Everyone should prepare for the coming onslaught of hi-tech products. A lot of these will be good for us. For one, solar panel technology has been advancing by leaps and bounds. It will not be long before individual residences will be able to produce the electricity they need through solar panels on the roof. It can be done right now, but the cost is still quite high. In California, however, some people have invested on solar panels on their roofs and they sell the electricity produced to the grid. Though they still buy their power from the grid, the price of what they sold might cancel out their bills. They might even be making some money if the price of the power their roofs are producing is higher than the cost of the power they are using.
How soon can we realize such ideal situation is dependent on our government which is God’s curse on us. We will not be a third world country if not for our infamous— for graft and red tape— government. We would be a member of the first world.
On the frontline when it comes to experiencing how bad our government is are those with hydropower projects (and those dealing with any kind of government project).. It takes forever for such projects to be approved, at a very high cost considering the bribes that have to be shelled out.
From another angle is the approval of hi-tech products to be sold in this country. Just the other day, a welcome news was that Nissan Motor Company is in talks with government for their electric car called Leaf to be brought in and sold here. Why the need for such talk—which predictably will linger for a year or even years? That product can be readily brought in and sold here. It is already being sold in the US along with GM’s Volt and Tesla’s (that used to sell only electric sports cars at luxury car prices) models that had been rolled out for the masses, priced like ordinary cars.
Then there are the driverless cars. Billions of dollars had been invested for such cars by Uber, Google, Tesla, etc. The big car companies had also been experimenting with similar models the past decades. Some models had already been tried in the streets with considerable success. Most infamous of these was the Tesla model that bumped and killed a pedestrian because one sensor became defective and failed to spot the person.
This one, however, takes the cake. Cars that can fly when the driver wants it to. Several companies in Europe and in the US will roll out such products in 2020. Toyota of Japan will showcase its own during the Olympic games in that country also in 2020.
If you are thinking that these hi-tech stuff are far into the future as far as we are concerned, think again. On the first quarter of next year which is just around the corner, SM will be deploying robots to assist customers in some of its malls.**