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While stuck again in a huge traffic jam on our way to the airport, there was plenty of time to think about that something really has to change in our ways to move ourselves from A to B. Our transport systems for longer than walk or bike travels by train, car or airplane are already 1 or 2 centuries of age without any change except better trains, cars and airplanes. The philosophy and systems remained the same.

The main problem is that the infrastructure for this kind of transportation is costly to build and maintain, highly inflexible, a waste of a devastating portion of our environment and economy in terms of time and money. Parked cars all over the place, asphalt and concrete everywhere, long waiting times in traffic, train stations and airports, air pollution and more. It's a long list of concerns we obviously just accept. Additionally the fact that humans are still the drivers of vehicles which nowadays serve as a major killing factor for people and animals and is even used as terrorist weapon, needs to be re-evaluated. Yearly in traffic 1 1/4 million people are killed worldwide and that number will more than triple in the next 15 years.

Elon Musk proposes an alternative for mainly long distance with trains and airplanes with his Hyperloop. Impressive concept and technology but it needs a massive infrastructure change which will be again costly and inflexible. It's comparable to bullet, TGV or Maglev trains and similar, just a few steps beyond. 

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SMACT-technology (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, Things) is already so woven in almost everybody's lives, that nobody complains about the drawbacks anymore. Admitted, looking at the numbers of people using it,  the advantages of SMACT for the consumer are obvioulsy there. A few examples around those already impressive numbers:

  • Social media: Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp is currently used by over a stunning 1000 Million active users each, QQ and WeChat (the Chinese competitors) over 800M each, Tumblr and Intstagram both over 500M, Twitter and Skype over 300M; 
  • Mobile: over 62% of the world population is already using a mobile phone and that pecentage will rise with 1.5% YOY for at least the next 5 years;
  • Analytics: looking at the Social Media numbers and everything you see after you have bought anything on internet, personal advertisement is already targetting over 2000 Million people;
  • Cloud: well, in fact Cloud is just another word for "internet" but with some storage and intelligence added to the bare network capabilities. Over 3000 Million people are already connected to it. Every day another 50.000 people are being added.
  • IoT: already over 2000 Million devices are connected to others. In 2020 this number will be around 5000 Million.

Artificial Intelligence will be added soon to this list because obviously todays vendors like Amazon, Apple, Google, Apple and more are already trying to use it as the glue between everything not in the least by emphasizing human speech as the "new computer keyboard". So just like the "T" of "Things" was added recently to SMAC, the "A" of AI will be added soon too. And shortly after that the "3" of 3D-printing, a "D" for drones, the "N" of Nano-technology or any character (X) about any new tech some IT- or media-people are intrigued about, and, probably it will be written in green to express the importance of clean energy and the tech around it. So something like SMACTA3DNX (pronounced as green-smacta-three-deenix :)).