Augmented

We are closer now to 2030 than we are to the start of the new millennium (2000). The technologies we are exploring today, such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, nanoscale manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, robots, wearables and embedded computing, are radically going to redefine the next age of humanity. I propose we should call this next age the Age of Augmented Intelligence, or just simply the Augmented Age, because of how radically embedded and personal technology will augment your daily life and your behaviour. This time the changes to our world are overtly personal. It’s not just about industries being disrupted, or technology that we’re inventing, it’s about how your life will change radically on a day-to-day basis compared to that of the preceding generations.

At its heart, this shift is about radical changes in the way the world is connected and works together. Simply classifying the next age as the second machine age would be too much of an economist’s view of the world—the probability that machine-or AI-based automation leads to economic impact from a productivity or jobs’ perspective is valid, but is only part of the picture.

Since the coming of the industrial or machine age, society has been continuously impacted by new technologies, be it the steam engine or the selfie stick. Today, our progeny measures changes in months, not decades. We have billion-dollar companies created in less time than it takes traditional companies to launch a new product line. The rapid nature of this change increasingly has more to do with how we respond as individuals and collectively as a society rather than focusing on the underlying technology behind that change.

As humans, we’re conflicted about change. As a species, we’re constantly trying to develop, push ourselves further, evolve, create wealth, explore, discover, improve our knowledge and make our lives richer, more abundant and better. However, when change affects our jobs, our homes or our families personally, it can get a bit funky, a bit dislocating. For instance, if we were to lose our job because a more efficient manufacturing process or advanced computer algorithm made us redundant, then we would probably be quite upset about it. We might even protest for the outlawing or restriction of that specific technology or new business model, or even for governments to exclude our industry from tariffs or taxes so that our outdated business approach could remain competitive in a world that has practically rendered our traditional approach obsolete. The previous chapter showed that this is a fairly typical reaction.

It’s Happened Before, It Will Happen Again

Not wanting to borrow too much from the Matrix or Battlestar Galactica, the reality is that this cycle of new technologies that act as the catalyst for entirely new industries, but at the same time dramatically impact employment patterns and social conditions, has been happening repeatedly over the last 200 to 250 years.

Commentators I admire like Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis have previously classified this change as part of the coming “singularity”. Diamandis called it the “Age of Abundance,”¹ but a factory worker at Ford Motor Company in Detroit or at Foxconn in China might have very different views today. Textile artisans in the early 1800s, chimney sweeps, farm tillers in the 1920s, video rental store clerks, 1-hour photo processing machine operators, newspaper reporters and taxi drivers are all examples of jobs that have been significantly impacted by technological change. While abundant, technology continues to be as disruptive as it is innovative.

Despite our very best efforts to adapt incumbent businesses to the rapidly changing world of the Internet, the dominant players that emerge out of these ages are mostly new players. It’s why Apple and Spotify are the big players in music distribution today versus Sony, Virgin and Tower Records, all of which dominated the 1990s. It’s why Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks are the fastest-growing players in book distribution today, and why Borders, Dymocks and Angus & Robertson bookshops are no longer around. It’s why we’re unbundling and cord cutting from cable TV in favour of Netflix, Hulu and YouTube and why Blockbuster failed to adapt when its stores became an anachronism. It’s why we’re ordering increasingly from Amazon and Alibaba, instead of jumping in the car and heading down to our local shopping centre or retail outlet, or even comparing the Amazon price while we are physically inside a Best Buy store.

Typically within just a few years, we see that the new players who have built their businesses differently are simply better positioned to grow and take advantage of changing consumer behaviour, while incumbents are hunkered down trying to stop these new players from gaining further traction. Regardless of the range of these defensive actions, in all cases within a few years, the disruption is complete—employment patterns have shifted, the government has moved out of the way in favour of economic progress and the new players have either acquired the old players or the old players are marginalised and consolidated, serving a small, declining market.

The facts are that it never ends with old business models or obsolete technology surviving as the dominant play. It rarely ends with incumbents retooling and cannibalising their businesses to reinvent themselves fast enough. Thus, these changes are nearly always disruptive.

