Monday, June 27, 2016

The Inevitable book review


My 6-word review of The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly:
The inevitable is the new impossible. 
I know that's long-winded, but what do you expect from a mountainultratrailrunner? Especially since Marc Andreessen already put out his 2-word review: "Automatic must-read."


The book is about understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future:
  1. Becoming
  2. Cognifying
  3. Flowing
  4. Screening
  5. Accessing
  6. Sharing
  7. Filtering
  8. Remixing
  9. Interacting
  10. Tracking
  11. Questioning
  12. Beginning
These trajectories are not destinies. They simply tell us that in the near future we are inevitably headed in these directions. We will all be 'Endless Newbies' in 'Protopia' (pro as in progress and process).


For example, the wearable activity gadgets will much improve in the next few years. They will access, screen and track every aspect of the flux and immediately share the stream with the cloud. The emphasis will shift from hardware products to software services.


Cheap parallel computation, big data and better algorithms mean AI will be soon embedded in everything. Human coaches (like most current professions) will be replaced by machine intelligence. Yes robots will take our jobs, but we will have new jobs with more time to exercise! :)


Of course many things could go wrong, but ever-optimistic KK is not worried about AI or anything. I really hope he is right in saying: "This is the best time ever in human history to begin," One thing is certain: we haven't seen nothing yet.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Not sure if I like the idea of *more* information noise available. For me the luxury of working out is the *absence of noise* … Of course there are situations when AI is very handy and taking over a lot of chore work (e.g. navigation, well that's actually more a search request than AI but anyway). I'm all for de-acceleration. I'm curious what will come this way… 
Nice review btw ;)

Jukka Kukkonen said...

Thanks Paul! I don't want info noise either. AI will process it all for you. You don't have to pay attention. AI will help you get better at whatever you are doing. It may also help you to think different, because AI intelligence can be totally different from a human mind. In today's world it's not enough to be smarter, you also need to be more creative and innovative for success.

For example World Champion Chess player Magnus Carlsen has trained with AI. He has a free app Play Magnus, which I downloaded. I just beat him in chess - at 5-year-old level. The AI in the app emulated a young Magnus on purpose. Next I can try to play against older Magnus. This way the AI makes it more fun for me to learn and improve my chess. These cheap AI-augmented programs have inspired more people than ever to play chess. The general level of playing has also improved.