The group was the first to get a run-through of my new concept framework Vectors of Disruption, shown below, which I used to introduce and frame the rest of my presentation.

Click on the image for the full-size pdf

Some brief thoughts on the framework:

The first comment is that I – as many others – am not a fan of the word ‘disruption’, which has lost much of its meaning through misuse and overuse in recent years. However I cannot find a better word for what is meant here. I’m very open to other suggestions!

Overall the intent of the framework is to distinguish between the different layers that are driving disruption, from the underlying forces, through the high-impact developments and finally key structural shifts. These are often confused, making the mechanisms – or vectors – of disruption far harder to understand.

The framework is of course immensely simplified. There are many other elements that could have been included, such as demographics, however many of these will play out over a longer period.

Underlying Forces

The most common focus is on Information technologies, with past future exponential growth in Data, Processing, and Connectivity, which a long runway yet for these trends. Advancing Interface technologies are also critical in giving people far deeper engagement to information.

Technologies in other domains, including Materials, Health and Energy are also impacting not just these industries, but many others, including construction, infrastructure, manufacturing and transport.

Expectations are continuing to rise on every front. Societal expectations, notably of sustainability and accountability, seem to be shifting into higher gears. Customers are demanding powerful experiences and customization. Another important force is that of shifting Investor expectations, who not only expect consistent growth, but also scalability and constant renewal.

High-impact developments

Here we can catalog the array of technology buzzwords that soak through almost every business presentation you are likely to see this year, such as AI, Robotics, Big Data and VR. While these developments are hyped, they individually are likely to have a massive impact on business and society, and even more when they are combined. However there are also important non-technological developments, including Power to the individual and active Capital reallocation by investors.

Structural shifts

While it is bold to point to only two fundamental structural shifts in the economy, I believe they will be responsible for the majority of structural change in coming years.
Automation in manufacturing has already significantly played out, however we are really just at the beginning of the impact of automation – as the application of AI and robotics in a work context – on not just almost all job roles, but how organizations function.
Platforms are the fundamental mechanism underlying the network economy. Beyond the evident rise of marketplaces in transport, accommodation, work, and many other domains, platforms also encompass blockchain and crypto-currencies, open innovation structures, and new models of reintermediation.

Disruption

It is clear that these forces, developments and shifts mean that existing Business models are unlikely to be sustainable without changes, sometimes evolutionary, sometimes revolutionary. However we also need to focus on other domains of disruption, including Organizational structures, Urban structure, Education and the Role of Government. Perhaps most importantly there is potentially massive disruption to existing Social structures. Understanding and shaping this in positive directions – to the degree possible – is everyone’s responsibility.

Of course this framework only looks at the vectors and structure of disruption, not the responses or solutions. I will be creating other frameworks soon that focus on what we need to do to create successful outcomes in a disrupted world.

As always this framework is released as a Beta v1, not intended to be final, but a first attempt that will be refined over time if useful. So please let me know your comments, ideas, and constructive criticism so that can be incorporate into subsequent versions.

Asimov not only invented the word “robotics,” his “Three Laws of Robotics,” first written as part of a short story in 1942, have had a massive impact on framing how people think about the development of artificial intelligence and the field of robotics itself.

Outside scientific domains, Asimov’s many writings have also inspired several popular movies including Bicentennial Man and I, Robot. His IMDb page shows contributions to various televisions series throughout his life, as well as a number of posthumous writing credits.

Perhaps most amazing are Asimov’s many accurate predictions on the Internet and what the world would look like in this decade. Several were in made a famous article published in The New York Times in 1964, which envisioned life in 2014.

Below are some of Isaac Asimov’s most accurate predictions.

On robotics:

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

On space:

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works.”

“Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space.”

On the human race:

“Not all the world’s population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the full. A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively.”

“Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”

On solar energy:

“Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical.”

On what would become smartphones and tablets:

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.”

On food:

“Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.”

On the Internet:

Further noteworthy and prophetic statements from Asimov emerged during a 1988 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers.

“Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where you can ask any question and be given answers, you can look up something you’re interested in knowing, however silly it might seem to someone else.”

“Now, with the computer, it’s possible to have a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

“One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice.”

Image source: Zakeena

Their interview with me on mind-machine interfaces was published under the ‘Exciting’ section:

2017 will be the year computers and humans start talking to each other, like really talking, according to futurist Ross Dawson, who also says there are some surprises in store for humanity as artificial intelligence becomes even more intertwined in our lives.

