Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Disclosures: I do not know Mr. Kelly; I have no financial stake in this book; I did buy it from the store. The Inevitable is not really inevitable, but is a great discussion of 12 technology trends that Mr. Kelly has identified. Exactly how those will play out remains to be seen. I give the author credit for mentioning some of the downsides of these trends that have shown up in headlines recently. The book was published in 2016; probably written in 2015. So it's not too out of date. I guarantee that reading it will inspire you in a few areas.

Excellent assessment of how current technologies will evolve. Author could have made his points with significantly less words.
Better examples of what will be accomplished could have been discussed.

This book is completely substanceless. Every trend he cites is something that is already happening and obvious to anyone paying attention. The Cloud? Really? We're going to get more of that, are we?

More importantly though, the book is peppered with mild inaccuracies that demonstrate how little the author knows about his subject matter. He refers to Tor as a 'ubiquitous file sharing site'. Really man!? You're the editor of Wired and you don't know what Tor is? Or similarly, on Bitcoin 'Six years ago some shady characters who wanted to sell drugs online...and some admirable characters championing human rights...came up with Bitcoin'. Wildly inaccurate on both counts. Bitcoin was created by a single person who is completely anonymous and his motives mostly unknown - though we can say with reasonable certainty they had nothing to do with selling drugs.

This book is a joke.

The author has listed a vast collection of verbs that are likely to define tomorrow’s context. The problem is that these are way too many to be insightful. And the explanation is verbose to the point of being banal. This would have been a great two page thought capital than this monstrously verbose book.

good forecast of new technology but views skewed to all new stuff is great with little discussion of major downsides. more balance and discussion of changes to society and solutions vs don't worry everything will work out would have made it a much more interesting read

Culturally we used to be much more excited about the future. We watched the Jetsons and Back to the Future with giddy anticipation. But somewhere along the way, we started getting scared. The predominant emotion towards the long term future now is fear. Dystopia. How bad things will get. There are very few thinkers giving us a more realistic and balanced glance into the future. This book does just that. Without the lingering taste of fear and dystopia. And without a giddy utopia. Just... An inevitable look at what will be.

Suspend disbelief, and join Kevin Kelly on his journey into the future. The book is entertaining, insightful, instructive and engaging in its vision, Kelly shares with the world his view of the future. Although not claiming to be a futurist, it would be interesting to review his assumptions, based on researched, of the 12 technological forces as they manifest into the future. This is a must read for entrepreneurs and leadership oriented people with an eye into future upcoming transformational events.

Suspend disbelief, and join Kevin Kelly on his journey into the future. The book is entertaining, insightful, instructive and engaging in its vision, Kelly shares with the world his view of the future. Although not claiming to be a futurist, it would be interesting to review his assumptions, based on researched, of the 12 technological forces as they manifest into the future. This is a must read for entrepreneurs and leadership oriented people with an eye into future upcoming transformational events.

Whether his predictions turn out to be right or wrong, this book takes you on a journey of discovery in the best way possible. Whether your a scientist, investor, innovator, or just interested in where we are progressing as a society, you need to read this book! It will change the way you look at things, but with 1 side effect: it will make it even harder to listen to short sided people that don't even try to see trends and adapt. If ever you get into a situation like that with someone, do them a favor and send them a copy.