How Disruption Is Evident through the Ages

In day-to-day life, each age has resulted in significant changes to consumer behaviour, employment and services. What was all the rage in 1920 is no longer a part of our daily routine. Today, particularly for our youth, smartphones are a fact of life. According to recent surveys, almost 90 per cent of Millennials said that their smartphones never leave their side,² and 80 per cent of them said that they sleep with their phones ³ (as in the last thing they do at night and the first thing they do in the morning is use their phones). This is markedly—and very obviously—different behaviour from that of teens and young adults who lived at the start of the 20th century. These types of behavioural shifts quickly become the norm, but over time they collectively add up to even greater changes in the way society works. For example, will you be able to order a taxi or a take-away in the future without a smartphone? It is unlikely.

Before we get to what comes next in the Augmented Age, let’s look at some of the specific disruptions of the past 200 years and what impacts these have had on society. That way we might be able to predict more accurately what will happen over the next 20 to 50 years.

The top jobs of 2020 will, of course, be very different from the top jobs 100 years ago. Over the last 200 years, we’ve moved from agrarian societies to very technology-driven and service-driven industries. In 1750, 80 per cent of the UK population lived in rural areas, by 1900 the figure had fallen to 30 per cent, and by 2030 it is expected to be just 8 per cent. The same phenomenon is happening in China, with figures rising from 13 per cent through to 40 per cent between 1950 and 2000, and projected to reach 60.3 per cent by 2030.⁴

The Augmented Age will bring about a huge rethink of processes involving dynamic decision-making, pattern recognition and advisory services as machine intelligence optimises those processes and feedback loops. Whereas the Internet was most commonly about disruption of distribution, availability of information and rethinking the value chain, the next age will be about disruption of information, intelligence and advice (the application of information and intelligence) itself. The Augmented Age will bring with it four major disruptions, and the emergence of two longer-term disruptive technologies:

Artificial Intelligence that disrupts the nature of advice, that is better at everyday tasks like driving, health care and basic services than humans. While many fear the possibility that hyperintelligent robots or minds will take over the world, for the next 30 years, it is far more likely that these AIs will be specialised and purpose built, and not necessarily human equivalent intelligence (more on this later).

Distributed, embedded experiences that are embedded into the world and devices around us but enable frictionless, contextualised service, products, advice and value creation which, in turn, are monetised based on their effectiveness. In a world that is constantly augmented by data and information, value, personalisation and context will be key.⁶ Everything with have a chip inside it, will sync with the cloud and interface with humans and other computers.

Smart Infrastructure improvements that radically change the way energy is delivered, how people and goods are moved from one place to another, how modern economies compete and how markets value commodities. Whether drones, solar energy, electric vehicles or autonomous transportation, value will be mobilised. Smart cities will be powered by smart resource allocation and smart infrastructure, making citizens’ lives demonstrably better. The energy sector will face radical disruption.

Gene Editing and HealthTech are going to radically change the way we think about health care. Hereditary diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anaemia and even colour blindness will be eliminated within two decades. Sensors, wearables, diagnosis AI and other tech will radically change the way we see heart disease and other preventable conditions. Algorithms and sensors will more reliably diagnose illnesses than doctors.

Two longer-term, and even more disruptive, technologies that are only just starting to emerge at the start of the Augmented Age are:

Metamaterials that are constructed using nanotechnology or radically new engineering approaches. Examples of metamaterials emerging include:

• an invisibility cloak (or surface material) that diverts visible light or microwaves around an object coated in the material

• bioinspired, self-actuated materials or electroactive polymers that behave like human muscle

• coatings that can conduct electricity or can turn any surface into a display

• clothing or textiles that will generate an electrical charge or include sensors and other circuits embedded in the weave

• carbon-nanofibre or diamond-nanofibre tethers which could be used to construct space lifts or similar

• super-strong and super-light metals and composites that can be grown like a tree or cultured in a vat

• windows that have transparent, embedded solar photovoltaics (PV) so that they can generate electricity

3D printing allows you to download almost any design for any product and print it in real time. The main 3D printing method is also known as “additive manufacturing” due to the build process that adds or extrudes a layer of material millimetres at a time to gradually create a three-dimensional object or design. Future 3D printers will be able to print clothing or include electronic circuits and displays in designs.

