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Beyond Digital: Why it’s a great time for investing in deep tech
As the Digital Age evolves, savvy investors are turning to deep technologies like revolutionary materials and programmable biology that could transform our world and deliver returns from foundational innovations. But what opportunities, if any, do these emerging fields really hold?
“Technology”
What comes to mind when you read that word? Phones? Laptops? Games consoles?
Today, we are perhaps two thirds of the way through the Digital Age. Beginning somewhere in the 1950s or 60s, with the widespread commercial application of computers, passing through the creation of the Internet, the PC, the World Wide Web, the smartphone, and now generative AI. With many other vital and world-changing inventions along the way. And a few more to come.
We are so deep in the Digital Age now, our lives so completely defined by it, that digital things colour our whole definition of technology.
We are so deep in the Digital Age now, our lives so completely defined by it, that digital things colour our whole definition of technology. It’s hard to see beyond them. But technology is much older than the transistor. And many technologies have arguably had an even greater impact.
Wheels and Bricks
The obvious example is the wheel. To our eyes now it looks so simple that it’s hard to think of it as technology. But so much goes into the creation of the wheel. The recognition that round things roll. The technique for shaping circular things, from carving them from a single piece of wood, to the complex combinations of different woods and iron of cart wheels, to modern alloys and tyres. The wheel spawned not just transport but most mechanical items in our lives, clocks, looms, printing presses.
What about the brick? Another simple technology that was foundational to the growth of cities. With cheap, mass-produced construction material, people could build more, and bigger, faster. No bricks? No cities. Or plant breeding? Without that, we couldn’t support our large population.
While most people are focused on the innovations coming in the last third of the Digital Age - quantum computing, artificial general intelligence (AGI), the metaverse - I think a lot of the smart money is looking beyond that. At the technologies that might be the foundation of the next age. Deep technologies that might themselves spawn many new applications. And there are a few obvious candidates.
New Materials
A few years ago I spent some time as the resident futurist at the National Graphene Institute in Manchester. What I saw there shocked me.