Kelly, K. (2016) The inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future. New York: Viking.
Executive Summary Notes
Introduction
● Book covers the 12 inevitable technological forces that will shape the next 30 years
● Inevitable does not mean a preordained destiny or final outcome.
● Inevitable refers to the momentum of ongoing technological shift or change toward tendencies already put in motion.
● Particular technological processes will inherently favor particular outcomes.
● For example, it was inevitable that networks would exist but what kind of networks could not be predicted.
● Not all shifts are welcome. Banning what is unwelcomed but inevitable usually backfires. Change is inevitable.
● At the center of change is technology, ever changing technology.
● Processes become more important than products.
● We get the most from technology when we figure out the direction and tendencies of technology and change our expectations, regulations, and products.
● Rather than see each force as independent, see them as co-dependent.
○ Sharing is connected to flowing
○ Cognifying requires tracking
○ Screening is inseparable from interacting
○ The verbs are mixed, remixed, and in the process of becoming.
● The forces are trajectories, not destinies.
1.) Becoming (Chad)
a.) Change is inevitible.
i.) Lifecycle can be super short - for an app, it’s 30 days!
ii.) Most technologies that will dominate life in 30 years have not yet been invented
b.) A world without discomfort is utopia.
i.) It is also stagnant.
ii.) Perfect fairness in some dimensions is horribly unfair in others.
iii.) The flaw in dystopian narratives is that they are not sustainable.
iv.) Technology is taking us to protopia (we are already there)
(1) Things are better today than they were yesterday
c.) Unceasing change can blind us to incremental changes
i.) Incremental changes make change easier to digest
2.) Cognifiying (Tracy)
a.) Artificial intelligence has the ability to change everything.
i.) It is cheap, powerful, and ubiquitous.
ii.) Adding just a little intelligence to a process increases its effectiveness.
iii.) The first genuine AI will be in the superorganism of the net. It will be worldwide, embedded, and loosely connected. Any device that touches it will contribute to its intelligence and this will help it continually improve.
iv.) The AI will look like Amazon Web Services -- cheap, reliable, industrial-grade, digital intelligence that is almost invisible.
v.) The next wave of innovations will come from adding AI to everyday items/activities to make them better.
(1) Entertainment can be individualized and produced for individuals.
(2) Marketing can be individualized to each person’s likes and then use the person’s social influence to expand the impact.
(3) Medical care can be monitored 24/7 to generate personalized care and refined daily.
(4) Children’s toys will become more like pets than inanimate objects.
(5) Anything with real autonomy, like robotic cars, will also need to make ethical judgements.
vi.) Google is a giant AI that uses searches to improve.
b.) 3 recent breakthroughs in AI:
i.) Cheap Parallel Computation
(1) AI requires multiple processes to occur simultaneously.
(a) Computer games created the graphics processing unit (GPU) to process the visual needs of millions of pixels per second.
(b) As computer games soared in popularity, GPUs were being produced cheaply and quickly to meet the demand.
(c) Researchers at Stanford realized clusters of GPUs could work like a brain--countless neural connections, processing information simultaneously and together.
ii.) Big Data
(1) AI must learn and massive databases of information, self tracking, web cookies, online footprints, terabytes of storage, decades of search results, wikipedia, and the digital universe provide the lessons for AI.
(2) A rocket ship needs a huge engine and lots of fuel. Similarly, AI needs learning algorithms and lots of data.
iii.) Better Algorithms
(1) Deeper algorithms allow data to be processed and matched more quickly and simultaneously.
c.) Cloud-based AI will become ingrained in our daily lives but is likely to grow so fast and to such a size that it will overwhelm small competitors, leaving it run by 2 or 3 large, general purpose commercial intelligences.
d.) Man-plus-machine = AI augmented human intelligence
i.) Studies show these combos outperform AI alone.
ii.) Example is GPS driving directions. Sometimes the directions are correct but human judgement can override the suggestions.
iii.) Other possible areas for AI combos are travel, medicine, law, and education.
iv.) Rather than conscious intelligence, we want artificial smartness.
(1) Consciousness is human
(2) Artificial is unhuman
e.) In a super-connected world, thinking differently will be a source of innovation and wealth.
f.) The variety of potential minds is vast.
i.) The character of a mind will dictate its value and role.
ii.) Measuring “other” intelligence is difficult because we have no real definition of our own intelligence.
iii.) All AI mind cognition is specialized to do specialized tasks and beyond what humans are capable.
iv.) When we encounter this new AI intelligence we will need to reevaluate our roles, our beliefs, our goals, our identity. We will redefine what it means to be human.
v.) AI will think differently, which will cause humans to think differently.
g.) The AI we will notice most are robots
i.) Automation will replace many jobs done by humans.