In July 2015, the astronauts on the International Space Station downloaded a “wrench” and printed it using a specially designed 3D printer. Such a technology could substantially reduce size, weight and storage requirements for long-duration spaceflight. If you have to carry tools, for example, that may not be required under most circumstances, or you need to carry multiple sets of tools for redundancy, you could simply carry the required raw materials to prime a 3D printer. You could even, theoretically, print additional 3D printers.

These disruptive technologies are sure to bring about dramatic shifts in employment patterns. Throughout the previous ages, there was a rebalancing of the workforce among industries. In the machine age, employment shifted largely from established industries to manufacturing. The manufacturing sector grew steadily through the 20th century until the 1970s to 1980s when process, electronics and automation took their toll on that sector too, and those jobs started to shift out of factories and into service industries. What will happen in the 21st century when AI and experience design reduce employment in the service industries? Where will those jobs go?

Employment Impact

For over 100 years, employment has been moving from big industry to services. Whether in agriculture, fishing, mining or, in the last 50 years, manufacturing, as processes have become automated, we’ve shifted to jobs where humans matter. However, in a world where the ability of a human is surpassed by artificial intelligence, there is a real risk that many humans will lose their jobs.

Futurists are deeply divided on this vision of the future. Some claim it will be a new gilded age, with humans working less and having more leisure time to pursue the arts and greater knowledge and learning like never before. Those with a negative view of the disruptive nature of AI argue that there will be a net loss of employment for the first time in 250 years as a result of technological advancement. There’s only so many AI or robot ethicists and robot psychologists that we’ll need in the Augmented Age.

A study released by Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology entitled “The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”⁷ evaluated 702 jobs on a typical online career network, classifying them based on how likely they are to be computerised. The skills and level of education required for each job were taken into consideration too. These features were weighted according to how automatable they were, and according to the engineering obstacles currently preventing automation or computerisation. The results were calculated with a common statistical modelling method. The outcome was clear. In the United States, more than 45 per cent of jobs could be automated within one to two decades. Table 2.3 shows a few jobs that are basically at 100 per cent risk of automation (I’ve highlighted a few of my favourites):⁸

One often voiced concern is that AI will create huge wealth for a limited few who own the technology, thus implying that the wealth gap will become even more acute. The ongoing viability of society will not be based just on access to technology, improved health care and the elimination of poverty, but on a more equitable distribution of wealth so that the impact of AI is not a cause for further class division.

Developments in Silicon Valley over the last two decades may indicate the above expectations are naïve. Probably, but we either solve these social issues or we are likely to see a clash between the “technocrati” and the users to such a degree that its effects would be felt for decades. If technology is made freely or cheaply available, especially technology that houses, clothes, feeds and cares for individuals, then we indeed could find humanity in an age of abundance. The hope is that technology like solar and electric vehicles will greatly disrupt the big oil and gas cartels and that we’ll continue to use technology to eliminate poverty and preventable diseases as well as improve access to education and financial resources.

In almost every example we’ve cited over the last 250 years of technology disruption, new technologies did result in the loss of some jobs, but it more often resulted in the net addition of new jobs that replaced those that were lost.

Pew Research Center conducted a comprehensive review of these issues back in August 2014,⁹ inviting futurists, journalists and economists from around the world to offer their views on the impact of AI and robotics on the future of jobs. The results show that we’re still divided as to whether this new technology will be a good thing for society. In total, 52 per cent of those surveyed by Pew said that the world will be a better place with more jobs being created by technology than will be displaced, as we have seen in each previous age. However, the remaining 48 per cent believe that the displacement of both blue-collar and white-collar workers will be on such a scale that it will inevitably lead to increases in income inequality, mass unemployment and breakdowns in social order.

Regardless of where you stand in the argument of how AI and robotics will affect our future, one thing is absolutely certain. It will be a time of heightened disruption. At the heart of the solution to the disruption problem will be how we prepare ourselves for this future. The skills that students need to learn in order to survive in the Augmented Age are very different from what they are being taught in school today. We will need to teach students not just science, technology, engineering and maths (so-called STEM subjects), but agility, creative thinking, rapid learning and adaptation too. One of the reasons why the Luddites found the shift so difficult is that thinking about changing their employment was painful and difficult, so it was easier to resist the change than to adapt.

What if we give our children the skills to adapt, to change faster than previous generations did? Maybe then the shift in jobs and employment patterns would not be as disruptive as it otherwise could be.