“The accelerating pace of a number of different technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, greatly facilitates how we can interact with machines,” he says.

“The ability to use our voices to control our machines, which is obviously not new, the promise is that even within the coming year, the developments in capabilities of the technology will mean that we can start to have far more natural fluid conversations with machines.”

Dawson says we are going to be interacting with AI in a much more natural way by the end of 2017, but that is just the beginning.

“Some of the more exciting developments are around thought interfaces, so using our thoughts to control machines.

“A lot of this is underpinned by new approaches to AI, this is underpinned by increasing processing power, but advances in machine learning, and deep learning which are particular approaches to artificial intelligence have been absolutely extraordinary in terms of their capabilities — including speech recognition, and the ability to be able to create natural responses.

“One thing, which already has happened, is essentially computer-mediated telepathy.

“It’s not necessarily going to be something which all of us are doing by the end of 2017, but we will start to see more and more examples and a further degree of development of the ability for us to basically transfer our thoughts to others just by thinking.

“Essentially they use sensors around our brain to detect brain activity, and to pick those up and to then use something in proximity to our brain to evoke that particular thought.

“We already are able to get a sense of some of the images people are thinking about in their own mind through external sensors, and it is possible that we can start to evoke some of those images in other people’s minds using external sensors.”

If this conjures visions of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a leather jacket, you might be surprised to learn Dawson envisages a different future for how humans and machines interact.

“The reality is we will be more emotionally engaged with robots, we already have begun to have emotional relationships with robots — a cute little robot pet for instance — but as we can start to have conversations with them I think many people will be surprised at how they actually have feelings about what they know is ‘just a program’.

“We are walking into a world where we will have significant emotional ties to some of these technologies.

“There are many people that may think this is a terrible thing, but that is just the nature of who we are, we are emotional beings, and when we start to have interactions we will become emotionally engaged. We’ve already had significant use of therapeutic robots for aged care and dementia, we’ve also seen for example robots that clear landmines in Afghanistan have been given names by their handlers — they start to feel an identity with these robots, which are going out to defuse mines.

“We certainly emotionally bond with our pets and I think to a certain extent we bond with our tools — a mechanic can have a favourite tool — but now when they start to interact with us it is just expressing the nature out of our humanity that we will be emotionally engaging sometimes deeply.”

Image: Bernard Spragg NZ

One of the interviews was on ABC News 24, as below.

Some of the points I discussed were

• Whether the pace of destruction of jobs will exceed the pace of creation of jobs
• Artificial intelligence is impacting both manual and knowledge-based jobs
• Some types of decisions are better made by machines, some by humans, and the boundary is continually shifting
• Many jobs will be in helping people to make better decisions, by analyzing, interpreting and visualizing information
• There is a creative, innovative space for new jobs to emerge
• Human-centred design – making technology and the world work well for us – can only be done by humans
• Empathy and the capability to relate to others together with innovation will be at the heart of many jobs of the future
• Trends towards technology will engender countervailing responses
• Even if technology can do things, many will still choose to do them for themselves, such as cooking and driving

Here are a couple of the quotes from me:

On Immersive Reality:

Futurist Ross Dawson, who heads Advanced Human Technologies Group, says the debut of Facebook’s Oculus Rift (and a host of other virtual reality head-sets arriving next year) is his “big game changer”. It will be arriving in the first quarter of 2016. Dawson believes it could transform the retail, travel, education and property industries. It is not augmented reality (as in Google Glass) but immersive​ reality: the images move in sync with a user’s head movements.

It could be used to offer virtual snapshots of off-plan apartments to prospective property buyers, give travellers the opportunity to peruse a virtual city or visit a mock art gallery in cyberspace, Dawson says. “You could immerse yourself in a battlefield or spend a virtual day in Rome, Paris or Berlin.”

On Automation:

Dawson expects to see greater automation in the retail and hospitality sectors, but believes fast food outlets will be the first to deploy robots. He mentions US-based Orchard Supply Hardware whose “OSHbot” answers questions and directs customers to products. There is also California’s Aloft Hotel, run by three-foot-high (91cm) “botlrs” which have 7-inch touchscreens to interact with patrons.

Here are videos of these robots:

Companies large and small need to be actively thinking about and exploring how these kinds of new technologies will change their business, and how they can seize the emerging opportunities.

