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on April 19, 2016
Very well done, including references to world wide experiences to which most of us in the reading audience will not be exposed. The business of "working for a living" is constantly changing. The issue with which "change" is happening is the "increasing speed of change." We all need to "hold on tight," this ride will bumpy for blacksmiths, cowboys, 10 cent stores and telegraph operators. Unfortunately, the persons who most need to read this material, probably will not.
on April 12, 2017
Author Alec Ross, is a technology policy expert who was Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is now a Senior Fellow at Columbia University. This book is a New York Times Bestseller. Here is why.
The most important job you will ever have will be to understand the future so you can guide your children’s development into it.
The last wave of innovation and globalization which centred around digitization and the internet, produced winners and losers. Among the winners were the investors, entrepreneurs, people with high-skills levels, and those who focused on fast-growing markets and new inventions. In this period more than a billion people rose from poverty into the middle class in the developing countries. They achieved this because their labour was sold at low cost, and their countries had entered the global economy.
And there were the losers. They generally came from countries where the cost of their poorly skilled labour was high, and they could not train up to the needs of the technological changes and the competition of global markets. In the past they could have found work in the textile industry or in mining. Textiles in South Africa lost to the countries with cheaper labour, and mining was slimmed down by mechanical and technological advances.
“And all this change will pale in comparison to what is going to come in the next wave of innovation, as it hits all 196 countries on the planet,” Ross explains.
In the near future, Ross points out, people will be able to wear robot-suits that will enable paraplegics to walk. They will ingest designer drugs which will melt away certain forms of cancer. Computer code will be the new international currency. Computer code will be the new weapon that will be able to destroy physical infrastructure on the other side of the world.
This book explores the industries that will drive the next 20 years of change to our economies and societies. These are industries producing cutting-edge advances in robotics. They are advancing the life sciences that will change the way we work and live. These industries codify money, and use code as weapons (and prevent codes being used as weapons,) and other industries will take data, the raw material of the information age, and advance society through this.
The advances these industries will make and the wealth they generate will not accrue evenly. Again there will be winners and many losers.
A sense of the message of this very rich book can be seen from the section on robotics.
Japan is already the world leader in robotics, operating 25% of all the industrial robots in existence across the world.
25% of Japanese are over 65. Japan’s birth rate is very low. The consequence of this demographic is that there will not be enough people to care for grandparents. Enter the robots. The future caretakers of the aged are being developed right now in a Japanese factory. Toyota and Honda are using their mechanical engineering proficiency to invent the next generation of robots.
Robina, for example, is a 60 kilograms, 1.2 meters tall ‘female’ robot. She can communicate using words and gestures. “She has wide-set eyes, a moptop hairdo, and even a flowing white metallic skirt.” Humanoid, (‘male’) is a multipurpose home assistant. He can do the dishes, take care of your sick, aged parents, and can even entertain them by playing the trumpet or violin.
Honda’s ASIMO can even interpret human emotions, movements, and conversation. It can help the patient get out of bed and even hold a conversation. ‘Walking Assist’ is a device that wraps around the legs and backs of people with weakened leg muscles so they can move on their own.
Robots of this kind will be the rare technology that starts with grandma showing her cutting-edge gadget to her children and grandchildren.
Japan, the United States, and Germany dominate the high-value industrial and medical robot arena, and South Korea and China are now the major producers of less expensive consumer-oriented robots.
Already at Manchester Airport in England, there are robot janitors that navigate the cleaning of their work areas using laser scanners and ultrasonic detectors. If a person gets in the way, the robot will say, “Excuse me, I am cleaning,” with a perfect English accent, and work around the person.
“The first wave of labour substitution from automation and robotics came from jobs that were often dangerous, dirty, and dreary and involved little personal interaction,” Ross explains. In the future, however, jobs that require situational awareness, spatial reasoning and dexterity, contextual understanding, and human judgment, are now starting to be performed by robots. These include waitressing (the Hajime restaurant in Bangkok has robot waiters to take orders, serve customers, and clean tables,) hairdressing (Panasonic created a 24-fingered hairwashing robot that has been tested in Japanese salons,) and driverless cars (Google, and soon - Uber?)
An Oxford study of more than 700 occupations suggests that over half of US jobs could be at risk of computerization in the next two decades. 47% are at high risk of robot takeover, and 19% face a medium level of risk. Replacing a trial lawyer may take a while, but not the replacement of a paralegal.
Consider the impact on those working in the jobs accessible to lower skilled people, jobs that offer first-time employment, and the route out of poverty. There are 2.3 million people currently employed at waiting on tables in the United States. There are 162,000 Uber drivers. This route out of poverty will slam closed.
The future industries are currently frontier economies, but they will move into the economic mainstream rapidly. The next wave will be a challenge to the middle classes everywhere, with the threat of a return to poverty.
“I have been fortunate enough to gain a glimpse of what lies around the next corner. This book is about the next economy. It is written for everyone who wants to know how the next wave of innovation and globalization will affect our countries, our societies, and ourselves,” Ross explains.
This book is a must read for all of us, if not as business people who must lead our companies into the future, then as moms and dads who owe it to our children to equip them for their future.
Readability Light ----+ Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High ----+ Low
Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy
The most important job you will ever have will be to understand the future so you can guide your children’s development into it.
The last wave of innovation and globalization which centred around digitization and the internet, produced winners and losers. Among the winners were the investors, entrepreneurs, people with high-skills levels, and those who focused on fast-growing markets and new inventions. In this period more than a billion people rose from poverty into the middle class in the developing countries. They achieved this because their labour was sold at low cost, and their countries had entered the global economy.
