steve Jurvetson
@dfjsteve · Partner, DFJ
@bentossell That we are in the middle of a sea change in how much of engineering will be done. It will be more like parenting than programming. The locus of learning shifts from end products to the process of their creation. An ever-growing percentage of software will be grown and an ever-growing percentage of compute will run on infrastructure that resembles the brain (massively parallel, fine grained architectures with in-memory compute and a growing focus on the memory and interconnect elements)
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Steve Jurvetson
@dfjsteve · Partner, DFJ
@bentossell And on a derivative note, I also believe that the conversion of every business into an information business will have profound aggregate effect, such as an accelerating rich-poor gap that is not self-rectifying.
What if technology raises the bottom of the pyramid for all, and democratizes upward mobility, yet at the same time, transforms it from a pyramid to a conical spike — where an ever shrinking percentage of the population controls an even-growing percentage of an information-economy embedded with winner-take-all network effects and power laws?
In short, I ask if the ironic byproduct of erasing the digital divide is a further acceleration of the rich-poor gap?
What happens to peoples who opt out of the vector of progress, as the sea change of destiny becomes the drumbeat of decades, instead of centuries? What is the nature of work in the future? And how can our culture and the very fabric of society co-evolve with our technologies during the transition?
And it motivates me to address some basic human needs, like free healthcare forever: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ju...
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David Joseph
@dvdrjo · Co-Founder, President. Regeneration.com
@dfjsteve @bentossell Free Healthcare is something that is very possible. The main question needs to be what perspective is that information being created from. Is it the conventional pharmaceutical approach. Or an Integrative approach that encompasses the best of modern medicine with ancient technology that is thousands of years old. Addressing the whole being is what has been lost from conventional care which sees the body as a machine. When it is a vastly more complex system composed of interconnected psychological, emotional, and physical bodies. Any thoughts on this perspective as our society shifts towards self-actualization as a result of our basic human needs being met?
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Steve Jurvetson
@dfjsteve · Partner, DFJ
@dvdrjo @bentossell The learning comes from the people, just like for Google today. So it can incorporate non-traditional medicine as well. Everything that works. Imagine it starts with a simple mobile text interface, and as the next three billion people come online in this decade, it could become enriched with imagery and diagnostic sensors in the smartphones. The proposition for the consumer is free, unbiased advice as long as they respond to the daily prompts for input on the remedies tried and the progression of symptoms through resolution. The recommendations would come from a special purpose AI (using machine learning and then deep learning) that benefits from what would become the largest data set of over-the-counter, prescription and non-traditional remedies. What actually works? What is the actual rate of adverse events over time? (This data set alone could provide enough revenue to cover the marginal cost of operation.) The vast majority of health care does not require surgery, especially in the developing world (think infectious diseases and nutrition), but when it is required, the system could help point people to the specialist they need. The service would be offered in all languages with voice/text conversion for the illiterate. Regional epidemiologic patterns and proactive warnings would naturally follow as it becomes a trusted, life-saving advisor. As it scales, it could become a powerful distribution channel for generic drugs, priced at a small fixed margin over manufacturing cost. Since the system is the trusted advisor, the brand of the drug would be anonymous and there is no sales or marketing expense to reach this large customer base.
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Rocky Pruitt
@rocky_pruitt
@dfjsteve @bentossell Spot on.
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David Joseph
@dvdrjo · Co-Founder, President. Regeneration.com
@dfjsteve @bentossell Steve & Ben would you be interested in speaking about the solution we have created at Regeneration.com ? davidjoseph@regeneration.com
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Steve Jurvetson
@dfjsteve · Partner, DFJ
@bentossell somewhat related: I think we'll build an artificial brain before we reverse engineer our own. Evolved complex systems are inherently inscrutable: https://www.technologyreview.com...
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