Click on the image to see a video of the segment:

In the segment I pointed to some of the broader trends shaping the future of work, as well as particular jobs that would be disappearing or growing.

REFEREES are an excellent example of the kind of work that is on the verge of being automated. Judgment and decision-making is required, however those decisions needs to be based on as full data as possible. Human referees can only have one view of events. While many sports are starting to allow computer data to be used, such as whether the ball has crossed the line in soccer, these are only in limited instances.

Of course judging whether there has been a foul is far less cut-and-dried. However multiple cameras on all action, combined with machine learning algorithms fed by thousands of examples of what does and does not constitute a foul, could probably already perform better than most human referees on the field. Sportspeople’s and fans’ willingness to embrace the new technology is another issue, however there are few who would dearly hang on to the flaws of human referees.

DESIGN is in a way the defining domain of the future, in shaping technology, products, and indeed everything in our world so it best suits humans. Design requires creativity, and even more it requires a deep understanding of what it is to be human, and how we want to experience the world. In the segment I used the example of emotional robot designers, those who design machines to interact with us on an emotional level.

While it sounds like a specialist role, in the broadest sense it will be a massive job sector. We need to design effective emotional engagement into the technologies we create. Design will be at the heart of the 21st century, and design work will grow massively, because it requires uniquely human capabilities to forge a human-centric world.

As a society we need to be thinking deeply about how automation will impact today’s and tomorrow’s jobs. Many jobs will disappear, yet there will massive demand for many domains of human talent.

Considering this we can shape our companies, educational institutions, and personal journeys to where prosperity lies.

It’s an excellent report, bringing together contributions from leading researchers from Australia and globally, looking at the exceptional challenges of the changing landscape of work, and some of the policy prescriptions that will help nations and their citizens to prosper.

One of the highlights of the report was an analysis of the likelihood of automation replacing jobs in Australia, adapting the methodology used by the Oxford Martin Institute in examining the risk of job losses in the US.

The Australian study looked at the likelihood of different job sectors being replaced by automation.

Source: CEDA

The report notes:

40 per cent of current jobs have a high probability (greater than 0.7) of being computerised or automated in the next 10 to 15 years. This is a lower figure than that for the US (50 per cent) – we believe due to smaller numbers of workers in the service sector – and is comparable to the UK.

The study went on to look at the geographical distribution of potential job losses, extending on the methodology of the original report.

The report notes that in fact physical labor and machinery operation have a high chance of being automated, meaning that in fact highly physical industries such as mining will significantly disrupted.

Regions with high dependence on mining (Western Australia and Queensland in particular) will suffer a bigger impact from automation and computerisation.

Within cities such as Sydney, shown above, the knowledge-intensive inner city will be least affected, while the edges of the city are likely to be more affected. The authors say:

These… simply underline many of the messages in the national data: The jobs that will remain will most likely be those in professional, technical and creative areas.

it is critically important to convey to policy makers the degree of potential impact of the automation of jobs. However digging deeper to look at specifically what kinds of jobs are at risk, and the regions and even suburbs that will be most affected, start to provide real insight into the policies and actions that need to happen now to mitigate risks and seize opportunities.

An interesting article titled The uncertain future of work reviewed some of the ideas presented by speakers at the event. On my session it reports:

Ross Dawson is a leading futurist, entrepreneur and strategy advisor. He sees relationships and creativity as essential attributes in the future working world, arguing that “human relationships, relating, understanding, empathy, engaging” are what sets us apart from machines. He says “the most important part of education is playing because it’s engaging with others, socialising”. Similarly, creativity is a particularly human attribute and Dawson is excited about the potential for education to foster thinking that can promote new ideas that “bring together things that have never been connected before and express that in a new way visually through words, through imagination, through arts”.

The ultimate capability is to combine capabilities. Imagine a world where computers support doctors’ decisions by scanning tens of thousands of articles to synthesise data, evidence, drug interactions and so on and then make a recommendation; the doctor’s specialisation and the computer’s complementary information, providing better, faster and more imaginative ways of solving problems.

The days when rote learning were useful – if they ever existed – are long gone. The role of education today is to foster our intrinsically human characteristics and capabilities. There is nothing more valuable than being able to play – with objects, with ideas, and with people.

Today’s schools – not to mention universities – do not teach us how to play, in fact they very actively stifle those capabilities. At very least they should allow our natural instincts of play to remain, far better they should teach us to play even better.

