I confess that sometimes the rhythm of change can overwhelm me, especially being in the tech industry and “simmering in the stew”. At the same time, it is exhilarating. Makes you hope that maybe tomorrow, you’ll see something amazing.
Another interesting thing that comes with this accelerated pace of change that we are experiencing, is that you can actually see the future unfolding before your eyes. It used to be that if you checked back on something the following day, chances were that it would have looked the same as the day before. Not anymore. Things happen fast, and because of that, it is almost like watching one of those mesmerizing time-lapse videos where you can see how a tree grows.
Undoubtedly, some of the fields that have made tremendous progress are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation and robotics. I remember back in grad school experimenting on these things. The concepts were pretty much there, but we had no real means of doing any of it in real-time.
Today is a different story. Many organizations are already leveraging these technologies in their various forms, but we, as consumers have only seen the tip of the iceberg. I can only wonder about the things we’ll see in the next decade.
It is ever more true what William Gibson said once: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet”