Disruption

Emerging Technologies
and the Future of Work
Victor del Rosal
Emtechub
Dublin
Copy right © 201 5 by V ictor del Rosal
All rights reserved
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Emtechub, Dublin

www.emtechub.com/disruption
Publication Date: September 12, 2015
Author photograph by Michael McLaughlin
Sold by : Amazon
ISBN-1 3: 97 8-1514173947
ISBN-1 0: 1 514173948
BISAC: Technology & Engineering / General

For Laura, Lucía and Alexander
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they
are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they
lead little by little to the truth.
–Jules Verne
Thank you
To my family, for enduring months of hearing: “in

the future…”
To Dr. Luis Flores Castillo (member of the team that

discovered the Higgs boson at CERN) for taking the
time to painstakingly read the original manuscript
and make significant contributions and edits; my
heartfelt gratitude
To the wonderful Advisors of the Emerging

Technology Leaders Global Initiative and the young
Emtechleaders Class of 2016
To Mayo County Enterprise Board (now LEO Mayo)

for being early supporters of the Emtechub endeavor
To John Magee, for his thoughtful and thorough

review; my most sincere thanks
To MexNet and Red Global MX, for serving as

inspiration
And a special thank you to young scientists- and
technologists-in-the-making… may these pages stir
your imagination.
ix
x
About the Author
Victor del Rosal
Founder of Emtechub, emerging technology education

startup
Lecturer at the School of Computing of National
College of Ireland, Dublin
Masters in Science (Honors) from UCD Michael
Smurfit Graduate Business School, Dublin, Ireland
Diploma in Economics, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Industrial and Systems
Engineering Monterrey Tech, Monterrey, Mexico
Director of Strategy at CloudStrong Ltd., Castlebar,
Ireland
Founding President of MexNet, the Irish chapter of
Red Global MX, Dublin, Ireland
Head of Business Analysis at the Supply Chain Center
of Excellence, TCS, Dublin, Ireland
Managing Director, W8 Training and Consulting firm,
USA-Mexico
Co-founder and CEO of the Prince of Wales's Y outh
Business initiative, Mexico City
Consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank,
Washington, DC, USA
World Bank scholarship for internship at the Boston-
based Y outh Employment Summit/ Education
Development Center think tank in Boston, MA, USA
xi
Contents
Thank you.................................................................... ix
About the Author ........................................................ xi
Foreword .................................................................... xv
Why Disruption? ...................................................... xix
PART I
Emerging Technologies: Enablers of Disruption
1. Disrupted future........................................................1
2. Artificial Intelligence ............................................... 7
3. Autonomous Vehicles.............................................19
4. Flying drones ......................................................... 27
5. 3D Printing ............................................................. 33
6. Internet of Things .................................................. 41
7. Virtual and Augmented Reality ............................ 47
8. Biotechnology ........................................................ 55
9. Alternative Energies ...............................................61
10. Blockchain ............................................................ 65
PART II
The Future of Work: Shifts Driven by Emerging
Technologies
xiii
11. Reality blurred ...................................................... 73
12. Blackbox combinations ....................................... 79
13. Augmented humanity .......................................... 83
14. Towards full automation ..................................... 89
PART III
Getting Ready for Disruption: Preparing for
Exponential Technological Change
15. Education for disruptors ................................... 103

16. Solving problems ................................................123
17. Engineering security ...........................................129
18. The transition to prosperity ...............................137
Conclusions and final thoughts ...............................141

Keeping in touch ...................................................... 149
xiv
Foreword
I
nnovation is not something that can be
produced on-demand—there are no “recipes” for
crafting technological breakthroughs. Instead
we can aim at increasing the probability of triggering
the kind of associations (among people or among
ideas) that end up producing disruptive technologies.
Although this is also a tall order, there are a few
examples of organizations that seem to fit the bill.
CERN
One of these is the European Organization for
Nuclear Research (CERN). Its mere size is
impressive: a total of about ten thousand scientists
are associated with it. It hosts the largest and most
powerful particle accelerator ever created, the
famous Large Hadron Collider, installed inside an
underground tunnel that describes a 27-kilometer
nearly-circular path one hundred meters below the
French-Swiss border.
Never before had such a large scientific collaboration

been formed, neither had a single machine of this
magnitude been built. Along this monstrous
machine, protons are accelerated to almost the speed
of light in opposite directions, to make them collide
in the center of four gigantic particle detectors, each
rivaling the size of a medieval cathedral.
xv
Creators of disruptive technologies
It is no coincidence that this organization—
concurrently so large and ambitious—is at the
forefront of science and technology, and an early
adopter of disruptive technologies—some of which
have even been developed here.
As a relatively well-known example, the need for an

effective and fast communication tool for the
dissemination and discussion of scientific results led
to the development of nothing less than the Internet.
Of course, there is no need to dwell on the relevance
and transformative power of this development.
To illustrate the relatively early adoption of

disruptive technologies, many research teams at
CERN utilize remote meeting software to collaborate
effectively and continuously from locations in all
continents; a professor from a Chinese university
may have frequent meetings with students and
postdoctoral researchers, some in Beijing and some
stationed at CERN (in Switzerland), while he visits
an institute in the US. This practice has been in effect
for several years already. Face-to-face video
interaction, screen sharing, chat box exchanges, and
easy file sharing sometimes make it preferable to
hosting a meeting in this fashion than walking into a
meeting room in the building next door.
Pursuing ambitious scientific goals at CERN and

similar laboratories has prompted several important
technological developments. The need to analyze the
xvi
massive amounts of data produced in these
laboratories led to an accelerated development of
computing clusters, which later evolved into what we
now call cloud computing. Multivariate methods
developed originally for these analyses have been
adopted for data mining.
The strong investment in the development of

superconducting magnets (used to steer the beams of
particles) has had a strong impact not only in the
magnet industry but, through it, in the nuclear
magnetic resonance industry.
Particle accelerators have also allowed the

development of cancer therapies that use protons or
carbon ions instead of radiation, which can better
target tumor tissue. These technologies, along with
several others, are in constant research and
development at these laboratories.
Disruption
Now more than ever, the rate of technological
innovation maintains its ever-faster march, without
any concession to our inability to keep up with it.
In Disruption, Victor del Rosal has put together a

comprehensive and coherent list of those
developments that are likely to redefine, in the next
few years, the way in which we live and work.
Whether or not you have kept up with the mind-

blowing pace of these emergent game-changers, I
think you are likely to enjoy Disruption as an
xvii
invitation to think about the magnitude of the
changes to expect in the near future, as a starting
point of more research on several topics, and—
hopefully—as a trigger that may lead to new
disruptive uses of these technologies.
Dr. Luis Flores Castillo

Member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
September, 2015
xviii
Why Disruption?
AN INTRODUCTION
Disruption: verb \dis-ˈrəpt\ to cause (something) to be unable

to continue in the normal way; to interrupt the normal
progress or activity of (something). –Merriam Webster
dictionary.
I
wrote this book to satisfy my own curiosity. I
wanted to know where technology is heading in
the next ten years or so, because, among other
things I have a young daughter who will certainly
start asking all sorts of questions—she already is.
The journey started four years ago, when I was

working for a management consulting firm in the
telecom space. I needed to know which trends and
technologies could impact our clients, most of them
Fortune 500 companies, exhibiting the greatest
growth and potential. I was hooked.
To say that we are on the verge of transformation

driven by exponential technologies is quite an
understatement.
Note that, for the purpose of this book when

referring to technologies we will use the adjective
exponential and emerging interchangeably. These
refer to technologies with the potential to cause
disruptive changes across the board.
xix
Speed of innovation
One of the unforeseen challenges of writing a book
about emerging technologies is the speed at which
they move. Consider a recent announcement like this
one: Uber to buy 500,000 autonomous
vehicles from Tesla. The surprising thing is that
statements like this one seem to pop-up in the news
on a weekly basis. Innovation cycles are clearly
accelerating.
A book about humans

This is a book about technology but more
importantly, this is a book about us—to help
understand the role of humans in an increasingly
technological society.
I think we have a moral obligation, especially with

the generations following us, to provide some sort of
guidance. We are entering territories which are
exciting and unchartered.
Structure
The book is divided into three parts. In the first one
we explore emerging technologies which will likely
play a significant role in the future of work. The idea
is to introduce some of the building blocks which
could enable significant leaps across industries and
society.
In the second part we explore the shifts which are

likely to occur driven by these technologies,
xx
answering questions like: How could technology
change the way we work? What are the patterns in
the occupations which are likely to be in high
demand and those which will probably fade? What
other major work-related trends could be
significant?
In the final part we will look at some ideas for

preparing for the future of work.
An overview of emerging technologies

Disruption is intended to serve as a primer to pique
your interest in tech fronts you may have not
previously considered. Y ou will gain a glimpse into
some of the emerging technologies with greatest
disruptive potential. Perhaps more importantly, you
may extract insights that may be useful regardless of
the state of any given technology.
We will explore things like drones, driverless taxis,

the virtual reality office, the Internet of Things,
among other technologies, and how all this could
change how we work.
xxi
Automatic fulfillment of groceries
Y our fridge senses that you are about to run out of
milk. It automatically triggers a process to ensure
you are well stocked: it sends a message to your local
grocery store. There, a team of robots assemble your
order, automatically debiting your account. A small
box with your order is fitted onto a drone capable of
transporting a payload of up to five kilograms. The
drone goes to the store’s departure area and takes
off. Within ten minutes your order has safely arrived
to your house. It is received by your robot
concierge—something resembling a vacuum cleaner.
It opens the door, retrieves the shipment, and stores
the delivery inside your fridge. Is this science fiction
or science fact?
No fad, no hype
Just as the Internet could have been dismissed as a
passing fad in the mid-1990s, there are powerful
emerging technologies brewing that could easily be
deemed as irrelevant to our future. However, if
history has taught us something, it is that we cannot
afford to discount that which we do not understand.
We are at the brink of a major technological and

labor shakeup, stemming from overlapping
innovation and technology advancing at an
exponential pace. Hence, changes will be felt not in
20 years but in a window of five to ten years.
xxii
Big changes underway
Imagine being at the onset of the Internet revolution
around 1995 and conjuring images of companies
such as Google, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Airbnb,
Uber.
While it is very difficult to make predictions,

especially about the future—paraphrasing physicist
Neils Bohr—one thing we can be certain of: we are at
a unique time in history powered by exponential
technologies. This enables disruption at a truly
unprecedented pace, presenting us with both
opportunities and growing pains.
It is easy to overlook the significance—and disruptive

consequences—of the fact that in the next ten years
we will not experience the same magnitude of change
we have experienced in the previous ten; it will be
more like decades of innovation, compressed into a
shorter frame. The recent IT revolution serves us a
warning of how much the economy can change in
such little time. The world may be so deeply
transformed that by 2025, in retrospect, the Internet
revolution may look like a warmup.
Victor del Rosal

July 2015
xxiii
PART I
Emerging Technologies:
Enablers of Disruption
DISR U PT ION : EMERGING T ECHNOLOGIES AN D T HE FUT URE OF WOR K
1
Disrupted future
EXPONENTIAL COM PUTING POWER GROWTH
Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.

–Sir Arthur C. Clark e
G
o back in time to the mid-1990s. Y ou have
just received your first email, connected via a
dial-up modem with a top speed of 56
kilobytes per second (that is 1/18th of a megabyte per
second). Y ou hear about this thing called the World
Wide Web. Y ou are thinking: Is this a fad? Is it a just
a geeky way to communicate? Will it be actually
useful? Will it ever go mainstream?
In 1995 email barely existed (Hotmail launched in

1996), faxing documents was still the norm, there
were no smartphones, no Wi-Fi, Google would not be
invented for three more years (1998), and social
media was limited to text-based bulletin board
systems. The idea of making a video phone call from
a handheld device—never mind for free—was
unimaginable. It was not easy to fathom the degree
to which the Internet would transform the world,
serving as a platform to spark innovation.
1
But what if four, five, or more technologies as

revolutionary as the Internet were about to mature
within the next decade? What would be the
disruptive power of a few Internets combined, going
mainstream within a shorter time span? How would
this reshape the economy?
This is where we stand today.
Exponential growth in computing power

In 1965, the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore,
observed that the number of transistors per square
inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year
since its invention. Moore predicted that this trend
would continue for the foreseeable future. Over time
this became known as Moore’s Law, and the
doubling of computing power was corrected to every
eighteen months. This has remained constant over
the past five decades.
In July 2015, IBM announced a 7-nanometer chip,

breaking the difficult 10-nanometer barrier (a
human hair is approximately 90,000
nanometers thick and a strand of human DNA is 2.5
nanometers thick) and paving the way for the
continued exponential growth of computing power—
Moore’s Law is alive and well.
MIT’s Technology Review points out that “even

smaller computing devices will proliferate, paving
the way for new mobile computing and
2
communications applications that vastly increase our

ability to collect and use data in real time.”
The consequence of exponential growth in

computing power is that in our pockets we carry (and
take for granted) devices which are as powerful as
the military-grade supercomputers of the late 1980s
and early 1990s. Unlike them, however, our
smartphones do not require nitrogen cooling and do
not take up the space of a bedroom!
Moreover, by virtue of Moore’s Law, by 2025 your

smartphone will be about 30 times more powerful
than your existing one. What could you do today if
you had the power of 30 smartphones crammed into
a single device? This is happening within 10 years.
And to start painting a picture of how our work life
could shift by 2025, let’s start by looking at our most
immediate computing devices.
The future of the smartphone

By 2025 your smartphone will have become your
main computing device. However it will not be what
we expect. It will be more like a mix and match of
technologies and connected devices. With it you can
comfortably fulfill virtually all your business and
personal needs. Laptops, desktops, and larger
devices will become largely redundant, confined to
niche applications. The chief researcher at Kantar
market research and Ex-Gartner research VP,
Carolina Milanesi, agrees.
3
As the price of computing power keeps dropping,

devices become commodities, becoming increasingly
accessible to larger sectors of the population. The
sheer increase in computing power will have
profound effects in society as will be explored in
other chapters. This democratization of access is
important as it continues to level the playing field.
Interacting in novel ways

Y our personal device will be even more
interconnected with other devices, eliminating the
need for an inbuilt smartphone screen. Instead, you
will be able to project visuals onto virtually anything.
Y our eye wear (prescription glasses, contact lenses,
etc.) will become your screen, thanks to advances in
augmented reality (AR), allowing for text and
graphics to be superimposed on anything you look
at, including everyday surfaces such as walls.
Companies including Google (with Google Glass as
an early attempt) are notable AR players. A company
called Innovega has been working a number of years
on ioptik, a contact lens onto which you can project
images, replacing larger eyewear. A Japanese
company, Aerial Burton, has devised touchable 3D
holograms, using super-fast femtosecond lasers.
Their device can show text and pictures in mid-air,
without using a screen.
Advances in natural motion sensing and tracking,

including hand gestures, eyeball tracking, haptic
touch, etc. will increase our capabilities to input
4
information, increasing the wealth of expressions

that can be captured. Companies including Leap
Motion, and virtual reality players including Oculus
Rift, HTC-Valve, Samsung, among many others are
making progress in this area.
PrimeSense, a company bought by Apple, pioneered

the concept of 3D sensing, which allows for displays
to be manipulating by gestures, much like what the
Kinect does, Microsoft motion sensing input devices
used for sensing motion in the Xbox. Shel Israel,
Forbes contributor explains that, “essentially, [this
technology] lets machines see you or your general
location in 3D, allowing the machines to learn the
context of a situation. Its sensors are so good they
can actually see the heartbeat of game players, thus
understanding how much a player is enjoying a game
or not.”
Ubiquitous Internet
As a connectivity backbone, we will need super-fast
and reliable Internet that simply works.
Uninterrupted Internet access will be accepted as a
human right, accessible regardless of geography,
location, provider, etc. Connectivity will be virtually
guaranteed for everyone everywhere on Earth.
A study by Pew Research Center highlights that by

2025 the Internet will be everywhere, it will become
ubiquitous, just as electricity is today. Joe Touch,
director of the University of Southern California's
5
Information Sciences Institute points out that "We

won't think about 'going online' or 'looking on the
Internet' for something. We'll just be online, and just
look."
Initiatives such as Internet.org by Facebook, Project

Loon by Google, OneWeb by Virgin are already
working in this direction. This will mean that global
Internet population will jump more than twofold
from three to eight billion. Singularity University
founder Peter Diamandis points out that “the
additional five billion Internet users represent tens
of trillions of new dollars flowing into the global
economy.”
Increasingly powerful applications, services, gaming,

etc. will be “streamed” from the cloud. For instance,
take IBM’s Watson—the artificial intelligence
computer which defeated the human world
champion of Jeopardy! IBM has made Watson
available as a cloud service.
Watson-as-a-Service means that an AI which would

be otherwise completely out of reach can now be
your new AI agent or a “freelancer” on steroids, an
outsourced service. This is profound: a cloud service
that you plug into your small business or health care
organization to increase your ability to provide
customer service or to identify viable treatment
options for cancer patients, powered by a
supercomputer as an ally. Did we even dream of this
in 1995?
6
2
Artificial Intelligence
THE BASIS FOR AUTOM ATION
"We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of

human life on Earth." –Vernor Vinge
A
rtificial intelligence (AI) has been the focus of
science fiction writers and film producers for
decades. Contrary to Hollywood’s typical
portrayal of AI as an evil overlord, the weak type of
AI already pervades the modern world in many
useful ways.
What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer
science concerned with making computers behave
like humans. Major AI researchers and textbooks
define this field as "the study and design of
intelligent agents", in which an intelligent agent is a
system that perceives its environment and takes
actions that maximize its chances of success. MIT’s
John McCarthy, who created the term in 1955,
defines it as "the science and engineering of making
intelligent machines".
7
One way to classify AI is in relation to human

intelligence, that is, into three categories: narrow,
general, and super intelligence.
Artificia l Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

