Wednesday, November 27, 2019

A world-leading technologist on what the year 2038 will look like

A world-leading technologist on what the year 2038 will look likeA world-leading technologist on what the year 2038 will look likeCurrently Senior Maverick atWiredmagazine,Kevin Kellyhelped launch the magazine and welches its executive editor for its first seven years. He has written forThe New York Times,The Economist,Science,TIME, and mora, and is the bestselling author ofThe Inevitable Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. He recently sat down withSrinivas Raoon theUnmistakable Creative podcastto discussthesurprisingchanges that societycan expect in the next 20 years.SriniInThe Inevitable, you said, Right now in 2016 is the best time to start up. Theres never been a better time with more opportunity, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit-risk ratios, better returns, greater upside than now. Right now, this minute, this is the moment that folks in the future will look back on and say, Oh, to have been alive and well back then.That really stru ck me, because its an overwhelmingly optimistic view of where were at. Can you tell me why you believe that?KevinI truly do believe this is the very best time in the history of the world to make something, because the tools for creation have never been more easily gotten. Theyve never been cheaper, theyve never been better, theyve never been as diverse. So if you want to write a book, make a movie, or record a song, some of the tools to do that are just about free, which means that almost anybody in the world can get their hands on them. Many of behauptung things in previous generations were prohibitively expensive and relegated to the elites, but now you can make a book that looks as good as the book that the hottest bestselling author can make, and you can distribute it, and it will cost very little to do. New things like web apps or websites are also much easier to make than before, and this is the best time for making hardware because theres more and more tools.Were also on the cusp of all these transformative technologies and trends - so all the amazing things that weve had in the last 50 years, ten times as many are going to be coming in the next 50 years. You should be encuraged that all the good ideas are not behind us - theyre all in front of us. The degree of impact that, say, motors had on the world, or electricity had on the world, or printing had on the world, are going to pale compared to some of the things that are coming up. Theyre likely to occur in the next 30 years, and you are going to be alive at that moment, and you will have access to the tools. This is something that people should be rejoicing in, and maybe people in the future will look back with envy that we were here at this time, and had all these opportunities and could have done amazing things if we had wanted to.SriniIts interesting to hear you say that, because I recently got to see somebody who had been on vacation in Costa Rica and shot aerial footage with a drone camera, an d it looked like the opening sequence to a Hollywood film. He was like, You can buy these drone cameras for $100 on Amazon.Can you give us an overview of what the 12 forces are, and how theyre going to impact ur lives?KevinI selected 12 umbrella categories in the book, and each of these trends, these forces, are codependent. Theyre intertwined and self-reinforcing. Among these categories is the idea that were going to increase the amount of tracking in our lives - recording, surveillance, all of these. Anything we do that can be tracked will be tracked. Anything that can be measured will be measured.The same thing could be said about sharing - were going to be sharing more and more. And I dont mean just swapping photos. I mean collaborating, cooperating - thats what this technology is doing. Its increasing the range, the reach, and the speed with which were able to collaborate and cooperate with each other, making things that could not previously be made because we can now have 1 ,000 people, or a million people, or a billion people together working at the same time on something, collaborating and cooperating at even planetary scales.We are also cognifying, meaning that we are making everything smarter. Were making some very inert things more lifelike, were making dumb things smarter, were making smart things very smart. So this artificial smartness is permeating our lives, and it will have an impact way beyond what happened when we electrified and motorized everything, when we built skyscrapers, trains, highways, and factories because we didnt have to rely on the muscle power of animals or ourselves. Now were going to pferdegeschirr artificial intelligence, artificial minds, and thats going to have a second transformation way beyond what happened with the industrial revolution.Theres increasingly this shift from owning things to accessing things, because if you can deliver everything on demand, in real time, anywhere in the world, thats in many cases better than owning it, so theres a shift away from ownership - which is a foundation of capitalism, so thats a big shift.We are also shifting and overturning the way we manage attention. We may eventually even get paid for our attention to watch an ad, to read an email. Right now advertising has a big, outsized role in the internet world, but