Kelly co-founded and was the executive editor at Wired magazine where he now holds the title of Senior Maverick. He is widely known and respected for his acute perspectives on technology and its relevance to history, biology and society.
Because we are so immersed in the technologies that surround us, grasping the effects that they produce is not easy. We need someone like Kelly to highlight these effects to be able to understand their relevance.
Pause and consider for a moment that most of the important technologies that will dominate our lives 30 years from now, have not been invented. (Pause.) Add to this the effect of the ongoing development of the technologies we use all the time.
Not too long ago, all of us decided that we could not live another day without a smartphone. Only a decade ago this need would have dumbfounded us. Today, as I write this column, I am frustrated because the network is slow: but not too long ago we never had a network. Few imagined the miracle the web would become. “The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous,” Kelly observes.
Add to this, that new technologies require endless upgrades. Even if you don’t actively choose to upgrade and so change the app you have become so used to using, continual upgrades are so essential to technology systems that they are now automatic. In the background, the machines we use upgrade themselves, slowly changing their features over time. This change happens gradually, so we don’t notice the evolution.
But the cycle of obsolescence is accelerating continuously, as we can see from the latest new cell phone, computer or app. Soon we won’t have time to master anything before it is displaced. “No matter how long you have been using a tool, endless upgrades make you into a newbie—the new user often seen as clueless,” say Kelly
Every technology we use is in a state “becoming”: it is never complete. We will remain in the newbie state for the rest of our lives.
From any window onto the internet, your phone, tablet or computer, you can get an overwhelming variety of music and video, a constantly evolving encyclopaedia, weather forecasts, satellite images of any place on earth, up-to-the-minute news from anywhere in the world, road maps with driving directions, real-time share quotes, and the list goes on.
Not too long ago, no one would have been silly enough to suggest this vision of the near future. After all, there simply wasn’t and still isn’t enough money in all the investment firms in the entire world to fund such a development.
What has transpired one study found, is that only 40 percent of the web is commercially manufactured. The rest is a function of duty or passion. All the content offered by Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter was not created by their staff, but by their audience.
“If we have learned anything in the past three decades,” Kelly reminds us, “it is that the impossible is more plausible than it appears.”
It is hard to imagine anything that could change our lives as much as cheap, powerful, ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI). This is a computer programmed not only to host and catalogue information, but more importantly to constantly learn from the information and arrive at new conclusions.
In 2015, researchers at DeepMind published a report describing how they taught an AI to learn to play 1980s-era arcade video games, like Video Pinball. They didn’t teach the computer how to play the games, but how to learn to play the games. This is the profound difference AI offers.
After half an hour, the computer missed only once every four times. By the 300th game it played, an hour later, it never missed. AIs like this one become smarter all the time, unlike human players.
This is not a trend we might see in the future, it is here already. Consider IBM’s Watson, a computer built on AI that can continuously absorb bodies of information far too large for any human to absorb, let alone gather. This collection of ongoing knowledge is being put to medical use as a medical diagnostic tool. “Most of the previous attempts to make a diagnostic AI have been pathetic failures, but Watson really works,” says Kelly. Soon Watson will be the world’s best diagnostician.
And the race for AI has only just begun in earnest. AI has attracted more than $18 billion in investments since 2009. Yahoo!, Intel, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter have all purchased AI companies since 2014. In 2014 alone more than $2 billion was invested in 322 companies with AI-like technology.
The business opportunities flowing from AI will take this form: find something that can be made better by adding AI to it.
In the legal field, it could be used to uncover evidence from mountains of documents to discern inconsistencies between cases, and then have it suggest legal arguments. In the field of investment this is already happening. Companies such as Betterment or Wealthfront optimize tax strategies and balance holdings between portfolios. These are the sorts of things a professional money manager might do once a year, but the AI will do it every day, or every hour.
AI can be added to laundry so that clothes “tell” the washing machines how they want to be washed and the wash cycle would adjust itself to the contents of each load.
Rather than using AI to improve its search capacity, Google is using search to make its AI better. Each of the 3 billion queries that Google conducts each day is “teaching” the AI process. Consider what another 10 years of improvements to its AI algorithms, plus a thousand times more data and a hundred times more computing resources, will do to Google’s unrivalled AI. “My prediction: By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI,” Kelly suggests.
There are twelve trends technological forces identified by Kelly in this very important book. Anyone who wishes to have a profound insight into the trends that will significantly impact our future, would do well to read ‘The Inevitable’ carefully.
Readability Light ---+ Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High ---+- Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the soon to be released ‘Executive Update’.

I enjoyed the topics covered in the book, but found it repetitive and very poorly edited. For example, we do not think different, we think differently. And the author could use a thesaurus because his ubiquitous use of the word ubiquitous bordered on the absurd.

The book basically enlightens about how humans should brace for unprecedented technology changes in the next 30 years.

I personally liked the concept of individualized medical care,which might in fact bring down the cost of health care.

The piece about the qualities of a good questions are some good management lessons.

