I have delineated ten phases in “the technology integration of man” – four before this moment, and six to come. Step back and think about the time we live in now as being in the middle of a 100 year continuum. We can go back 50 years and review how technology has blossomed for us, then look forward 50 years to what it will become. It is helpful to view our time in this way because it will make you conscious that we are on a fantastic journey of integrating technology into our lives, and early enough with it still that we do not really understand the impact. Not only is the fact we are becoming more dependent on technology interesting, but also what it is and will do to us as human beings.
In the beginning, we had basic calculating machines. These were mechanical and had no electrical parts. A person could press a series of buttons and then pull down a handle to get an answer to some mathematical question. These actually came to being around the turn of the century, and were the only devices that could be classified as information technology because they were the first devices that could create a piece of knowledge for us mechanically. (Well, that is if you set aside the abacus.) The only impact these had on our lives was to speed up the ability to do simple math. Yet, they also created a fork in the road because for the first time, we could assemble a machine that calculated something on our behalf so that our minds did not have to go through the process of calculating. The impact on our lives was minimal because these devices really helped with small tasks on a small scale. It is important to understand that this first phase lasted for decades, and was only replaced with the advent of mainframes.
The second phase is signified by the growth and development of mainframes. We now moved out of the realm of a mechanical device that could calculate to an electronic device. This was a huge change in the scale of calculation that could be done because now, for the first time, a machine was able to crunch numbers and data at a speed and level of accuracy that was not really possible by a team of humans. Sure, we could do the math, but it would take too long to get it done, and any weak link in the chain of humans would cause a major deficiency.
They were called “thinking machines” at times because to humans in that day, the machines actually offloaded the task of calculating on a huge scale and this made the machines appear to be able to think. Of course they only processed data that was fed to them in strict means of holes in punch cards or the like. The impact of mainframes was very different than the mechanical calculators before them. Mainframes were used in World War II with great impact. They invented secret codes, broke secret codes, processed huge amounts of military data, and allowed man to find answers inside of data that had been locked away heretofore. This time, technology became indispensable to man, and for the first time, proved itself to be able to change world events. Once again, this phase lasted for decades before the next phase came to be.
The next two stages will bring us up to the current times. The reason it is important to understand what is happening with humanity and the integration of technology into our lives is because we are finding this integration/dependence on tech is constantly altering our quality of life, how we work, and even the social strata of society. It is critical that we don’t get “lost in the forest for the trees.” I have given lots of thought as to these stages and what they will mean for us and the picture it creates is intriguing.
Phase three was the advent of personal computers. For the first time in history, we moved the power of a computer into the hands of the individual, and away from the IT department. A couple of interesting things to note are that this stage came approx. 40 years after the mainframe era, and that it put the power and creative field of software development into the hands of hobbyists. This meant that the time between stages was starting to shrink, and that there would now be millions of people that could apply their innovative ideas into code that could be sold on the market directly to users. In other words, the economy was augmented with a new product set that would allow Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe, and many others to become multi-billion dollar companies. For those of us that lived through this time, it was a fantastic adventure of getting more and more powerful computers annually, and participating in the burdening software market where the person next door might write an application and hand it to you on a 5 ¼ floppy for $10. This era exploded and grew at a substantial rate for about 15 years, which brought us the next stage.
Phase four was the power of the Internet, or the Web to be more specific. The Internet as a technology had been around for a while, but not until the World Wide Web was created by putting a graphical front end and hyper-linking into the mix, did it really take off as a tool the masses grabbed a hold of. Now for the first time, humanity had a collective way to post and store data that could be accessed by anyone else in the world. We now had an underlying communication infrastructure that was electronic and extremely low cost. The Web started with people creating a single page, then they added sub pages, then e-commerce, then an explosion of applications that helped us find things on the Web, communicate in a myriad of ways over this network, and collaborate. Again, an interesting dynamic was that this stage came in half the time as the previous stage, and our adoption rate of this new technology was incredible. For the first time in humanity, we are connected to one another in an unfiltered way where any one person can “talk” to more than a billion people for free. And we the people get to decide what is valuable by reading it and voting it up or down if we choose. Talk about a democracy!
