Technology has always been painted to be both benevolent and evil. Two sides of the same sword. Yet what we fail to remember sometimes is that technology is made in our image and shows the best and worst of us, carried to extremes.
We are at another turning point where technology is painted as evil and soul less, out to take away our livelihoods. A movie that was circulating around not too long ago, sums up the fears some of us harbor.
To me personally, technology and it’s alleged negative impacts are a sign of humanity’s laziness and fight to survive while the tsunami of evolution clears out the unfit.
My short time in the corporate world has seen many friends and colleagues retrenched and removed from their posts. Is it because they are bad people? No, most of them were nice folks with family. Were the survivors more political and cunning? Not anymore political or cunning then those who were let go. Everyone is a politician to survive. For corporations to survive a harsh business landscape of the current business ice age, the sum of knowledge and expertise of the corporation needs to evolve. Too many folks are still stuck in the past looking at past glories.
Technology like time, waits for no one. The scene has moved to a universe similar that of the X-men where mutants are definitely the more advanced lifeforms. Yet among mutants, some would be faster, stronger, smarter than others. Those who are still normal must try to compete and win through sheer wit or with the help of technology. The only way to compete is to suit up like Batman or Ironman and try to level the playing field.
Mutant powers to dream about
I view knowledge in esoteric fields akin to mutant powers. (You develop them after basking in screen radiation for years). The following are a list of abilities that I see a 5 year shelf life before they become commoditized or commoditized through automation.
Deep Learning
Deep learning is currently split into two camps with users picking either a hardware camp or a software camp. Very few experts are able to look at end to end (think of a full stack engineer versus front end and back end engineers)
Technologies to look at:
- Tensorflow by Google
- Theano (for poor people without money to burn for memory)
- Cuda by Nvidia
On the horizon (but not yet mature, the hardware side of things):
- Northbridge by IBM
- Neuron architecure by Koniku
- Quantum computers by various tech companies (Google D-Wave, IBM, Qualcomm)
Robotics
Robotics will play a much bigger role in our lives. The advent of Aldebaran (now Softbank Robotics) has ushered in a new era of Jetson inspired helpers.
Two competing standards:
- OpenNao OS by Softbank (Documentation feels like quicksand. I’m hoping this changes soon. But if the robots become more ubiquitous, this may be the industry standard to program humanoid robots)
- Robot Operating System (I am hoping for the open source standard to win and hopefully be ported to the Softbank hardware)
Enhancing normality and the unevolved
Social eminence
Gaining an insane number of followers and readers helps to create an aura (and sometimes safety net from being attacked like #gamergate)
Insane Productive Hacks
This would be similar to throwing yourself into an easy bake oven spewing radiation and hoping for mutant powers to develop.
And no, this is totally different from multitasking. Multitasking is just sun-tanning for long hours hoping to get superpowers while you contract skin cancer and die with red peeling skin.
Mentalism
The ability to be persuasive confidence men/ women is a lost art. A charming smile and ability to hack human psychology will be relevant as long as humans remain the masters of the universe.
The ability to learn new skills is very much hit and miss (similar to mutations, you either get it or you don’t. At least within a reasonable amount of time). For the commoners like myself, hitting the mental and physical gym is the only way to stay relevant and hopefully reasonably fit enough to survive and win the fight in the barren business tundra.