Also known as weak AI, it is a type of artificial
intelligence that, as the name suggests, is narrowly
focused on one type of work.
It turns out we are already very familiar with this

type of AI. From a consumer level, you can see
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), for example, in
the way your bank detects abnormal spending
patterns, with algorithms specialized at recognizing
suspicious transactions. Apple’s Siri and Google Now
virtual assistants are also a type of ANI. The
recommendations given by Amazon, Netflix, and
LinkedIn, tailored to suit your particular
preferences, connections, and so forth, are also a
type of ANI, based on highly refined algorithms.
Two of the most public demonstrations of narrow AI

are IBM Deep Blue’s defeat of world chess champion
Garry Kasparov in 1995 and the defeat of the
champion of Jeopardy! by IBM’s Watson. Tim
Urban, editor of Wait But Why, points out that “the
world’s best Checkers, Chess, Scrabble,
Backgammon, and Othello players are now all ANI
systems.”
Today more than half of equity shares traded on US

markets are performed by bots, that is, algorithmic
8
high-frequency ANI agents that respond in

milliseconds to complete trades that match
parameters set by investors.
Artificia l General Intelligence (AGI)

While ANI agents may be impressive doing highly
specialized work, they are no match for the combined
range of complex functions performed by human
beings.
Artificial General Intelligence is the type of artificial

intelligence that could match human intelligence,
being able to perform any intellectual task that is
humanly possible.
This includes the ability to “reason, plan, solve

problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex
ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience,” as
described by Professor Linda Gottfredson.
To this day, AGI has not been achieved. How can we

know when it is realized? Luke Muehlhauser, of the
Machine Intelligence Research Institute presents
four tests for AGI which have been proposed.
Turing Test
Perhaps the most well-known one is the Turing Test,
examining a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent
behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from,
that of a human. Alan Turing proposed that a human
evaluator would judge natural language
9
conversations between a human and a machine that

is designed to generate human-like responses.
A win scenario would be as follows: a program will

solve the test if it can fool half the judges into
thinking it is human while interacting with them in a
freeform conversation for 30 minutes and
interpreting audio-visual input.
I reached out to physicist Luis Flores Castillo,

member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson
at CERN. He points out that “the Turing test has an
interesting problem associated with it: it inherently
aims at human level intelligence, and has no
provision, nor expectation, for the possibility of
superintelligence.”
Coffee Test
AI expert, Ben Goertzel suggests a more complex
test, the “coffee test”, as a potential operational
definition for AGI: go into an average American
house and figure out how to make coffee, including
identifying the coffee machine, figuring out what the
buttons do, finding the coffee in the cabinet, etc.
The robot college student test

Goertzel suggests an even more challenging
operational definition. That a robot should be able to
enroll in a human university and take classes in the
same way as humans, and get its degree.
10
The employment test

Nils Nilsson, one of the founders of AI, once
suggested a highly demanding operational definition
for AGI, the employment test. He argues that
machines exhibiting true human-level intelligence
should be able to do many of the things humans are
able to do. Among these activities are the tasks or
“jobs” at which people are employed. To pass the
employment test, AI programs must… [have] at least
the potential [to completely automate] economically
important jobs.
This leads us squarely into one of the areas of

focused research in AI: machine learning, or the
ability of computers to learn by themselves.
Overall, AGI poses a deeper philosophical issue, as

highlighted by Flores Castillo: “consciousness seems
to me to be intimately interwoven with freedom and
emotion”. The question then is if AGI could truly
achieve emotion, freedom, and consciousness. Or are
these qualities reserved exclusively for human
beings?
Machine learning
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence
(AI) that provides computers with the ability to learn
without being explicitly programmed. Machine
learning focuses on the development of computer
programs that can teach themselves to grow and
change when exposed to new data. It is a subfield
11
of computer science that evolved from the study

of pattern recognition and computational learning
theory in artificial intelligence.
Machine learning explores the construction and

study of algorithms that can learn from and make
predictions on data. Such algorithms operate by
building a model from example inputs in order to
make data-driven predictions or decisions, rather
than following strictly static program instructions.
McKinsey & Co. points out that the unmanageable

volume and complexity of the big data that the world
is now swimming in have increased the potential of
machine learning—and the need for it.
Machine learning is at the heart of automation as it

enables computers and robots to perform
increasingly complex tasks that were previously
exclusive to humans.
Artificia l Superintelligence (ASI)

Nick Bostrom, Oxford University philosopher and AI
leading thinker, defines superintelligence as “an
intellect that is much smarter than the best human
brains in practically every field, including scientific
creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”
Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) can range from a

computer that’s just slightly smarter than a human
to one that is billions or trillions of times more
intelligent.
12
Potential existential threat

This is the existential threat that Stephen Hawking,
Bill Gates, and Elon Musk among others have been
talking about. It is a real threat that must be carefully
addressed. Elon Musk has recently donated $10
million to the Future of Life Institute which “will
look into how to keep AI friendly”. Can humanity
curb the potential capacity of ASI to wipe out human
life?
Connecting Moore’s Law with AI

What is the connection between Moore’s Law and
AI? Columnist Kevin Drum presents it in a sobering
way, he asks the reader to consider that Lake
Michigan's volume (in fluid ounces) is about the
same as our brain's capacity (in calculations per
second). Imagine that somehow Lake Michigan was
emptied and you were given the task of filling it back
to capacity (why me you might ask?). The rule is that
you start by dropping a single ounce of water (about
two tablespoons) into it and waiting 18 months to
drop twice as much liquid. Y ou are to keep going,
doubling the amount every 18 months, until you
finish the task. How long would this take?
It turns out that if you started in 1940, by year 2000

you would barely see a slight sheen on the lakebed.
By 2010, only a few inches of water would have
accumulated. At that point you might be tempted to
think that, after 70 years of hard work, the whole
effort is futile. But the shocking part is that within 15
13
years, by 2025, you would finish—you would fill the

lake to capacity. It is mind boggling, yet math does
not lie, this is the real power of exponential growth
and it goes against our linear intuition.
Despite seeing the evidence of Moore’s Law right in

front of us, it is easy to dismiss the true power of
exponential growth. That is because our intuition is
linear. Right now for the most part we think that our
technology is cute. Y es we can play some cool video
games, we have these things attached to our hands
called smartphones, and we can do a number of
things with powerful desktop applications. But we
have literally just seen the tip of the iceberg.
Not only useful, but incredibly powerful

Going back to the very literal metaphor of Lake
Michigan, once computing power nears human-level
computational power; our handheld assistants might
go beyond seeming cute. We might pause to think
that these things are getting incredibly smart and
capable. Right now we marvel because we can
identify facial features, recognize our voices, and so
forth. Once our devices are capable of performing at
the level of human intelligence, we will quickly
realize the potential which we could only dream of
before. They will drive our cars not as well as
humans did, but much better. They will perform
more complex knowledge-based tasks, including
writing books (they already write sports columns,
today). These machines will be our doctors, much
14
more capable at diagnosing as they learn in real-time

from thousands of patients treated.
These non-human abilities will mean that they are

more capable than us at many functions which were
reserved for humans.
Just as humanity relied on brute animal (and

human) muscle power until the invention of the
steam engine, we will see that the advent of
computing power at the level we are about to
experience, will mean that our own human brains
are replaceable for many functions which were until
now reserved for human beings.
From Siri to Iron Man’s AI assistant

According to Peter Diamandis, in a decade, next
generation AI assistants will be more like JARVIS
from Iron Man, with expanded capabilities to
understand and answer, thanks to work with IBM
Watson, DeepMind and Vicarious, among others. “In
a decade”, Diamandis points out, “it will be normal
for you to give your AI access to listen to all of your
conversations, read your emails and scan your
biometric data because the upside and convenience
will be so immense.”
Quantum computing
A quantum computer harnesses phenomena
explained by quantum physics, such as superposition
and entanglement, to perform operations on data,
15
which are impossible with the traditional binary

approach. “With quantum computing, a quantum bit
or qubit exists in both of its possible states at once, a
condition known as a superposition”, as explained by
AI expert Ciara Byrne. “An operation on a qubit thus
exploits its quantum weirdness by allowing many
computations to be performed in parallel. A two-
qubit system would perform the operation on 4
values, a three-qubit system on 8 and so forth.”
Andris Ambainis, computer scientist active in the

fields of quantum information theory and quantum
computing, gives an example: “Let’s say that we have
a large phone book, ordered alphabetically by
individual names (and not by phone numbers). If we
wanted to find the person who has the phone
number 6097348000, we would have to go through
the whole phone book and look at every entry. For a
phone book with one million phone numbers, it
could take one million steps. In 1996, Lov Grover
from Bell Labs discovered that a quantum computer
would be able to do the same task with one thousand
steps instead of one million.”
The next step for Moore’s Law?

Following Moore's Law sometime within the next
two decades we will find that we can no longer
shrink the circuits on a microprocessor already
measured on an atomic scale, currently at 10
nanometers. Hence the next step would be quantum
16
computing, which would perform calculations

significantly faster than any silicon-based computer.
According to Jerry Chow, manager of IBM's

Experimental Quantum Computing group, quantum
computing has potential for things like drug
discovery, drug design (testing drug combinations by
the billions at a time), chemical design, and
hopefully applications in the bio-pharma realm.
Other possible applications include solving complex
physics problems which are currently beyond our
understanding and creating unbreakable encryption
through the use of quantum cryptography.
We are making steady progress towards the

availability of quantum computing, regarded as the
“holy grail” at the intersection of physics, quantum
mechanics, and computing. When could we expect to
see a functional quantum computer? Robert
Schoelkopf, Researcher at the Department of Applied
Physics at Y ale University states that “it is hard to
estimate how long it will be until we have functional
quantum computers, but it will be sooner than we
think.” When quantum computers go mainstream we
will enter a new era of computing that was, not long
ago, only science fiction.
17
3
Autonomous Vehicles
THE NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE OF
TRANSPORTATION
All of the biggest technological inventions created by man –

the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about
his intelligence, but speak s volumes about his laziness.
–Mark Kennedy (Author)
O
n June 16, 1897 in Stuttgart, the world's first
gasoline-powered taxicab, the Daimler
Victoria, was delivered to German
entrepreneur Friedrich Greiner. The eight-
horsepower engine afforded a top speed of 24
kilometers per hour. The vehicle came equipped with
a taximeter, a six-year old innovation which allowed
fares to be calculated based on distance covered and
waiting time. Within three years Greiner ordered
another half dozen taxis, launching the world's first
motorized taxi company. By the end of the 19th
century, motorized cab companies would proliferate
globally, and by 1920 they were a ubiquitous part of
urban life.
Fast forward 113 years. On May 31, 2010, two young

techies, Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick launched
19
a service in San Francisco, a smartphone app

connecting a driver with someone looking for a ride.
Uber was born and with it a service that has
completely disrupted the taxi industry. Uber and
similar services have significantly enhanced the
interaction between drivers and passengers; the
proof is that users are typically delighted.
Taxi industry disruption

This clear preference has taken its toll on the
incumbent taxi industry, sometimes devastatingly so.
Point in case is taxi tycoon Evgeny “Gene” Freidman,
estimated to own some 1,000 New Y ork City taxi
medallions which he leases to drivers. At the peak of
the market, around 2013, each medallion was worth
an estimated $1.1 million. However, mainly thanks to
Uber, his assets have depreciated around 40 percent.
The New Y ork Times reports that Freidman is
currently locked in litigation with Citibank, trying to
seize 87 medallions from him, following unpaid
loans. Overall the problem for NY C taxi owners is
not only asset depreciation but that creditors are less
willing to lend to potential owners. Medallion sales
have stagnated in a disrupted market; lenders are
less willing to provide financing. Freidman argues
that he is too big to fail and this is a public problem,
demanding that the City of New Y ork step in to
guarantee a “normal” value.
The challenge really is that the playing field has been

fundamentally disrupted by technology. The licenses
20
he owns, which skyrocketed in price thanks to

limited supply, are no longer as demanded as in the
pre-Uber era. Aided by the advent of smartphones
and app ecosystems, Uber and similar services have
taken a big bite out of the Big Apple taxi market in a
few short years.
Uber domination
Forbes reports that, based on expense reports filed
by business travelers in the first quarter of 2015, “an
average of 46 percent of all total paid car rides were
through Uber in major markets across the U.S.”
During the same period, rides in taxis, limos and
shuttles also took a hit, falling 85 percent.
More shockingly, Business Insider UK reports that in San

Francisco—Uber’s most mature market—the company is
already three times the size of the local taxi market ($500
million vs. $140 million in yearly revenue). Uber's rides in
San Francisco are growing threefold per year, in New
Y ork, four times, and in London, five to six times per
year.
Today Uber is worth over $50 billion, half of the
entire global taxi industry (estimated by Forbes at
$100 billion), most strikingly, without owning a
single taxi. Not bad for a five year old company.
Enabling platform
One of the events that enabled Uber’s rise can be
traced back to June 29, 2007. On this day Steve Jobs
unveiled the first generation iPhone, describing it as
21
a “revolutionary mobile phone”. A year later, on July

10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store (iOS) ,
opening the gates for an ecosystem of apps. That was
followed by the Android ecosystem, furthering the
expansion of the app world in mobile computing. We
could not understand Uber’s success without those
two platforms: smartphones and the app ecosystem .
We will revisit this concept in the second part of the
book, where we discuss the combinational nature of
exponential technologies in novel ways.
No going back for users

While not everything is blue skies for Uber due to
backlash from incumbents and ensuing regulation,
for users, regardless of the outcome, there is no
going back. Passengers are now used to it, and
clearly prefer it over the traditional alternative. The
ride-sharing platform has completely disrupted an
industry that was 113 years old. But there is a more
profound shift literally around the corner.
Driverless vehicles
Hold on to your seat. If we are seeing protests
because of Uber, wait until the taxi shows up without
a driver. On July 8, 2015, Uber announced that it
would buy half a million automated vehicles from
Tesla—the company is on its way to replace the
driver, Uber’s human component. Major automotive
manufacturers, including Audi, Mercedes-Benz,
Nissan, and Honda, to name a few, along with
22
Google and Tesla, are working on some version of an

autonomous vehicle, that is, a self-driving car.
What are autonomous vehicles?

