Our generation will live the full transformation of the Digital Revolution
The latest most significant development in human history was the Industrial Revolution (the first machine age). Everything before that can be considered as meaningless in the history of humanity when watched from above.
It was about 250 years ago that the steam machine from Watt was invented. This event happens to be just the big bang of what was about to occur in the next years. Everything then changed. Human social development and worldwide human population grew exponentially for the first time in history.
As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee detailed in their book “The Second Machine Age” we have entered into a new revolution, one powered by digitization.
I sincerely believe we will live the full transformation of this revolution. I based my beliefs mainly in the following reasons:
We are living in exponential times
It was just around 70 years ago since computers were invented. Today, we carry more computing power in our pocket that was required to land a man on the moon 45 years ago. Feel free to repeat this sentence with me: We carry more computing power in our pocket that was required to land a man on the moon.
This can be explained thanks to “Moore’s Law”, which predicts that computer power doubles almost every year (Moore’s law has proven right for the last 40 years). By this pace, the progress and outcome of this exponential growth are beyond our minds to predict.
For 200 years, after the steam machine was invented and the Industrial Revolution was getting traction, no one could have predicted what would happen and how much humans would progress. We are facing the same experiences again, only that this time will take much less than 200 years.
This time, all this is taking place as we speak and will live to see it!
We already live in a Science Fiction world
I was 12 years old when I visited Epcot Center in Miami Florida. I was able to see video communication, driverless cars, robots and many other futuristic predictions.
It happens to be, that today not only can I communicate and do video conferences with anyone in the world at almost no cost, but I have this pocket device capable of doing almost anything I want. From reading any book, newspaper or magazine, to hearing any music track whenever I want. I can carry all my picture library in it. Besides, it can geolocate my close friends and monitor my health, my steps, my altitude, my inclination, my sleep, my heart rate. It can open doors of cars, manage my TV, be my radio, and the list goes on and on. And all this after only seven years of this device been on the market.
If that is not enough, “real” Science Fiction is about to get real.
Around ten years ago it was said in the scientific community that computers are good at following rules, but lousy at pattern recognition like, for example, driving a car. We now know about Google driverless car and that it will only take about five more years to see the first driverless cars on the market. Soon, autonomous driving will change everything. Now I know that my kids won’t need a driver license and surely won’t need to own a car when they get to 18.
Artificial Intelligence will change everything, again
Also, it was also said last decade that computers could not manage complex communications. In 2011 Apple introduced Siri, capable of managing complex communications like “Do I need an umbrella today?”. Moreover, If you think that is not enough, wait to hear about Watson (the computer that beat Jeopardy and World Chess Champions) and how IBM is converting it (him?) into worlds best medical diagnostician. At the rate AI technology is improving, my recent born kid will rarely need to see a doctor to get a diagnosis by the time he will be an adult.
In the next 40 years, followings Moore’s law, computing power will be as powerful as that of the human brain. Will these digital minds become self-aware on their own?
The internet of things is to become the internet of everything!
Gartner has just forecasted that there will be almost 5 billion things connected by the end of 2015. By the end of 2020, that number will rise to 25 billion. This represents about three connected devices per person distributed evenly. In other recent news, the McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that the impact of the Internet of Things on the global economy might be as high as $6.2 trillion by 2025. This is just ten years from now.
This will change everything, every industry, every product, every business model, every company. Also, this will happen, again, within our lifetime!
Sooner than later, I am pretty confident, that all these changes will occur. We still have a lot to do and think through to face successfully the challenges and implications of this digital transformation (mass labor loss, income inequality, security, and privacy, etc.), which I will cover in separate posts. Until then, it is crucial to try to understand what is about to come. We need to be ready and willing for this transformation. To act now is already too late.
Machines and the digital age are not to be feared; then it is not a race against them, but with them. I am convinced that the right use of technology for the right task can help us be better humans. Humans are the current bottleneck in the equation. It is up to us to catch up with progress.