That is how humans will keep ahead of machines.

While daytime TV isn’t an ideal form to discuss all of the ins and outs of big issues, we did start to discuss some of the advantages of driverless cars. Some of these are:

* Safety. Humans are highly fallible, as self-driving cars improve we can be confident they will in the (vast) majority of cases be safer than human drivers.

* Vehicle efficiency. Driverless cars can be continually operational and do not need to be tied to a single driver, meaning we can have far fewer vehicles.

* Fuel and road efficiency. Self-driving cars can be designed to be far more energy-efficient, and once there is a sufficient proportion of self-driving cars on the road, they can interact with each other to create optimal road efficiency, reducing traffic jams and travel time.

* Time and attention. Across major cities globally, average daily commute time is an hour or longer. This adds up to two weeks of waking time a year that is available for work, entertainment, or socializing.

* No drunk driving. Depending on your perspective, this creates far safer roads, or more opportunities to over-indulge.

* Free up parking spaces. Self-driving cars can drop people off and trundle off to somewhere convenient. The massive amount of parking in prime destinations can be freed up for better uses.

Of course there is not only upside. Beyond the technological, regulatory, and financial issues that need to be addressed to get driverless cars common on the roads, there will be a real impact on jobs as drivers transition to other work, as well as the reality that technology is vulnerable to compromise.

There is a very high degree of uncertainty on the pace of adoption of driverless cars, as it is driven by regulatory change. While four states in the US, UK and France are allowing driverless cars on the road for testing, suggesting that other countries could follow suit and the technology rapidly become widespread, that could easily change.

However the social and environmental benefits are compelling. Let’s make it happen.

However in preparing for some TV interviews at the turn of the year I have pulled together 7 themes that will help define 2015. Here they are, together with illustrative videos.

1. Robots are here

Robots have so long being part of science fiction that many have come to believe they will never arrive. With recent technological advances, the age of robots is finally beginning, with humanoid robots finally entering the mainstream in work, retail, aged care, the home and even warfare.

2. From reactive to predictive medicine

Health and medicine has traditionally been about reacting when we get sick. New technologies are turning it around, allowing us to constantly monitor ourselves so we can take action before we get sick. We can get direct feedback to help us change behaviours, and DNA analysis means we can soon get medicines that are personalised for us alone. Health management tomorrow will be very different from health today.

3. Technology is fashion

Technology is not just a fashion accessory, but fashion itself. Smartwatches are making tech giants into purveyors of fashion, and establishment French and Swiss luxury companies are becoming tech firms. Clothes themselves are becoming ‘smart’ as textiles embed technology, monitoring our health, communicating with friends, and displaying people’s moods for all to see.

4. Immersive entertainment

Entertainment is going beyond watching to experiencing. Facebook, having purchased Oculus Rift for $2 billion, as well as Samsung and others are launching virtual reality headsets that will allow people to feel immersed in movies and games. Other immersive technologies that may emerge in 2015 include Star Wars-like holographic communication on mobile phones and the highly secretive Magic Leap, which has attracted a $500 million investment from Google with a mission to transform entertainment.

5. Technology transforms finance

Money, payments and investment are all being transformed by technology. Cash is rapidly disappearing from our lives as payments by mobile and biometric identification become commonplace. Artificially intelligent ‘robo-advisors’, already commonplace in the US, will compete with human financial advisors in helping us make wealth planning decisions.

6. Reversing ageing

Humankind has never been satisfied with mortality. New figures show that the life expectancy of Australians has increased 4.8 years over the last 24 years, more than in any other developed country. Now heavily-funded medical research promises to rapidly extend our longevity. Scientists have recently successfully reversed ageing in mice, with human trials now in progress. Beyond leading-edge medicine, healthier habits of many Australians and changed attitudes are dramatically shifting the perception of age, with an increasing number of 60 year-olds being as vital as our image of 40 year-olds.

7. It’s easy to be perfect

The debate over air-brushed models in magazines has moved on. Now powerful editing tools make it easy for anyone to make themselves look wonderful in photos, and we will soon be able to choose how we look in video calls, making us appear well-dressed, perfectly groomed and made-up even if we’ve just dragged ourselves out of bed. Social media is allowing people to shape how they are perceived online, making boring lives glamourous and fraught relationships appear perfect. We are making our lives appear flawless, and are only seeing the shiny gloss of others’ lives.