Related to my field, Introduction of AI, AR,VR on construction management is another one.

Overall,Well written and thought provoking.

Question to the author : How to do we marry ethics with future technology ? Like the snippet about the “ Capability of a video game player to kill the horse which gave him a ride “ . It’s a free speech world ,completely agree. We can not regulate these thoughts and with technology these viewpoints can exponentially reach a wider audience and influence a whole generation . But is that the right thing for our future generation ? It’s not . So what do we do about it ?

Expected more after reading some of the reviews. Doesn't really have much new to say just some rehash of stuff you can find for free on the net. May be good for someone not familiar with current technologies and the developments underway.

Some of it feels like the 1950's flying car predictions.

Mr. Kelly casts a soaring vision of the 'Global Mind' we have created. Variously frightening, inspiring, intriguing, and exciting. He covers twelve ares of technological trends which, he believes, will inevitably envelop and transform our world.

This is an informative and fun ride. I highly recommend this book!

I'm pretty good at distilling, summarizing, synthesizing, and then sharing; it is what I do best for my fellow educators.  I certainly don't arrive at big ideas by myself. Most are the products of interactions with "others", which stew for some time in my mental crock pot before they are ready for consumption.

I am stumped in how to best share The Inevitable, an educators' must read by Kevin Kelley.  It is just too rich, too full of what we need to know and imagine, that it almost defies summary.  An adequate book report would be many pages long. Just read it.

Kelley co-founded Wired magazine in 1993, and has had a front row seat to the birth and explosion of the Information Age.  In The Inevitable, he focuses on the forces of change, not the products and services that continue to flow into our lives.  These forces, all empowered as verbs, include becoming, cognifying, flowing, accessing, sharing, filtering, and more.  They are the evolutionary factors which will increasingly determine outcomes of many of our most human goals and ambitions: success, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction.  If this sounds like a frightening vision, it is a bit...but it is also inevitable.  The future does not have to be scary, but it can be, particularly when we face it with our eyes squinting or closed.

Most books on technology become embarrassingly dated after a couple of years. This is not one of them. Kevin Kelly has written an important book, one that dives beneath the choppy waves of the endless roll-out of new stuff. Kelly takes us down below the surface to where the big currents flow. Those currents are like the Gulf Stream. They are the deep background ideas that will drive technological change for many decades to come. Even more importantly, Kelly shows the reader how these big currents will change societies and individuals. Some will push back against his analysis. Perhaps not wanting to let go of a comfortable and known present. Others who know that change is hard and demanding will embrace Kelly's insights and wisdom. They will benefit greatly over the decades to come. Skeptics should consider that even if Kelly is only forty percent right, that is an astonishing amount of change headed our way. Kevin Kelly has written one of the most important books in a long time on technology innovation and it's impact on society and culture. Read this book.

He does an excellent job of pointing out how many of these trends are already in place and then projecting into the future. He gives frequent examples of this, such as Wikipedia, Uber, the store, etc. He also makes a good case for his contention that much of this transformation is indeed inevitable.

I really enjoyed this book. Thought provoking and well researched, it was broken up into sections but linked together into a cohesive ‘story’.

Will watch with interest to see how many of the ‘inevitable’ predictions come to pass over the next 3 decades.

A poet of the Internet mesh, Kelly wraps a prescient sense of where the maze of apps, devices, Things, media and we are headed. There are traces of what's come before - Ted Nelson's Dream Machines, and Negroponte's Being Digital. If you're a future CEO, or a future consumer, give it a read.

This book is mandatory reading for my Master's program. The book was incredible! I read it in 2 days. As an IT professional, I totally resonated with the message of what's taking place now and how it's setting the tone for the future. The book was exhilarating while at the same time it scared the bejeezus out of you. SkyNet is real!

KK continues his mastery of explicating the unfolding future. Helped me see key distinctions (chapters) that empower me as I grapple with my business (data science) and personal life. Should help me avoid being G blind-sided by technologies and their related sociologies like the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence.

Author introduces 12 concepts. The entirety of each of the 12 chapters are then devoted to platitudes and fluff. There is no serious analysis of any technolological issue in this book. The invevitable here is this book is an inevitable fail.