What Technology Comes after the Smartphone?
Articles on the next technology, what happens after COVID and the best books of the year are all popular topics this yearend holiday season. My book list is at the end of the article, my thoughts on post-COVID economics are here and my latest thoughts on technology follow.
Brian Arthur, one of the developers of complexity economics and a former Stanford Professor, said in his latest book The Nature of Technology that technologies emerge to solve a problem at a particular time. In other words, each technology has a purpose. Over time it is adopted in new domains to solve more and more problems and becomes what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm. To answer the question in the article title about the next big technology, perhaps we should instead look at the purpose to be served by the technologies rather than the technologies themselves.
Last year I read Nicholas Mirzoeff’s excellent book, How to See the World. Mirzoeff makes the interesting observation that photography captured art in an instant process rather than waiting a month for the rendering process. Given how basic sensory perception is, Mirzoeff’s insight got me thinking about the relationship between technology and the senses.
During summer vacation I visited the Thomas Edison Estate and Museum in Fort Myers, FL. This a wonderful museum that traces the history of America’s most prolific inventor and patent holder on the estate where he wintered away from the New Jersey cold. When I processed the visit I realized that Edison redesigned the sensory perceptions of sound and vision. Using the newly developed technology of electricity, and combining it with other technologies for the first time, he gave us the phonograph and the motion picture. The phonograph gave us recorded music and the motion picture gave us video. These technologies were at the birth of the 2nd Industrial Revolution and electricity was combined with other technologies to also give us the radio and Edison’s light bulb. These inventions also changed sensory perception.
If we roll forward to the 3rd Industrial Revolution (3IR) beginning in the 1960s, what we see is a repeat of the 2IR. Claude Shannon’s Information Theory showed that any waveform could be digitized and the emerging computing power revolutionized the scope of digital signals to take over recorded music and then video. The application of digitized music and video is still evolving and continuing to disrupt industries in its wake. Again sight and sound perception is redefined. What about touch, taste and smell? If you review the senses, there are only two activities that involve all five senses — eating and reproduction — the most basic human activities. Some people include fishing, but the role of smell looks to me to be a stretch .
As we look at the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) rolling out now, we should look for how sensory perception will be redefined by technology. I think we will see the technology replace the human perception. For example, dogs smell people and can determine whether or not they have COVID-19. Then researchers at FIU take a swab of the person’s skin to capture the chemical signature of the person’s smell. Applying artificial intelligence to the database of chemical signatures identifies the chemical signature of COVID-19. Soon we will have devices to identify diseases of people using smell and for other purposes and our sense of smell will become less and less important. Using AI in the creation of art may be another example. Art is a perception of the abstract to translate it into tangible writing, art or music. Each observer sees a different outcome. Computers are already creating pictures drawn in the style of the old Masters and soon all the great artists will be duplicated. Soon AI will create the art and equally important tell us what art is the genuine article. If AI-assisted art creation becomes a consumer rage, in 150 years the old Masters will only be “old”. Virtual Reality (VR) is another obvious example, but this technology has still not found its first universal application. There is no Excel application that launched the personal computer in the near term outlook for VR. Perhaps implanted sensors will be the application for sound. Perhaps implanted biosensors will assist all the senses and these sensors will emerge as a paradigm technology of the 4IR. Bring on the Cyborgs, we may be ready! Touch may be the last sensory frontier, but your robot companion may not care about your touch.
I have not reviewed the First Industrial Revolution (1IR) and the earmark change in perception as a result of technology. I think the 1IR technology was the newspaper which enabled information to be democratized and reach the masses quickly. Therefore, the change in perception was the ability to capture information in a different time span similar to photography. Thinking about it, every industrial revolution has changed the speed with which information moved and moved it closer to real-time. For example, the radio in the 2IR and the Internet in the 3IR. The bio-physical sensors mentioned above for the 4IR would open real-time information to a whole new range of inputs and define personalized medicine.
In conclusion, to see the technology opportunity ahead, a rich area to consider is to change how sensory perception is enhanced by technology. Another equally rich opportunity, change the speed with which “real time” information is defined and the source of that information.
Note: The Thomas Edison Estate is an intense visual and intellectual immersion into the technology of Thomas Edison. This immersion heightens the opportunity for pattern recognition to operate well. I had a similar experience at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona where I was able to draw so many new insights about Picasso. I recommend single purpose museums about individuals if you want to find new insights about the person or their work.
Book Recommendations
1. The Nature of Technology, W.Brian Arthur
2. How to See the World, Nicholas Mirzoeff
3. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, M. Mitchell Waldrop
4. Prediction Machines, AJ Agarwal
5. From Matter to Life, Sara Imari Walker
6. Scale, Geoffrey West
Books 3 and 5 are exceptional in their insight. 1, 2 and 6 are fundamental works in my opinion. 4 redefines how we think about information, for which there is no suitable classification of importance. Reading order — 1, 6, 4, 2,3,5. We take no responsibility for any restructuring of your view of cognition, epistemology or reality.
If you have extra time, read this excellent article from MIT on Shannon’s information theory. In fact, read a good article on Information Theory every holiday season and then watch Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” talk on YouTube to remind yourself that human-centric approaches to problem-solving are a critical factor.
Happy holidays.