that could shift if we shifted the economics of attention. Were seeing more and more filtering, more and more curating. Thats necessary because our attention is limited, and all the things were making are growing exponentially. So there has to be a new economics around attention because we will simply see a smaller percent of everything that is made.Theres also the shift from answers being a foundational value to becoming a commodity. So if you want an answer, you ask a machine, and it will tell you the answer. Answers become cheap and ubiquitous, and I think well shift to valuing questions and uncertainty much more than we do now, because in the wo rld of free answers,a good question becomes more valuable.The other shift is from solid things to processes, to services. This is a shift from atomic solids to dematerialized intangibles, and thats the general shift thats been showing in our economy - we have this intangible idea-based, bit-based world of services and processes.Now were going to harness artificial intelligence, artificial minds, and thats going to have a second transformation way beyond what happened with the industrial revolution.SriniWhat are the implications of all this for human behavior?KevinTheres certainly going to be pushback. Humans crave novelty, but at the same time, our bodies and minds are initially resistant to change. Our minds are fairly plastic even as adults, and our bodies can learn, but it requires energy, so there is a built-in resistance to change that has to be overcome. A lot of this stuff is going to require new habits that I call techno-literacy, wherewe are going to become perpetual newbi es, always having to learn new stuff.And that is tiresome. Its like, How many languages do I need to know? How many interfaces do I need to master? How many jobs do I need to have in my career? And the answer is going to be a lot of them. Youre going to be constantly changing.For some people, that was not the bargain that they grew up with, or were taught, and I think theres going to be some tough times for many people. But I firmly believe that people are capable of change. I think that with help from the government, we can move people, if theyre willing, to this new era where lifelong learning becomes the major skill you want. It doesnt really matter what language you learn, or what interface you learn, as long as you can learn new ones.That meta-skill of critical thinking becomes more important when we move towards this era where authorities dont have as much weight, where you have to assemble your own truth on the screen rather than from the authorities of authors and books. So theres a set of basic, essential meta-skills that I think should be taught not just to children but to adults. Our education systems were not set for that, but that, I think, is partee of a transformation that we will continue.Were very malleable in the evolutionary sense. We are slowly inventing who we want to be, while at the same time trying to adapt to the things that were making.SriniChris Sacca has an almost dystopian view of the future, where were going to have the 1% and everybody else is going to be driving their Ubers and serving them lattes. You mentioned that were going to have multiple jobs throughout the course of our lifetimes. What is that going to look like based on where were headed and the trends that youve seen? I know that there are so many jobs today that didnt exist even 10 years ago.KevinI think there is an element of truth to what Chris is saying in the sense that any role or task that can be defined in terms of efficiency will be a job that we give to the b ots. Whether its manual labor or knowledge work, if its something where efficiency matters, then we give it to the bots, and that leaves us humans with a pretty wide open field of things where efficiency is not so critical.If you think about science, which is fundamentally built on one failure after another, thats terribly inefficient. And innovation is by definition inefficient because youre trying stuff, youre prototyping, youre spending a lot of time on things that may be a dead end as you try to figure out the best solution. So innovation is an entirely inefficient process, and so, by the way, is human relationships.Anything in which humans are working with other humans is this inherently inefficient time - you dont want productivity in there. So some of the service jobs are inefficient in that sense. When you are getting help from somebody, you dont want them to be concerned about efficiency - you want them to be concerned about effectiveness. Some of the things humans will d o will be working with other humans, and right now we tend to denigrate that, but I think over the long term we may come to value that, because we humans cherish that kind of interaction. Having a nurse sit by your bedside for long periods of time is very inefficient, but very comforting to us. I think thats something that we will begin to appreciate more. Having somebody come into your house to fix something is not very efficient, but its something that we like. That service component is what well come to value even more.SriniOutside of serving lattes and driving Ubers - places where you could easily replace somebody with a bot - what are the not-so-obvious careers where people may not be thinking, Hey, this is replaceable by a robot? What are we overlooking?KevinI mean, all the truck drivers will probably lose their jobs. But a friend of mine just did a workshop on auto-driven cars, and they were coming up with a bunch of different occupations that might relate. He was imagining these guys that would wait around areas where it looked really tough to navigate with auto-driven cars, and they would drive those cars through these parts, and then theyd get out. Their job would be to do the hard driving that AIs had not yet mastered.Thats something I talk about in the book - humans and AIs working together. Theyre like partners, and sometimes they do one job, then AI does another. If there are all these AIs around, then what we know about technology is that theyre going to break. So there will be a huge IT world of people keeping the AIs going. Thats both a manual job and a cerebral job. Theyre repair guys, but its a very techie job nonetheless, and I think theres going to be a huge need for that. Its going to be like a horse wrangler - just keeping these beasts happy is going to be a pretty big thing.Im not worried at all about the new jobs that will come up. I think well be surprised by how many new types of careers and roles and tasks are going to come up. Theyll be as weird to us as a web designer was to a farmer 150 years ago. Youd tell them, Hey, youre going to lose all your farming jobs. And then theyd say, What are we going to do? Youre going to be a web designer. Youre going to be a mortgage broker. Youre going to be a yoga teacher. And they would say, What? That doesnt make any sense.These new jobs wont make any sense to us either. Theres just going to be this never-ending surprise of the ways in which people will figure out new desires, new wants - its going to be amazing.We are slowly inventing who we want to be, while at the same time trying to adapt to the things that were making.SriniWhat does a day-to-day routine look like 20 years from now?KevinWell, the most obvious difference I think will be the degree to which AI will have permeated our lives, even though most of it wont be visible. Like the Netflix or Amazon recommendation engines - youre not aware them being AIs.Theyre just throwing up suggestions for books. But t hats the level of AI that will be operating behind the scenes - it will have a huge impact on our lives.There will be a few outward-facing AIs, and I suspect that the mode of interaction will be conversation and gestural. So they will be like the Amazon Echo, Alexa, and Siri where, like the movie Her, were having a conversation with them. That conversation will deepen over time and become very complex for many people, and I suggest that in 25, 30 years, the internet will be more of a conversation, a presence that we experience, rather than a place that we go to.This ongoing presence is like a GPS for our life. If you go down the road and disobey the GPSs instructions, the GPS is ready with an alternative route, and its anticipating your arrival time. If you again detour from that route, theres no problem - its got another one.So there will be a GPS for our lives in the sense that these AIs are anticipating what youre doing - theyre getting stuff ready for you, figuring out, Youre going to go to lunch now, youll be over here, so Ill have this ready for you. And you decide, No, Im not going to do that. And then, No problem, I have another plan for you. This will be ready for you there instead. Theres this forever patient anticipation of us in our lives that I think will definitely have outward-facing AI within 30 years.SriniI have one last question What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?KevinI think it goes back to the ability to see things differently. Every person on the planet - past, present, and future - has a slightly different mix of talents, just like our faces are different. And part of what technology is about is to invent different ways that that mix of talents can be expressed and shared - whether that means inventing musical instruments so thatthe genius of Mozart or Beethovencan be expressed and shared, or inventing the technology of cinema so that Alfred Hitchcocks genius can be expressed and shared. Just imagi ne if we had never invented that technology - what a loss to them, and to us, that would have been. There are people born today whose technology has not been invented, and in a certain sense, we have a moral obligation to invent, to enable more people to express their genius.But I think what unmistakable means is not just having that technology available, but actually coming to discover what it is about your mix thats particularly distinctive. For people who have found that way to express their mix, then we call them unmistakable, and its in part because they are not living someone elses movie - they are in their own movie. They are unmistakable in the sense that when that person is doing something, theres nobody else who can do it like theyre doing. Just as most people have an unmistakable face, I hope that we can all grow to have unmistakable lives.This article first appeared on Heleo. This conversation has been edited and condensed. Listen to the full version on theUnmistakable Creative podcast.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

4 Top-Tier Tools to Keep Your Employees Connected

