WEBVTT - Disruptive Technologies 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:13.560 Get in text with Technology with textaff from works dot com. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.080 Hey there, and welcome to text UFF. I'm Jonathan Strickland 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:22.279 and I'm joined today by nobody. It's just me. So 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.239 it's another solo episode. And today I thought I would 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.520 talk about something that gets a lot of attention. There 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:33.080 are a lot of articles about this, and you hear 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:35.320 a lot of talking heads mention it, and you see 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.519 it on social media all the time. And that is 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:43.760 the concept of disruptive technology. And you hear it a lot, 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.280 but often it is not very well explained and sometimes, 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:53.360 in fact, often it is misused. Uh. Disruptive technology sometimes 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:55.240 is being used just to mean something that has a 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.600 lot of buzz around it, but doesn't necessarily mean it's 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:03.400 going to be disruptive. Uh. The term itself is actually 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:09.360 pretty specific. It was originally coined by Clayton M. Christensen 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:14.640 in a book titled The Innovator's Dilemma, and specifically was 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.760 talking about disruptive innovation, not just technology, but innovation in general, 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.440 because it doesn't have to be a physical thing. It 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.880 could be a new way of going about doing something. 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:30.640 And Christensen was saying that disruptive innovation was something that 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:35.520 in business meant adopting techniques or developing technology that eventually 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:42.640 completely surpasses or replaces previous approaches, possibly harming whatever business 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:48.360 back the other older and in the long run, wrong technology. 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:53.200 So I'd say a type of technology that disrupts an industry, 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.640 sometimes completely changing the way stuff is done, sometimes completely 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:05.120 invalidating long standing UH industries or business practices. So it's 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.800 it's meant to signify something that is really going to 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:13.200 be transformative, not necessarily for the better. It doesn't mean 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.680 that the disruptive technology is more powerful or more effective 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.840 or more efficient. It might just be cheaper or easier 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.800 to produce than the previous version. So here's an example. 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:31.720 You might look at a ah you know, something that 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.960 was made by hand, like a handmade article of clothing 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.000 versus a machine made article article of clothing. One is 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.800 not necessarily better than the other just because it happens 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.280 to be made in a different way. You could have 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:49.840 handmade clothing that is superior to machine made clothing, but 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:55.440 because the speed and the expense of using a machine 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.400 can be much lower, or the speed is faster but 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:00.520 the expense is lower than and if you were to 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.840 rely on a human being to produce that piece of clothing. 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:09.960 The sewing machine and other automated ways of creating garments 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:16.679 end up pushing the the handmade version to a niche market. Now, 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.000 you could argue that in cases like that, a person 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.519 could still make a pretty decent living working by hand. 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.600 It's just that the nature of the business has changed. 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:31.760 In fact, you could argue that by marketing it as handmade, 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.360 you could charge more for your product and thus make 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.320 more money on a per product basis, and that could 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:43.600 be very helpful. But the industry overall, the giant umbrella industry, 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.280 has changed significantly. So I'm going to look at several 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:51.480 different disruptive technologies. I'm pulling a lot of these from 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.440 an article that we have on how Stuff Works dot com. 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.240 If you don't remember how stuff works dot Com is 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.960 my employer, Tech Stuff is part of how Stuff Work. 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:05.640 And the article is ten disruptive technologies you use every day. Now, 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:08.720 there's one that's not on the list that you certainly 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.840 use frequently. You have to if you're listening to this 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.880 podcast that I think merits special mention, and that is 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:22.039 the Internet. The Internet is incredibly disruptive and that it 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:26.039 has changed the way we do lots of stuff. It 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.240 has enabled platforms to exist on top of it that 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:33.160 have completely shaken up the way things used to work. 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.000 Here's a you know, a simple example is shopping. You know, 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:38.520 back in the day, you had to do one of 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.440 two things. You order from a catalog, in which case 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.159 you would go through a catalog, you'd fill out your order, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:45.760 you'd send it in, and then you would wait for 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.920 stuff to be delivered to you, or you would have 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.840 to go to an actual physical store and purchase things. 