What's the next big thing? I get that question a lot, usually from high-tech entrepreneurs or venture capitalists searching for what to do next. Actually, they are more interested in regaining their adrenaline rush than anything else. Face it; we all miss the thrill of being on top of the world as it changed and knowing we had changed it. The last five years in technology have been boring, boring, boring-kind of like watching an English Test cricket match that goes on for days.

"If I knew, I would tell you" is my usual reply. I am lying through my teeth; I would tell them squat. Well, I might tell them after I had made a few investments - when I owned part of the right companies and the intellectual high ground. But the sad fact is that 20 years ago I could see 2006 crystal clearly. Now, I can't see next week.

So it was interesting to have Andy Kessler stop by last week. Kessler has been a researcher at Bell Labs, a high-tech stock analyst for Wall Street, a hedge fund manager and an author (Running Money and Wall Street Meat). He went to boxing matches with Jack Grubman, knew Mary Meeker when she was barely visible, twice turned down investors trying to give him $500 million, because he knew the end of the bubble was upon us, and hangs with the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. He is high-tech royalty.

Kessler is trying to figure out what is The Next Big Thing, too. Isn't everyone? But he thinks he found it. His thesis: Look for where chips/software/communications will affect the status quo, where decreasing costs will lead to exploding new applications, which will bring burgeoning innovative industries to the forefront. He is looking for a technology that scales. And he's found it in medicine. Medicine? I hate medicine. I won't even watch "General Hospital" or "ER" on TV. But Kessler makes a point: It will be possible to have a world where we won't have heart attacks and strokes, much as we now don't have smallpox and polio. The technology is there. Kessler writes about it in his new book, The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor, which you should read.

Example: Most hospitals have two radiologists read every X-ray. Some send these X-rays electronically to Australia to be read, but that only lowers the cost of the doctor. But other hospitals are reading half of these X-rays by a neural computer, which gets smarter the more X-rays it sees. So maybe your doctor is obsolete. Remember, we used to have bank tellers, travel agents and telephone operators, but technology put them out of business. Any time a technology can replace people, whole new worlds open.