4 Top-Tier Tools to Keep Your Employees Connected 4 Top-Tier Tools to Keep Your Employees Connected Communicating with clients is a critical work task as is regularly interacting with your fellow employees.Contrary to widely accepted belief, neither is mora important than the other. Yes, loyal, long-term clients are the ones technically keeping your place of business afloat, but its a strong, unified team that keeps things running properly. Youd be wise to keepit this way.If you want a unified team, you need to help your employees stay connected to one another. Recruiters and hiring managers put countless hours into onboarding the best talent your industry has to offer, and itsvital that this talent remains in constant, comfortable contact throughout the day.The good news? Its 2017. Carrier pigeons and long walks down seemingly endless hallways to relay a five-second message are things of the past. To keep your team as connected and effective as possible, all you really need are a few tried-and-true communication tools.1. DoLong gone are the days when meetings were all about discussing goals and ideas. Sure, a sizable number of meetings are mucksmuschenstill geared toward this kind of activity, butnew technologies have made them more efficient.This is where Do comes into the picture. Do is an all-inclusive, collaborative tool that allows people to take detailed notes, create agendas, and track progress, all while seated comfortably in a meeting.And thats not even the best part.Answer honestly During a meeting, have you ever asked yourself, Couldnt we have gone without getting together like this? If so, youre in luck. Dos Insights feature tracks how much time and money are spent on meetings, helping youensure youre only investing in worthwhile meetings.2. TrelloTheres a good chance you and your team have already heard of Trello. And you know what? That makes sense. Few tools are as well-equipped tokeep employees connected asTrello is.Email is nice, but whose inbox is really hurting for more incoming material? Trello provides employees with a smarter, more streamlined way to tackle project management through its board system.Staff members create boards representing key tasks whenever something needs to get down. Each board is composed of three columns To-Do, Doing, and Done. Assignments move from left to right until a project is confidently completed.3. BrosixMichael Jordan allegedlyonce said, Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. Though its unlikely these words were meant for the office, they still apply to the workplace quite well. Talent is crucial, but without unity, its all for naught.Brosixis a one-of-a-kind messaging tool designed to meet the demands of fast-paced business environments. Sure, Slack and Skype are great at what they do, but Brosix takes things to a whole new level.The biggest difference is Brosixs emphasis on safety. Brosix applies strong data encryption to any and all data transfers. R eal-time messaging often includes critical private information. Its easier to protect that information when you useBrosix.Tech support, the ability to account for multiple languages, and an easy-to-use interface round outBrosixs up-and-coming messaging platform. I predict it wont be long before Brosix becomes a mainstay of all in-house communication.4. GoToMeetingWhile Do intends to help companies hold more effective meetings, GoToMeetingwants to make those meetings happen. GoToMeeting is a simple web conference solution that can bring professionals together from all over the globe.With just one click, GoToMeeting syncs to both Outlook and Google Calendar, making scheduling a straightforward affair. As for the meetings themselves, GoToMeetings HD video conferencing, screen-sharing, and dial-in connectivity make it easy to get everyone on the same page.Further strengthening GoToMeetings core offering is the programs capacity to provide on-screen drawings and real-time recordings for all meeting participants. Its also incredibly affordable.Youre a recruiting professional. You know how urgent it is to find theright talent to bring about real, bottom-line growth. Buthiring the right personnel is only half the battle. Its equally important that employees work well together. The above tools can help your business create strong, unified teams that accomplish more.Lucas Miller is freelance blogger, direct response copywriter, and content marketer at Echelon Copy.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

8 Dangerous Assumptions That Can Cost You the Job of Your Dreams

8 Dangerous Assumptions That Can Cost You the Job of Your Dreams8 Dangerous Assumptions That Can Cost You the Job of Your DreamsWe have the tendency to make assumptions about everything, writes Don Miguel Ruiz in his bestselling book The Four Agreements. The third agreement he discusses in the book is dont make assumptions. He writes, The problem with assumptions is that we believe they are truth. We could swear they are real.The process of looking for a job is rife with possible assumptions- about job requirements, company culture, what happened during the application and interview process and even what you believe you can achieve.Ruiz suggests that that the antidote to assumption-making is asking questions. Because we are afraid to ask for clarification, we make assumptions, and we believe we are right about our assumption then we defend our assumptions and try to make someone else wrong.We might believe