The Future is Faster Than You Think takes the reader on a journey through modern technologies and the associated growth curves and the consequences for our lives. It gives a solid overview of how we are living in an age of great change where exponential growth in computing power is allowing for major shifts in the impact of technology in shopping, advertising, entertainment, healthcare, finance, food and life expectancy. The language is at times exaggerated but the overall content is useful for those looking to get a picture of the abrupt changes that are taking place in almost all industries due to the influence of technology.
In the Future is Faster Than You Think, the authors discuss how we often overestimate what will change in the short term but underestimate what can occur in the long term. This is a common adage and many businesses have underappreciated the impact of technology and are now struggling with the consequences. The authors start by describing why the changes are of such scale at the moment with several exponential growth curves converging to accelerate the influence of technology on our lives. The setting the stage language is exaggerated but sets the tone for how the authors frame the changes that will unfold in the coming decades. The authors then discuss how technology is being used to enhance consumption matching via shopping platforms and how advertising has shifted from times of past to now using user data to optimize ad placement effectiveness. This is merely a description of why Amazon and Google/Facebook have had such successful business models as service providers/platforms for their users rather than traditional business providers of goods or services. The authors discuss entertainment in the future and technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality with suits which have tactile sensation. It is certainly the path and our abilities to fabricated reality via headset is already quite remarkable but the anecdotes are at times too colorful. For examples the authors describe a simulation for a circuit judge who 2 decades ago tries a VR headset and lost his balance due to the immersive reality of VR, but in that time headsets would create dizziness and were anything but immersive. Thus the cases made to make the reader think this is coming tomorrow must be taken with a serious grain of salt. The authors describe how education is evolving and online learning will change how education takes place. They highlight how collective experimentation can lead to exciting solutions where literacy training was enhanced from a school group in Africa after a world wide competition to create education apps. The authors discuss how healthcare devices and sensors will fundamentally change our day to day health monitoring and will lead longer and more nurtured lives with the help of technology. This leads the authors to describe how technology could lead to perpetual life with discussions of how gene therapy extends the lives of single celled organisms and other treatments extent the lives of rats. It is certainly fascinating scientific work, but as usual the authors projecting the consequences onto benefits for us around the corner are improbable at best. The authors discuss emerging blockchain technologies and their ability to influence finance and insurance, discussing how gofund me as a platform creates a more egalitarian means to raise money vs centralized finance. Lastly the authors discuss the future of food and technologies like vertical farming, discussing how we could increase yields decrease our carbon foot print and reduce the pressure on our water supply immensely.
One can read this book and be in wonder at the technological roads we are embarking on as it appears like we have solutions to all of our problems. To some extent we do, as most problems have partial solutions that we are aware of. The issue is always commercialization to which the authors trivialize this complexity. For a quick overview on what people in the VC world are looking at, this i think is a good overview. In terms of discussing an actual technology roadmap for any of the topics covered there is a huge amount that is glossed over. Nonetheless the book is entertaining and informative and in some respects it inspires some awe at what our collective intelligence has produced and how our lives could be better for it.
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Customer reviews
I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this book. This book is super boring. But I kept reading cause I bought this. My common sense tells me the future this book is projecting is very far way or never coming. At one point the author said that we only have 12 years to fix all the problem or we all will die. That tells a lot about this book and the two author who wrote it. The author said they got this fact from top climate scientist, I think they got it from Congresswomen AOC. We all know most tech people are hardcore liberal. So, at the end this is a boring book. I think most people will not not like it, even if you are a big tech fan. I think this is total waste of my money. The first half of the book is kinda Ok, then it started to become boring and boring. This book is all about what will happen in the future according to big scientist. We all know scientist most of the time get thinks wrong...Anybody remember coronavirus projection by some greatest scientist in our earth?
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Top reviews from other countries
Czechboy
Hopefully I'll be dead before this world is realised.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 26, 2021
John Lawless
No fireworks, just a damp squib
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 5, 2021
Ace
A roller coaster ride into the future of Tech. Hold on tight!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2020
A roller coaster ride into the future of Tech. Hold on tight!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2020
Loved the book which read like a feel good / optimistic and thrilling blockbuster movie. It moves at pace and makes a strong argument for how we will see more innovation and change in the next decade that in our parents and grand parents lifetime. The big idea of the book is that the law of accelerating returns will compound the transformation from convergence of a number of individual exponential technologies from hyper connected with 5g, ultra fast fixed to Cloud, AI, AR/VR and so much more.Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2020
If you are interested in the future of technology and the impact it will have on our world then I am sure you will enjoy it too.
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I. Krutainis
Writing about near future is risky
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 4, 2021
