The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Simon & Schuster (January 2020)
Why and how the only constant is change, and the pace of change is accelerating
To what does the title of this book refer? According to Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, convergences resulting from independent lines of accelerating technology (e.g. augmented reality), because you’re in for a wild ride…a palpable acceleration in the pace of change re happening at an ever-increasing rate. “This has turbo-boosted the rate of change in the world and the scale of that change. So buckle up is our point, because you’re in for a wild ride…a palpable acceleration in the pace of change in businesses and in the world.”
In fact, according to William Gibson, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” The arrival of the future in months and years to come will be even sooner and even faster than ever before. To place this reality in proper context, Diamandis and Kotler cite an example: “individual car ownership enjoyed over a century of ascendancy. The first real threat it faced, today’s ride-sharing model, only showed up in the last decade. But that ridesharing model won’t even get ten years to dominate. Already, it’s on the brink of autonomous car replacement, which is on the brink of flying car disruption. Plus, avatars. The most important part: All of this change will happen over the next ten years.”
These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Diamandis and Kotler’s coverage:
o Convergent Technology (Pages 7-12)
o Seeing Into the Future (21-24)
o Quantum Computing (27-32)
o Artificial Intelligence (33-37)
o Robotics (45-48)
o Virtual and Augmented Reality (49-53)
o Blockchain (56-61)
o Biotechnology (67-68)
o Innovation Accelerant Force 1: Saved Time (70-72)
o Innovation Accelerant Force 4: (More Genius (79-82)
o Innovation Accelerant Force 6: New Business Models (83-87)
o AI and the Retail Experience 100-103)
o The Robots Are Coming, The Robots Are Coming (106-108)
o The Spatial Web (118-120)
o The Rise of the Uber Creator (127-130)
o Here, There, and Everywhere (138-142)
o The Ultimate Field Trip (147-149)
o The Nine Horsemen of Our Apocalypse (169-172)
o The Bloody Fountain of Youth (178-179)
o An Unusual Proposition (191-193)
o The AI Invasion (194-196)
o The Inefficiency of Food (202-205)
o Climate Change for Optimists (215-218)
o Economic Risks: The Threat of Technological Unemployment (227-230)
o Abundance Revisited (261-263)
As you try to wrap your head around the reality that converging technologies are transforming business, industries, and our lives, keep in mind this prediction made by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock (published in 1984): “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Heartiest congratulations to Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler on this third volume in the Exponential Mindset Series. It really is a brilliant achievement, one that makes an exceptionally important contribution to thought leadership.
Those who share my high regard for it are urged to check out BOLD: How to Go BIg, Create Wealth, and Impact the World (2015) and Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You think (2012).