With a name like Singularity, it’s no surprise that we often run across the work and thoughts of famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. His best known theory is of a “technological singularity,” where the pace of technological change exceeds our ability to understand it. This concept has become very popular as we’ve all started to feel it happening around us, and the implications of Ray’s predictions are huge.
Ray was the keynote speaker at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit this week in Coconut Point, FL and he shared more of his visions of our future. Those visions ranged from a 100% solar-powered world, to robotic red blood cells capable of carrying enough oxygen to fuel us for dozens of minutes without taking a breath. At the heart of these predictions is Ray’s underlying observation that computing power, information creation and bandwidth have grown at an exponential rate over a very long period of time, and will continue to expand at that rate.
For marketers, this acceleration can be terrifying. The lifecycle of new technologies, from creation to critical mass to saturation to overload is being compressed to the blink of an eye. Moving forward, if we wait for a new technology to be validated and then try to master it, we’ll always be chasing, rather than thriving.
Is there anything we can do to get in front of this wave and ride it, rather than feverishly paddling trying to catch up with it?
- First, don’t try to capture, analyze and understand every detail. By the time you’re done the last half, the first half will have changed.
- Second, know that it’s moving and that it will move faster. The truth is that the only constant is change, so take that to heart and expect it.
- Third, be adaptive. The best model for success today is different from what the best one will be next week, next month or next year.
- Fourth, I lied when I said the only constant is change. The other constant is us. The factors that drive and motivate human behavior don’t change. That’s our North star. As the sea of technology churns and the waves of change come faster and higher, we need to keep an eye on that core of human nature and use it to chart our course.
Whether we like it or not, Ray Kurzweil is right. Monumental change will continue to come at a faster and faster pace. We just have to be prepared to ride that change, rather than try to control it.
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