An autonomous vehicle also known as a driverless
car, self-driving car, or robotic car is an automated
or autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the main
transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an
autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its
environment and navigating without human input.
Autonomous vehicles sense their surroundings with

such techniques as radar, lidar (light detection and
ranging), GPS, and computer vision. Advanced
control systems interpret sensory information to
identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as
obstacles and relevant signage.
By definition, autonomous vehicles are capable of

updating their maps based on sensory input,
allowing the vehicles to keep track of their position
even when conditions change or when they enter
uncharted environments.
Driverless taxis
Forbes reports that about three quarters of the fare
charged by Uber goes to drivers’ wages, i.e. the
human component. What happens if and when the
driver is no longer needed? Then all of a sudden, the
taxi becomes highly affordable to everyone.
23
Futurist Zack Kanter cites a Columbia University

study which suggests that with a fleet of only 9,000
autonomous cars, Uber could replace every taxi cab
in New Y ork City. Passengers would wait an average
of 36 seconds for a ride costing around $0.50 per
mile.
Even today, for some urban dwellers taking a taxi is

cheaper than the total cost of owning a car. When
taxis go driverless, people will have less incentive to
own a car.
At present, cars are one of the most under-utilized

assets; they sit idly, parked, about 96 percent of the
time, according to Morgan Stanley. We use our cars
4 percent of their useful life! If you add licensing
costs, fuel, maintenance, cost of money, and other
expenses, it is evident that they are expensive assets,
and that the majority of users would be delighted to
do without them.
However, the impact of driverless cars extends way

beyond the taxi industry.
Driverless future
When an individualized taxi service becomes as
cheap as taking the bus, city dwellers will buy fewer
and fewer cars. A study by the University of
California at Berkeley concluded that vehicle
ownership among car sharing users was cut in half.
Y ou will hail a cab with your smartphone app with

the only difference that it will be self-driven and it
24
will be much cheaper. In essence we will go from an

ownership model to a rental (pay-as-you-go) or even
subscription-based transportation model. This will
have huge implications.
Reduced vehicle fleet

First of all this eliminates the inefficiencies caused by
a bloated fleet of private vehicles; a reduced number
of cars can service a given urban area, because a self-
driving car doesn’t need to be parked. It can go pick
up the next passenger as soon as it drops you at your
destination. Taxi-like driverless services are destined
to become a primary mode of transportation in
urban settings. Morgan Stanley estimates that a 90
percent reduction in crashes would save nearly
30,000 lives and prevent 2.12 million injuries
annually.
Direct impact
Six million professional drivers are employed driving
a truck, bus, or a delivery vehicle in the U.S. alone.
Car manufacturing employs another 900,000 or so.
Driving is the most popular job in the majority of
American states. Widespread adoption of driverless
vehicles could decimate most of these jobs by 2035.
Demise of ancillary industries

As the driverless trend accelerates, other structural
changes will follow. A smaller state apparatus will be
needed for issuing driver licenses, there will be a
diminishing need for traffic cops (unless “robot”
drivers start to misbehave). Traffic wards, parking
25
attendants, and other jobs associated with human

driving will be progressively phased out of existence.
The parking industry is worth $100 billion in annual
revenue. However that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Kanter points out that the automobile insurance

market is worth $198 billion, the automotive finance
market, $98 billion, and the automotive aftermarket,
$300 billion. Demand for these would plummet.
In the trucking industry there are a number of

ancillary services including service stations, motels,
catering to the needs of truck drivers. Demand for
these could drop sharply.
The transition
Governments will undoubtedly face increasing
pressure to slow down or outright ban autonomous
driving vehicles. But sooner or later, as the
advantages prove to outweigh the costs, society will
transition to this automated model. However, make
no mistake, this will be a painful transition, and
steps must be taken to soften the fallout.
26
4
Flying drones
OPENING THE SKIES
A
few months ago I was hiking in the beautiful
west of Ireland in Shramore, near Newport,
Co. Mayo with Frank McManamon. During
the trek, I was astounded when he demonstrated
how Sam, his sheepdog, obeyed six or so different
whistle commands. I half-jokingly said to him that in
the not-so-distant future Sam could be out of work,
replaced by a drone which would let Frank do his
sheep-herding from a distance, maybe even from
home. It turns out it doesn’t have to be a (lame) joke.
In Dannevirke, New Zealand, Michael Thomson, a

young engineering student, has been busy herding
sheep on his sister’s farm with a “quadcopter” he
crafted himself. The drone turned out to be more
effective at sheep-herding than anyone anticipated,
“much quicker than horses and dogs,” Thomson
explained to the Wall Street Journal and local media
outlets. “I didn’t have to worry about fences or going
through gates, I’d just fly over them,” he described.
From lifeguard drones, to aerial photography, and

flying medical supplies in remote areas, drones have
become increasingly useful gadgets.
27
What are drones?

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly
known as a drone, and also referred to as an
unpiloted aerial vehicle and a remotely piloted
aircraft (RPA) by the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), is an aircraft without a human
pilot aboard. Drones range in size from a few
centimeters to tens of meters in length. Drones are
either controlled by a person on the ground or
autonomously via a computer program. First
popularized due to their military use, drones are now
used for everything from wildlife and atmospheric
research to disaster relief and photography.
Drone era
Drones have ushered in an era of not only hobbyists
but of professionals using them to accomplish
increasingly significant tasks.
Lifeguard drone
The Pars Aerial Rescue Robot is an aerial drone for
sea rescue missions. RTS, the company behind it,
states that the technology decreases the time needed
to reach drowning people and that could also save
more than one sinking person at a time. Lifeguards
or rescue team members can fly the drone over the
victims with a radio control. The drone, carrying
cameras and rubber life tubes, can be sent out by
lifeguards from the shore, helping rescue drowning
individuals quicker than with human assistance only.
28
Drone photography
Professional photographers find drones extremely
useful for shots that were previously impossible.
From creative snapshots of weddings to astounding
photographs of previously inaccessible scenery,
drone photography has become the new normal. Y ou
would expect a social network for flying drone
photographers, right? Enter Dronestagram, the first
social network for this market niche, giving
professional drone photographers and enthusiasts a
place to upload breathtaking aerial photographs that
can be captured using their UAV’s. Dronestagram
recently partnered with National Geographic, GoPro,
Adobe and other notable companies for the 2015
Drone Aerial Photography Contest with very
aesthetically pleasing results.
Another company, Falkor Systems, has targeted

extreme sports enthusiasts, focusing on skiers and
base-jumpers. "The angles people get [while filming]
are not quite as intimate as would be possible with
an autonomous flying robot,” commented Falkor
CEO, Sameer Parekh. He envisions a small UAV
device that can accompany a downhill skier.
Air parcels
What if you could order something online and get
your hands on it in a matter of minutes? Amazon is
testing a 30-minute delivery service with Amazon
Prime Air. The order would have to be less than five
pounds (2.26 kg), which, according to Jeff Bezos,
29
Amazon CEO, includes 86 percent of the packages

Amazon currently sells. Earlier this year the FAA
issued the company a special "experimental
airworthiness certificate", allowing Amazon to
conduct outdoor research, testing, and training.
Flying medical supplies and disaster relief

Flirtey is the Australian drone start-up that became
the first company to receive approval from the FAA
to deliver packages by unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) in the U.S.
The company will deliver medical supplies to a rural

coal mining region in Wise County, Southwest
Virginia, not only one of the most isolated places in
the U.S. but on the planet. For some 3,000 residents
the isolation means precarious access to healthcare.
Flirtey will tether medical supplies to six-rotor

drones, delivering 24 packages of prescription
medication, weighing some 10 pounds (4.5kg) each
to Wise County.
"This is the first step in proving that on-demand

drone delivery can revolutionize the way medical
care can be delivered to remote communities, and
eventually from your local pharmacy to your front
door," said Flirtey Co-Founder Tom Bass. "This will
be a game changer for millions in America."
In a similar effort, a team from the Harvard-MIT

Division of Health Sciences and Technology received
a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
30
to develop drones that deliver vaccines and

medicines to remote locations and disaster zones.
According to a Forbes report, “They envision
healthcare workers using the drones via mobile
phone to swiftly get medicine to people in isolated
areas in a cost-effective way, helping to improve the
coverage of vaccine supplies.”
Highway monitoring
In the state of Georgia, U.S. a project is underway
using drones to inspect roads and bridges, surveying
land with laser mapping and alerting authorities to
traffic jams and accidents.
Javier Irizarry, director of the CONECTech Lab at

the Georgia Institute of Technology stated that
"drones could keep workers safer because they won't
be going into traffic or hanging off a bridge."
Challenges
While the potential use for drones is limited by
imagination, not all uses of technology are as
harmless. A recent video that went viral on the
Internet showed a handgun attached to a hovering
drone being remotely fired. This clearly raises red
flags that must be addressed.
Moreover flying drones have become an issue of

airspace security as they can interfere with passenger
aircraft. While drones are highly useful, regulation
that ensures safety for everyone is a must. The trick
is to achieve this while not hindering industry
31
growth, limiting the potential benefits of this

technology.
32
5
3D Printing
M ANUFACTURING REVOLUTION
O
n the morning of November 25, 2014
orbiting some 400 kilometers above Earth
on board the International Space Station
(ISS), NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore
checked the output of his printer. A day earlier,
Houston ground control had sent it a command to
print a plate which read: “MADE IN SPACE NASA”.
Astronaut Wilmore inspected it and was satisfied
that they had just 3D-printed humanity’s first object
in space. If you consider the amazingly complex and
expensive ISS resupply process, one can appreciate
the fact that NASA found a way to wirelessly "beam"
an object onto the ISS, saving hundreds of millions
of dollars per event. On that date we entered an era
allowing us to conceive objects on Earth and
replicate them in three-dimensional form outside
our planet.
Tipping point
In a Harvard Business Review article, Richard
D’Aveni states that 3D printing is at a tipping point,
fast approaching the 20 percent adoption rate which
33
Gartner analysts consider as the benchmark for

mainstream adoption.
What is 3D printing?
A 3D printer works much like a conventional inkjet
printer, except that the output is not a flat, or two-
dimensional printout, but a three-dimensional
object. The technology typically works by depositing
successive layers of a material such as plastic resin in
intricate patterns. The resin solidifies enabling the
production of a wide array of objects, including those
that are difficult to produce via conventional
manufacturing processes. 3D printing is also known
as additive manufacturing because an object is made
by adding successive layers as opposed to cutting
away or shaving off excess material. It is not a new
technique, as it has been used for over 25 years to
create industrial prototypes, however, it is about to
go into the mainstream consumer market.
From rapid prototyping to mass production

3D printing also known as additive manufacturing
has been around since the 1980s. However, it was
not capable enough or sufficiently cost-effective for
the majority of end-product or high-volume
commercial applications. But that is quickly
changing.
Typically there has been two price points for 3D

printers: costly high end 3D printers and inexpensive
yet less capable printers. However, according to a
34
PricewaterhouseCoopers report a new category is

emerging: a mid-level 3D printer which offers many
high-end features in a desktop form factor while
being more economical. The added capabilities at a
more reasonable price will make the technology
more useful and speed its adoption.
Today most 3D printers utilize only one type of

material at a time. This can be plastic, metals,
including gold, silver, bronze, titanium, and
ceramics, and more recently wood. According to
PricewaterhouseCoopers, 3D printers must be
improved in three areas to capitalize beyond rapid
prototyping. The first one is performance, including
speed, resolution, and autonomous operation, ease
of use, reliability, and repeatability. Secondly, multi-
material capability and diversity, including the
ability to mix materials while printing a single object.
Lastly increasing the variety of finished products,
such as the ability to 3D print embedded sensors,
batteries, and electronics.
The key insight is that 3D printers will be able to

produce increasingly complex objects, at greater
speeds, and with greater functionality.
Whereas today 3D printing may be perceived by the

public as being limited to producing arts, crafts, and
spare parts, with these key developments we will
have complex products printed increasingly faster.
Given enough time we will be able to print anything
we can imagine.
35
Canalys, a market research firm, predicts that the

global market for 3D printers and services will grow
from $2.5 billion in 2013 to $16.2 billion in 2018, an
astounding year on year growth of 45.7 percent.
Supply chain disruption

What if we can completely bypass the complexities of
supply chain logistics? What if increasingly localized
3D printing machines could fulfill the needs of
smaller cities or villages? Imagine that, instead of
paying 30 percent or 40 percent of the cost of a
product on freight, you could 3D print a wide variety
of objects at home or at specialized kiosks within 25
kilometers of smaller consumer centers. This could
spell disruption for global supply chain
management. Rick Smith, 3D printing entrepreneur
and Forbes contributor, references this as direct
digital manufacturing, the capacity to manufacture
components and finished goods near their point of
use.
Another advantage over conventional mass

production is the fact that you can custom produce
your products, tailored to suit individual consumers.
This creates an added value in terms of
personalization. Y ou don’t need to have the same
mass product as everyone. Y ou can create truly
unique products with your name on them, at no
additional cost, opening the door for a new type of
affordable customized production.
36
Gartner predicts that 3D printers with the

anticipated potential described above will be
available for less than $1,000 by 2016. Printer
improvements will likely accelerate in the next few
years. As with every technology it will also become
increasingly more automated and easier to use.
Current and potential applications

PwC identifies some further potential uses of 3D
printing, including the following: in automotive and
industrial manufacturing, to consolidate many
components into a single complex part, to create
production tooling, produce spare parts and
components, to create complex geometry parts not
possible with traditional manufacturing.
In health care, to plan surgery using precise

anatomical models based on CT scan or MRI, to
develop custom orthopedic implants and prosthetics.
Some makers of hearing aids and dental braces have
adopted the technology for finished products.
In retail, to create custom toys, jewelry, games, home

decorations, and other products, to print spare or
replacement parts for auto or home repair, for
example.
In sports, to create custom protective gear for better

fit and safety, to create custom spike plates for soccer
shoes based on biomechanical data.
37
3D printed house
Researchers in Sweden are experimenting with 3D
printed houses. In a collaborative EU-funded
endeavor, the project aims to 3D-print houses with
cellulose. “The idea of the project is to develop a
technology that can be used in reinforcing the
manufacturing industry in the region,” explains
Marlene Johansson, director of Sliperiet.
The +Project looks to target industries within the

wood and construction sectors, as well as within
design, architecture and even IT. It has goals of
producing cellulose-based 3D printable materials
which can be used to print everything from walls
within a home, to simple weather-stripping, doors
and even entire houses.
“There is already technology in place to print parts of

houses in concrete, for instance,” explains Linnéa
Therese Dimitriou, Creative Director at Sliperiet.
“Now, with this project, the region is one step closer
to the front edge in the area of digital manufacturing
and so-called mass-customization. This opens up for
incredibly exciting future opportunities for the
regional forest and construction industry as well as
for regional raw material.”
Bridge printed “on the go”

In Amsterdam, 3D printing technology will enable a
pedestrian bridge to be 3D printed. A Dutch startup
company, MX3D, is planning to be the first to print a
38
steel bridge across a canal in Amsterdam. According

to the company, the robotic arms, to be placed on
opposite ends of the bridge, will heat metal to 2,700
degrees Fahrenheit and weld together metal pieces
one by one. Moreover, the robotic arms use the
bridge’s own structure as support, eliminating the
need for additional work space.
According to Tim Geurtjens, MX3D Chief

Technology Officer, “what distinguishes our
technology from traditional 3D printing methods is
that we work according to the ‘Printing Outside the
box’ principle. By printing with 6-axis industrial
robots, we are no longer limited to a square box in
which everything happens. Printing a functional, life-
size bridge is of course the ideal way to showcase the
endless possibilities of this technique.”
3D printing on course to deliver

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the current
pace of innovation suggests that the high
expectations set for 3D printing will be met. The 3D
printer market is transforming rapidly. Robust
innovation at established vendors and among
entrepreneurs and hobbyists is providing a test
ground for filling the market with more midrange
systems that bring enterprise-class capabilities at
much lower prices.
39
6
Internet of Things
EVERYTHING CONNECTED
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think lik e
men, but that men will begin to think lik e computers.
– Sydney Harris (Journalist)
W
hat will happen when all your things start
talking amongst each other? According to
Gartner some five billion things are
connected to the Internet, making up the Internet of
Things (IoT), up 30 percent from 2014, reaching 25
billion within five years.
This sudden expansion will boost the economic

impact of the IoT as consumers, businesses,
government authorities, hospitals and many other
entities find new ways in which to make use of the
technology.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a powerful

force for business transformation, and its disruptive
impact will be felt across all industries and all areas
of society.
41
What is the Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of
physical objects that contain embedded technology
to communicate and sense or interact with their
internal states or the external environment. This
allows everyday objects have network connectivity,
allowing them to send and receive data
Consumer applications will drive the number of

connected things, while enterprise will account for
most of the revenue. Gartner estimates that 2.9
billion connected things will be in use in the
consumer sector in 2015 reaching over 13 billion in
2020. The automotive sector will show the highest
growth rate at 96 percent in 2015.
A trillion-sensor economy
Peter Diamandis estimates that by 2025, the IoT will
exceed 100 billion connected devices, each with a
dozen or more sensors collecting data. This will lead
to a trillion-sensor economy driving a data
revolution beyond our imagination. A report by Cisco
estimates the Internet of Things (also known as
Internet of Everything) will generate $19 trillion of
newly created value.
A sensor for everything

Consider that under the view of IoT architects,
objects, animals, and people can and will be provided
with unique identifiers, giving both living and non-
42
living entities the ability to transfer data over a

network without requiring human-to-human or
human-to-computer interaction. The implications
could be groundbreaking.
Sample benefits in a manufacturing context

According to Manufacturing Global, increased
product knowledge is one of the benefits that IoT can
deliver. “By connecting a product to the Internet, a
manufacturer should expect to receive granular, real-
time information about how it is being used.”
Another key area is the improvement of customer
service. As the manufacturer has a greater ability to
identify problems, customers can expect a greater
level of customer service, providing hints and tips on
how to get the most out of a product. This can also
represent an opportunity for greater interactivity
with the consumer.
Entrepreneur and Huffington Post contributor, Paul

Mashegoane, sees the Internet of Things as a game
changer and argues that IoT possibilities are
“endless; your smartphone may know about your
health more than your doctor does, your fridge may
know more about your diet than you know. A traffic
system will get to a point where it will control itself
to better monitor traffic, send the information to
your car to navigate the city more easily; collect the
data of what's happening on the road of accidents
and traffic congestions, then send it over to the
transport department.”
43
Exciting uses
Futurist and tech consultant Daniel Burrus paints a
vivid picture of potential IoT uses: “In 2007, a bridge
collapsed in Minnesota, killing many people, because
of steel plates that were inadequate to handle the
bridge’s load. When we rebuild bridges, we can use
smart cement: cement equipped with sensors to
monitor stresses, cracks, and warpages. This is
cement that alerts us to fix problems before they
cause a catastrophe. And these technologies aren’t
limited to the bridge’s structure.”
Burris explains that if there is ice on the bridge, the

same sensors in the concrete could detect it and
communicate the information via the wireless
Internet to your car. Once your vehicle knows there’s
a hazard ahead, you can slow down or avoid the road
altogether, turning data into actionable insights.
Furthermore smart cars can connect to smart city

grids and start talking to each other, optimizing
traffic flow. “Instead of just having stoplights on
fixed timers, we’ll have smart stoplights that can
respond to changes in traffic flow. Traffic and street
conditions will be communicated to drivers,
rerouting them around areas that are congested,
snowed-in, or tied up in construction,” explains
Burrus.
44
Privacy issues
However, the IoT could also result in huge privacy
headaches that we must be aware of. “If privacy isn’t
dead yet, then billions-upon-billions of chips,
sensors, and wearables will seal the deal,” say Jat
Singh and Julia Powles, researchers at the University
of Cambridge. Y et there are ways around this. “If
there is the vision and commitment to realizing
pervasive computing in a way that is open, diverse,
innovative, and high-value, then privacy may just
stand a fighting chance.” This is an issue that must
be thoroughly reviewed and addressed to prevent
security breakdowns.
Key areas of development

