New Kinds of Roads
Don’t rely on the infrastructure changing
Autonomous cars could have been around 50 years ago — or for even longer- had the roads been designed for this. Markers embedded in roads could keep a car aligned and let the car know where it was. This would have required a change to the infrastructure and the concept was never able to take off.
You can see the Jetsons-like experience here:
Relying on the infrastructure to change seems like a poor bet. Roads take a long time to build. The construction part is just the final piece. All of the zoning, the construction standards, the tendering for contracts are very time and effort intensive and take years or decades to establish. That doesn’t take into account who needs to pay for what.
If you’re designing a new product or offering, better to make the innovation within the existing infrastructure. Internet first arrived to the masses through dial-up, high speed Internet first arrived on the TV cable. Better to build on AWS then start to need a whole new type of server.
However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan on new infrastructure arriving. 6G will likely be rolling out by 2030. It is possible to plan for the arrival and what applications will be enabled as a result to be a leader in a new space.
Just don’t count on it happening as you planned.