So how have these four stages changed us? To list all of the ways would take many pages so in order to just think the big thoughts, let’s just pull out a few basics. This integration of technology into our lives so far has dramatically improved our quality of life by bringing us information to our fingertips that we never had. It allows us to entertain ourselves, heal ourselves, and work in completely new ways that are more flexible than any time in the past. It has begun a huge change in the economy and who can do what work from where. The types of jobs people hold are moving quickly from manufacturing to knowledge based or technology development. Along with this list of positives, we have the negative. Kids who are addicted to technology and lose touch with reality for awhile. Unfiltered access to information for young people who are seeing and being exposed to things earlier than is wise, and the enabling of adults who struggle with a myriad of moral problems. Without our recognizing the transitions, we are all moving quickly through foundational changes in how society operates.
Step back for a just a second and think about the fact that from 1940 to the present time, we invented mainframes, then reduced that power to PC’s, then created the Web to connect and leverage the collective thinking of anyone that has access. This was a mere 70 years, and the trend is toward faster adoption and creation of new stages. Although interesting in a historical way, the more interesting thing will be what the next 70 years will provide.
Now we are getting into the most interesting part of how we will become more, and more, integrated with technology. As we sit here today, we are somewhere between stage four and five on the Klososky vision of things and stage four was the Internet. We are still feeling the effects, and reaping the rewards of this major step forward. The intriguing thing for me with my futurist hat on is that it is pretty clear what the next stages will be, because we already have prototypes being built of the systems that define the next large leaps we will take with integration.
Phase five will be known as the era of intelligent software systems. We have been talking about artificial intelligence, expert systems, and knowledge based systems for years, and have been building the early versions in this class of tools. There really is no magic here, it is simply a matter of taking rules that humans use to make decisions and coding those rules into a platform that can ingest data, and apply the rules. We already have expert systems that help us make loan decisions at banks, medical decisions at hospitals, and do claim adjudication in insurance companies. Each year, we improve these systems by encoding more rules, with more variations, and create more trust that the computer can make decisions as well as a human given the same set of data. Like most big leaps forward, there is a slow run up before the major change. The Internet was like that as well in that we had it for years before the Web component was added to and it took off with the masses. Such will be the same pattern with all of the big stages that are coming. The technology will exist for years before it “suddenly” takes off and has major impacts on our lives.
So let’s spin forward what intelligent software will begin to do for us, and to us. As expert systems become more and more sophisticated, they will begin to encompass more rules than any one human could handle. This will create situations where the expert system is literally smarter than a human – or at least can make decisions that will prove to be better on a more frequent basis. An example would be that a healthcare system will be able to diagnose more accurately than any one doctor. This is only surprise to you today if you do not understand how crude some of our diagnostic tools are, and how often doctors are just guessing. Or how about a car insurance rating system that can much more accurately judge what your payment should be by processing 100 factors about your life instead of the 5 or 6 that humans use today. As these systems get better and better, they will become more and more valuable and companies will covet the asset that will be their expert system. These pieces of artificial intelligence will one day be the most valuable asset on the balance sheet.
Then they will become self learning. They will begin to monitor the results of their predictions and decisions and will self-modify their rules based on outcomes. This will quickly allow them to get more and more accurate, and be ever changing with new trends, data, or variables. Will they ever become conscious? No, this is not Matrix territory, these are just highly intelligent pieces of code that know one specific thing very well, and can learn from mistakes. And these will be embedded in devices all around us. We will come to depend on them. We will do what they say without thinking because they will have proven to be dependable. We will eat what they tell us to eat, and drive like they tell us to drive, and handle business decisions the way they tell us to. Except for those rare moments when we think we know better. This is already happening isn’t it. I use a GPS to take the route it tells me and I almost never try my own turns. I go where it says to, when it says to. Turn now please…
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Scott Klososky speaks on technology trends, innovation, and leadership. He’s a former CEO of three technology startups, as well as a successful entrepreneur.