(1) This is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts.
(2) This has already impacted blue collar jobs and is moving into white collar jobs now.
(3) Unlike past robots, these will be cheaper, more interactive, and easier to program.
ii.) 4 categories of human-robot relationships
(1) Jobs humans can do but robots can do better
(2) Jobs humans can’t do but robots can
(3) Jobs we didn’t know we wanted done
(4) Jobs only humans can do -- at first
3.) Flowing (Jamie)
a.) Internet is like a copy machine, taking note of every action, character and thought
b.) Solid products are becoming services leading to uninterrupted betterment
i.) Transportation is more than a car, it's uber, or lift
ii.) Phones are more than a way to communicate, they are updating daily for you
c.) The world of computing borrowed ideas from the industry
i.) 1st age used words like desktop, folders and files to organize the machine
ii.) 2nd age used words like pages to organize the web
iii.) 3rd age is flowing like a streams on twitter, facebook, youtube, etc.
(1) Flowing time has shifted from batch mode to real time.
(a) Bank transactions are immediate and not monthly
(b) Email replies are expected immediately
(2) Organizations now must do their interactions in real time
(a) ATM rather than teller, Paypal rather than debit
d.) Music was the first industry to switch into real time
i.) Music faced changes with napster making things free
(1) Free is hard to ignore
(2) Things of value cannot be copied
(a) When things can be copied they are worthless
(b) Generative value- a quality or attribute that must be generated at the time of the transaction.
(i) Cannot be copied, cloned, stored, or warehoused
(ii) Cannot be face or replicated
(iii) Generative qualities add value to free copies and therefore can be sold
e.) 8 Generatives that are “better than free”
i.) Immediacy
(1) Right to the inbox
(2) Movies at opening night can be more expensive
ii.) Personalization
(1) Movies edited for family watching (kid safe)
(2) Books read to reflect your preferred reading background
iii.) Interpretation
(1) Software free. User manual, $10,000.
iv.) Authenticity
(1) You will pay more if it feels like the real thing
v.) Accessibility
(1) You will pay for more for it to be organized or readily available (convenience)
vi.) Embodiment
(1) Some prefer to hold the book rather than use digital copy
(2) Some may prefer the theater style over living room
vii.) Patronage
(1) We want to show appreciation so we pay if it is easy, reasonable, beneficial and clear it will go to creators.
viii.) Discoverability
(1) We will pay for a services that will guide us to our preferences
(a) Amazon book preferences will guide you to other books
(b) Netflix will guide you to other shows “because you watched”
ix.) These 8 skills demand nurturing qualities that can't be replicated with the click of a mouse to prevent copying.
f.) The internet has lead to anyone becoming a musician, a photographer and a movie maker
g.) Moving from Fixity to Flows on the internet can be illustrated through a book
i.) Fixity of the page-page stays the same
ii.) Fixity of the edition-no matter which copy you get- it's the same
iii.) Fixity of the object-with proper care, the text doesn't change
iv.) Fixity of completion-paper books carries a sense of finality and closure
h.) These fixities are not present with ebooks.
i.) Ebooks offer fluidities
i.) Fluidity of the page-content flows on any device
ii.) Fluidity of the edition-material can be personalized to students or give recaps if you have read previous books
iii.) Fluidity of the container-can be stored in various palaces and delivered to different devices
iv.) Fluidity of the growth-material can be corrected or improved and it may never be “done”
j.) We choose a book vs ebook based on preferences of fixity and fluidity. Four stages of flowing
i.) Fixed. Rare. Beginning- precious products that take time to recreate.
ii.) Free. Ubiquitous.--1st disruption-- copying relentlessly makes product a commodity.
iii.) Flowing. Sharing.--2nd disruption-- unbundling of product into parts creating remixes and new bundles
iv.) Opening. Becoming.--3rd disruption--The previous two disruptions allow amateurs to create new products with better quality that cost.
k.) These stages apply to all media. We have only started flowing
l.) Generative intangibles will rise above the free.
m.) Think of the world as flowing.
