Exponential Trends Society is Facing (Lawyers Need to Know for Counseling & Getting a Job!)

Lawyers need to be ahead of the curve to give relevant advice (or to pick jobs they want with a great mission). I loved this eye-popping Twitter thread highlighting exponential trends we are seeing today:

Industries

• Cybersecurity losses and  insurance costs both exponentially up
• Car electronics systems up: they made up 5% of total car costs in 1970 but an estimated 50% by 2030
• Gene-mapping costs down by 100,000% from 15 years ago
• Semiconductor shortages: by 2025 the market is forecasted to be short 300,000 semiconductor workers
• Crypto up: mirroring Internet adoption rate. In 1994 when Amazon started, the Internet was growing at 2300%!

Environment

• Hottest years on record for the last 19 out of 20 years (e.g., number of 70+ degree days in NYC: 111 in 2000, 141 in 2020)
• Green energy costs cheaper: cost of opening a new solar plant 300% cheaper than opening a new coal plant
• Lab-grown meat costs trending down (e.g., lab-grown burger cost $330K in 2013! Now 1lb chicken $7.70 down from $18 mid 2021; 1 kg shrimp $37 down from $7398 in 2019)

Society

• Global fertility down 50% in the last 50 years
• Gaming up while viewership of traditional events/channels like Olympics, Disney, Nickelodeon down 55-75% compared to 2014-18
• Hours of sleep down: from 8 hours a night in 1942 to 6.8 now
• Phone: we pick our phones up 58 times per day!