The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

"Kevin’s a cool guy. He was the initial editor of Wired magazine. Kevin said that the reason it’s called ‘ The Inevitable’ is that these are 12 trends that are going on, and whether you like them or not, they are not going to stop. Maybe he overstated the case a little bit, I’m not sure, but he said: ‘We’re at a time right now, an apex in our culture, that is more significant than the Industrial Revolution, in terms of how much it’s going to change the world.’ He talks about artificial intelligence and virtual reality, things like that. He said: ‘Artificial intelligence is only the stuff that hasn’t been implemented yet.’ He said: ‘You don’t know how much is already going on. As soon as you drive and use Google Maps, artificial intelligence is already taking that data and updating everybody’s calendars and everybody’s GPS and everybody’s traffic patterns that you’re seeing. It’s already on.’ So it’s fascinating to see his 12 trends. I love his first chapter. He said, ‘You’re never going to get really good at anything, because everything keeps being updated. You’re going to have to constantly update your refrigerator, your washing machine, your computers, your phones, maybe your relationships, God knows.’ A good example is Quicken. I used to be able to ignore the Quicken upgrades and say, ‘Oh, come on, Quicken works fine.’ Until at a certain point, if you didn’t upgrade, the whole thing wouldn’t work, given all the new stuff that they were doing. So they got me. I have to upgrade. So every time a Quicken upgrade shows up, I go, ‘yes, okay, install.’ Life’s like that. Oh, I’m not sure yet. There are quite a number of studies I’ve seen that basically state that productivity has not increased in the last 10 or 15 years, whereas technology has exponentially increased. So an increase in technology does not necessarily mean an increase in productivity. As a matter of fact, for some people it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I got a new computer program I have to learn. Geez, my productivity just went down the drain because of trying to understand and how to optimally use the technology.’ So it’s both good and bad news. The good news is that way cool stuff is out there that you can use; the bad news is, it’s not free. Yes and, quite frankly, there’s really nothing new that’s been game-changing since really the word processor and the spreadsheet. Because those things changed the game . . . I mean, there are so many people running their whole life and their business with Excel, right? Do you use Word to write your stuff? I’m old enough to remember erase tape on a manual typewriter. It damn well better be right before you start to write. Oh my god, erase tape was a pain in the butt. But word processors work much more like your brain works. You like to have ideas, then later on figure out what to do with them. So that was game changing, truly game changing, as well as when WYSIWYG showed up with the word processor—what you see is what you get. In 1970, if you were going to write a letter, you needed a programmer on the computer. So those things were game changing. Everything else for the most part has just sped up and added volume to our source materials. That’s pretty much it, so in a way there’s nothing really new except the speed and volume of the content. That’s what a lot of the technology has really done. And I think that’s to Kevin’s point: we’re still waiting in the wings for cool stuff we haven’t seen yet, that may truly impact all that. What I did was unhook a lot of my references to technology, because new things were now showing up weekly. At last count, there were over 300 apps that were built around my Getting Things Done methodology (GTD)—not mine, just other people who say, ‘Wow, all I need are lists, let me find a cool way to make a list manager with different bells and whistles.’ So they’re just showing up regularly. I mentioned the technology in the first edition because most people weren’t aware of how they could use their technology at hand to implement getting things done. So I mentioned Outlook, I mentioned Lotus Notes. I mentioned the PalmPilot. You old enough to remember the PalmPilot? You must’ve been a tiny baby. I mentioned those simply because it was a new way to think about how to use the technology—to manage lists in an appropriate way. In the new edition, I decided to unhook a lot of those references, because it would date it by the week. People then focus on the tool, not the methodology, which is really the essence of GTD. Once you get the getting things done methodology under your belt, any tool can work."