Taking advantage of accelerating technological change

from the taking-the-long-view dept.
Many Worlds, a website devoted to technology-related business and investment information, has posted an interesting white paper on "Tracking Emerging Technologies and Trends: Taking Advantage of Technological Acceleration". (Note: this link is to an Adobe Acrobat PDF file of the report, not a web page.)
"We are on the cusp of a breakout in technological acceleration, a discontinuity in human history," the report states. "It will affect business along with the culture as a whole." And it offers some sound advice: "Those businesses that can most effectively grasp the deep undercurrents of technological evolution can use this to their advantage."
After considering a wide variety of emerging technologies, including molecular nanotechnology, nanmedicine and more, the report concludes: "Looking through the technologies noted above, it will become obvious that numerous technological convergences are occurring . . . The once-separate worlds of hardware and software are beginning to blur together to some degree. As matters grows in intelligence with the spread of embedded processors, wireless tracking, and ubiquitous computing, it becomes responsive to human desires and commands. Matter is increasingly becoming programmable like software. If the promises of molecular nanotechnology are realized, this process will be completed."