 So obviously when you're looking 20 years out a lot of predictions can be wrong if you think back two words that always humble Us when we try and make predictions that are the words paperless office, right? And 40 years ago some people were talking about how cyborgs would be ubiquitous at the exact same time There were people who couldn't really they were scratching their heads wondering who would ever who would need a personal computer Why would we want that so you had totally contradictory views on the future of certain technologies just a couple of years Or a couple of decades before they became really widespread. So it is very hard to make those long-term predictions That doesn't mean it's not worth doing it is going to get harder and harder and more complicated because now that we have this baseline information technology landscape new discoveries in areas that we don't know as well like nanotechnology or biotechnology are actually Intersecting with that IT landscape and that makes it very difficult to assess how quickly they're going to spread through our system think about things like brain computer interfaces or or computational biology, I mean these combinations of different fields are going to lead to the spread of Technologies and access to them in ways that we really find it hard to to predict in terms of energy, it's it's interesting because really it's Not you know, we know that 20 years from now As they say the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone Clearly all predicts and predictions suggest that we're going to still be aligned to a large degree on fossil fuels Not just us but the rest of the world as well But again, that doesn't mean the conversation isn't worth happening where technology intersects with energy is that it could Give us access to even more traditional energy sources, right through the ability to access hard to reach areas and be more Efficient in our fossil fuel extraction while also promoting the discovery and spread And an intensity of alternative energy productivity, so both are going to happen at the same time and technology allows that It's interesting to ask whether this conversation is even worthwhile because maybe you know that which will really be taken for granted in 2030 isn't even out there yet, but I actually do think this is a worthwhile conversation to be having Although the date 2030 is arbitrary, right? Although it's also instructive because it really speaks to the compression of eras as we move from the agrarian age to the industrial age Which took millennia from the industrial age to the information age took just centuries and now we're moving to something new what I'm Calling the hybrid age, which has taken just decades And so we're really seeing this compression in time as we move through As we move through different eras That's why you know William Gibson says he doesn't write about the future anymore because the future is is already here The paradox that reveals itself in that is that you know We're closer and closer to the future and yet it gets harder and harder to predict So the purpose of this conference though is not to find the one single silver bullet Solution to a world beyond the end of oil because again We're not going to get to that world because technology is going to help us use more oil But simply more efficiently or find more of it at the same time that it's going to Give us these new technologies But I think the magic lies in pursuing all of them at the same time and that's where technology breakthroughs Come in and become very very interesting So the fact that also we're going to discover the utility of these new technologies for entirely different markets There are parts of the world where you don't have that as many cars You don't have you know the rate of automobile penetration as rapidly as is happening in China India What if you can have only electric and battery cars in those parts of the world? That's a solution even if it's not one that's adopted immediately in the West plant-based power Rural electrification solar power for those areas where you don't have power lines and grids that too is a very important solution for Highly populace and overpopulated parts of the world that actually don't have our modern energy infrastructure So whatever it is that we discover Is going to be used somewhere in the world and it's going to be helpful for some segment of the world Population so in a way we should be letting a thousand flowers bloom when it comes to this intersection of technology and energy