Table of Contents
Back in 2002, Amy Webb was walking around Tokyo with something that seemed like science fiction to most Americans - a phone with a camera that connected to the internet. While people back home were playing Snake on their Nokia bricks, she was already seeing a future where everyone would carry these powerful connected devices. That early glimpse of what was coming put her on the path to becoming one of the world's most respected futurists.
Key Takeaways
- Amy Webb's 2024 research reveals three converging general purpose technologies creating an unprecedented "technology super cycle"
- The convergence of AI, advanced sensor technology, and biotechnology matters more than any single technology in isolation
- Strategic foresight requires tracking signals, distinguishing trends from trendy fads, and mapping scenarios based on uncertainties
- Real-world applications are already emerging, from cultured chicken selling in Singapore to AI-designed molecular structures
- Traditional regulation approaches won't work for these converging technologies - new frameworks are needed
- Successful leaders must look beyond their immediate competitive set for analogous solutions and frameworks
- The key to driving organizational change lies in making future scenarios immediately relevant and visceral for decision-makers
From Aspiring Solicitor General to Tech Oracle
What's fascinating about Webb's journey is how seemingly random events led to her current role. Her childhood dream wasn't to predict the future - she wanted to be Solicitor General of the United States. "When I was in fifth grade, I was like, why would I want to be president? The president just manages things for a handful of years. I want to be the person that makes the laws that are here forever," she explains with a laugh.
Everything was mapped out: Game Theory and economics in college, then law school, then shaping policy at the highest levels. But sometimes panic attacks have a way of redirecting entire careers. When Webb blacked out during the LSAT's third section after acing the first two, she realized the traditional path was closed. "I was going to have two really good scores and a zero," she recalls. "I wasn't going to get into a tier one school."
Without a Plan B, she took a professor's advice and headed to a tiny town in northern Japan to work as the town foreigner - yes, that's apparently a real job. She taught middle school English, hung out with elderly residents, and gradually learned Japanese from scratch. The experience of being completely outside her comfort zone, combined with her exposure to Japan's advanced mobile technology, planted the seeds for her future work in strategic foresight.
"I had a phone that was really advanced, and all I could see was a future where everybody was going to have phones that had cameras connected to an internet where you could take pictures and share them," Webb remembers. Given what she knew about technology components and costs, it seemed obvious that content creation would shift from one-to-many to many-to-many distribution.
The Technology Super Cycle: Three Converging Forces
While everyone's been obsessing over ChatGPT and large language models, Webb's latest research suggests we're missing the bigger picture. Her 2024 tech trends report identifies what she calls a "technology super cycle" - the convergence of three general purpose technologies that will reshape how we work, live, and organize society.
Artificial Intelligence is the one everyone knows about. As a general purpose technology - defined as something with profound and lasting economic impact, like electricity or the steam engine - AI has finally captured mainstream attention. But Webb argues it's just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Advanced sensor technology represents the second pillar. We're surrounded by millions of sensors now, from the ones in our phones to the increasingly sophisticated arrays monitoring everything from our health to industrial processes. "For as much as everybody was talking about large language models, which you build using publicly available data, that only gets you so far," Webb explains. "You don't have any behavioral data or real-world data. For that, you need sensor data."
This sensor data enables what she calls "large action models" - systems that don't just predict what we might say next, but what we might do next. The implications for behavioral prediction and personalization are staggering.
Biotechnology - specifically synthetic biology and generative biology - completes the trilogy. Just as you can type a prompt into ChatGPT and get a LinkedIn post, you can now type in a molecular structure or biological function and get the formula to create it. "It gives us optionality for materials, and that matters to everybody," Webb emphasizes.
The key insight isn't about any single technology, but their convergence. Improvements in one area accelerate progress in the others, creating a flywheel effect that's reshaping entire industries faster than most organizations realize.
Real-World Convergence: From Chicken to Gloves
Webb doesn't deal in abstract concepts. Her examples are concrete and often surprising. Take nitrile gloves - those blue disposable gloves that became ubiquitous during COVID. All the raw materials come from one geographic region, creating supply chain vulnerabilities and shortages. But what if you could formulate and essentially print that material locally using synthetic biology?
Even more striking is her chicken example. In Singapore, where space for traditional farming doesn't exist, lab-grown chicken cutlets are already on sale. A single 2-gram tissue sample grown in a bioreactor - basically a giant pressure cooker - can yield 250 tons of chicken meat. Sure, that cutlet costs $17 compared to a dollar for the frozen version, but Singapore could theoretically become a net exporter of chicken to Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries.
"Singapore is growing chicken inside of an office building," Webb notes. "It changes the geoeconomic dynamics because these countries don't have to rely on China or some other place for their chicken." The implications extend far beyond food - it's about reshaping global supply chains and economic relationships.
The sensor component comes in through increasingly sophisticated monitoring of everything from fermentation conditions to quality control. AI optimizes the growth processes and predicts optimal harvest timing. It's convergence in action.
Webb uses herself as another example. As a competitive cyclist, her gravel and road bikes are packed with sensors connected to heart rate monitors and performance computers. She and her coach, who lives in a different state, can analyze multiple data streams in real-time. "I'm just like a lady who likes to ride her bike," she laughs, "but I have access to all of that now."
