You’ve probably never heard of Charles Duell.
In 1899, he was the Commissioner of the US Patent and Trademark Office. At that time, he looked back on the incredible number of patent applications his office had received and thought that the influx was about to come to an end.
So, he is alleged to have said: “Everything that can be invented has been”. As a result, he felt that his services were no longer required because the US Patent Office would no longer be needed.
As predictions go, it’s right up there with Michael Fish who assured BBC viewers that there would be no hurricane a few hours before the Great Storm of 1987. Or, Hollywood film producer Darryl Zanuck who in 1946 said: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months”.
Indeed, the sheer scale of human advancements over the past 100 years has been so great that we tend to take them for granted as we become used to the benefits they bring.
Read about some of the biggest advancements across different sectors and why we’re unlikely to ever be in a position of thinking that there’s nothing left to be invented.
The commoditisation of miracles
In a recent article about the importance of having your own lifeboat drill when it comes to planning for a downturn in investment markets, I referenced Nick Murray, who has long been a source of financial wisdom for me.
He has three investment principles that he refers to frequently. The first of these is that you should have faith in the future. The reason for this is that, if you don’t, you will let all the bad news out there prevent you from making good long-term investment decisions.
In the couple of hours before I sat down to draft this article, I’ve booked a winter holiday for my family, traded some new cash into my kids investment portfolios, and read reviews of some new restaurants we might check out. I’ve also had a face-to-face call with a client in Malaysia and watched a golf tournament live in the US.
Not only that, but I’ve done it all on a device I can fit in the palm of my hand.
Even the 20-year-old me back in the year 2000 would have raised more than a quizzical eyebrow if I’d been told that would be possible.
Yet, we are so used to the way something as technologically advanced as an iPhone (other reputable brands are available) has changed our lives, that we can easily become blasé about it. Furthermore, things that would have been described as “miracles” decades ago are now easily affordable rather than an expensive dream.
It’s not just in the fields of technology and entertainment where we have seen incredible advances in such a short space of time.
From a medical perspective, the biggest steps forward in the last 50 years have probably been in the availability of vaccinations. You just need to consider how quickly pharmaceutical companies were able to come up with a vaccine during the Covid pandemic to appreciate how advanced the industry is in coming up with solutions to medical problems.
You can now live a happy life with a disease that would have previously killed you. Likewise, there have been incredible advances in the field of diagnostics, so it’s now so much easier for a doctor to discover what’s wrong with you and treat you than it was before.
Clearly, from a parochial financial planning perspective, such advances pose challenges around longevity, but the increasing possibility of being able to live relatively healthily to age 100 is a nice challenge to have.
The pace of advance will not slow
Going back to the quote you read at the start of this article, it’s hard to see the current head of the US Patent Office being so rash.
Indeed, many of the circumstances that drove the extraordinary developments we saw in the last 100 years still exist today. So, there’s no reason to think that the remarkable pace of advance cannot be maintained.
For one thing, there’s no lack of investment. Companies and individuals are pumping billions into research to fund new technological advances.
Furthermore, it’s not just in the field of technology where money is being invested. For example, the Bill Gates Foundation has committed billions of dollars to carry out research and invest in innovative ideas in order to save and improve lives in developing countries.
International competition can also help drive new advances. After all, it was the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union that was the catalyst for the technological advances that put men into space. President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s came just 53 days after Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. It seemed fanciful at the time, but NASA achieved it, with five months to spare.
It’s not hard to envisage a similar international rivalry between the US and China producing similar advances in a different sector.
Then there’s the fact that mankind’s desire to break new boundaries rather than sit still and rest on our laurels has never diminished. It seems to be human nature to seek new worlds to, metaphorically, conquer, and to discover solutions to problems that have previously been seen as impossible to solve.
Artificial Intelligence and robotics will drive future developments
It’s time to dust off the Charlton House crystal ball and make some predictions as to what advances you may see in the coming decades.
Given the high profile and international prestige associated with exploring different planets, it’s not hard to envisage a future US president mimicking JFK and calling for a man on Mars within a given timescale.
On a lesser scale, the self-aggrandising gene in some billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson will mean that space travel could become close to routine for those who can afford it.
Despite some safety concerns, we are likely to see driverless cars on our roads within as little as a decade, and they could become commonplace very quickly.
From a medical science perspective, there’s a chance we could be getting close to a cure for cancer.  In the slightly longer term, we could also see effective treatment for motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis.
Advances in medical technology already mean we can enjoy greater longevity than previous generations. Such advances, and the research around DNA, may well mean that the Harvard Gazette suggestion that it’s possible that the first person to live to 150 has already been born may not be so fanciful.
Similar advances in the field of robotics mean that we will see continual developments when it comes to machines replacing humans. A Sky News report pointed out that over 40 years ago, writers in the Omni Future Almanac predicted workers including dry cleaners, farm workers, and shop cashiers would be replaced by robots. All of those, to a certain extent, have come to pass.
Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has now reached the stage where computers and machines can reason and learn at a level that exceeds human ability. While the negative repercussions of that are enough to keep you awake at night, there are clearly positive aspects too.
For example, Scientific American suggest that, while the laws of physics say time travel is possible, there may be restrictions posed by the human body. But advances in robotics and AI may well mean that while you can’t travel in time, but perhaps a robot equivalent of you could.
So, given the pace of development over the last century, would you really bet against a version of your great-grandchildren being able to come back and visit you from 2124?
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