To fully advance the potential of the Internet of
Things, McKinsey & Co. identifies five key areas of
development. These are: interoperability of the
different types of sensors and software; the need for
low-cost, low-power hardware; ubiquitous
connectivity—that is the need for Internet
everywhere; analytics software and analytic people
needed to help make sense of it all; and more
attention needs to be paid to privacy, confidentiality,
and security, as pointed out previously.
45
7
Virtual and Augmented Reality
THE GIFT OF TELEPRESENCE
The art challenges the technology, and the technology

inspires the art.
–John Lasseter (Director)
I
t’s 8:59 am. Y ou are about to kick off your
weekly staff meeting. Y ou look around: everyone
is ready to go. The usual is discussed: project
status, KPI’s, holiday plans, and the latest episode of
Game of Thrones. Forty five minutes into the
meeting you are done: all fourteen team members
agree on key objectives and results—you are all set
for the week. Y ou go back to your desk and look out
the window. Y ou are relaxed by the live waterfall set
against a jaw-dropping view of the forest. It doesn’t
get better than this.
Rewind 60 minutes: you wake up at 8:30 at your

lakeside cabin, 100 miles from the nearest city and
2,500 miles from company headquarters. Y ou stay in
bed for 15 minutes. Y ou get up and make a pot of
coffee slowly enjoying every sip. At 8:57 you sit at
your home office, strap on your virtual reality
47
headset, and log in. The meeting starts promptly at

9am.
Thanks to the latest advances in VR you felt as if you

were actually at the company meeting. The funny
thing is that half of your staff was also working from
home. It will become increasingly hard to tell the
difference between a real meeting and a virtual one.
What is Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality is a computer-generated simulation
of a three-dimensional image or environment, in
which interaction takes place using special electronic
equipment, such as a helmet, or goggles, or other eye
wear, and may include other sensors. The
environment can be explored and interacted with by
a person. That person becomes part of this virtual
world or is immersed within this environment and
whilst there, is able to manipulate objects or perform
a series of actions. VR is presented to the user in
such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts
it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual
reality is primarily experienced through two of the
five senses: sight and sound.
The big new platform

In a public announcement in June 2015, Mark
Zuckerberg expressed the view that he believes that
immersive experiences like VR will become the
norm. This is to be expected as Facebook acquired
leading VR company Oculus Rift. Taking
48
Zuckerberg’s increasing levels of excitement around

VR, we can trust that he has virtually seen the future,
if you pardon the pun.
Furthermore, he envisions that we will use

augmented reality technologies including devices
that we can wear almost all the time to improve our
experience and communication.
When you put on a VR headset such as Oculus Rift’s,

you enter a completely immersive computer-
generated environment, like a game or a movie scene
or a place far away. The incredible thing about the
technology is that you feel like you're actually
present in another place with other people. People
who try it say it's different from anything they've
ever experienced in their lives.
Oculus's mission is to enable you to experience the

impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility
of completely new kinds of experiences.
Zuckerberg explains that immersive gaming will be

the first domain they will target, as the Rift is already
highly anticipated by the gaming community.
VR will become a platform for a multitude of

experiences. “Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a
game, studying in a classroom of students and
teachers all over the world or consulting with a
doctor face-to-face—just by putting on goggles in
your home,” remarks the Facebook founder.
49
The possibilities are seemingly endless. From

gaming, to next generation social networking, to
entertainment and business applications, VR has the
potential to usher in transformative change.
Indistinguishable from reality

In the VR front we see technology getting so good
that it will become indistinguishable from reality.
This has many powerful implications.
Peter Diamandis points out game changers like

Magic Leap (in which Google just invested over $500
million) that are developing technology to “generate
images indistinguishable from real objects and then
being able to place those images seamlessly into the
real world.”
Nine new VR experiences will be premiering at the

Sundance Film Festival this year, spanning from
artistic, powerful journalistic experiences like Project
Syria to full “flying” simulations where you get to
“feel” what it would be like for a human to fly.
This is truly a new communication platform,

Zuckerberg says. “By feeling truly present, you can
share unbounded spaces and experiences with the
people in your life. Imagine sharing not just
moments with your friends online, but entire
experiences and adventures”. Facebook is committed
to making this kind of immersive, experience a part
of daily life for billions of people.
50
Augmented Reality
Going in a direction similar to that of virtual reality
is augmented reality.
What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that
superimposes a computer-generated image on a
user's view of the real world, thus providing a
composite view. For example, super imposed on a
helmet, windscreen, or regular eye wear a user could
see text alerts, or read a map directions, without
looking at a separate screen. By contrast, virtual
reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.
With the help of advanced AR technology the
information about the surrounding real world of the
user becomes interactive. Artificial information
about the environment and its objects can be
overlaid on the real world.
Life seen through different lenses

Whereas virtual reality immerses you in a fully
computer-generated environment, augmented reality
(AR) overlays text and graphic information over a
display or even holographically.
Microsoft HoloLens for example is the “first fully

untethered, see-through holographic computer,”
according to Microsoft. “It enables high-definition
holograms to come to life in your world, seamlessly
integrating with your physical places, spaces, and
51
things.” They call this experience mixed reality.

Holograms mixed with your real world will unlock
all-new ways to create, communicate, work, and
play.
As of 2015, a number of Windows Holographic

applications have been showcased or announced, for
the HoloLens. These include HoloStudio, a 3D
modelling application which can produce output for
3D printers; an implementation of the Skype
telecommunications application; an interactive
digital human anatomy curriculum by Case Western
Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic,
architectural engineering software tools by Trimble
Navigation, a version of the video game Minecraft,
and OnSight and Sidekick, software projects being
developed as part of a collaboration between NASA
and Microsoft to explore mixed reality applications
in space exploration.
Augmented and virtual reality

Diamandis points out that billions of dollars invested
by Facebook (Oculus), Google (Magic Leap),
Microsoft (Hololens), Sony, Qualcomm, HTC and
others will lead to a new generation of displays and
user interfaces.
The screen as we know it, on your phone, your

computer and your television, will disappear and be
replaced by eyewear. The result will be a massive
disruption in a number of industries ranging from
52
consumer retail, to real estate, education, travel,

entertainment, and the fundamental ways we
operate as humans. We will review this more in the
next part.
53
8
Biotechnology
EDITING NATURE
This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite

for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal
extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from
nature.
–Don DeLillo (Author)
E
nglish novelist Daniel Defoe, author of The
Political History of the Devil (1726) is
credited as the first one to quote the certainty
of “death and taxes”. But what if death was not as
unquestionable as we all think it is? Could there be
someone out there trying to “cure” death? As crazy as
it seems, it turns out this is not the quest of a mad
scientist, but a company backed by Google called
Calico.
Calico: a project to “cure” death

Calico, the California Life Company, is Google’s
moonshot project in healthcare and biotech aimed at
reversing the processes by which the body ages.
While the company is still far from offering a
market-ready solution, there has been some progress
made in relation to telomeres, tiny caps at the end of
55
each strand of our DNA. It turns out that these may

hold the key to discovering the proverbial fountain of
youth. Scientists have discovered that each time our
cells reproduce, telomeres get progressively shorter,
which is, in short, the cause of age-related cellular
breakdown. In 2009, a group of scientists was
awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of how
the enzyme telomerase impacts telomere length. This
is an area into which companies like Calico are
researching, aiming to reverse aging. While aging
may seem a moonshot for Google, it also has become
a matter of computing power and machine learning.
“Digital insights are becoming increasingly
important in the life sciences, because genetics is a
data-driven practice, giving us a real place to add
value,” says Dr. Krishna Y eshwant, a general partner
with Google Ventures.
What is Biotechnology?
Biotechnology is the use of living systems and
organisms to develop or make products, or "any
technological application that uses biological
systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to
make or modify products or processes for specific
use" (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Art. 2).
Over the past 30 years, biologists have increasingly
applied the methods of physics, chemistry and
mathematics in order to gain precise knowledge, at
the molecular level, of how living cells produce
substances such as medicines, food, and fuel.
56
Cut and paste DNA editing

In a similar front in the biotech world, scientists
have found a way to easily and affordably cut and
paste DNA segments in a process similar to cutting
and pasting text. CRISPR-Cas9 is a technique
invented by Jennifer Doudna (director of UC
Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Initiative) and
Martin Jinek in 2012 at UC Berkeley which is at the
center of genomics. It is an acronym for “clustered
regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” a
description of the genetic basis of the method; Cas9
is the name of a protein that makes it work. This
technique makes it easy, affordable, and quick to
move genes around, in any living organism, from
bacteria to people. CRISPR-Cas9 opens exciting
possibilities in the field of genome engineering.
However, Doudna, and other genomics notables,
“strongly discourage any attempts at making changes
to the human genome that could be passed on to
offspring”. We have entered the era where it is not
only possible to sequence the whole human genome
to understand the code we are made of, but we are
now capable of re-writing our own code, our DNA,
for a number of purposes. We are running into
unchartered territory in the world of biotech that
may unlock all sorts of promises, some of which may
be highly beneficial to humanity and others which we
may be completely unaware of.
57
Printing live human tissue

In another front, Organovo has taken 3D printing to
a whole new level, by becoming a leading innovator
in bioprinting, that is, using live cells as ink to create
three-dimensional living designs. This is functional
human tissue, proven to function like native tissues.
The printed tissue accurately represents human
biology, enabling ground-breaking therapies and
applications. Keith Murphy, CEO of Organavo,
explains that the company has several research
partnerships with firms like L'Oreal and Merck &
Co., to help them test their cosmetics on 3D printed
tissue as opposed to testing with animals.
Organovo, for example, has also succeeded in

creating 3D printed human kidney tissue, on which
they tested a new drug called Rezulin. The results
demonstrated within seven days that the drug caused
significant damage to the cells, dramatically
speeding up the testing process. This is a
breakthrough allowing for quicker routes for drug
development.
Bioprinting methods
According to a report by PwC, bio-printing typically
uses two inks. One is the biological material and the
other is hydrogel that provides the environment
where the tissue and cells grow. The breakthrough to
add blood vessels was the development of a third ink
that has an unusual property: it melts as it cools, not
as it warms. This property allowed scientists to print
58
an interconnected network of filaments and then

melt them by chilling the material. The liquid is
siphoned out to create a network of hollow tubes, or
vessels, inside the tissue. Such creations are possible
only with 3D printing, generating new possibilities
beyond traditional manufacturing.
Drawing blood
Elizabeth Holmes is heralded as the youngest self-
made billionaire, founder of Theranos, a biotech
company that has developed novel approaches for
laboratory diagnostic tests using significantly less
blood. The company's blood-testing platform uses a
few drops of blood obtained via a finger-stick rather
than vials of blood obtained via traditional
venipuncture.
Theranos' device design uses a fingerstick to draw a

microliter sample of blood into a disposable
cartridge, which is loaded into the device's "reader"
for analysis; results are sent wirelessly from the
reader to a secure database, from where they go
online to the patient or patient's physician. The
company's device claims include that the results will
be received faster than the usual three-day delay for
centralized laboratory testing. Theranos offers to
perform up to 30 tests with a single sample, while
eliminating human errors associated with handling
and delays associated with traditional tests.
Theranos is valued today at around $9 billion.
59
Disruption of healthcare
Peter Diamandis sees that, overall, existing
healthcare institutions will likely face disruption as
new business models with better and more efficient
care emerge. Thousands of startups, as well as
today's data giants (Google, Apple, Microsoft, SAP,
IBM, etc.) will all enter this lucrative $3.8 trillion
healthcare industry with new business models that
dematerialize, demonetize and democratize today's
inefficiencies.
Biometric sensing (wearables) and AI will make each

of us the CEOs of our own health. Large-scale
genomic sequencing and machine learning will allow
us to understand the root cause of cancer, heart
disease and neurodegenerative disease and what to
do about it. Robotic surgeons can carry out an
autonomous surgical procedure perfectly (every
time) for pennies on the dollar. Each of us will be
able to regrow a heart, liver, lung or kidney when we
need it, instead of waiting for the donor to die.
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9
Alternative Energies
POWERING OUR WORLD
O
n May 1, 2015, billionaire entrepreneur Elon
Musk, announced a “fundamental
transformation” in the energy landscape.
“We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called
the sun, you don’t have to do anything, it just works,
shows up every day, and produces ridiculous
amounts of power.” He continued: “The problem
with existing batteries is that they suck”, pointing out
that they are expensive, unreliable, they have poor
integration, poor lifetime, they are not scalable, and
they’re unattractive. Most importantly, he noted
society’s reliance on contaminating fossil fuels.
Tesla’s Powerwall
The Powerwall by Tesla is an answer to solving the
energy problem. It is, in essence, an energy storage
device—a lithium ion battery borrowed from Tesla’s
car battery technology—that captures sunlight and
stores it for residential consumption. It is
“completely automated, it installs easily and requires
no maintenance,” according to Tesla. During
sunlight hours, the home battery stores surplus
electricity generated from solar panels installed at
61
the home or from the utility grid when rates are low.
It converts direct current electricity into the
alternating current used by residential lights,
appliances, and devices.
The Harvard Business Review points out, though,

that Tesla’s isn’t the first battery for energy storage
on the market, but it may be the first that is simple to
use, install, and maintain. The other aspect that is
noted is the creation of an energy ecosystem: solar
panels, home batteries, and electric vehicles can
interact in a compatible plug-and-play ecosystem,
benefitting from economies of scale, and possibly
contributing to a consumer trend.
The Washington Post notes that “battery-storage

technologies will improve so much over the next two
decades that homes won’t be dependent on the
utility companies”.
Cheap, abundant energy?

Does the idea of cheap and abundant energy sound
like a pipe dream? It may turn out that it is not
utopia. A report by Citi titled “Evolving Economics of
Power and Alternative Energy” published in March
2014 states that “Renewable Energy is Increasingly
Cost Competitive: Renewables energy, primarily
solar and wind, costs continue to decline and are
increasingly competitive with natural gas. The
drivers of the lower costs are lower construction
62
costs, higher efficiencies, and favorable financing

terms”.
The quest for alternative energies is not limited to

solar. Wind, biomass, thermal, tidal, and waste-
breakdown energy, among others are working on
improving their efficiency and effectiveness.
What are Alternative Energies?

Alternative energy is any energy source that is an
alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are
intended to address concerns about such fossil fuels.
Renewable energy is generally defined as energy that
comes from resources which are naturally
replenished on a human timescale such as sunlight,
wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.
Solar
In the Washington Post Vivek Wadhwa states that by
2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with
energy generated from fossil fuels on an
unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world.
Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what
fossil-fuel-based alternatives do.
The incumbent fossil fuel industry will be disrupted.