4.) Screening (Sloane)
a.) The use of screens over paper
i.) Books=Perfection
(1) Laws, contracts, and pictures on paper are validated when put onto pages.
ii.) Screens represent technology
(1) Words and illustrations on paper are converted into pixels on computers, phones, tablets, televisions.
b.) People of the book vs People of the screen
i.) Book readers favor newspapers, magazines, and are immersed in text.
(1) Information is fixed
ii.) Screen viewers ignore books and favor movie screens and tv screens.
(1) Information can change meaning or be deciphered into multiple meanings.
c.) Screened information allows for links, networks, tags.
i.) Book pages can include hyperlinked words
(1) Books with links become networked books, such as wikipedia.
ii.) When all book references are networked to other books, a universal library is formed.
(1) The text in one book will be connected to texts in other books, allowing for readers to locate a book being referenced in a footnote.
d.) The universal library will connect words and ideas
i.) Readers will have a better understanding of history
(1) Books, magazines, journals and newspapers are all cross-linked.
ii.) If all texts from now and from history are available in the universal library, readers will have a clearer understanding of what we do and do not know as a civilization.
5.) Accessing (Ehren)
“Possession is not as important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever. Five deep technological trends accelerate this long-term move toward accessing and away from ownership.” p.109
a.) Dematerialization
i.) A tendency exists toward products with more benefits and less mass.
ii.) “Products encourage ownership, but services discourage ownership because the kind of exclusivity, control, and responsibility that comes with ownership privileges are missing from services.” p. 111
b.) Real-Time On Demand
i.) “The promise to customers is that you don’t need a lawn mower or washing machine or to pick up flowers, because someone else will do that for you - on your command, at your convenience, in real time - at a price you can’t refuse.” p. 114
ii.) “Our appetite for the instant is insatiable. The cost of real-time engagement requires massive coordination and degrees of collaboration that were unthinkable a few years ago. Now that most people are equipped with a supercomputer in their pocket, entirely new economic forces are being unleashed.” p. 116
iii.) “For short-term uses, sharing ownership makes sense. And for many of the things we will use in the upcoming world, short-term use will be the norm. As more items are invented and manufactured - while the total number of hours in a day to enjoy them remains fixed - we spend less and less time per item. In other words, the long-term trend in our modern lives is that most goods and services will be short-term use. Therefore most goods and services are candidates for rental and sharing.” p.117
c.) Decentralization
i.) The world is moving away from centralized organization to the flatter world of networks. p.119
ii.) “The most important innovation in Bitcoin is its “blockchain . . . it is a public commons. No one really owns it because, well, everyone owns it.” p.120
d.) Platform Synergy
i.) “A platform is a foundation created by a firm that lets other firms build products and services upon it . . . like a department store, [a platform] offers stuff it did not create.” p.122
ii.) “The wealthiest and most disruptive organizations today are almost all multisided platforms - Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.” p.123 Multisided platforms enable multiple-way matches between buyers, sellers, third party developers, advertisers, and more.
iii.) “Ecosystems are governed by coevolution, which is a type of biological codependence, a mixture of competition and cooperation . . . The platform’s job is to make sure it makes money (and adds value!) whether the parts cooperate or compete.” p.124
iv.) “At almost every level of a platform, sharing is the default - even if it is just the rules of competition. Your success hinges on the success of others. Maintaining the idea of ownership within a platform becomes problematic, because it rests on notions of ‘private property’; but neither ‘private’ nor ‘property’ has great meaning in an ecosystem. As more is shared, less will act like property. It is not a coincidence that less privacy (constant sharing of intimate lives) and more piracy (disregard of intellectual property) are both breeding on platforms.” p.124
v.) “Dematerialization and decentralization and massive communication all lead to more platforms. Platforms are factories for services; services favor access over ownership.” p.124
e.) Clouds
i.) “A cloud is a colony of millions of computers that are braided together seamlessly to act as a single large computer . . . A cloud is more powerful than a traditional supercomputer because its core is dynamically distributed.” p. 125
ii.) “[Clouds] are so large that the substrate of one cloud can encompass multiple football field-size warehouses full of computers located in scores of cities thousands of miles apart. . . A central advantage of a cloud is that the bigger it gets, the smaller and thinner our devices can be.” p.125
iii.) “If I re-google my own email (stored in a cloud) to find out what I said (which I do) or rely on the cloud for my memory, where does my ‘I’ end and the cloud start?” p.126