Then and Now from Peter Diamandis

May 4, 2015

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May 4, 2015 – In his weekly email blast Peter Diamandis of XPrize and Singularity University fame presents us with a snapshot of a decade ago and today. I very much wanted to share this with my readers because it is an incredible illustration of the rate of change we are experiencing here in the 21st century and why the possibilities to effect positive outcomes even in the middle of the many challenges we face on the planet can happen in almost a blink of the eye. Enjoy the read.

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It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago…

The first video was uploaded to YouTube.
Facebook, then just a year old, dropped “the” from its old URL “thefacebook.com” after acquiring “facebook.com” for $200K.
An early prototype of an autonomous car completed the DARPA Grand Challenge for the first time.
The term “Drone” meant a military weapon system.
Bitcoin and blockchain didn’t exist, and wouldn’t be created for three more years.
Android was a small startup that Google had just acquired.
There were 6.4 billion humans on Earth, only ~1 billion were online, and none of them had heard of Uber or AirBnb.

And today….

YouTube has more than a billion users, who watch hundreds of millions of hours of video every day. Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Facebook has 1.4 billion users from every country on Earth.
Every major car manufacturer is working on an autonomous model, and Google’s autonomous cars have logged over 1 million miles driving themselves.
Drones are now used by children, can be purchased at prices ranging from $50 to $1,500. The largest consumer drone company DJI (which was started in 2006) is valued at $10 billion.
Bitcoin and blockchain companies have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital and are poised to be potentially as disruptive as the Internet itself.
Google now has over 1 billion active Android users.
Today, there are close to 7.4 billion humans on Earth, and ~3 billion are now online.
Uber, which was started in 2009, is valued at over $40 billion, and AirBnb, started in 2007, valued over $20 billion.

The picture above is of Peter Diamandis trying out the zero gravity vomit comet. If you have some additional then and now statistics to add to these lists please send them along.