The book this week is The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
I must first say that there are very few books that interest me and keep me engaged as this one
At the same time, my overall impression is that Kelly does a far better job of providing new, insightful predictions in the first 5 chapters. It was these first chapters that had my mind racing and neurons firing with new insights and conclusions.
The last half of the book is just OK (still above average I would say) where Kelly gets caught stating too much of the obvious and seems more like a reporter who is stating what is happening and the grand prediction is that there will be MORE in the future. Indeed, Kelly finishes the book by stating we are just at the “Beginning” of all this…a rather amateurish conclusion given that we are ALWAYS at the beginning of something…not at all helpful in terms of grand conclusions in my opinion.
However, that shouldn’t take away from the rest of the book that I rate 4-stars out of 5 for both originality and usefulness (in terms of both seeing the world in new ways but also developing some actionable ways to apply his insights to your life and business.) With that kind of rating, obviously I do recommend that you place this onto your top 10 list of books to read if you have not already gone through it
- Kelly starts the book with an admission of both insights and mistakes he made in foreseeing the latest trends – he saw many trends around Internet and hyper linking of pages that formed early web, but missed how this would spawn user generated content and platforms Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc… (Hmmmm – that’s a big miss, but to his credit, 99.9% of everyone else missed it too)
- Trend 1 – “Becoming” – not my favourite label, point being that innovation now happens so fast that we are in a constant state of becoming, never arrive. A seemingly simple concept but with a few minutes of thought turns out to be a pretty important concept for anyone continuing to innovate or use the latest platforms. Siince we are in a constant state of “becoming”, there is still great change and opportunity to come
- Trend 2 – Cognification: refers to the application of massive feedback, big data collection and algorithms to facilitate Artificial Intelligence (AI) applies to Everything from health and science to marketing through consumer experience. This is perhaps the most important trend in the entire book. We are entering a generation where highly established thoughts, ideas and rules are going to be completely altered because we will have so much linked data at our disposal and when combined with leaps in analysis capability and intelligent questions we will see major breakthroughs in the next decade most certainly based on cognification
- Trend 3– Flowing – major disruption to business models such as music, video, apps, training – ongoing lower-cost access to content and products. This is perhaps the most complex trend to communicate in the book, but does have huge implications on how we learn, teach, consume and produce products as part of a “flow” process instead of lumpier produce/consume model
- In this “flow” model there are 3 important concepts to grow value, price and profits (immediacy – instant access) ;personalization (customized for the audience or customer); interpretation (give away content, charge for its interpretation such as coaching, training or consulting). It is this latter concept (interpretation) that is so important for those of us who teach, lead, produce, coach and mentor as our value as interpreters increases markedly as this flowing economy manifests itself
- Trend 4 – Screening – concept that facts and entertainment we used to get from books now come from screens (blogs, podcasts, YouTube, streaming, etc…Pretty important stuff for all of you who have been resisting using video, audio and social in your marketing and products.
- Trend 6 – Sharing – and Trend 7 a Filtering – idea that platforms and technologies allow remarkable levels of sharing (ex crowdsourcing, competition/contests such as 99designs for logos/graphic design) – Filtering refines mass information and collaboration to filter results (recommendations, based on previous likes and dislikes, friends through social networking, etc…Understanding filters is important as filters=attention – critical part of marketing and branding
- Trend 9 – Interacting seems basic enough and Kelly focuses on Virtual Reality heavily in this section. My only takeaway here is that devices will become much more aware of you and what you are looking at – something he calls “gaze tracking” which is already happening on some devices. Knowing how people interact with your website, application, course or content seems like a very powerful breakthrough
- Next, the trend towards massive tracking is already well underway (as Kelly reminds us compellingly in the book) – get ready for Billiins more sensors/collectors and more interestingly, huge advancements in data monitoring, classification and artificial intelligence. Through sheer data analysis we are about to get “instantly” smarter about many things touching nearly every aspect of our lives
- If there is a weakness in Kelly’s “The Inevitable” book it stands with the last few chapters that – to me – paled in comparison to delivering the insight and value of the earlier chapters.
All-in-all, I would definitely categorize The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Have you read the book? Have anything to add or have a comment, leave it below and let everyone know what’s on your mind.
