A Book of Revelations: Exploring THE INDUSTRIES OF THE FUTURE by Alec Ross

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If You're Interested in Where the New Jobs of Tomorrow Will be and How These Changes Will Affect Your Children Over the Coming Decades, You Need to Read This Book. 

At the recent Campus Insight Conference, APSCU President and former congressman Steve Gunderson strongly suggested to an assembly of CIOs and other higher education executives that we should all read this book. Brilliant recommendation.

Anyone who has any reason to be concerned about how the nature of work, employment, education, and the global community will change due the impact of rapidly evolving digital technologies over the coming decades should read The Industries of the Future.

It is hard to imagine anyone whose daily lives will not be touched by the advances explored in this fascinating publication. These advances are all well under way. If you shop, bank, or use a smartphone, you've been affected. If you work in publishing, finance, media, health care, retail, technology, or the military, you've been touched by these changes. In fact, thanks in part to the “leapfrogging” effect that has bought smartphones and other technologies to practically every remote corner of the planet, just about everyone on earth has been part of the chain of technology-driven changes that are altering how the world works in a sweeping way. And the pace of change is quickening.

Advances in robotics, genetics, military (“the weaponization of code”), finance, and big data are going to impact the future of just about every country, every industry, every business, and every individual over the coming decades. The Industries of the Future provides tremendous insights into how this is likely to play out, in an easy to read, engaging format.

The following excerpt is from SimonandShuster.com:

“In The Industries of the Future, Ross shows us what changes are coming … highlighting the best opportunities for progress and explaining why countries thrive or sputter. He examines the specific fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics, cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the coming impact of digital technology on money and markets.

In each of these realms, Ross addresses the toughest questions: How will we adapt to the changing nature of work? Is the prospect of cyberwar sparking the next arms race? How can the world’s rising nations hope to match Silicon Valley in creating their own innovation hotspots? And what can today’s parents do to prepare their children for tomorrow?”

Who is author Alec Ross?

Alec Ross was a key player in forming the Obama campaign’s tech and innovation strategy in 2008, and served as Hillary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation. While in this latter role, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every continent. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Ross has been included on the Huffington Post's “10 Game Changers in Politics” list and Foreign Policy Magazine's “Top 100 Global Thinkers” list, received the Oxford University Internet & Society Award and the Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Award, along with the U.S. Department of State Distinguished Honor Award.

As noted on his Amazon.com Author's Page, “Google Chairman Eric Schmidt writes that, “In a world growing more chaotic, Alec Ross is one of those very rare people who can see patterns in the chaos and provide guidance for the road forward. He has an unusual diversity of expertise that allows him to apply multiple lenses to the world's challenges and dream up the kind of innovative solutions that are changing the world.”

A Series of Posts Exploring This Fascinating Tome

Over the next few days, we will share a series of short articles exploring various sections of this book, keeping a focus on implications for education and our students' and children's futures. I hope you'll join us. We'll start tomorrow with a look at Robotics (do you have any notion of how advanced humanoid elder care robots are becoming in some areas of the world?), and follow that with a dive into Big Data (it's already touching us in more ways than you might imagine, and this will expand explosively in the coming decade).