I’ve finished reading the book The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. It is a novel about a brave new world that we could face in this century, when nanotechnology is pervasive. I quite enjoyed the book. It is clear that the author really did his homework on nanotech. The book is titled “The Diamond Age” because a significant milestone in nanotech will be when diamonds can be manufactured artificially to atomic precision. The possible applications of “diamondoid” will be huge. For example, coating a replacement artificial organ with a super-thin layer of diamond will render it completely non-reactive with your immune system.
One reason I was drawn to reading this book was because mega-millionaire VC Steve Jervetson lists it as his favorite. (Steve was a key funder of Hotmail before it got bought by Microsoft.)
Besides being a fun read, the book really got me thinking about the huge changes that we’ll be going through as a society in the coming years and how the evolution of technology is accelerating. If you feel it is hard to keep up now with all the latest stuff, it is going to get a lot harder. In fact, according to the brilliant Ray Kurzweil, at today’s rate of change the last 100 years of technology development could fit into the next 20 years, but because it is continuing to accelerate, it would actually fit into the next 12. Steve Jurvetson has some interesting things to say about accelerating change and societal shock.
Just think how absurd it would have sounded to someone living 100 years ago to hear that people will be walking down the street apparently talking to themselves, wearing a tiny earbud in their ear — in actuality they’re talking to people who are halfway around the world.
Now imagine that things you currently deem to be science fiction could very well become reality in just 12 years time. Can you keep up? Can your business keep up? Businesses that’ll win in this new world order won’t be the ones that merely cope with accelerating change, they’ll be the ones that embrace it. In fact, I think this resilience, flexibility, and enthusiasm for things to come will need to be part of their corporate DNA.
The next book on my recreational reading list is a brand new one from my friend and colleague Ramez Naam called More Than Human. In addition to being a nanotech visionary, Mez is also an exec on the MSN Search team.
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Still to this day, I find people who talk endlessly even tho there arn’t any actual persons there to engage that conversation, a bit odd. I was looking at this fellow the other day in the car next to mine at the stoplight. he was waving his hands in the air, and soon I had decided that he wasn’t psychotic, but was “talking with his hands”, as I myself have done a time or two.
About things changing and the acceleration of that flow of manifested reality, there is only one true rule of thought when it comes to change, and that is that change is enevitable. We can embrace it, or fear it. Or… we can have faith, in our Ideal. My own personal Ideal incorporates change in several dimensions simultainiously.
Things that I’m looking forward to in the next 12 years, and actually I think that this number should more accurately be 7 years, are levitating vehicles, one supreme world government & a computer that you can roll up like a magazine & has all 5 senses interacting.
I look forward to reading your future posts.