Where could jobs be created? Let’s take a more in-depth look at solar energy. Figure 2.2 shows the generation capacity of photovoltaic cells from 2000 to 2040 (projected).

Even though solar energy provided just 0.4 per cent of America’s electricity in 2014, it’s growing at an incredible rate. Rooftop solar generation has roughly tripled ¹⁰ since 2010 (some estimates are as high as a 418 per cent increase in the four years from 2010). Current estimates are that a new rooftop solar system is now installed every four minutes ¹¹ in the United States. According to Bloomberg’s renewable energy research team (Bloomberg New Energy Finance), 70 per cent of the power generation that the world will add between now and 2030 will be renewable. By 2035, this would mean that the world will be predominantly renewable energy based. Economies like China and India are actually likely to lead the charge on this.

The threat to the established grid is clear and significant, especially because solar installations are speeding up. If rooftop solar reached just 10 per cent of the US market, it would result in utility company earnings falling by up to 41 per cent!

Putting aside the whole climate change argument, when solar energy effectively becomes “free” or fractional compared with electricity generation through coal or gas, it will absolutely have to rapidly disrupt grid-based systems. Why? Solar doesn’t require a grid to be efficient because it can be installed in every home or at every point of consumption. So the costs incurred by utility companies in maintaining the grid will quickly become untenable, further accelerating the need for a distributed grid.

The year 2015 was a big year for solar as it reached price parity ¹⁴ with natural gas for electricity generation, but with solar we don’t need a system of generators (or farms) and the traditional network to distribute that energy. The concept of maintaining a grid based on wooden poles or high-tension power lines becomes counter-intuitive and no longer viable. Once again, David Crane made an insightful observation on the disruptive nature of this change in energy distribution systems.

Keep in mind that these comments are not coming from a solar energy company, but from inside one of the current market leaders in provision of retail electricity across the United States!

If, however, we take homes, offices and factories off the grid, then storage of electricity becomes a critical element in the success of a distributed system. Recently, Tesla Motors, an automotive and energy storage company, announced that its new US$5-billion Gigafactory in Nevada will not only produce batteries for Tesla vehicles but will also sell batteries—called Powerwalls—for homes. These batteries are designed to capture excess solar capacity throughout the day so that homes can continue to operate independent of the grid in the dark and in cloudy weather when solar capture is reduced.

The essential problem here is clear. With the adoption of solar energy and the deployment of the Tesla Powerwall or similar products, many homes will soon attempt to go off-grid. If enough homes do so over the next 20 to 30 years, existing utility companies will lose money and will certainly be unable to maintain or service the grid, leading more homes to rely on newer technologies as the grid fails.

The two decades-long transition away from fossil fuel-based generation has already started. A brief written for the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) by the University of Cambridge and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) stated that solar photovoltaic power is expected to reach grid parity in 80 per cent of countries within the next two years.¹⁶ Surely much cheaper, cleaner solar energy for all is better than pulling coal out of the ground and converting it to run across wires laid over 120 million wooden poles? As you can see in figure 2.3, sci-fi author Ramez Naam has done some great analysis on his blog showing that unsubsidised solar will be roughly half the price of natural gas and coal within just a decade. Ultimately, on this basis alone, solar must win this fight. It’s no longer about climate change, pollution or clean energy—it’s simple economics.

Looking ahead, the good news is that there are 125 million homes in the United States, and more than 2 billion globally. That’s a lot of homes to retool with solar cells and batteries over the next 20 to 30 years. Today, 8 million people are employed in renewable energy, but estimates predict that as many as 37 million people globally will be employed in this industry by 2030. This is not a future consideration as jobs in the US domestic solar energy industry grew nearly 12 times faster than the overall economy did in 2015 according to a survey by The Solar Foundation.

Gigging, Job-hopping and Cloud-based Employment

It was recently reported by Mintel that almost a quarter of Millennials would like to start their own businesses, and nearly one in five planned to do so in the next 12 months.¹⁷ In markets like the United States or Australia where the cost of college education is becoming either unattainable or a poor investment for large swathes of the population, many of this generation are choosing instead to be educated by online platforms, hackathons, internships, start-ups and experimentation rather than through traditional college approaches. With this alternative approach to education, this tech-savvy generation is increasingly demanding flexibility with employment. A total of 66 per cent of Millennials would be willing to wear technology to help them do their jobs.¹⁸ In fact, 40 to 45 per cent of Gen Y regularly use their personal smartphones and download apps specifically for work purposes (as opposed to 18 to 24 per cent of older generations).

