Home > Work > The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
101 " once we wrapped the globe in endless circles of wires crossing the deserts and beneath the oceans, decentralization was not only possible, but inevitable. "
― Kevin Kelly , The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
102 " Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A "
103 " By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI. "
104 " Nearly every aspect of modern civilization has been flattening down except one: money. Minting money is one of the last jobs left for a central government that most political parties agree is legitimate. It takes a central bank to battle the perennial scourges of counterfeit and fraud. Someone has to regulate the amount of money issued, keep track of the serial numbers, ensure that the money is trusted. A robust currency requires accuracy, coordination, security, enforcement—and an institution that takes responsibility for all those. Thus behind every currency stands a watchful central bank. "
105 " Cognifying photography has revolutionized it because intelligence enables cameras to slip into anything (in a sunglass frame, in a color on clothes, in a pen) and do more, including calculate 3-D, HD, and many other options that earlier would have taken $100,000 and a van full of equipment to do. Now cognified photography is something almost any device can do as a side job. "
106 " Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More tools, more answers, ever more questions. "
107 " Our most important thinking machines will not be machines that can think what we think faster, better, but those that think what we can’t think. "
108 " All of us—every one of us—will be endless newbies in the future simply trying to keep up. Here’s why: First, most of the important technologies that will dominate life 30 years from now have not yet been invented, so naturally you’ll be a newbie to them. Second, because the new technology requires endless upgrades, you will remain in the newbie state. Third, because the cycle of obsolescence is accelerating (the average lifespan of a phone app is a mere 30 days!), you won’t have time to master anything before it is displaced, so you will remain in the newbie mode forever. Endless Newbie is the new default for everyone, no matter your age or "
109 " This is the curse of the postscarcity world: We can connect to only a thin thread of all there is. Each "
110 " Ordinary life, not just virtual worlds, can be gameified. The "
111 " That monopoly of a persistent identity is the real engine of Facebook’s remarkable success. "
112 " By 2050 most truck drivers won’t be human. Since truck driving is currently the most common occupation in the U.S., this is a big deal. "
113 " We are constantly surprised by things that have been happening for 20 years or longer. I "
114 " This waking dream we call the internet also blurs the difference between my serious thoughts and my playful thoughts, or to put it more simply: I no longer can tell when I am working and when I am playing online. For some people the disintegration between these two realms marks all that is wrong with the internet: It is the high-priced waster of time. It breeds trifles and turns superficialities into careers. Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook engineer, famously complained that the “best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” This waking dream is viewed by some as an addictive squandering. On the contrary, I cherish a good wasting of time as a necessary precondition for creativity. More important, I believe the conflation of play and work, of thinking hard and thinking playfully, is one of the greatest things this new invention has done. Isn’t the whole idea that in a highly evolved advanced society work is over? "
115 " Shutting down civilization is actually hard. The fiercer the disaster, the faster the chaos burns out. "
116 " The problem with constant becoming (especially in a protopian crawl) is that unceasing change can blind us to its incremental changes. In constant motion we no longer notice the motion. Becoming is thus a self-cloaking action often seen only in retrospect. More "
117 " The Internet will be the CB radio of the ’90s,” he told me, a charge he later repeated to the press. Weiswasser summed up ABC’s argument for ignoring the new medium: “You aren’t going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the internet. "
118 " Looking back, I think the computer age did not really start until this moment, when computers merged with the telephone. Stand-alone computers were inadequate. All the enduring consequences of computation did not start until the early 1980s, that moment when computers married phones and melded into a robust hybrid. In "
119 " The link and the tag may be two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years. "
120 " The union of a zillion streams of information intermingling, flowing into each other, is what we call the cloud. Software flows from the cloud to you as a stream of upgrades. The cloud is where your stream of texts go before they arrive on your friend’s screen. The cloud is where the parade of movies under your account rests until you call for them. The cloud is the reservoir that songs escape from. The cloud is the seat where the intelligence of Siri sits, even as she speaks to you. The cloud is the new organizing metaphor for computers. The foundational units of this third digital regime, then, are flows, tags, and clouds. "