And there were the losers. They generally came from countries where the cost of their poorly skilled labour was high, and they could not train up to the needs of the technological changes and the competition of global markets. In the past they could have found work in the textile industry or in mining. Textiles in South Africa lost to the countries with cheaper labour, and mining was slimmed down by mechanical and technological advances.
“And all this change will pale in comparison to what is going to come in the next wave of innovation, as it hits all 196 countries on the planet,” Ross explains.
In the near future, Ross points out, people will be able to wear robot-suits that will enable paraplegics to walk. They will ingest designer drugs which will melt away certain forms of cancer. Computer code will be the new international currency. Computer code will be the new weapon that will be able to destroy physical infrastructure on the other side of the world.
This book explores the industries that will drive the next 20 years of change to our economies and societies. These are industries producing cutting-edge advances in robotics. They are advancing the life sciences that will change the way we work and live. These industries codify money, and use code as weapons (and prevent codes being used as weapons,) and other industries will take data, the raw material of the information age, and advance society through this.
The advances these industries will make and the wealth they generate will not accrue evenly. Again there will be winners and many losers.
A sense of the message of this very rich book can be seen from the section on robotics.
Japan is already the world leader in robotics, operating 25% of all the industrial robots in existence across the world.
25% of Japanese are over 65. Japan’s birth rate is very low. The consequence of this demographic is that there will not be enough people to care for grandparents. Enter the robots. The future caretakers of the aged are being developed right now in a Japanese factory. Toyota and Honda are using their mechanical engineering proficiency to invent the next generation of robots.
Robina, for example, is a 60 kilograms, 1.2 meters tall ‘female’ robot. She can communicate using words and gestures. “She has wide-set eyes, a moptop hairdo, and even a flowing white metallic skirt.” Humanoid, (‘male’) is a multipurpose home assistant. He can do the dishes, take care of your sick, aged parents, and can even entertain them by playing the trumpet or violin.
Honda’s ASIMO can even interpret human emotions, movements, and conversation. It can help the patient get out of bed and even hold a conversation. ‘Walking Assist’ is a device that wraps around the legs and backs of people with weakened leg muscles so they can move on their own.
Robots of this kind will be the rare technology that starts with grandma showing her cutting-edge gadget to her children and grandchildren.
Japan, the United States, and Germany dominate the high-value industrial and medical robot arena, and South Korea and China are now the major producers of less expensive consumer-oriented robots.
Already at Manchester Airport in England, there are robot janitors that navigate the cleaning of their work areas using laser scanners and ultrasonic detectors. If a person gets in the way, the robot will say, “Excuse me, I am cleaning,” with a perfect English accent, and work around the person.
“The first wave of labour substitution from automation and robotics came from jobs that were often dangerous, dirty, and dreary and involved little personal interaction,” Ross explains. In the future, however, jobs that require situational awareness, spatial reasoning and dexterity, contextual understanding, and human judgment, are now starting to be performed by robots. These include waitressing (the Hajime restaurant in Bangkok has robot waiters to take orders, serve customers, and clean tables,) hairdressing (Panasonic created a 24-fingered hairwashing robot that has been tested in Japanese salons,) and driverless cars (Google, and soon - Uber?)
An Oxford study of more than 700 occupations suggests that over half of US jobs could be at risk of computerization in the next two decades. 47% are at high risk of robot takeover, and 19% face a medium level of risk. Replacing a trial lawyer may take a while, but not the replacement of a paralegal.
Consider the impact on those working in the jobs accessible to lower skilled people, jobs that offer first-time employment, and the route out of poverty. There are 2.3 million people currently employed at waiting on tables in the United States. There are 162,000 Uber drivers. This route out of poverty will slam closed.
The future industries are currently frontier economies, but they will move into the economic mainstream rapidly. The next wave will be a challenge to the middle classes everywhere, with the threat of a return to poverty.
“I have been fortunate enough to gain a glimpse of what lies around the next corner. This book is about the next economy. It is written for everyone who wants to know how the next wave of innovation and globalization will affect our countries, our societies, and ourselves,” Ross explains.
This book is a must read for all of us, if not as business people who must lead our companies into the future, then as moms and dads who owe it to our children to equip them for their future.
Readability Light ----+ Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High ----+ Low
Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy
on May 17, 2016
If you're well-versed on some these subjects it won't all be new, but overall it's a well-written, well-researched, engaging, and entertaining book. I think this book is particularly interesting to someone who likes tech, entrepreneurship, and innovation, but honestly I would recommend this to anyone. The appeal is definitely very broad. All in all, one of the better books I've read in a long time; I barely put it down until I finished it and will gladly read Ross' next book
VINE VOICEon November 6, 2016
Excellent read. Read it along with The Seventh Sense--which is the best book in this field.
on July 17, 2016
Very informative as to the way we are going in society and in turn how manufacturing is going or could go.
The projections are very interesting.
If a person thinks about it it's not all that far fetching.
An awful lot of this stuff is ready happening right now.
We just have to see how far things will go.
It does give you a idea of how you might want to line up your ducks though.
The projections are very interesting.
If a person thinks about it it's not all that far fetching.
An awful lot of this stuff is ready happening right now.
We just have to see how far things will go.
It does give you a idea of how you might want to line up your ducks though.
on May 13, 2017
This is a MUST read if you want to understand where the world is headed. Very, very interesting and well written.
on May 3, 2017
Excelent book. Alec Ross has an excellent understanding and vision of the future technologic & economic trends around the globe, written in an outstanding and interesting way.
on December 26, 2016
This was an amazing book covering multiple areas that will truly peak anyone's interest. Working in finance now, look at this book as a guide to what will be be the next fortune 15 company, as well as a potential pivot. This is a must read for anyone that wants to remain relevant 20 years from now.