that the job is wrong, the company is wrong or we got some schwimmbad advice. It is always better to ask questions than to make assumptions, because assumptions set us up for suffering.Here are eight assumptions about job search and how you can keep them from holding you back.1. Dont Assume You Need to Check Off Every Qualification Listed in the Job DescriptionHiring managers and recruiters usually put requirements and desired qualifications in the job description. Feeling like you have to meet every bullet point listed will prevent you from applying to many jobs that youre probably qualified for. Wendy Nolin, business and career coach at Change Agent Careers, counsels her clients to evaluate the overall requirements necessary to do the job versus the full list of desired qualifications. Most job descriptions include must have and nice-to-have qualifications, she said, and they know youll need to learn some things on the job.When you read job descriptions, ask, Does my experience meet the fruchtwein important requirements? Is this a job that I could do with a little bit of training? If the answer is Yes, apply. The recruiter will be the one to ask you questions later.2. Dont Assume Everything You Hear About A Company Will Be True for YouYou can never assume that one parties opinion is true- whether its about the company, a team or an individual, Nolin said. Like all assumptions, this one is particularly important to question. Ask what specifically the person didnt like and find out who you else can talk to. Consider each persons agenda. Do they have a chip on their shoulder because they got passed over for a promotion? Look for patterns in the answers you get. Also do research on review sites.You might get along with someone that a few other people dont like, said Nolin. You might be the perfect person to work on that team. So go ahead and apply, and see for yourself.3. Dont Assume That Because You Dont Hear Back it Means They Dont Like YouThere are a myriad of reasons you might be rejected for a job, and none of them are about you. For more on rejection, read our article Dont Take Anything Personally.4. Dont Assume You Nailed or Failed the InterviewI once walked out of an afternoon of interviews certain I had the job. I was fully qualified and thought the interviews had gone well. I received a rejection email two weeks later. Adrienne Chang, associate absatzwirtschaft manager at Simply Hired, assumed that she didnt get the job when she interviewed with us because the hiring manager seemed cold. It turned out that the hiring manager was using a bad cop interview technique. As with all forms of rejection and acceptance, you cant assume you know whats going on behind the scenes. Dont let an assumption about your performance in an interview keep you from following up.5. Dont Assume the Salary Offered is All You Can GetNolin strongly advises her clients to negotiate when they receive an offer. They expect you to negotiate, she said. If they want you and need you, they are usually willing to pay more- often 10-15 perce nt more than the initial offer. Dont assume that the company has the power- YOU are the one who is wanted, so dont be afraid to ask for what you want.6. Dont Assume that A Best Place To Work is the Best Place for YouSome people focus all their efforts on getting into a popular company, assuming that their life and career will be perfect once they get inside. Many Simply Hired employees used to work at some of those companies. There are pluses and minuses to all working environments, most notably between companies that employ thousands of people versus those that employ a few hundred or less. Do as much research as you can to find out why you would like working at a certain type of company. In the interview, dont be afraid to ask your hiring manager to point out some unique things about the culture.7. Dont Assume That the Career Ladder is Right for YouWhen I was in my 20s I assumed that I would be a manager by 30 and a VP by 35. When I reached age 30 and was still an individual contr ibutor, I was disappointed in myself. As Ruiz notes, this was an assumption that set me up for suffering- and the suffering was unnecessary because I was doing fine.Nolin frequently counsels people who got lost on the career track and burned out by age 40. Theyve made the assumption that theyre nobody without a title. Theres plenty of room in the world for individualcontributors, managers and CEOs. We need them all. We cant have all managers, CEOs and entrepreneurs.Ruiz suggests that the antidote to these sorts of assumptions is asking questions of yourself. He writes, maybe you need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want. It may not be what other people or society tells you.8. Dont Assume You Cant Have The Job You Truly WantThere are many stories of people creating jobs for themselves, either as entrepreneurs or within companies. Nolin coaches clients who want to move to a different type of role to write a job description for the desired role. If they propose it as a b usiness problem and position themselves as the expert to solve that problem, theres a good chance the position will get created.Find your voice to ask for what you want, Ruiz writes. Everybody has the right to tell you no or yes, but you always have the right to ask. By not assuming an automatic No, you might just find a big fat Yes.