Have you ever heard of Moore’s law?

Well, Moore’s law was developed by entrepreneur and engineer Gordon E. Moore in 1970. He stated that the computing power doubles every two years.

Interestingly, this observation has been quite accurate for the last 40 years. For almost twenty years now, consumers have shared digital good to themselves for free, shrinking revenues in music and newspaper industries. Nowadays, people are able to use cheap computing power in cloud to calculate complex big data sets for very small cost.

Soon, when everyone is able to access big data, sensors and analytics to speed up efficiency and increase productivity of physical things such as products, services and energy. This dramatically lowers the marginal costs, rendering the current commercial paradigm in crises.

Also other things are shaping the economic models of the future. Forms of ownership are changing. New service models (as-a-service models) in many markets reduce the need for ownership. Look at worker owned businesses, collaborative consumption, sharing economy and platform businesses such as Uber and AirBnB.

In the future attention and data can be more valuable assets than money. Market’s can converge, and be soon run by just a few technology conglomerates. Digitalisation redefines the boundaries of many industries. In smart city markets, energy, construction, IT, telecom and security industries are converging towards a single marketplace. Construction companies can put solar panels and windmills to their roofs effectively becoming energy companies. IT data warehouses can use their excess heat to do the same.

Or instead of converging, the markets can fragment to isolated islands of incompatible standards. Is the development driven by closed collaboration platforms such as Facebook and Uber or open collaboration such as Linux and Wikipedia? And further, based on the work of Mario Mazzucato, it is reasonable to ask what truly drives the development of future innovations: is it market funded innovation such as SpaceX and Hyperloop or government investments such as the GPS and Internet developed by US military?

New economic systems and the question of converging markets vs. fragmenting structures is one of the five most important tensions of the hyperconnected world. The forms of ownership will be different from today as well as structure of the market.

This is the fourth blog post in the series of “The key tensions of the hyperconnected world”. The outcomes of these tensions will shape the future of our society. They are the basis of two future scenarios about the hyperconnected world, which Demos Helsinki will publish at Slush festival on 11th November.



Other tensions:

A possibility is not a capability in the hyperconnected world

Future of work is one of hyperconnected world’s key tensions

How to ensure sustainable and happy life in the future?

The changes leading to hyperconnected world will shape our values and identities

More about Naked Approach project can be found here.