The world will no longer depend on oil. There is a
high probability that this will occur within 20 years.
63
Wind
Furthermore, Wadhwa points out that wind power,
for example, has also come down sharply in price
and is now competitive with the cost of new coal-
burning power plants in the United States. It will,
without doubt, give solar energy a run for its
money. There will be breakthroughs in many
different technologies, and these will accelerate
overall progress.
There is little doubt according to Wadhwa that we

are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free
clean energy. This has profound implications.
The Renewables 2015 Global Status Report shows

that once again more renewable energy has been
generated this last year in comparison to the
previous one. Over the course of ten years, the
planet’s renewable energy power capacity (excluding
hydro) has grown from 85 to 657 gigawatts, which is
almost an eightfold increase.
Going forward
The promise of sustainable energy that families can
access directly will contribute to the disruption in
this sector. Moreover, Musk’s incipient success with
Powerwall (and with Solarcity) can serve as an
inspiration for more entrepreneurs to disrupt the
energy sector.
64
10
Blockchain
BREAKTHROUGH TRANSPARENCY
Technology made large populations possib le; large

populations now mak e technology indispensable.
–Joseph Krutch (Writer)
T
hink of a blockchain as a peer-to-peer
database, an open source, massively
distributed list, which can keep a record of
pretty much anything. It is a decentralized ledger of
transactions. The blockchain started as a public
ledger of all Bitcoin transactions that have ever been
executed. It is constantly growing as 'completed'
blocks are added to it with a new set of recordings.
The blocks are added to the blockchain in a linear,
chronological order. However, it will not be limited
to recording Bitcoin transactions; the blockchain
technology is set to disrupt other realms.
According to BBC’s Paul Coletti, other characteristics

of the blockchain are: the blockchain is split up and
distributed over thousands of computers all over the
world; these computers compete to be the one to add
the next block to the blockchain; clever cryptography
ensures each block is digitally signed in such a way
65
that changing or altering an entry invalidates every

other entry preceding it going right the way back to
block one—this is what makes each entry in the
blockchain immutable, while the uncoordinated
nature of the network is what keeps it honest. To
corrupt the system you would have to commandeer
more than 50 percent of the computers on the
system.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is essentially a record, or ledger, of digital
events—one that’s “distributed,” or shared between
many different parties. It can only be updated by
consensus of a majority of the participants in the
system. And, once entered, information can never be
erased. For example, the bitcoin blockchain contains
a certain and verifiable record of every single bitcoin
transaction ever made.
Investors like Marc Andreessen, Netscape cofounder,

have poured tens of millions into the development
and believe this is as important an opportunity as the
creation of the Internet itself.
The blockchain is shared by all parties participating

in an established, distributed network of computers.
It records every transaction that occurs in the
network, therefore eliminating the need for “trusted”
third parties such as payment processors. This is why
it has a revolutionary potential.
66
Blockchain advocates often describe this innovation

as a “transfer of trust in a trustless world,” because
the entities participating in a transaction are not
necessarily known to each other yet they exchange
value with surety and no third-party validation. This
is why the blockchain is a potential disruptor.
It is a secure network because each transaction is

encrypted with a hash that is used to verify the
succeeding hash. Simply put, this means that
changing one vote requires millions of votes to be
changed before another vote is cast. The network is
protected by the simple fact that no hacker has
enough computing power to rewrite so many votes
that quickly. A hacker would actually need more
computing power than the top 500 supercomputers
combined, 256 times over!
Distributed cloud storage

The founder of future-of-cloud storage service Storj,
Shawn Wilkinson says that with available excess
hard drive space around the world, users could store
the traditional cloud 300 times over. “Considering
the world spends $22 billion plus on cloud storage
alone, this could open a revenue stream for average
users, while significantly reducing the cost to store
data for companies and personal users.”
Breakthrough with smart contracts

Innovating in this space is Ethereum, a platform for
decentralized applications which allows developers
67
to build blockchain applications aiming to

“decentralize the Internet and return it to its
democratic roots”. It is a platform for building and
running applications which do not need to rely on
trust and cannot be controlled by any central
authority. It is a decentralized platform that runs
smart contracts: applications that run exactly as
programmed without any possibility of downtime,
censorship, fraud or third party interference.
Proponents of smart contracts claim that many kinds
of contractual clauses may thus be made partially or
fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both. Smart
contracts aim to provide security superior to
traditional contract law and to reduce other
transaction costs associated with contracting.
End of patents
Blockchain technology could replace patents. A tech
company might want to prove that it created a
certain innovation on a specific point in time without
filing for a patent. If anyone challenges ownership of
a technology, the company could later reveal internal
documents that are linked to the transaction hash,
proving the existence of the innovation at a specific
date specified on the Blockchain.
Electronic voting
Josh Blatchford of BTC.sx, a Bitcoin trading
platform, says that the automation of counting paper
votes is a no-brainer for cost, time, and accuracy
68
improvements. However, previous systems have

been riddled with technical issues. The main
problems are the inability to verify a machine’s
accuracy during recounts and being prime targets for
hackers. It is not surprising that political parties are
turning to the blockchain for their internal voting.
On the accuracy front, blockchain’s pseudonymity

allows each vote to be publicly shared without
identifying the voter. Hence, each voter could check
their vote has been counted from public records.
This may one day eliminate election corruption in
the undeveloped world.
As Nic Cary of Blockchain.info said, ‘”Check it on the

Blockchain” will be the phrase of the 21st century. It
will be as commonplace as people saying “Google
that.”
New era of transparency?

The blockchain could enable accountability at an
unprecedented level. It could spell the end of
corruption by design. All movements of money
would be tracked, and it would be easy to require
those moving money to register their public keys,
according to Bitcoin news journal,
CryptoCoinsNews.
For example, Texas-based blockchain company

Factom is hoping that this technology could help
eliminate some of the corruption that has afflicted
the property market in Honduras for years. Factom
69
announced that the government of Honduras has

agreed to partner with the company in order to
create a new system to oversee the country’s land
title record keeping ledger. This could signal the
beginning of the end for the old system allowing
officials to hack into the records and assign prime
real estate to themselves.
Similarly in the UK, former Member of Parliament,

George Galloway wants to use the blockchain to keep
track of the Mayor of London's spending.
We could be witnessing the start of a revolution that

could signify the end of corruption by design,
ushering in an era of irrevocable transparency
leading to better democratic structures.
70
PART II
The Future of Work: Shifts Driven by
Emerging Technologies
11
Reality blurred
VIRTUAL OR REAL?
Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? –Queen
J
ust as the Internet enabled the world to
efficiently collaborate across countries, across
organizations and time zones, virtual and
augmented reality (VR, AR) are about to open a new
realm for humanity: the ability to be somewhere else,
without actually being there—that is the ability to be
telepresent.
The implications for the future of work are

significant. When VR and AR take off, the incentives
to keep workers at home will outweigh the costs of
providing staff with full-time offices, facilities and all
the associated costs. It simply will not make business
sense to have everyone physically working at the
same place when circa 90 percent of office functions
can be achieved in a virtual environment.
Virtual or real?
We will likely see a reversal in office attendance:
instead of taking a day off to work from home, we
will take a day off to go meet at the office. The office
73
will become a hub to socialize "the old way" perhaps

once a week, or once a month. The mention of "the
office" will elicit the question: do you mean the
virtual one or the physical one?
At the speed of development described by key

players, working VR solutions for business should be
available by 2020. By 2025 the norm will likely be
working on a virtual environment, and physical (old-
fashioned face to face meetings) will be reserved for
very special occasions (which could nevertheless be
achieved in a VR environment). This will disrupt the
whole concept of working from home. It is hard to
appreciate the power of VR as it has not gone
mainstream just yet, but once we do, it will be hard
to go back.
Disruption will be evident in many industries that

rely on face to face interactions—which is basically
every industry. We will need to reinvent ourselves for
a new reality where the lines of virtual and real are
blurred.
Even though today we see VR as cumbersome

headsets, the miniaturization trend will also take
over, so that common eye glasses and eventually
contact lenses will serve as VR displays.
The main achievement of VR technology is creating

presence. Creating the sensation of presence, a la
Matrix, is within the realm of engineering
achievement, and may be regarded as an
74
achievement of remarkable importance, because of

its implications.
Every industry will face some level of disruption due

to this key technological achievement. Industries
such as education, retail, health, and many others
will be disrupted. Perhaps the most impacted at the
beginning may be transportation and business travel.
The work commute in Mexico City

Take for instance a megalopolis of close to 22 million
inhabitants, Mexico City. With millions of people
commuting daily for hours, the impact of VR
technology could be life-changing. VR could
significantly curb the need to leave home for work. If
everything that needed to be achieved in a physical
work space could be achieved in a virtual
environment, the need for transportation would be
significantly curbed. This would have very important
implications for a city as big as Mexico City,
including less pollution, less street maintenance, less
traffic, but most importantly, more time for
everyone. On a monthly basis this could free up
millions of man hours. On a conservative calculation
of 5 million people commuting daily for an average
of 2 hours, with a 20% adoption rate of VR, thus
avoiding the daily commute, Mexico City could save
one million man hours per day.
75
The future of working from home

Eventually, full-time employees will realize that they
do not even have to live in the same city to go to
work. They will be able to live increasingly farther
and farther away from corporate headquarters, as
the need to meet physically diminishes powered by
VR tech improvements.
For many corporations, most recently Y ahoo,

working from home did not make the most sense, as
collaboration was hindered.
In a VR context this is solved, as each worker is fully

immersed and visible to each other, creating at least
the same level of accountability and collaboration
afforded by a traditional work environment.
However, innovations will be needed to optimize the

way people work in a VR environment, so that we do
not necessarily copy the old way of working in an
office setting but adapt to the future of work in the
virtual reality setting.
Innovations by Oculus Rift, HTC Valve, and many

other VR players will enable this transformation. As
we pointed out, Mark Zuckerberg has already "seen"
this as the next big platform, creating an entirely new
ecosystem. For many, this development could be as
revolutionary as the Internet has been.
C-level executives will be able to live in small towns

anywhere in the world, experiencing the quality of
life they want. For most workers, there will be a
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requirement to collaborate in the same time zone,

plus or minus 2 hours (if sleep is not to be
disrupted). Otherwise workers will be free to live
anywhere in the world where they can meet the
connection specs. The societal impacts may be
profound.
Business meetings
With virtual reality business meetings for instance, it
is conceivable that the whole business travel
industry, a €1 trillion global behemoth according to
Forbes, could be at peril of being seriously disrupted.
Why travel when you accomplish pretty much the
same for the vast majority of meetings?
The new normal

The impact of virtual reality on work will be
significant. The whole point of “going to work” will
take on a whole new meeting. Soon enough actually
being somewhere and doing it virtually will be
indistinguishable. The need to meet people face to
face will be seen as a luxury, as we will be able to
collaborate more effectively in virtual environments.
Dr. Luis Flores Castillo points out that this is already

the case at CERN, where technology is leveraged to
facilitate interactions with colleagues on the other
side of the planet. “When connecting to a meeting,
you can share your screen, paste URL’s and email
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messages in the chat box on the fly, and anyone
interested can immediately add those to their
notes.” Arguably this form of virtual interaction is
the precursor to true VR ushering in a new era of
collaboration.
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12
Blackbox combinations
THE NEW LEGO BLOCKS
A pile of rock s ceases to be a rock when somebody

contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind. –Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry
U
ber’s very existence could not be understood
without key innovations such as smart-
phones and accompanying app ecosystems.
This is the case for countless companies that have
been born on the Internet, and on newer platforms.
Many of the emerging technologies that we have

reviewed in this book will serve as the new platforms
that will enable the launch of the next round of
entrepreneurs.
In how many different ways could you combine

autonomous vehicles, with 3D printing, with biotech,
with alternative energies, with VR and AR, with
blockchain, with everything else? The truth is that
imagination—creativity—will become the main
constraint.
With technological platforms advancing at

breakneck speed, increasing their sophistication,
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they will serve as building blocks serving to enable

increasingly powerful innovations.
Blackboxing
There is another important quality of these
technologies to consider: they can be seen as black
box technologies, that is, each of these building
blocks is a self-contained component, which can be
used by programmers without a detailed
understanding of how it works. This is a
constructivist approach to science and technology
referenced by French philosopher, anthropologist
and sociologist of science, Bruno Latour. He states
that blackboxing is "the way scientific and technical
work is made invisible by its own success. When a
machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is
settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs
and not on its internal complexity. Thus,
paradoxically, the more science and technology
succeed the more opaque and obscure they become."
This is a very powerful property. Once you

incorporate any of these technologies into your
business model, as long as you hit the upgrade
button, you will have the most recent version of that
particular component, without necessarily having to
worry about the complex inner workings of that
particular technology.
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However as an entrepreneur it is essential to quickly

increase the level of sophistication, and build upon
more complex ones.
Heart of innovation
Channing Robertson, one of the Stanford professors
of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of
Theranos, recounts that Elizabeth came up with a
patent for a wearable patch that could not only
administer a drug, but monitor variables in the
patient’s blood to see if the therapy was having the
desired effect, and adjust the dosage accordingly.
Robertson recounts: “I remember her saying, ‘And

we could put a cellphone chip on it, and it could
telemeter out to the doctor or the patient what was
going on. And I kind of kicked myself. I’d consulted
in this area for 30 years, but I’d never said, here we
make all these gizmos that measure, and all these
systems that deliver, but I never brought the two
together.”
What Robertson describes is precisely at the heart of

innovation: the ability to connect 1+1+1 to make 5 or
10.
New Lego blocks for entrepreneurs

The wide array of emerging technologies available
today means that entrepreneurs can literally play
with more blocks in increasingly creative ways.
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The blackbox combinational nature of emerging

technologies means that the sum of the components
do not simply add in value, but more likely multiply,
in ways that are often unanticipated.
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13
Augmented humanity
THE AGE OF AM PLIFIED COGNITION
“New developments in machine intelligence will mak e us far,

far smarter as a result, for everyone on the planet. It’s
because our smart phones are basically supercomputers.”
—Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA
I
f you think about it, one of the byproducts of the
exponential growth of computing power is
increased cognition: an increased capacity for
humans to access information, to know, to achieve,
to make decisions, and to accomplish more with less
effort. This will be done through a combination of
devices and technologies, including AI agents, AR
devices, memory enhancements, better voice
recognition and so forth. As a consequence, the bar
will be raised for everyone. Today the modern
knowledge worker is expected to be proficient in
finding information and using office software, as the
bare minimum technologies. But in the near future,
we will see that the unassisted, or un-augmented
worker, will simply not be able to operate anywhere
near the level of her augmented peer.
Augmented humanity is a term that was coined in

2010 by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. It defines
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the use of technology to both aid, and replace,

human capability in a way that joins person and
machine as one. Schmidt stated that devices
connected to cloud supercomputers could give us
powers or "senses" that we didn't know were
possible. This could be something like Watson-as-a-
Service. "Think of it as augmented humanity" he
suggested.
Human enhancement
According to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies, human enhancement refers to any
attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the
current limitations of the human body through
natural or artificial means. The term is applied to the
use of technological means to select or alter human
characteristics and capacities, whether or not the
alteration results in characteristics and capacities
that lie beyond the existing human range.
Human enhancement refers to the general

application of the convergence of nanotechnology,
biotechnology, information technology and cognitive
science to improve human performance. Human
enhancement technologies are techniques that can
be used not simply for treating illness and disability,
but also for enhancing human characteristics and
capacities.
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Human augmentation is not new

According to microchip implant pioneer, Amal
Graafstra, “it’s a myth that human augmentation is
anything new. Since the first humans picked up
sticks and rocks and started using tools, we've been
augmenting ourselves.” It is just that the tools have
been shrinking in size and are getting easier to use.
“The common thread,” Graafstra says “is
transhumanism; to constantly and fundamentally
transform the human condition.”
Futurist Gerd Leonhard questions: “Which

university professor would not want to have the
world’s knowledge available instantly in the lecture
theater using a Wikipedia-app controlled via a
contact lens or an unobtrusive brain-computer-
interface? Which doctor would not want IBM’s
Watson Analytics VR-display to provide him with
real-time medical information and thereby protect
him from malpractice lawsuits?”
If we are already witnessing a reliance on our

smartphones as memory augmentation devices (who
still memorizes phone numbers?) then it is logical to
think that subsequent steps towards augmentation
will be welcomed as the new “normal”.
Human and machine

In Rise of Robots, Martin Ford argues that it will not
be a case of men vs. machines, but men working with
machines doing the work that an unassisted human
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can only do poorly. This makes the case for human

augmentation as a desirable “upgrade” that could
increase the value of the worker.
More examples of augmentation

In Codegent, Beth Gladstone cites some examples of
augmentation, including Edios Audio, a mask that
allows you to “zoom in” on nearby conversations,
gaining a momentary sense of enhanced selective
hearing. Google Glass’s wink activates a snapshot
feature, allowing you for instance to take a picture of
where you parked your car. Spotify can now listen to
the user’s body to measure heartrate and choose
music based on mood. A tiny device called Reveal
LINQ, which sends irregular heart rate data from
patient to doctor, via a 3G box that lives under your
bed.
Man-machine convergence
The creativity in terms of augmentation is unlikely to
see any bounds. Coupled with progress in Internet
ubiquity, AR, IoT, increased computational power,
big data, AI, and biotech among other trends, in five
years’ time we could be looking at very powerful
augmentation devices and approaches, some of
which we haven’t yet thought of.
As Gerd Leonhard puts it “just imagine a world

where you simply cannot compete or even keep up
without some kind of wearable augmented reality
(AR) or virtual reality (VR) device, or without an
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implant, or other mental or physical augmentations.”

