Some insights here, but also some rehash for me. If you believe everything these techno geeks say, it won’t be long before we’re living in pods with machines catering to us. Not sure I’m ready to disconnect from the real world to that extent. I was particularly taken with AI as it is already developing and search engines and such. Kelly makes a compelling case for AI sneaking up on us in very specialized forms rather than as a general human sort of intelligence. ( )

Not great, but not terrible. I've generally like Kelly's thoughts over the years, but it just went on and on and on about the same dozen companies and how they were harnessing these inevitable technologies so well. There was a bit of fantastical futurism that I love reading, but it gets bogged down by the pending oligarchy where a handful of companies control everything about us. Onward we go. ( )

When it comes to the future and technological advance, I think there are generally three responses: 1) fear. 2) dismissal. 3) awe-inspired worship. Kelly undoubtedly falls into third grouping. I sit uncomfortably in the first. For that reason, I really really did not like the book. In fact I put it down twice to read something else. It genuinely gave me anxiety.

That said, it was not what I expected. I had thought the "12 Technological Forces" were going to be specific technologies, such as VR, the Internet of Things, the brain-net, AI, or some other life-altering technology in the making. That and so many more technologies are described in detail, but his "forces" - and chapter titles - are trends or trajectories of where he sees us going. Here they are:

1) Becoming: Moving from fixed products to always upgrading services and subscriptions. We will be forever noobs having to learn new things.
2) Cognifying: Making everything much smarter using cheap, powerful AI that we get from the cloud. The general innovation was to electrify all new produces. Now we will cognify them.
3) Flowing: Depending on unstoppable streams in real-time for everything. Infinite scroll wins.
4) Screening: Turning all surfaces into screens. The "people of the book" are becoming the "people of the screen."
5) Accessing: Shifting society from one where we own assets, to one where instead we will have access to services at all times. Delayed gratification becomes a relic of the past.
6) Sharing: Collaboration at mass-scale. Here he assumes ownership will less and less common. Consider spotify, netflix, uber, amazon kindle, etc.
7) Filtering: Harnessing intense personalization in order to anticipate our desires
8) Remixing: Unbundling existing products into their most primitive parts and then recombine in all possible ways
9) Interacting: Immersing ourselves inside our computers to maximize their engagement. If you can't interact with it, it must be broken.
10) Tracking: Employing total surveillance for the benefit of citizens and consumers.
11) Questioning: Promoting good questions are far more valuable than good answers. Answers, it turns out, are cheap... and getting cheaper.
12) Beginning: Constructing a planetary system connecting all humans and machines into a global matrix.

At first glance (and even after reading the book), it's easy to be skeptical of some them. In particular that last chapter, which I just just finished is really where he moves from being an enthusiast to a worshiper. In a thousand years, he says, humans will look back on this time as the beginning of wild wonder (my phrase). And yet, I can't help but wonder if they're look back and cringe at the ignorance.

However, as he goes through each "force," he walks through an argument for each that is compelling. And that is the reason the book is worth reading - namely, to me it seems he is (mostly) correct in his assessment of the future. That and he gives a thorough description of all sorts of technologies alive(?) and well today, or in 2016 when it was written....

A few ideas really stick out to me. First, in the tracking chapter, he goes through a long long list of ways we are already being tracked, which is a bit uncomfortable. His response was to describe a spectrum between privacy and personalization. The less privacy we have the better our recommendations will be.

In the screening chapter, he describes the culture clash between "people of the book" and "people of the screen." Despite falling resolutely with books, I cannot help but recognize the inevitable (or all but certain) shift toward more screens.

In Questioning, he praises the importance of good questions and gives solid insight on the fact that an answer yields two more questions. Therefore, as our knowledge grows exponentially so do our questions, which means our known ignorance - or the space between our answers and our questions - grows exponentially as well.

He shares the famous quote: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." He pushes back on this idea, and goes on to cherish the "active mind" that the internet promotes, in contrast to a "contemplative mind." This, I cannot disagree with more.

All-in-all, the book did provide key insights on what is and likely to come, and it was more philosophical in nature than I expected. I felt also that it was just too long. Half of what he said could have been cut. Also, he offers basically no critique of technology, or really any sort of help on how to navigate the coming onslaught of life altering changes in the near future. In short, he welcomes it all. The old serendipity prayer starts, "Help me to accept the things I cannot change...." If it all really is "inevitable," I can't help but think he's onto something.... ( )

Some people cannot be cured of optimism. If only the author could compare his previous predictions with reality. I fear that even if he wanted to do that he would take his life as a representative example of reality and somehow believe that everyone in the world is like him.

I am punching the next person who quotes the future is not evenly distributed line. ( )

I'd heard Kevin Kelly on several podcasts and found him intriguing. This book is a nice look into the mind of silicon valley, but it presents a very myopic view of what may or more importantly should happen as technology progresses. ( )