See also Black Swan: mobile Internet and green energy

Stop worrying about real estate or consumer spending: the expansion of mobile internet and the growth of green energy consumption fuelled by soaring oil prices could be a new economic boost.

The US economy is slowly recovering from the worst depression in history every month. There is no doubt that economic expansion is always better than austerity, but the consensus on the outlook is not good, typically the expectation of years of slow growth and high unemployment.

"Black Swan" recovery?

But the pessimistic argument may be overdone. Perhaps the seeds of economic recovery are slowly taking root in areas that are not expected. In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Black Swan" book, "Black Swan" in essence refers to an unknown abnormal event, can have a great impact on the economy and society. It debunked the hypocrisy of the elegant quantitative and mathematical models that forecast financial markets and the future of the economy. The astonishing twist in history can even fool the financial and academic elite.

Black swans are often considered a negative event, but the nature of black swans is not bad, and unexpected events can be positive. Typical case: Netscape.

The US economy, which has just emerged from the early 90 's, has been slow to grow. Netscape, a new Silicon Valley company, has brought web browsers into the mainstream after the listing of the company in 1995, the company's stock demand was huge, with 28-dollar shares soaring to 75 U.S. dollars, a closing price of 58 U.S. dollars. COM and the Internet era opened at that time--at least a lot of people suddenly started dreaming of creative opportunities and creating wealth.

Mobile Internet time

Now, the rapid development of the Internet economy was still impressive. To be sure, many startups have broken up with the bubble, but internet companies like Amazon, Google and ebay have survived and prospered.

Since the 10 of 21st century, the technological breakthroughs in changing the rules of the game have not emerged. Instead, investment has poured into the real estate and financial derivatives markets. But the new cycle may be brewing, marked by Apple's market capitalisation beyond Microsoft. Will this become the "Netscape moment" of the mobile internet market? The IPod, the iphone and the ipad are clear signs of a rapid embrace of wireless data across the global economy. Competition has a clear global color, industry leaders not only from the United States, but also from the rest of the world, including the United States of Facebook, South Korea's Samsung, China Unicom and Japan Rakuten.

"The mobile internet will create more wealth and destroy more wealth than the first four waves of technological innovation (mainstream computers, microcomputers, PCs, and the internet)," said David Darst, managing director and chief investment strategist at Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management, David Daste. From the good to the Tesco, from FedEx to JPMorgan, mobile internet will affect everything. ”

The impetus to alternative energy

In addition, as oil prices soar, alternative energy sources also show momentum. Despite the current fall in oil prices, according to Weeden & Co, Wall Street energy analyst Charles Maxwell expects world oil production to peak in 2015-2020, The price accordingly rose from $150 a barrel in 2015 to 300 dollars per barrel in 2020.

"The biggest economic hotspot will be energy efficiency and energy conservation." Energy technology will be as important to markets as it has been for the last 30 years. "Maxwell said.

Many oil companies will benefit, but companies like GE are benefiting. Almost all of the company's business is energy-related, including compressors, train engines and so on. "The infrastructure of the world's capital markets will have to be reformed," Maxwell said. ”

To be sure, the underlying economic engine mentioned here is not surprising to everyone (perhaps the "Blue Swan" is more appropriate). But innovation, which stimulates economic development, rarely progresses in the way we expect. Nuclear, nanotechnology and biotechnology, for example, have never reached the heights of imagination. In any case, in the coming decade, the mobile Internet and new energy will spark a new wave of innovation destruction, as the thought-provoking "creative destruction" metaphor of economist Joseph Schumpeter-New technologies, new markets and new institutions will replace the old.

Let's hope so.