This world might be closer to us than anticipated.
Expanding the neocortex

Ray Kurzweil points out the current trend we see in
augmented human cognition will only heighten. At
present smartphones represent the way in which we
enhance our memory and our capacity to move about
the world. However, as we have seen in the previous
two parts, this is only the beginning. Soon, we will be
able to further enhance ourselves to the point—
Kurzweil posits—where we expand our neocortex
into the cloud. Just think what will happen when
instead of having to Google something, you just
know, by virtue of your brain being connected to the
Internet. Kurzweil calls this hybrid thinking.
Converging technologies will make us smarter and
more efficient in a variety of ways.
“And so, over the next few decades, we're going to do

it again,” says Kurzweil. “We're going to again
expand our neocortex, only this time we won't be
limited by a fixed architecture of enclosure. It'll be
expanded without limit. That additional quantity will
again be the enabling factor for another qualitative
leap in culture and technology.”
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14
Towards full automation
REPLACING HUM AN LABOR
All of the biggest technological inventions created by man–

the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about
his intelligence, but speak s volumes about his laziness.
– Mark Kennedy (Author)
U
p until the industrial revolution muscle
power was limited to what animals and
humans could provide. With the advent of
the steam engine, the availability of physical power
grew exponentially, marking an era of tremendous
progress. This is referred to as the first machine age
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their
Second Machine Age book.
If muscle power was essential to that age, brain

power is the key for the second machine age.
However this is not the natural brain power of
humans, but that afforded by computers. It is the era
we live in, where plentiful computing power—which
continues to grow exponentially—multiplies the
availability of cognitive power. Today computers are
doing the jobs that were reserved for humans not
long ago. This is powering a new era of automation.
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Brynjolfsson and McAfee point out that it is the

“exponential, digital, and combinational” nature of
technology that underpins the powerful nature of the
second machine age.
Not so special after all

Human cognition is losing its value. It is no longer
unique. This is because the supply of computing
power is increasing until it becomes ubiquitous and
increasingly sophisticated. Overall the price of a
floating operation per second is dropping. All this
powers a cocktail of technologies that make us
humans increasingly replaceable. Humans may not
be so special after all. Computer code is replacing
basic human cognitive functions.
One of the consequences of the technological

progress is precisely our ability to replace human
cognition with machine cognition.
As we saw in the first part of the book, processes

which were limited to human labor are now being
performed by computer code. Automation will
continue to replace predictable and repetitive labor.
Point in case is made by Delfina Eberly, Director of

Data Center Operations at Facebook. She comments
on the data server to (human) admin ratio, pointing
out that each Facebook data center operations staffer
can manage at least 20,000 servers, and for some
admins the number can be as high as 26,000
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systems. To accomplish a decade ago, it would have

probably taken a small army.
Automation is not a new thing

However, automation is not a new thing. In a Pew
Research Center study, Jim Warren, the founder and
chair of the First Conference on Computers,
Freedom & Privacy, wrote that “Automation has
been replacing human labor—and demolishing
jobs—for decades, and will continue to do so. It
creates far fewer jobs than it destroys, and the jobs it
does create often—probably usually—require far
more education, knowledge, understanding and
skills than the jobs it destroys.”
Rex Troumbley, researcher at the University of

Hawaii at Manoa, wrote, “We can expect robots,
artificial intelligences, and other artilects to
increasingly displace human labor, especially in
wealthy parts of the world. We may see the
emergence of a new economy not based upon wage
labor and could be realizing the benefits of full
unemployment (getting rid of the need to work in
order to survive)”.
The reason why this will start in wealthier parts of

the world is simple: a worker in the developed world
is more expensive than her peer in a developing
country. There is simply more incentive for a
corporation to start an automation process where
wages are higher. In the developing world, where
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labor intensity is still affordable it will take longer,

but it will also come of age.
AI and robotics will continue to displace low

level worker skills
According to specialists, our continuing failure to re-
train under-skilled workers will exacerbate un- and
underemployment. This is because advances in AI
and robotics will require workers that are
increasingly educated and specialized. Those who
attain the required skill levels will find new
opportunities while under-skilled workers will likely
be left on the curb.
Rebecca Lieb, an industry analyst for the Altimeter

Group and author, said, “Enterprises will require a
highly educated, digital and data literate workforce,
which does not bode well for blue-collar workers, or
softer skill white-collar workers. Given trends in U.S.
education, this could lead to high demand for
engineers from foreign countries (as we've seen in
the past) with advanced degrees in engineering,
mathematics, etc., as institutions of higher learning
in this country fail to produce enough graduates with
the requisite skill sets.”
The rise and fall of secretaries

It only takes a few episodes of Mad Men to
appreciate the full glamor of the typical office set in
the ‘60s and with it the reliance on secretaries. As
the economy shifted from factories to offices, much
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of this setup carried right through the early 1990s. In

much of the U.S., and globally, the secretary became
a common job, in many cases it was the gatekeeper
to power. However the rise of the personal computer
overturned this; PCs were able to do more and more
of the work which had been exclusive to secretaries.
Jobs ripe for disruption: 47 percent

Vivek Wadhwa is an American technology
entrepreneur and academic. He is a fellow at the
Stanford Rock Center for Corporate Governance.
Wadhwa states that “not only will there be fewer jobs
for people doing manual work; the jobs of knowledge
workers will also be replaced by computers. Almost
every industry and profession will be impacted.”
A 2013 study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael

Osborne from Oxford University predicts that 47
percent of all U.S. jobs are under threat of
automation. But as, Wadhwa states, the difference
this time is that the threat goes beyond
manufacturing jobs or those at the lower-wage end of
the spectrum. This time automation impacts a wide
spectrum of office jobs as well.
The Oxford study quantified the vulnerability of jobs

listed by the U.S. Department of Labor. The
researchers compared the detailed tasks of 702
positions in relation to the predicted future ability of
technologies, specifically connected to advances in
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machine learning and robotics, concluding that

almost half are under threat.
Jobs you would expect to be safe

Daniel Tencer of the Huffington Post Canada
identified jobs that most people would not think
would be threatened by automation. Some of these
are:
Construction workers
Today developers can build entire components of
buildings in a factory before shipping them to the
construction site. That makes it much easier to hire
robots to do the work, and automation of
construction is spreading rapidly, especially in
Japan. Probability of automation, according to the
Oxford report: 88 percent.
Bakers
Automated bakery lines for food retailers are
coming. Probability of automation, according to
Oxford report: 89 percent
Journalists
The next wave of automation will take aim at the
creative side of the business: reporting. The
Associated Press this year announced it will use a bot
to produce 4,400 articles on corporate earnings
every year. Pretty soon we can expect sports stories,
weather stories and local crime reports to be written
by bots as well. Probability of automation, according
to Oxford report: 55 percent (for editors)
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Farmhands
Two pieces of technology will revolutionize farming
in the twenty-first century: self-driving tractors and
drones. Drones will soon be fertilizing and inspecting
crops while self-driving tractors will pick crops.
Farmers themselves though are not under threat of
replacement (less than one percent chance). All the
same, fully automated farms are now a
thing. Probability of automation, according to
Oxford report: 97 percent
Paralegals and legal assistants

Preparing for a big trial can take thousands of hours
of poring through documents, in the discovery
process, work that used to be done by paralegals and
associates. Now all that time-consuming work is
being done much faster by data-mining
algorithms. Probability of automation, according to
Oxford report: 98 percent (legal secretaries), 94
percent (paralegals)
Pharmacy workers
Automation will take over the counting and
dispensing of pills, reportedly making far less
dispensing mistakes than human pharmacists.
Though pharmacists themselves will continue to
exist, their technicians and aides could soon be out
of work. Probability of automation, according to
Oxford report: 92 percent (pharmacy technicians),
72 percent (pharmacy aides)
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Hospital and medical workers

Doctors will carry diagnostic tools with them that
will be instantly connected to hospital records and
other databases. Essentially, the hospital will come
to you. But that means fewer jobs for orderlies,
administrators and other staff. This shift is probably
still a few generations away. Probability of
automation, according to Oxford report: 91 percent
(medical records technicians), 90 percent (medical
lab technologists), 47 percent (medical appliance
technicians)
Real estate agents and related jobs

In the age of home sale sites like Zillow and Trulia,
homebuyers can find out at least as much about
homes available for sale online as they could from a
realtor. The role of realtors is shrinking, and many
other real estate-related activities are also becoming
automated, such as property appraisal. Forbes
contributor, Bruce Kasanoff recently suggested
that 95 percent of a real estate broker’s job can be
better done by machinery. Probability of automation,
according to Oxford report: 97 percent (real estate
brokers), 90 percent (appraisers and assessors of
real estate), 86 percent (real estate agents)
Airport security and customs officers

Automated self-service security systems could make
today’s human driven airport security a thing of the
past. California startup firm Qylur is selling
automated security booths that can detect
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suspicious-looking objects and sniff out dangerous

chemicals. Similarly passport-reading machines are
eliminating the need for a portion of the country’s
customs officers. Thomas Frey, a prominent futurist
and head of the Da Vinci Institute, figures about 90
percent of airport security jobs will be automated
within a decade. Probability of automation,
according to Oxford report: N/A (84 percent for
security guards).
It is clear that this wave would target jobs in the

heartland of the middle and upper-middle class:
professional occupations.
From being decision-support systems to

decision-taking systems
As the ability of the machine to turn raw data into
information and then insight improves, the space
remaining for a human to add value shrinks and
eventually disappears.
In this vision, a requirement for creativity is not

necessarily a defense against automation. Computers
can already write sports articles for newspapers
which readers cannot distinguish from pieces
penned by humans. A computer system called Lamus
in Malaga, Spain, produces such sports columns.
Customer Service disrupted

A senior policy adviser for a major U.S. Internet
service provider commented, “Virtually all customer
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service work involving telephonic and online contact

with human beings will be rendered unnecessary by
better communications and computing services and
by AI. Vast amounts of manufacturing, maintenance
and other lower-skill jobs will give way to robots. The
nation will have failed to make the necessary changes
in either its education system or its commitment to
promote economic and social equality, so the
impacts on those with lesser skills, training, and
motivation will be dramatic, with some socially
disruptive results.”
AI poised to take over jobs

Artificial Intelligence is poised to take over a number
of jobs, because it makes economic sense. We will go
through times of trouble as we adjust to this new
reality. It is already a humbling experience because
many incredibly bright and talented individuals
currently find in this market that their skills are not
in demand.
The transition has started

The recent crisis of 2008 was perhaps our last big
warning sign. After this we have seen that companies
are not willing to be exposed to risks, especially with
big employee bases. They will not go back to making
massive hires anymore. The era of the huge bloated
corporation is long gone. Actually this was gone a
decade ago, when tech companies started to exhibit
exorbitant ratios of company valuation to number of
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employees. Point in case, today Uber has a market

cap of $50 billion and an employee base of around
2,500 (est.) giving it a ridiculously high valuation to
employee ratio of $20 million. Google’s ratio is $7.7
million per employee ($438.1 billion market cap:
57,148 employees). This was close to impossible in
the old economy.
Automated trains in London?

On July 9, 2015, London was paralyzed. The Tube
Union went on strike bringing the super convenient
Underground service to a halt. In response to this
the Mayor of London pointed out that, in line with
automation trends, driverless trains are pretty much
inevitable. Is the future catching up with us quicker
than anticipated?
This book was not written by a robot

This book was not written by a robot (I promise). But
a decade from now, I am certain it could well be.
Sooner rather than later, I will have to accept that as
a human writer I may not be as special as I thought I
was. For humanity, it is a sobering realization—to
think that a machine or an algorithm can replace our
work.
We have seen the global shifts that replaced animal

and human muscle power, mechanizing many
functions, so we thought that jobs that had to do
with brain power were safe. But this is not so
anymore.
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Jobs in high demand

When asked which types of profession might be in
highest demand, MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson
states that, in the new economy, specialists, the
creative class, and people who have jobs that require
emotional intelligence, and people who create
everything from writing and art to new products,
platforms and services, will likely see higher
demand.
Mark J. Schmit, PhD, executive director of the

Society of the Human Resource Management
Foundation states that jobs in health care, personal
services, and other areas that are tough to automate
will also remain in demand, as will trade skills and
science, technology and mathematics (STEM) skills.
Workers will need to engage in lifelong education to
remain on top of how job and career trends are
shifting to remain viable in an ever-changing
workplace, said Schmit.
We will explore this in further detail in Part III.
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PART III
Getting Ready for Disruption: Preparing
for Exponential Technological Change
15
Education for disruptors
BEYOND THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
“What I really want out of life is to discover something new,

something that mank ind didn't k now was possible to do”
–Elizabeth Holmes, youngest self-made billionaire, founder
of Theranos, blood testing
I
f we accept that the new knowledge worker is an
augmented human capable of leveraging
knowledge and emerging technologies to achieve
what a small army of non-augmented humans could
do a few years ago, then we have to seriously ponder:
how do you teach a learner like that?
No more carbon copies

In an Industrial economy, education was designed to
replicate workers, so that they were interchangeable
pieces of well-oiled machinery. However, exact
copies of worker are no longer as useful or relevant,
because, by virtue of automation we see that
eventually most predictable patterns will be
ultimately replaced. Emerging education must
recognize that learners in the new economy are
moving towards an era of specialization, where
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workers and entrepreneurs will be highly rewarded

for coming up with unique solutions.
Education will then move away from the mass-

production of graduates towards highly customized
educational programs. Instead of following a cookie-
cutter approach to teaching and learning we will
realize that it makes more sense to follow highly
personalized teaching-learning methodologies which
are adapted to each learner. While technology will
serve as a key enabler of this, the biggest challenge
will not be technological or even methodological, but
cultural. We need to reconsider the role of education
for the era we have entered.
Realization of the student-worker-preneur

One of the questionable assumptions relates to how
the educational system sees the learner: is she an
employee? Is she an entrepreneur? Is she a perennial
student?
John Baker, founder of Desire2Learn, asserts that

“life in the industrial economy was typically viewed
as a series of discrete segments: school, work and
retirement. But this thinking is no longer viable as
we have entered the era of lifelong learning.”
Are we then teaching students to be employees and

not entrepreneurs? While we may be tempted to
answer that everyone must be trained as an
entrepreneur, it does not mean that everyone wants
to be exclusively one or the other. The reality might
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lie somewhere in between: we need for learners to

become proactive lifelong learners, who will likely
work for a company as a full-time employee at some
stage, and will more-than-likely start their own
company, or be a freelancer. Hence a more balanced
term which reconciles reality and work trends might
be summarized in the realization of the student-
worker-preneur, a term I have coined to represent
that each of us is a student who is a worker and an
entrepreneur in different degrees throughout our
careers.
Memory augmentation: commoditized

knowledge
If, for all practical purposes, knowledge is a Google
search away, memorizing things will become
irrelevant. The idea of regurgitating dates and names
for the sake of it will be seen as a waste of time.
Access to information will become increasingly
commoditized and it will also be enhanced and
sophisticated: from voice commands, to augmented
reality displays, to automatic face recognition—the
trend in memory augmentation is clear: we will need
to memorize less and less. This implies that as
educators the emphasis should not be placed on
getting students to remember and regurgitate data.
The case is strengthened by the increasing volume
and speed at which information is generated; the
body of knowledge in any given profession can
change not in a matter of years but months or weeks.
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Hence, knowing is not enough. The actual

competence, doing, achieving something, is the real
test.
Questioning the purpose of education

How can education keep up in times of exponential
change?
Whereas in an Industrial age the quantity of

graduates was the key variable to optimize, in the
new economy, it will be the quality of graduates.
Thus, instead of graduating professionals with the
same (commoditized) skills, the most valuable
education will be that which is able to cultivate the
uniqueness of each learner, including an optimal mix
of hard and soft skills, that is, technical and
interpersonal competencies.
Learning to learn
Decades ago it used to be enough to learn a trade in a
four or five year university program. However today,
by some estimates, half of the technical information
that you learn in a university program might be
outdated by the time you finish.
In an era where new industries and business models

are born overnight, it is clear that being able to learn
at a record speed will not only give the learner a
competitive advantage but it will become an essential
skill for life.
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However, as explored, the limitation for this is no

longer access to information. Nowadays anyone can
learn virtually any trade online, thanks to Massively
Open Online Courses (MOOC), or through full
university courses made available by Universities
including Harvard, Stanford, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. While certification is still
closely held by universities, the actual knowledge to
be learned has increasingly become commoditized.
As the new currency is being able to do, and not just
knowing, the ability to proactively engage in self-
taught education that helps develop real world
competencies will become paramount.
Raison d'être: the motivation to learn

Underlying the ability to learn is the motivation to
learn. In an article by the Center for Teaching and
Learning at Stanford University, author Barbara
McCombs, director of the Human Motivation,
Learning, and Development Center at the University
of Denver, is quoted on seven qualities of students
who are optimally motivated to learn. McCombs
points out that optimally motivated students see
schooling and education as personally relevant to
their interests and goals; they believe that they
possess the skills and competencies to successfully
accomplish these learning goals; they see themselves
as responsible agents in the definition and
accomplishment of personal goals; they understand
the higher level thinking and self-regulation skills
107
that lead to goal attainment; they call into play

processes for effectively and efficiently encoding,
processing, and recalling information; they control
emotions and moods that can facilitate or interfere
with learning and motivation, and; they produce the
performance outcomes that signal successful goal
attainment.
From my own experience working with students and

business clients over the years, I see a clear
correlation between the motivation for learning and
the ability to learn. I would argue that it is more
important to have a reason for learning, a powerful
why that inspires the learner to pursue education.
This can be tied back to the importance of solving

problems. To paraphrase McCombs, learning can be
enhanced when the learner sees that what they learn
can serve as a tool to impact the world in areas that
are relevant to their own interests.
This is perhaps one of the greatest opportunities we

have today: helping learners discover a reason and
purpose for learning.
Passion, Curiosity, Imagination, Critical

Thinking, and Grit
Peter Diamandis often gets asked a question about
raising children in times of exponential change. “So,
Peter, what will you teach your kids given this
explosion of exponential technologies?”
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“In the near term (this next decade) the lingua franca
is coding and machine learning. Any kid graduating
college with these skills today can get a job. But this
too, will be disrupted in the near future by AI. Long-
term, it is passion, curiosity, imagination, critical
thinking, and grit.”
Passion
“Y ou’d be amazed at how many people don’t have a
mission in life. A calling, something to jolt them out
of bed every morning,” writes Diamandis.
Developing a passion is a key. It can be understood

as the driving force, the true motivation behind work
or any other endeavor.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive,

receptive, relaxing times,” says Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, “the best moments
usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched
to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish
something difficult and worthwhile.”
In this state of flow a student-worker-preneur can be

completely absorbed in an activity, especially one
involving creativity. During this “optimal experience”
you feel strong, alert, in effortless control,
unselfconscious, and at the peak of your abilities,
according to the author. The key to this is setting
challenges that are neither too demanding nor too
simple for a person’s abilities.
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In a talk at Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil,

