I thought re-visiting The Long Boom would be interesting given the a16z manifesto.
In addition to simply being better written, I find The Long Boom to be far more consistent of a vision and far less self serving.
In addition to simply being better written, I find The Long Boom to be far more consistent of a vision and far less self serving.
One topic that was woefully underestimated is that of alternative energy and batteries. The article talks about Toyota and hybrids and basically parrots their version of the future as of 25 years ago. Which of course half happened and then stopped happening entirely. Because another thing happened that the article missed: lithium ion batteries. Those were invented in the early nineties. By 2008, Tesla had its roadster on the roads. And by now batteries can power everything with wheels from heavy mining vehicles, Australian 200 tonne road trains, heavy trucks, vans, cars, muscle cars, super cars, bikes, scooters, etc. You name it and there probably already is a company doing a battery electric version of it.
The bigger topic with energy is that clean energy also means cheap energy. And this is creating the next boom. A lot of stuff in our economy is bottle necked on energy being expensive and dirty. Renewable energy solves both problems: it's clean and cheap. And that's starting to unlock a whole lot of new growth that looks like it might define the rest of this century.