In the United Kingdom, 85 per cent of Gen Y graduates think that freelance or independent working will become a more common and accepted way to succeed in the job market over the next five years.¹⁹ In fact, freelancing is becoming so common amongst Millennials that they’ve even come up with their own term for it—gigging. As in “I’ve got a gig at Google.” Others call them “permanent freelancers” or “permalancers”. Increasingly, this type of work is done at home, at a shared workspace or even at a Starbucks. There are even websites dedicated to helping giggers find coffee shops that can be used as workspaces.²⁰ It’s hardly surprising, then, that almost half of Millennials surveyed in the United Kingdom and the United States show a strong preference for this sort of working lifestyle.

The full-time job ²¹ is historically an anomaly. Prior to the industrial age, it didn’t really exist. Early industrialists, who needed to have workers on a production line at the same time for efficiency, are most likely responsible for creating the concept of a structured work week. Consequently, for the last 100 years, the 40-hour-a-week job has been the centrepiece of work life simply because there was no better way for people to gather in one place at the same time to connect, collaborate and produce.

Now technology is changing the very nature of work. Millennials will be the first modern generation to work in multiple “micro-careers” at the same time, leaving the traditional full-time job or working week behind. “Work” is more likely to behave like a marketplace in the cloud than behind a desk at a traditional corporation. While a central skill set or career anchor will be entirely probable, most will be entrepreneurs, and many will have their side gigs. For instance, Uber, Lyft and Sidecar are platforms that give people a way to leverage their cars and time to make money. TaskRabbit is a market for odd jobs. Airbnb lets you rent out any extra rooms in your home. Etsy is a market for the handmade knick-knacks or 3D print designs that you make at home. DesignCrowd, 99designs and CrowdSPRING all offer freelance design resources that bid logos and other designs for your dollars.

Before long, technology will allow instant marketing of your skill set, the auctioning of gigs and expertise, and the ability to be paid for your work in near real time or as deliverables are finished.

Some of this is borne out of simple necessity. Millennials are generally more educated than their predecessors, but the impact of the 2008 financial crisis (the Great Recession) resulted in them being hit particularly hard on the job front, with 30 per cent of men and 37 per cent of women unemployed or not in the labour force.²³ This has driven a pragmatic approach to work, and technology and real-time engagement are underpinning the job-hopping and gigging that Millennials are becoming known for.

When Life Is Augmented

Despite technology-led disruptions, in all the previous ages we’ve made solid progress as a species. Living conditions have improved, a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, life expectancy has increased, infant mortality has declined and, globally, the job creation trend has stabilised unemployment in most regions. Things are good in general, but that won’t stop many from bemoaning how our young people are wasting their lives on social media or how greater technology integration in our lives is making us less human, less inclined to do the “normal” things that previous generations did.

What we do know is that humanity is constantly adapting when it comes to behaviour. Sometimes these changes appear minor, such as moving from reading a physical book to reading it on a tablet, when the underlying behavioural shift has actually been a shift in respect to how people purchase books. On occasion, a new technology like email or the smartphone will dramatically change our daily routine, producing new behaviours that would have been unimaginable to our grandparents. Should we embrace such change or rally against it?

Children born after 2000 most likely don’t attach much personal significance to events like 9/11, simply because to them it is history. They certainly don’t remember a time when there was no Internet. Most of them don’t even understand the concept that TV shows used to be broadcast on a specific channel at a specific time of day, and the only way you got to watch it again was on a rerun. My six-year-old son is one of them. He can watch his favourite shows on any device at anytime.

This generation is highly adaptable, but their lives and decisions hinge on the technology around them. For instance, how do they learn something? They google it or watch a video on YouTube. They didn’t grow up with VHS tapes, cassette recorders, vinyl records and cathode ray tube TVs. So even their language and lexicons are different. How do they decide which new phone, clothes, video game or music they should buy? They ask their networks as they are influenced by mentions and Likes. To their parents, this may seem like strange behaviour. However, it is evidence of a definite generational shift in the way decisions are made and how connections are formed.