Google Director of Engineering, was asked "When
robots are everywhere, what will humans be good
for?" His answer was that, if under the logic that
automation will take away a big chunk of the
drudgery, the work humans don’t enjoy doing, it will
leave us with more time to explore what we want to
explore. Part of his advice then was to “develop a
passion.”
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and

science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson says that
“what you need, above all else, is a love for your
subject, whatever it is. Y ou've got to be so deeply in
love with your subject that when curve balls are
thrown, when hurdles are put in place, you've got the
energy to overcome them.”
Developing a passion is closely linked to three other

ingredients: curiosity, imagination, and critical
thinking.
Curiosity
Jeff Bezos said this about success and innovation: “If
you want to invent, if you want to do any innovation,
anything new, you’re going to have failures because
you need to experiment. I think the amount of useful
invention you do is directly proportional to the
number of experiments you can run per week per
month per year.”
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At an award’s acceptance speech in London, Google

co-founder Larry Page, said “we tried a lot of things,
most of which failed.” He elaborated that when they
set out to create the world’s biggest search engine,
they were just pursuing their interests, hopefully
arriving at something that would be useful. The key
takeaway comes in the form of direct advice from
Page: “Y ou should pick areas that you think are
interesting, that could be valuable, or where there’s a
lot of activity. I was interested in (URL) links
because I knew no one else was interested in them,
and I figured you could probably do something with
them.” We can infer from this that curiosity is key to
arriving at what actually interests you.
The author of Silicon Guild, Peter Sims, points out

the work of INSEAD business school professors who
surveyed over 3,000 executives and interviewed 500
people who had either started innovative companies
or invented new products. They concluded that a
number of the innovative entrepreneurs learned to
follow their curiosity. Without curiosity it would be
impossible to expand the frontiers of what is
possible.
Videogame inventor Will Wright, co-founder of

Maxis (which became part of Electronic Arts) points
out the importance of the joy of discovery: “It’s all
about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher
explaining stuff to you.” SimCity, one of Wright’s
creations, is an example of this.
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Curiosity and the joy of discovery are closely linked

to imagination, another quality identified by
Diamandis.
Imagination
“Entrepreneurs and visionaries imagine the world
(and the future) they want to live in, and then they
create it. Kids happen to be some of the most
imaginative humans around… it is critical that they
know how important and liberating imagination can
be,” says Diamandis.
“Imagination is one of humanity’s greatest qualities,”

says Richard Branson, founder of Virgin, “without it,
there would be no innovation, advancement or
technology, and the world would be a very dull
place.”
Critical thinking
“Critical thinking is probably the hardest lesson to
teach kids. It takes time and experience, and you
have to reinforce habits like investigation, curiosity,
skepticism, and so on”, says Diamandis.
A movement called Philosophy for Children, also

known as P4C and under the auspices of Stanford
University, began with the 1969 novel titled Harry
Stottlemeier's Discovery written by the late
philosopher Matthew Lipman. The novel and
accompanying teacher manual were designed to help
children in K-12 learn how to think for themselves.
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Dr. Peter Facione, who spearheaded the American

Philosophical Association’s international study to
define critical thinking elaborates on the meaning
and importance of critical thinking: “We understand
critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory
judgment which results in interpretation, analysis,
evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of
the evidential, conceptual, methodological,
criteriological, or contextual considerations upon
which that judgment is based…. The ideal critical
thinking is habitually inquisitive, well-informed,
trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-
minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal
biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to
reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex
matters, diligent in seeking relevant information,
reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in
inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are
fthe subject and the circumstances of inquiry”.
Ad Astra school: “to the stars”

Speaking of education for disruptors, it makes sense
to examine how disruptors are teaching their own
kids. Elon Musk’s disruptive endeavors span finance
(PayPal), solar energy (Solar City), cars (Tesla),
space exploration (SpaceX) and now, education. He
didn’t like his kids’ school, so he started his own. It is
called Ad Astra which means “to the stars”. For now
the school is also serving kids of SpaceX employees.
One of its features is a focus on problem solving.
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“Let’s say you’re trying to teach people about how

engines work,” said Musk to a media outlet. “A more
traditional approach would be saying ‘We’re going to
teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches’. This is a
very difficult way to do it. A much better way would
be, like, ‘Here’s the engine. Now let’s take it apart.
How are we going to take it apart? Oh, you need a
screwdriver’.” This is clear approach to ignite
motivation and critical thinking. “It makes more
sense to cater the education to match their aptitude
and abilities,” also remarked Musk. Interestingly,
Musk reports that his kids “really love going to
school” so much that “they actually think vacations
are too long; they want to go back to school.”
The Montessori approach

In a Wall Street Journal article, Peter Sims points
out that “the Montessori educational approach might
be the surest route to joining the creative elite.” He
cites that it is so overrepresented by the school’s
alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia.
Graduates include Google’s founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Wikipedia
founder Jimmy Wales.
In an interview with Barbara Walters, Larry Page

said: “we both went to Montessori school, and I
think it was part of that training, of not following
rules and orders and being self-motivated,
questioning what’s going on in the world, doing
things a little bit differently.”
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The Montessori learning method was founded by

Maria Montessori and it features a collaborative
environment without grades or tests, multi-aged
classrooms, as well as self-directed learning and
discovery for long blocks of time, primarily for young
children between the ages of two and a half and
seven.
The approach nurtures creativity, taking after the

work of inventors who typically improvise,
experiment, fail, and retest. Sims points out that
inventors such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison
were voracious inquisitive learners.
In a world flooded with often-conflicting ideas,

baseless claims, misleading headlines, negative news
and misinformation, you have to think critically to
find the signal in the noise, explains Diamandis.
Grit
Finally, grit is seen as “passion and perseverance in
pursuit of long-term goals,” and it has recently been
widely acknowledged as one of the most important
predictors of and contributors to success.
Pinterest was launched in 2010. The story of co-

founder Ben Silbermann is a great testament of
perseverance. In 2008, Silbermann decided to quit a
job he hated. However, he didn’t know what he
wanted to build, so built an app called Tote… and it
flopped. He then decided to try a new idea, a site for
collecting things, and it was rejected by many
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investors. He made fifty different versions of the site,

launched it and got 200 initial users. Silbermann
personally wrote welcome emails to his first 7,000
users, and in this process he discovered that his early
adopters were “moms”. The rest, as they say, is
history. Today Pinterest is home to over 500
employees. The company recently doubled its
valuation to over $11 billion.
Education and life as process of self-

directed learning
Sergey Brin said “there are many important things to
life aside from financial or career success, and in
fact, it’s not necessarily the ultimate success that
motivates you, it’s the process of getting there; the
technology, the products that you build. I am not too
concerned about finding something to do, though I
do think it will be based on doing things that I really
enjoy, and not have some end goal in mind.”
Being exposed to new people and ideas

Speaking of predictors of career success, according to
Ron Burt, one of the world’s top network scientists,
being in an open network instead of a closed one is
the best predictor of career success, a discovery
based on multiple, peer-reviewed studies.
Burt explained that if you are a member of a “large,

open network where you are the link between people
from different clusters”, as opposed to being a
member of a “small, closed network where you are
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connected to people who already know each other”

you have a much higher chance of overall career
success
“The more you repeatedly hear the same ideas, which

reaffirm what you already believe. The further you go
toward an open network, the more you’re exposed to
new ideas.” Simmons concludes, based on network
science, that people who are members of open
networks, and hence open to all sorts of new
information, are significantly more successful than
members of small, closed networks.
The relevance of Science, Technology,

Engineering, Math (STEM) education
The other key distinction in terms of education
directly correlates with the first part of the book:
emerging technologies.
The fact that a number of highly disruptive

technologies are coming of age in a relatively short
time frame presents an opportunity for student-
worker-preneurs focused on Science, Technology,
Engineering, Math (STEM). This is due to the
competitive advantage that comes from being the
first movers in those particular technologies.
Software guru, Jesse Stay, comments that, “there will

be a much stronger, and greater need for
engineering, and STEM-related jobs.”
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Overall employment trends by the US Labour Market

Statistics, point out that graduates of Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
majors are and will be the most demanded areas. In
the United States, STEM employment grew three
times more than non-STEM employment over the
last twelve years, and is expected to grow twice as
fast by 2018.
Emerging technology companies will demand

specialists in the areas we have reviewed, including
3D printing, advanced robotics, big data, biotech,
nanotech, etc. presenting an economic opportunity
of close to $20 trillion in the next 10 years. This will
require specialized graduates in a wide array of
industries, according to McKinsey & Co. However, as
reported by Manpower and various studies, even at
present, tech companies are struggling to find
qualified candidates, resulting in unfilled positions
and reduced growth.
Importance of the Soft skills: the 4 C’s

Perhaps some of the hardest skills to teach, the so
called soft skills, may be the most important ones in
a new economy. While we have already referenced
creativity and critical thinking, communication and
collaboration will also be essential enablers for the
modern student-worker-preneur. Referred to by
some educators as the 4 C’s, these soft skills are
already instrumental in the workplace.
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Leaders and Entrepreneurs

At the intersection of the technical and interpersonal
competencies we can appreciate that two traits
emerge: leadership and entrepreneurship. Arguably
this is the intended result of the educational system.
Moreover, I conclude that a focus on developing
leaders and entrepreneurs might be the right
educational aim, as this in consonance with the
workplace shifts occurring over the next two
decades, where less repetitive and predictable tasks
are performed and where higher order tasks, in
terms of cognitive complexity, will be the norm.
One of the projects we have started at Emtechub is

precisely to identify young talented individuals from
around the world who are doing impressive work
with emerging technologies. They are emerging as
leaders in their fields, addressing real world
problems. We call it the Emerging Technology
Leaders Global Initiative. Emtechleaders (for short)
is a non-profit initiative that will help inspire young
students around the world to pursue STEM careers,
with a focus on emerging technologies.
Inspiring the young and young at heart

Neil deGrasse Tyson affirms that “Once you have an
innovation culture, even those who are not scientists
or engineers, poets, actors, journalists, they, as
communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to
be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of
an innovation culture. They vote in ways that
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promote it. They don't fight science and they don't

fight technology.”
Putting it all together

The Berkeley Alumni magazine points out that the
inventor of the CRISP-cas9 DNA editing method,
Jennifer Doudna “came to UC Berkeley from Y ale in
2002 with a reputation for working side-by-side with
Nobel laureates and having a knack for building
alliances with other creative thinkers. She was also
known for her brilliance at teasing out the purpose of
biomolecules and for an uncanny ability to glean the
shapes of the virtually invisible: the remarkable
molecular machinery that spins within living cells”.
This is a very telling statement. It not only reveals

the importance of the hard technical skills, but how
important it is to be able to collaborate, and to think
creatively.
It strengthens the idea that the way forward in

education has to do with a mix of hard and soft skills.
High tech companies are not only looking for

proficiency in the hard, technical side of technology,
but on the soft skills. In a Forbes article, Rich
Milgram, CEO of career network Beyond, is quoted
saying, “And more about how you think systems
through and work within the context of the team.
Learning a technology is the easy part. Having the
mindset to apply it, having the mindset and logic to
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process it, being thorough and detail-oriented while

doing so, these are the critical skills.”
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16
Solving problems
OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURS
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”

–Albert Einstein
O
ver the coming decades, we may just have to
reinvent ourselves more than once. For
example, if you currently give advice to
clients, it is not far-fetched to envision an automated
assistant that is able to understand natural language.
It would be able to recommend solutions based on
the experience and success rates of millions of users,
carefully filtered by criteria to suit a specific client.
This task is currently being automated.
Being unique
The answer then hinges around being unique and
irreplaceable. Neil deGrasse Tyson says this: “I have
a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can
do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And
what I want to do is find things that would represent
a unique contribution to the world - the contribution
that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make
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happen. Those are my priorities in life.” This is quite

a useful approach.
Greatest opportunity
Perhaps the greatest opportunity that emerging
technologies gives individuals and organizations is
the opportunity to be unique by finding unique ways
to solve problems. The technologies we have
explored represent a democratized approach to the
solution side of the equation. What we must think of
is what to solve for.
Today a team of entrepreneurs can single-handedly

tackle highly relevant problems. The insurmountable
is now within the realm of possibility for more
individuals and organizations.
Focus on problem solving

One of the defining traits of entrepreneurs is a
dogged focus on solving highly relevant problems.
The problem with first picking a tool, i.e. a
technology, and then finding a problem to solve, is
that if you pick a hammer every problem will likely
seem like a nail.
It would make more sense to first understand what

exactly you are trying to solve, or what function you
are trying to optimize.
In a business world where the actual day to day work

becomes less and less relevant it will be more
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important for a person to focus on actually solving

problems and challenges in innovative ways.
Abilities like problem-solving, entrepreneurship,

creativity, communication and collaboration skills,
as we have explored in the previous part, will become
highly sought after. This would be one of the last
skillsets to be automated.
Getting comfortable with emerging

technologies
It goes without saying that those with at least some
awareness of emerging technologies will be in a
better position to solve problems. However, as
mentioned previously, the black box nature of
technologies also means that you do not necessarily
have to understand the complexities of a technology
to be able to use it, just as you do not need to
understand the inner workings of the A380 to fly
between continents. It is however useful for the
creative process to become as familiarized as
possible with all the different blocks that you could
play with, so that you are able to create more and
more complex creations.
Working with Machines

The other relevant insight would be the importance
of mastering technologies that would suppose a
short-term advantage in the market.
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For example, just as anyone today is expected to

know how to use a word processor or email, it does
not mean that everyone masters these technologies.
Hence workers could in theory gain an advantage by
being early adopters of the emerging technologies we
have reviewed.
Disrupt
A more proactive approach, of course, is to not sit
around waiting for disruption, but to be the
disruptor. An example of this is Elon Musk, PayPal
co-founder and the real life Iron Man. In 2001, he
was certain that NASA had plans to go to Mars, but
when Musk searched NASA’s Web site for details on
this, he found nothing. "I thought there w as some
kind of mistake," Musk says. "I expected to find that
they were well on their way and that we'd have to
figure out something else to do. But there was
nothing at all,” Musk told Esquire. This stirred Musk
to ultimately start SpaceX, risking his personal
proceeds from PayPal. He is now in the midst of
reinventing space exploration.
Space exploration is one of those realms that until

recently was a country-level initiative, beyond the
reach of individuals. But then came Elon Musk, one
of the most daring and disruptive entrepreneurs on
the planet.
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Instead of basking in the sun to enjoy the healthy

proceeds of his PayPal exit, Elon Musk decided to
tackle some of humanity’s most pressing challenges.
One of these has to do with the future of humankind

outside of Planet Earth. He has made it his mission
to help our species colonize Mars.
We may still be two, three or more decades away

from a successful human colony in Mars, but think
about this: within your lifetime there is a good
chance that people will be living on the surface of
another planet. How crazy is that?
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17
Engineering socio-economic
security
THE POST-JOB WORLD
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to

add, but when there is nothing left to tak e away. –Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry
A
question at the heart of the future of work
has to do with social and political
responsibility: how can we ensure that we
win together? We can be certain that machines and
algorithms will continue to take over repetitive and
predictable jobs currently performed by humans.
Many white-collar jobs considered “safe” today will
be gone in ten years. While the march towards full
automation is generally unchallenged, two relevant
questions remain: how fast will this happen and if
the amount of jobs made redundant will be
significant enough to upend the economy and
ultimately trigger a collapse?
While the ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ approach may

serve to drive innovation, another layer of innovation
is essential: at the socio-political level.
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Simply put, within one to two decades we may

realize that there are not enough jobs for everyone,
that the job deficit was never surmounted, but
deepened.
New industries will appear, but they will not

be as labor-intensive
While the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not
exist in 2004, we may see that by virtue of
automation, the new types of jobs created in the
future of work may not be as labor intensive.
Furthermore “no matter what the jobs of the future
are, they will surely require greater skill and
education,” says Vivek Wadhwa. This benefits those
with higher levels of education and skill, but may
completely exclude those that cannot qualify. It
already is the case.
Jobs as a mechanism to distribute wealth

In economic terms, jobs are the main vehicle for
distributing wealth in society. But this vehicle is
quickly losing its relevance both in quantity and
quality.
In the Second Machine Age book Erik Brynjolfsson

and Andrew McAfee remind us that “in today’s
capitalist economies, most people acquire money to
buy things by offering their labor to the economy.
Most of us are laborers, not owners of capital.”
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However global economic trends are clear in that the

share of wages are becoming a smaller share of
national income, whereas the share of capital is
increasing. In proportional terms more income is
going to owners and less is going to workers.
Perhaps the most critical piece of evidence,

according to Brynjolfsson, is a chart that depicts
productivity and total employment in the United
States. For years the two lines closely tracked each
other, with increases in jobs corresponding to
increases in productivity, as businesses generated
more value from their workers, the country as a
whole became richer, which fueled more economic
activity and created even more jobs. But, beginning
in 2000, the lines diverged; productivity continued
to rise, but employment suddenly withered. By 2011,
it was evident that despite economic growth there
was no corresponding increase in job creation.
Authors Brynjolfsson and McAfee refer to this as the
“great decoupling”, positing that technology has
enabled both the vigorous growth in productivity but
a weak growth in jobs.
In a presidential address, Irish economist Paul

Sweeney expressed that “over three decades, the
share of national income going to labor in most
countries has been in decline. Conversely, capital’s
share of national income has increased. The trend in
the decline in labor’s share of income has been less
noticeable as national income has continued to rise.
This trend may have major consequences for
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economies, with reduced demand and also for

societies, where social cohesion may be threatened
by the trend… [Factors] include technology and
increased returns to capital; globalization; the
reduction of labor’s bargaining power.” Who has this
hit the most profoundly? The lower skilled sectors,
those with lowest educational levels.
Sweeney argues that the main impact of less job

opportunities for the unskilled is growing inequality,
which may threaten social cohesion, if median
incomes remain stagnant while those at the top
continue to rise. He argues that the decline in labor
share has to become a mainstream policy issue for
governments.
Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots concurs.

