The Signals Are Talking
Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream
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4.4 • 9 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Amy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future. The Signals Are Talking reveals a systemic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon-distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know today what developments-especially those seemingly random ideas at the fringe as they converge and begin to move toward the mainstream-that have long-term consequence for tomorrow.
With the methodology developed in The Signals Are Talking, we learn how to think like a futurist and answer vitally important questions: How will a technology-like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things-affect us personally? How will it impact our businesses and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think-and how should we prepare for it now?
Most importantly, Webb persuasively shows that the future isn't something that happens to us passively. Instead, she allows us to see ahead so that we may forecast what's to come-challenging us to create our own preferred futures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trends can be profitably predicted, according to this windy treatise on business futurism. Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute consultancy, insists that prognosticating is a "learnable skill" and lays out a labyrinthine, acronym-heavy conceptual framework for pondering the future, featuring three rules, six instructions, 10 "sources of change," a six-part "CIPHER model,"and a six-part "F.U.T.U.R.E test" to "pressure-test any strategy created to address a technology trend." It all amounts to a tangle of vague truisms rule one says, "The future is not predetermined, but rather woven together from numerous threads that are themselves being woven in the present" that leave the impression that futurology is still a dark art navigable only by hiring experts such as the author. Webb's own predictions are sometimes bizarre she asserts that drones will make America dependent on imported food and that "pods" hooked to maglev trains will replace airplanes but when she's predicting trends in digital technology, which is most of the time, the future sounds both grandiose and boring. (Google, she reports, is "creating a ubiquitous exo-brain... that could anticipate my every need" and will eventually become "some kind of digital life assistant.") Webb's futurism is not compelling, but her insightful retrospectives on why some innovations succeeded and others failed make for an engaging study of technical trends of the past.
Customer Reviews
The Future of Futurism
Amy Webb describes her job as a futurist: to collect data, identify emerging trends, develop strategies, and calculate the probabilities of various future scenarios. She identifies future trends –pre-trends– by surveying the fringes of technology. Companies, able to identify pre-trends have an early adapter advantage, shaping and forming the trends themselves; companies that miss them, come in late to the game, only able to react and respond to change.
Webb believes many company leaders fail to appreciate the fringe, only taking note when a technology enters the mainstream –but, by then, it’s too late. Webb’s interdisciplinary background allows her a unique ability to forecast the downstream effects of new technologies and the government regulations meant to reign them in.
For example, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have generated several unintended consequences. Recreational enthusiasts have unwittingly obstructed California firefighters, attempting to control a wildfire and, twice, almost hit commercial flights. Amazon has proposed a delineation of airspace: recreational drones can operate below 200 feet, commercial drones between 200 and 400 feet, and anything above 400 feet would be reserved for manned aircraft. However, Webb points out this would require any new buildings over 25 stories to require a special right-of-way easement, making construction too costly. In the alternative, Webb believes buildings will become “landscrapers” stretching both vertically and horizontally, replete with elevators, running up, down, and across. But this creates environmental spillover, displacing soil, causing sediment to flow into rivers and streams, killing off wildlife.
Webb’s interdisciplinary background allows her the ability to identify the latest fringe technologies as well as forecasting their long-term consequences.