Some believe that being born into a world of technology is changing the way this particular generation reads emotional cues from faces, the way they emote and communicate. It is hypothesised that the causes of autism, Asperger’s and other such conditions might even be evolutionary adaptations to a world where it is more important for a child to have tech skills than people skills.

It’s not that these children are necessarily less emotionally clued in. In fact, it seems that they get so much input on their friends’ emotional states through things like social networking and technology that their emotional quotient (EQ) may actually be higher than that of previous generations. They’re simply getting those cues through feedback loops in the ecosystem rather than through reading facial or verbal cues.

This generation often communicates in real time about almost everything; including their relationship status, what they’re eating for breakfast, which content they’re watching and what products they’re buying, and which of those they like and don’t like. They are using information sources I never had as a child or young adult to make decisions in much shorter time frames. In fact, it has been said that a young graduate in Lagos, Mumbai or Bangkok today has access to more information on his smartphone than the President of the United States had just 20 years ago. In other words, they are highly adaptable, highly agile in their thinking and even less likely to resist technology change when it appears. In their world, change is a constant, and the fact that it is speeding up signals positive progress.

This may produce the biggest social disruption of all. The baby boomers (born 1946–1963) in particular, but also the early Gen Xs, those who are still at the helm of government and big business, tend to be the generations that are most resistant to political or economic change because they consider stability to be a core need. In fact, the 113th Congress in the United States is the oldest congress in history, with the average member being 62 years of age,²⁶ and considered one of the least effective historically.²⁷

With the introduction of social media, we’ve seen a huge increase in protests by Gen Y/Millennials attempting to provoke change—whether through the Arab Spring, the Occupy movements, protests against police brutality and extrajudicial killings in the United States and the like. The baby boomers longed for sustained peace; Gen X for economic prosperity and stability. The new citizens of the world, the generation that will dominate the world by 2023, don’t want stability per se. They want positive progress through change.

These two worlds will very likely collide in the next decade when it comes to issues like climate change, energy, employment and education. Especially when it becomes very clear that there is little or no representation in government for the largest generation of voters, or where interests of incumbent industries and lobby groups resist technology change, especially in countries like the United States.

Advice in health care, financial services and technical areas, along with principles of government, have been predicated for the last 100 years on the concept of information asymmetry—the fact that the government or “adviser” knows something you don’t know. Increasingly that information asymmetry simply doesn’t exist, and so it is getting harder and harder for governments to claim that they are acting in the best interests of the public when the influence of lobby or special interest groups is blatantly obvious.

One thing is certain. The disruptions that technology and the Augmented Age bring will be perhaps the most impactful on society’s operation that we’ve seen since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s. The Augmented Age will be all about technology infused into every aspect of our lives, whether AI, amazing distributed experiences or entirely new value systems built up of new infrastructure and new value chains.

In 30 years’ time, technology will be so small, so powerful and so integrated into our lives that it will be hard to define technology in the way we do today as devices, interfaces, multitouch, mouse and keyboards. We’ll have technology that lives inside us, on our person, in our clothes, in our homes, in our cars and elsewhere, that in each instance is millions of times more powerful than the most powerful computers we have today.

Imagine a sensor network made up of nodes the size of a blood cell inside your bloodstream reporting on your health and vitals to your personal AI? Imagine an AI that listens to your phone calls and meetings so that it knows what to put on your calendar, and a smart home and a smart car that coordinate with that AI to organise your meals, transport and other integrated experiences.

If you think of the Augmented Age, AI and technology as a threat to humanity, then perhaps the biggest problem you might have is that your choice to participate in this new world may be taken away from you by a generation that is extremely comfortable with tech. For them it’s not new—it’s just the way they live their lives. It’s cool, it’s new and if it’s not embodied by the latest device you need to have, or the latest app your friends are all using, it’s just old and obsolete. The Augmented Age celebrates constant change wrought by technology, and those who resist that change will likely have the most to lose.

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1 Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. Abundance: The Future Is Better than You Think (New York: Free Press, 2012).