He points out that despite an increase in productivity
thanks to information technologies, the purchasing
power of workers has eroded. He argues that we will
reach a point where jobs are so specialized that fewer
and fewer will qualify. This is because increasingly,
not only entry level jobs but white collar ones will be
taken over by algorithms. This has created a
widening wealth gap, with profits concentrated with
capital owners.
With exponential technologies, including IT, this gap

is only getting wider. Will we reach a point when this
is no longer sustainable? It leaves us in a
predicament. Company owners will thrive in this
new economy where a limited augmented human
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workforce can accomplish the work that required five

times the amount of labor in the past. But the social
cost will be high. For some, the scenario of
unemployment can rise to a level that threatens
social peace.
Day of reckoning
If the jobs requiring lower skill continue to be
automated, and soon after white collar jobs face the
same luck, we will be left with only a handful of
highly specialized ones. This trend may never be
reversed.
In one or two decades, after automation has made

many positions redundant, not everyone will be able
to take up a highly specialized job.
Jim Warren, in a Pew Internet Research study

argues that “It is becoming more and more obvious
that we (all developed nations) need to move—
rapidly!—away from work-based income and well-
being, towards and into more humane cultures,
where all citizens are assured a comfortable quality
of life, even if they aren't (and cannot become)
sufficiently competent and expert to fill the shrinking
number of more-demanding jobs that are available
now, and will be still fewer in the future.”
Guaranteed Basic Income

One of the models that is currently being explored is
Guaranteed Basic Income. It is the proposal of a
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guaranteed baseline of income that covers the cost of

living, including housing, rent, and the basic
necessities. In Maslow’s terms, this is the base of the
pyramid.
From a capitalist perspective it makes sense if we

consider that an economy without consumers is not
really an economy. Furthermore widespread
unemployment could threaten social stability.
Within ten years we will finally accept that there is a

growing portion of the population which is highly
educated, but still unemployable. This will be a
structural issue.
Making a basic income work for everyone

In Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford says that a basic
income should be tied to measures such as gaining
education, performing community service, or
participating in environmental projects. This might
motivate people to work instead of spending all of
their time in holographic worlds. However this might
complicate it with additional layers of bureaucracy,
deciding what is right for individuals.
Vivek Wadhwa writes in the Washington Post that “If

we can develop the economic structures necessary to
distribute the prosperity we are creating, most
people will no longer have to work to sustain
themselves. They will be free to pursue other creative
endeavors. The problem, however, is that without
jobs, they will not have the dignity, social
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engagement, and sense of fulfillment that comes

from work. The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
that the constitution entitles us to won’t be through
labor, it will have to be through other means.”
A pragmatic approach
What if the prospect of a 47 per cent unemployment
rate materialized? It could spell economic collapse.
Instead of speculating what could happen, perhaps
the most sensible approach is to actively start
experimenting with pilot programs pioneered by
governments around the world. The aim would be to
find modalities of a basic guaranteed income that
could both ensure the basic needs of every citizen
while providing incentives for improving valuable
life and work skills.
Once again let us not be fooled by our linear

intuitions into thinking that this problem is too far
away. While no solution may be perfect at first, it is
not too soon to start debating and piloting solutions
that may become useful with increasing waves of
automation.
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18
The transition to prosperity
GATEWAY TO A BETTER WORLD?
T
he years comprehended between 2015 and
2025 will serve as a transition period, where
we will begin to fully appreciate the pros and
cons of automation and the wider array of emerging
technologies. While we can be optimistic about the
prospects of the future of work, this period may feel
uncertain.
We will need at least two decades to fully transition

to an era where needs are met more effortlessly and
where poverty is eradicated and significantly greater
social justice is achieved, enabled in part by
technology.
Abundance and possibility

Let’s imagine a scenario where freight costs lower
thanks to 3D printing, transportation costs decrease
due to autonomous vehicles, cheaper energy
becomes available, as 3D printed houses become
more available. Thanks to increased transparency
the public cost of corruption could significantly
diminish. With less need to travel for work owed to
VR and AR the cost of doing business could decrease.
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Overall, with less human inputs required, the cost of

products and services attributed to wages could be
dramatically slashed. All of this could spell an
economy where needs could be met with less effort,
at lower costs. This is a plausible scenario powered
by emerging technologies.
The role of humans

As more and more repetitive tasks are automated we
will transition to an economy where human labor is
increasingly specialized and unique. This would
presumably give way to roles that provide a higher
degree of satisfaction, even though jobs would be
scarcer.
Meaning outside of work

In regards to the sense of meaning and pride
attached to working, society at large may have to
come to terms with finding meaning outside of work.
“The role of humans will be to direct and guide the
algorithms as they attempt to achieve the objectives
that they are given,” says Martin Ford.
“No matter what fresh insights computers unearth,

only human managers can decide the essential
questions, such as which critical business problems a
company is really trying to solve. Just as human
colleagues need regular reviews and assessments, so
these ‘brilliant machines’ and their works will also
need to be regularly evaluated, refined—and, who
knows, perhaps even fired or told to pursue entirely
138
different paths—by [human] executives with

experience, judgment, and domain expertise,” says a
McKinsey & Co. report.
Less drudgery, and more leisure time

Paul Jones, a professor at the University of North
Carolina and founder of ibiblio.org, responded, “I for
one welcome my new robot masters. I don't welcome
the loss of jobs or the depersonalization of services.
The social impact is and will continue to force us to
refocus on what makes us human, who we are in
relation to each other, and the terms of the social
contract that binds us. In the South we saw great
changes when the plantation system was abandoned.
Not for the best—much room for improvement—but
certainly for the better.”
A professor at Stanford Law School wrote, “Robotics

and similar technologies will displace lots of jobs.
But those people will find productive things to do—
not necessarily in fields created by robotics, but with
the time that these advances have given them.
Robotics and self-driving cars will free up substantial
parts of our day. For some that will be a pure benefit;
for others it will be partial compensation for the loss
of work.”
What makes us human anyways?

Gerd Leonhard expresses the view that in the future
of work and jobs we might be moving towards the
right-brain, become more human and increasingly
139
less like machines. Ironically, this is completely the

opposite of what traditional education may look like,
avoiding emotions, limiting imagination, and
sticking to schedules and plans. If you believe that
non-algorithmic, i.e. emotional or subconscious
factors such as trust, purpose, ethics, and values will
remain at the core of human societies in the
foreseeable future, this will clearly put a much
stronger emphasis on the right brain. Education,
training and learning will be changed forever as a
consequence and we are already seeing the tip of that
iceberg emerging.
140
DISR U PT ION : EMERGING T ECHNOLOGIES AN D T HE FUT URE OF W OR K
Conclusions and final thoughts

THE CHOICES AHEAD
The human spirit must prevail over technology.

–Albert Einstein
W
hen technological progress was fairly
linear, say in the 1960’s, it was relatively
easy to anticipate demand and the range
of changes that might occur in a given short and
medium term horizon. Today we see that within five
years a single company can achieve a valuation of
half of the global market (Uber), and that another
one (Airbnb) can be worth more than a chain of
hotels established five decades earlier (Hyatt).
This is the true power of exponential technological

progress, enabling disruption at a speed which was
simply impossible some decades ago. If we also take
into account the combinational nature of the tools
we will have at our disposal, it is hard to predict
exactly what will happen in five, never mind ten,
years from now—we live indeed in exciting times of
possibility.
We can see that greater abundance will be within

reach, as the price of the factors of production drop.
We are also transitioning to an economic model not
based on scarcity but on abundance.
141
We will soon enter an era where our own creations

match the computational power of our own brains,
something which was only in fantasy land for most
two or three decades ago.
But we must make some decisions both at the career,

organizational, and socio-political level.
Harnessing disruption
The world of work as we know it, and the jobs we
expect, will continue to shift, with greater speed.
New industries will continue to rise seriously
disrupting others. We are at an exciting time in
history, with technological innovations looking more
like magic, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke.
The relevant question is how does anyone become a

player and not an idle bystander, or worse, an
economic casualty of technologically-driven change?
Perhaps the more urgent question from a social
perspective is: are we heading to a future where only
a few skilled ones benefit and mass inequality
progresses?
One thing is clear: the better we understand the tools

at our disposal, the better positioned we will be as
individuals and as a collective to harness innovation
to our advantage.
The fast fish eats the slow one

We may have to adapt at the individual level, at the
organizational level, and at the socio-political level.
142
The speed of change means that thinking on your

feet and being completely adaptive to models is the
new currency. The founder of the World Economic
Forum, Dr. Klaus Schwab, states that the motto
affirming that the big fish eats the small fish may be
outdated. Today it might be more appropriate to
consider the fast fish eating the slow one—if not ask
Kodak, which went bankrupt after failing to
capitalize on the rise of digital photography. Kodak
moved too slowly too late.
Choice
We now live in a time of exciting entrepreneurship
marked by a sense of possibility. Perhaps this can be
leveraged to lift more and more people out of
poverty, and other conditions which may be deemed
unacceptable in a world of such technological
prowess.
We enter an era with many challenges related to the

future of work, especially for those with limited
access to education. However it is also an era of
optimism, of increasing possibility to achieve greater
equality and access to wealth and justice.
Technological advancement is not deterministic. We

are not destined to do any one thing or the other.
We, the humans, have the choice. Perhaps that is one
of our defining features.
143
Glass box effect

“If you want to k eep a secret, you must also hide it from
yourself.”—George Orwell, 1984
One of the effects of emerging technologies is that

our lives and the lives of organizations and
government will become increasingly transparent.
This could be a glass box effect. Given the projected
advances of the Internet of Things, including the
increasing amount of information we will be
submitting via wearable devices strapped on to
monitor our health for instance, as well as advancing
smartphone technology, we can expect an explosion
of data that will reveal more and more information
about individuals and organizations. Just as we feed
data in our social media interaction, the incentives to
volunteer increasing amounts of information will
outweigh the potential privacy concerns, but
nevertheless we will feed this information about
ourselves.
For instance, we will start seeing insurance

companies offering to lower your fees based on
dynamic risk assessment. This could include your
cholesterol levels, how fast you normally drive, the
activities you perform on a day to day basis, etc.
While we might see this as an invasion of privacy and
opt-out, it would make sense for a lot of users who
lead a low risk lifestyle and therefore justify
participating. Those who opt out by default would
pay a heavier prime.
144
However it is important to note that transparency

does not mean loss of security. It means that the
parties that should be privy to our information will
receive it. Increasingly we will find the convenience
of this, in many cases. This will push for greater
transparency in institutions as well.
Bye, bye, privacy

Consciously or unconsciously we are making a
decision that feeding our platforms with information
is beneficial to us. And in most cases it is.
The stated goal of search engines is not to give you

the information that you need when you need it, but
to anticipate your desires. This will be accomplished
thanks to the vast amount of decisions, likes,
searches, etc. that each of us makes and has made in
the past, which are documented.
This could turn out to be a double-edged sword. The

real nightmare in the next decades will be escaping
the reach of this know-it-all computing conglomerate
which could eventually transition into the
superintelligence.
The trust revolution

While the glass box effect may be seemed as a
negative outcome enabled by emerging technologies,
it could also represent a new era of transparency that
could significantly empower new levels of structural
trust—in the corporate world and especially in
145
politics. Marc Benioff, Salesforce Chairman, states

that “trust is a serious problem, we have to get to a
new level of transparency–only through radical
transparency will we get to radical new levels of
trust.”
However the other side of transparency is the right

for privacy by individuals and organizations. “We’ve
got to get this balance between privacy and at the
same time use of data for legitimate public safety.
The Internet is one of the greatest global goods, and
common goods. If we destroy it, we destroy a lot of
our economic future,” says Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
Tim Berners-Lee, Professor of Engineering, MIT

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, expresses his hope that the discussion
around tech-related privacy is more optimistic. “I
hope that if we come back here next year we’ll be
talking about things very much more positively. So
rather than just worrying about the niggling fears
that people are going to be spying on us and doing
the wrong things with our data, instead I hope we
will have woken up to the completely exciting
possibilities when it comes to our data.”
Water is filling up the lake

Our world is shifting. The water is filling up the lake.
Remember that in the year and half, two years,
before it fills completely it will be only half full, and
before that it will be only a quarter of the way. The
146
temptation to dismiss exponential trends will be

strong. Let’s get ready for disruption. However, while
it is tempting to approach this with a sense of
pessimism fueled by the potential fallouts of the very
technologies we are creating, it is the very technology
we create which leads to possibility.
For young students

My final word for young students and entrepreneurs
is that you find in this fascinating world of science
and emerging technologies your own world, one that
interests you, one that captivates you. But most
importantly perhaps, I urge you to find problems to
solve, ways to improve this world. As you can see
sprinkled throughout the book and, especially in the
world around, there are many challenges to solve.
The world around you allows you to solve countless

problems, that is, once you determine what you are
solving for.
Leaders and entrepreneurs needed

As previously mentioned, my conclusion is that a
focus on developing leaders and entrepreneurs is
highly relevant, given the work shifts that are
projected in the coming decades. With the
automation of drudgery, jobs that require a higher
degree of cognitive complexity—including both hard
and soft skills—will be more prevalent. This calls for
an emphasis on education that develops the student-
147
worker-preneur to fully realize personal and

professional potential.
From dreams to reality

“The Internet was also once a dream, and so were
computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we
have a chance to build it together.”-Mark Zuck erberg
Larry Page urged young graduates at a London

gathering, saying: “work really hard on the things
that really matter in the world and don’t be afraid to
fail.” Albert Einstein famously said: “Strive not to be
a success, but rather to be of value”.
I leave you with this note written two decades ago by

a 9-year old girl to her father:
“Dear Daddy, what I really want out of life is to discover

something new, something that mank ind didn't k now was
possible to do."
She is Elizabeth Holmes, Founder of Theranos,

invited by the White House to be a Presidential
Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, focusing
on attracting women to science, tech, engineering
and math fields.
I sincerely hope that this work on emerging

technologies and the future of work may inspire you
to continue your path of innovation.
148
Keeping in touch
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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What are some of the emerging technologies discussed in the book?

What are some of the emerging technologies discussed in the book?

Emerging Technologies

and the Future of Work

Victor del Rosal

No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a

Published by Emtechub, Dublin

Publication Date: September 12, 2015

Author photograph by Michael McLaughlin

BISAC: Technology & Engineering / General

To my family, for enduring months of hearing: “in

To Dr. Luis Flores Castillo (member of the team that

To the wonderful Advisors of the Emerging

To Mayo County Enterprise Board (now LEO Mayo)

To John Magee, for his thoughtful and thorough

To MexNet and Red Global MX, for serving as

Victor del Rosal

Founder of Emtechub, emerging technology education

15. Education for disruptors ................................... 103

Conclusions and final thoughts ...............................141

Never before had such a large scientific collaboration

As a relatively well-known example, the need for an

To illustrate the relatively early adoption of

Pursuing ambitious scientific goals at CERN and

The strong investment in the development of

Particle accelerators have also allowed the

In Disruption, Victor del Rosal has put together a

Whether or not you have kept up with the mind-

Dr. Luis Flores Castillo

Disruption: verb \dis-ˈrəpt\ to cause (something) to be unable

The journey started four years ago, when I was

To say that we are on the verge of transformation

Note that, for the purpose of this book when

A book about humans

I think we have a moral obligation, especially with

In the second part we explore the shifts which are

In the final part we will look at some ideas for

An overview of emerging technologies

We will explore things like drones, driverless taxis,

We are at the brink of a major technological and

While it is very difficult to make predictions,

It is easy to overlook the significance—and disruptive

Victor del Rosal

Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.

In 1995 email barely existed (Hotmail launched in

But what if four, five, or more technologies as

This is where we stand today.

Exponential growth in computing power

In July 2015, IBM announced a 7-nanometer chip,

MIT’s Technology Review points out that “even

communications applications that vastly increase our

The consequence of exponential growth in

Moreover, by virtue of Moore’s Law, by 2025 your

The future of the smartphone

As the price of computing power keeps dropping,

Interacting in novel ways

Advances in natural motion sensing and tracking,

information, increasing the wealth of expressions