My 200th Creative Disruption Column

(Originally published in the Westchester Guardian of April 28, 2016)

Creative Disruption

by John F. McMullen

Creative Disruption is a continuing series examining the impact of constantly accelerating technology on the world around us. These changes normally happen under our personal radar until we find that the world as we knew it is no more.

The 200th Column

Wow! Four years of columns (the series actually began the end of 2012) — and so much has happened in the world of technology along the way. More importantly, as users and readers became more comfortable with the powerful tools available for computers, tablets, and smartphones, they became more adaptable — able to move from Windows to MacOS or visa versa; from iOS to Android; or from e-mail to texting. In short, they became more concerned with WHAT they were doing than HOW to do it — just the opposite of the early days of microcomputer use when the most asked question to my consulting staff was “Which button do I push?”

During the two weeks that I was preparing for this column, I read a terrific new book by Steve Case, the founder of AOL, “The Third Wave” — a book that I recommend to all. When I first saw the book, I immediately thought of another book with the same title, written in 1980 by futurist Alvin Toffler. I had read the Toffler book when it first came out and had found it both insightful and inspiring. I wondered whether Case had read the book and was also inspired by it.

I didn’t have long to wonder — once I got past the short Forward by Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Ben Franklin and Steve Jobs, I saw the Toffler book mentioned in the first paragraph of Case’s Preface — “I spent a fair amount of my senior year in college hiding away in the stacks of the library, reading and rereading a new book I couldn’t put down. It was The Third Wave, by futurist Alvin Toffler, and it completely transformed the way I thought about the world — and what I imagined for its future.”

Case then went on to describe Toffler’s three waves — “Toffler wrote about a coming global transformation, In his telling, the ‘First Wave’ of humanity was the settled agricultural society that was dominant for thousands of years, The ‘Second Wave’ was the post-Industrial Revolution world, where mass production and distribution transformed how people lived. Toffler’s ‘Third Wave’ was the information age: an electronic global village, where people could access an endless array of services and information, participate in an interactive world, and build a community based not on geography but on common interests. He predicted the world as we know it today. His vision captivated me. I knew that I wanted to be part of that Third Wave. Indeed, I wanted to be part of making it happen.”

Case’s words resonated with me because I had the same reaction to the Toffler book. I jumped into this online world as soon as I could, using an Apple II with a Hayes Micromodem II over telephone lines to communicate with the first online services, “CompuServe” (then called “MicroNet”) and the “Source.” The communications were excruciatingly slow by today’s standards (30 characters a second — referred to as “300 baud”) but what did we know? We had never seen anything like it. It was mindboggling — so mindboggling that I had to tell everybody about it — and so Barbara McMullen and I wrote what was the first book about this new world “Microcomputer Communications: A Window On The World” (The book was supposed to be ahead of its time; unfortunately, it took so long for the publisher to “get the book out the door,” by the time it reached the bookshelves, the technology and the online world had already passed it by).

I learned something, by the way, from the book experience. The technology moves so fast that the books are always behind — The best book on using Microsoft’s “Surface Pro Two” laptop / tablet was barely on the shelves when the “Surface Pro Three” was out, followed not long after by the “Surface Pro Four.” After that experience, I limited my book writing to fiction and poetry and confined my technology related writing to magazines and newspapers,

Case takes the same wave metaphor — he grew up in Hawaii — to describe the stages of the Internet. He dates the first one from 1985 to 1999 when the Internet was being built. He refers to the Second Wave as “App Economy and Mobile Revolution” and dates it from 2000 to 2015, a period when “Search, social, and ecommerce startups grow on top of the Internet.” He then moves into what will be (or, for him, what should be) in the Third Wave, the period from 2016 forward, “The Internet of Everything,” where “Ubiquitous connectivity allows entrepreneurs to transform major real-world sectors” (ex. Healthcare, education, government, etc.).

In short, in Case’s Third Wave, we have the hardware, software, and connectivity in place — now let’s do something of real importance with it to make all our lives better. Case realizes that this step will not be easy. It will take partnerships among entrepreneurs, business, technologists, investors, and government to be successful in this endeavor — something similar to the Apollo Project coupling among the same entities. Whether or not this can be done is another thing, although Case makes a strong case that it can be and puts forth a reasonable blueprint for its execution (some may find this part of a book, about the last third, a little “preachy” — I didn’t — but, then again, he was “preaching to the choir”).

As I finished Case’s book, I was still stuck in the wave metaphor and stopped to consider whether it fit the growth of software development necessary to both get us where we are now and prepare us for our future. After some thought, I decided that it did fit:

· The First Wave — Computer Programming Begins. We move very rapidly from people manually instructing a computer to do things to a situation where the newly professional computer programmers “write” programs to be tested and stored to accomplish tasks when needed.

· The Second Wave — The Tools Of The Programming Trade. A constant improvement of tools and methodology bring us to where we are now — editors, compiled languages (COBOL, Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, Ada, Forth, C, Java, etc.), Fourth Generation Languages (Database Systems), “Scripting Languages” (PERL, Python) and APPs allows the programmers to constantly be more productive and proficient in the development of software.

· The Third Wave — Machine Learning. The software is / will be given tasks to be accomplished (rather that instructions — “Program Steps” to accomplish the task) and will develop the machine instructions required by the task. The computer system becomes the programmer.

As we review the history of software development, it is easy to look back and see what brought us to where we are — to “connect the dots,” using Steve Jobs’ terminology from his wonderful “2005 Stanford Commencement Address” (https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc), but we cannot connect the dots going forward; we can only use our best judgment as to what we think will happen. Unfortunately, with the exception of Toffler and a few others, the predictions usually miss the mark — they are either overly optimistic or pessimistic or miss the mark because of new technology breakthroughs. Perhaps, we even get the technology right but miss the ramifications (ex. Viruses, identity theft, and massive security breaches) — this is, of course, a major item of concern when trying to make intelligent guesstimates about a world of intelligent algorithms and robots.

In short, it seems to me that all we can say when looking into the future is “Surf’s Up!” and trust that we will get a good ride!

Back in 2 weeks!

I welcome comments on this piece to johnmac13@gmail.com.

John F. McMullen is a writer, poet, college professor and radio host. Links to other writings, Podcasts, & Radio Broadcasts at www.johnmac13.com, and his books are available on Amazon.

© 2016 John F. McMullen