2 Zogby Analytics Survey. Cited in Lisa Kiplinger, “Millennials LOVE their smartphones: Deal with it,” USA Today, 27 September 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/09/27/millennials-love-smartphones-mobile-study/16192777/.

3 “Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change,” Pew Research Center, 24 February 2010, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/02/24/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change/.

4 Felicity Brown, “Percentage of Global Population living in cities, by continent,” Guardian, 29 August 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percentage-population-living-cities.

5 The Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting (ERMA) was developed from 1950 to 1955 by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to automate the bookkeeping associated with cheque processing at the Bank of America. In 1950, the bank’s checking accounts, known as current accounts in other parts of the world, were growing at the rate of 23,000 new accounts per month, and before introducing ERMA, its banks were forced to close their doors at 2 p.m. to cope with manual processing.

6 Image credit: Day in the Glass video by Corning

7 The research paper is available at http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf.

8 These are jobs with 0.98/0.99 probability of disruption through technology. Based on a ±2 per cent confidence interval, this basically is a statistical certainty.

9 “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs,” Pew Research Center, 6 August 2014.

10 http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/24/us-energy-capacity-grew-an-astounding-418-from-2010-2014/

11 http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2014/05/29/90551/rooftop-solar-adoption-in-emerging-residential-markets/

12 A prosumer is both a producer and consumer.

13 Google Green

14 See GreenTechMedia.com analysis, http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Utility-Scale-Solar-Reaches-Cost-Parity-With-Natural-Gas-Throughout-America.

15 Alissa Walker, “Tesla’s Gigafactory isn’t Big Enough to Make Its Preordered Batteries,” Gizmodo, 8 May 2015.

16 NBAD, University of Cambridge and PwC, “Financing the Future of Energy,” PV Magazine, 2 March 2015.

17 “Enter the entrepreneurs,” Mintel, 19 November 2014.

18 Cornerstone OnDemand Survey, November 2014.

19 “Generation Y and the Gigging Economy,” Elance, January 2014.

20 Check out https://workfrom.co/.

21 For more on work patterns throughout history, go to https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/.

22 “Solving the Mystery of Gen Y Job Hoppers,” Business News Daily, 22 August 2014.

23 Pew Research 2014

24 For more on Jordan Greenhall, go to http://reinventors.net/content/jordan-greenhall/.

25 Statistics taken from http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2010/10/22/got-questions-answers-to-your-questions-from-the-autism-speaks%E2%80%99-science-staff-2/.

26 See www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/01/average_age_of_members_of_u_s_congress_are_our_senators_and_representatives.html.

27 “The 113th congress is historically good at not passing bills,” Washington Post, 9 July 2014.

Top Jobs in early 1900s	Top Jobs for 2020
Farmers	Computer Engineers
Farm Labourers	Environmental Science, Energy Storage and Solar Deployment
Mine Operators	Data Mining and Analytics
Household Services Workers	HealthTech, Biomedicine and Bioengineering
Craftsman, Tradesman	Entrepreneurship
Factory & Production Operators	Psychology, Counselling and Therapy
Secretary, Clerks and Office Workers	Business Managers and Administration
Salesman	Designer and Customer Experience Specialist

Telemarketers	Data Entry Professionals	Procurement Clerks
Title Examiners, Abstractors and Searchers	Timing Device Assemblers and Adjusters	Shipping, Receiving and Traffic Clerks
Sewers, Hand	Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks	Milling and Planing Machine Setters, Operators
Mathematical Technicians	Brokerage Clerks	Credit Analysts
Insurance Underwriters	Order Clerks	Parts Salespersons
Watch Repairers	Loan Officers	Claims Adjusters, Examiners and Investigators
Cargo and Freight Agents	Insurance Appraisers, Auto Damage	Driver/Sales Workers
Tax Preparers	Umpires, Referees and Other Sports Officials	Radio Operators
Photographic Process Workers and Processing Machine Operators	Bank Tellers	Legal Secretaries
New Accounts Clerks	Etchers and Engravers	Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerks
Library Technicians	Packaging and Filling Machine Operators	Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers and Weighing Technicians

Chapter 2

The Augmented Age

It’s Happened Before, It Will Happen Again

How Disruption Is Evident through the Ages

Employment Impact

Gigging, Job-hopping and Cloud-based Employment

When Life Is Augmented