This level of data availability has spawned ideas like the Enhanced Games - a proposed alternative to the Olympics where athletes would be encouraged to push themselves to absolute extremes with pharmaceutical assistance, all tracked through comprehensive sensor data. It's a contradiction that fascinates Webb, since contradictions often signal emerging trends.
Strategic Foresight: Beyond Gut Instinct and Headlines
The methodology behind Webb's predictions isn't magic - it's disciplined strategic foresight. Her Future Today Institute works with major corporations and governments to develop what she calls "a data-driven way of seeing the future for the purpose of making better strategic decisions."
The framework involves several key components:
Signal tracking forms the foundation. These are early indicators of change that most people dismiss as anomalies or curiosities. The trick is distinguishing genuine signals from noise.
Trend identification comes next - separating lasting trends from temporary fads. "Knowing the difference between what's a trend and what's trendy" is crucial, Webb notes.
Uncertainty mapping involves cataloging all the factors an organization can't control. While signals and trends represent knowable elements, uncertainties are the unknowables that could dramatically alter scenarios.
Scenario development uses this information to map potential futures and their implications for strategic decision-making.
The goal isn't perfect prediction - that's impossible. "Even we cannot tell you exactly what the world looks like 10 years from now," Webb admits. Instead, it's about increasing the probability of making good strategic decisions under uncertainty.
Making the Future Feel Real
One of Webb's most valuable insights involves overcoming organizational inertia. Many companies have been profitable for decades doing things a certain way, evolving only incrementally. Getting them to seriously consider disruptive changes requires more than spreadsheets and probability estimates.
Webb traces this back to Herman Kahn's work at RAND Corporation during the Cold War. While his colleagues presented nuclear war scenarios as sterile mathematical probabilities, Kahn told visceral stories about the aftermath - like every milk carton in school lunches carrying radiation level warnings and daily allowance calculations for children.
"These were stories that were immediately understandable and relevant to military leaders," Webb explains. "They were incredibly effective as a result."
She contrasts this with climate change communication, where focusing on abstract temperature increases like 1.5 degrees Celsius fails to resonate, especially in America where most people don't use Celsius. "There's too much contrast between a tiny number which seems insignificant and this absolute catastrophic outcome," she observes.
Better to tell the story through something everyone understands - like opening your weather app to find wildfire warnings in New York City. The key is making scenarios "immediately relevant to the consumer of that information."
The Regulation Puzzle
As these converging technologies gain power, the question of governance becomes critical. Webb's perspective might surprise people concerned about AI safety and biotech risks: she doesn't think traditional regulation is the answer.
"If you use the heavy hand of regulation, you don't get compliance, you get lawsuits," she argues. The fundamental problem is that regulation is inherently reactive - it responds to things that have already happened. With rapidly evolving technologies, especially biology that "doesn't geofence," traditional regulatory mechanisms become obsolete before they're implemented.
Instead, Webb advocates for alternative frameworks. In her book "The Big Nine" about AI's future, she proposed data trusts that financially incentivize participation while economically isolating non-participants - a kind of sanctions-adjacent approach that democratizes power rather than concentrating it in a few data-rich companies.
The key insight applies beyond regulation: "A lot of times we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we do have to look outside our existing bubbles to see what's worked in other places." Most organizations only look at their direct competitive set when seeking solutions, missing analogous frameworks from different industries that could be adapted.
Strategic Moves for Uncertain Times
For entrepreneurs and business leaders trying to navigate this technological convergence, Webb's advice is both practical and challenging. Simply being aware of the technology super cycle isn't enough - organizations need to develop internal capabilities in strategic foresight.
This means moving beyond quarterly planning cycles to think in longer time horizons. It requires building systems to track signals and distinguish between genuine trends and temporary phenomena. Most importantly, it demands opening up to uncertainty rather than trying to eliminate it.
Webb sees particular opportunity in healthcare, which she views as "the most vulnerable to disruption" and ripe for startup innovation. The convergence of AI, sensors, and synthetic biology creates openings for entirely new business models and solutions.
For existing companies, the challenge is overcoming incremental thinking. "You have to create a sense of urgency, but it has to be immediately relevant to the consumer of that information," Webb emphasizes. This requires understanding behavioral psychology as much as technology trends.
The data-driven approach is non-negotiable. "You can't just come in with 'I think these things' or 'here's a couple of headlines I read,'" Webb notes. "That does not pass muster." Decision-makers need concrete, evidence-backed scenarios that give them confidence they're making the right strategic moves.
Hope in Uncertainty
What emerges from Webb's analysis isn't just a roadmap for navigating technological change, but a fundamentally optimistic worldview. Despite acknowledging the challenges - from climate change to geopolitical instability - she sees the current moment as filled with possibility.
"The future is not set in stone," she emphasizes. "I don't believe in fate or destiny or anything else like that." The current disruption, while uncomfortable, creates opportunities for those willing to think strategically and move decisively.
"It's like somebody took the chessboard and shook up all the pieces, and now we get to play a new game," Webb explains. "If you make good strategic moves and you are thinking ahead, you're going to be next year at this point looking back feeling pretty great."
The technology super cycle she's identified represents one of those rare historical moments where multiple transformative forces align to create unprecedented possibilities. The organizations and individuals who recognize this convergence and position themselves accordingly won't just survive the disruption - they'll shape what comes next.
For a futurist who started her career with a panic attack during the LSAT, that's a future worth working toward.
