The Industries of The Future — book review
Author: Alec Ross
Genre: nonfiction; government, business, politics, economics, futurism
Rating: 4/5
In one sentence: this book gives you a front-row seat peeking into the future of a wide range of fascinating industries and other upcoming innovations.
Where to begin? This book touches on a great many important subjects related to the future of the world and our role in it as human beings. Robotics, the financial industry, government, what to teach our children, the dominance of Silicon Valley, China; you name it, it’s in here.
When you know a little about Alec Ross’ background this is not surprising: his most prominent role was Senior Advisor of Innovation to Hillary Clinton during her period as Secretary of State. In that role, he traveled the world meeting with anybody, anywhere, involved in groundbreaking innovation. This means the book is first and foremost an interesting peek into the future; what wonderful, scary and disrupting products, services and other trends might await us?
But Ross goes deeper than mere curiosities. He also looks at the impact all these developments have on society, and what this means for the future of our kids. In doing so, he compares Silicon Valley to ancient Rome, “extracting tribute” from faraway provinces. He also foresees a rise in popularity of liberal arts studies (to facilitate creative thinking amidst the rise of automation) and recommends your kids to get into the field of “cybersecurity” if they want a guaranteed job in the decades ahead.
“Overall, robots can be a boon, freeing up humans to do more productive things — but only so long as humans create the systems to adapt their workforces, economies, and societies to the inevitable disruption.”
While his book is by no means only about robotics, this quote symbolizes the overall premise of the book: lots of change and disruption is ahead of us, and we can only survive (and hopefully) thrive if we adapt not only ourselves, but also our systems of government, education and economics.
> The Industries of the Future
Goes well with: the rise of automation and robotics is a recurring theme in The Industries of the Future. Combined with The Second Machine Age, you’ll get a good idea of how we might cope with this oncoming change.
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