DO NOT LOOK FOR A BOOK REVIEW HERE, WE DON’T DO THEM. THIS IS OUR SPACE TO FEATURE BOOKS THAT WE LOVED AND TELL YOU WHY YOU SHOULD NOT BE MISSING THEM.
If your aging parents are being taken care of by robots or if you’re paying for your purchases in bitcoin, you needn’t freak out – You have arrived at the future. In the hands of the uninformed, The
Industries of the Future by Alec Ross could easily be categorized as science fiction instead of economics. A book that seeks to understand how the current developments in technology would transform the landscapes of tomorrow is not without its hyperbole, but for most parts it takes a calculated and measured view of how the fields of robotics, genomics, cryptocurrency and big data analytics can dramatically change the way we work, love, care and live.
Alec Ross, the author of the book, has high credentials. He was a former advisor on innovation to past Secy. Of State Hillary Clinton and has clocked quite a few miles travelling to 41 countries to have a ringside view of the progress being made by various startups hubs and R&D labs in creating the future.
The key question that Ross keeps asking throughout the book is the impact these advances will have on us– Would the advent of advanced robotics create more unemployment? Would we
have to live in a world where humans and robots worked side-by-side? Would the constant creation, storage and mining of digital data strip every layer of privacy from our lives? Would every child need to be learn a computer language in addition to foreign languages? Ross takes a balanced approach highlighting the positive all the while cautioning us with the possible negative aspects.
Predicting the future can be a tricky business. In the words of Reid Hoffman (Founder & Chairman, LinkedIn), “Predicting exactly what is going to happen is impossible. But thinking systematically and strategically, as Alec Ross does here … is absolutely critical. Anyone who wants to understand the key forces that are shaping our economic, political, and social futures will benefit hugely from Ross’s insights.”
To augment the industries of the future, governments are trying to recreate a Silicon Valley type of atmosphere. However, Ross argues that Silicon Valley has achieved a level of competency in internet-related products that will be hard to match for others. Instead, he urges them to focus on creating a core competency in the fields that have not yet been explored, suggesting that Detroit could become the “Drone Valley” capitalizing its expertise in the Auto Industry.
Ross makes the argument that countries can lift themselves out of poverty by leapfrogging technological advances. It is most evident in the case of Estonia which adopted digital technology directly. Today Estonians can vote, file tax returns and do just about anything else online. The highlight came when Skype, developed in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, was acquired by EBay in 2005. In contrast to Estonia, Ross compares Belarus which has chosen not to adopt new technologies and remains outdated and poor. He feels that Africa along with India and China need to similarly leapfrog technologies to lift its people out of poverty.
Ross makes a study of India and China. While he credits India with generating good quality higher education, he points out that India has failed to provide the same for primary education. China is
in a similar situation. Providing rural education would be a game changer for both countries and the use of internet technologies would be the perfect medium. Another sector which is critical to India is farming and agriculture. Today, scores of farmers depend on outdated technology and unpredictable rains for growing their crops. But with the development of IoT technology in
machinery, data could be mined on factors such as soil fertility, weather, moisture and seed quality. Using this, the type of seeds or crops that can be planted in different soils for best results could be forecasted. Adoption of such technology would be crucial to lift millions out of hunger and poverty for countries like India and China.
The empowerment of women, according to Ross, would be a key criterion for the development of the industries of the future. With women constituting half the workforce, the country that can best
tap in to this under-utilised resource will benefit the most. He cites the story of a Pakistani woman, Maria Umar who founded Women’s Digital League providing employment opportunities to
hundreds of women in rural Waziristan as an example of development of the region itself.
In the last section, Ross talks about how we can prepare our children to live and work in a world where they may have to compete with a robot. He feels that today’s children would need to have
an awareness of what is happening at the global level. They would need to learn a foreign language as well as a computer language. He predicts that there would be a convergence between Science and Humanities. The key to living in the future would be the ability to think critically in a way that cannot be automated.
Alec Ross has done justice to the herculean task of predicting the future. He has given a global perspective, highlighted the challenges ahead and the opportunities that are yet to be explored. The book is a testament to human innovation and ingenuity while reminding us of our greatest weakness, our own innate fallibility. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in imagining the future, creating the future and living the future.
Book facts
Book: Industries of the Future
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author: Alec J. Ross Year: 2016
Rating on Goodreads: 4.06/5
Our favorite line: “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”
Review: “In a world growing more chaotic, Alec Ross is one of those very rare people who can see patterns in the chaos and guidance for the road forward. He has an unusual diversity of expertise that allows him to apply multiple lenses to the world’s challenges and dream up the kind of innovative solutions that are changing the world.” – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and author of The New Digital Age
Text: Anish Shankar Photos: Various Sources