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:55.520 I guess theoretically you could have a door to door salesman, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.720 so maybe there's three, but that that was pretty much 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.120 your only choices, and then you were limited by the 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.800 inventory of the physical space you went to. Uh, you 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.960 were you know, you had to actually make time out 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.599 of your day to travel there. Uh. You had to 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:13.039 expend a lot of energy just to get from point 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.479 A to point being. These days, we can do a 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.279 ton of our shopping online, never leave the comfort of 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:23.800 our chair. Uh. The inventory is enormous because there are 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.200 a lot of companies out there that either keep huge 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:30.680 inventories or they can create on demand, depending upon whatever 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:34.200 the thing is you're trying to buy and so the 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:39.159 Internet has really disrupted the shopping industry. You've got a 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.640 lot of stores out there that are struggling to continue 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:44.960 to make their numbers so that they can remain open. 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:47.680 We've seen lots of different chains close over the last 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.960 few years, bookstores being a big one. A lot of 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.000 electronics stores have been having problems. That's indicative of the 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.400 disruption we have seen from the Internet. And that's just 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.400 one thing that the Internet has disrupted. Another there could 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.080 be long distance communications in general. The first one on 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.159 our list in the on the side is email, and 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.279 clearly email has been disruptive. It is changed the way 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.800 we communicate with one another. We have this immediacy now. 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:21.320 We no longer have the long delay between writing something 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.280 and someone else receiving it and then responding, because back 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.960 in the old days, we would write letters and send 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:31.480 those through the mail, and then we have to wait 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:36.159 for the postal service to deliver our note. We have 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.640 to wait for the person to read it, then write 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:40.760 their own response, send it, and we have to wait 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:45.960 to receive it. So communication was very different by its 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:47.800 very nature. It had to be. I mean, you couldn't 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.159 be asking a question that you needed an answer you know, 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:53.200 within twenty four hours that was not going to happen. 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.479 But email has changed things dramatically. It's also kind of 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.000 changed the nature of how we communicate. And you will 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.680 hear people a case really talk about how letter writing 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:05.960 is now a lost art that people no longer know 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.440 or bother to write letters in a way that they 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.960 used to because email has supplanted. That has really changed 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.800 the nature of communication. But emails cheaper, It's easier than 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.160 handwriting a letter. There's no postage, there's no paper, there's 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.040 no ink. Really, all you need is an internet connection. 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.920 So whether you are paying for internet service or you're 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:34.400 going someplace like the library, even to send a message, uh, 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.160 you know, that's all you need really, and uh, of 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:42.080 course it'll get to where it's going in moments, so 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.760 if the other person is online, you could end up 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.680 getting a response before you have a chance to navigate 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:52.080 away from the email window. So it's very different. It 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:57.320 has completely changed the nature of the postal service. Um 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.200 things like greeting cards and invitations, even those have started 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.679 to decline. According to a two thousand eleven Pew Internet 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:09.320 survey of adults in the US who got online used 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:13.320 email them used it on a typical day of all 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:17.080 Americans used email to some extent. That might even mean 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.840 that we're communicating more. It may not be the same 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:23.000 quality of communication, but the quantity certainly has gone up. 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:25.800 And of course there's tons of other stuff that we 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.040 send through email. So that's a good example of how 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.720 the Internet has disrupted things. Beyond the shopping aspect, there 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.840 are others as well. Social media, which is number nine 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:42.040 on the list, also applies. Obviously, they are allowing us 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.400 to have interactions with our friends and family, no matter 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.760 how far apart they may be from us. Um you 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:54.199 can share information, not just through text, but you can 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.640 share links, you can share videos or music, you can 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.800 share photographs. You have this up a tunity to have 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:06.720 these interactions that before would have been limited to whenever 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.679 you were with one another, or perhaps you had to 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.280 rely on something like the snail mail service. So again, 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:21.480 incredibly disruptive, and we've even seen this this pocket get 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:27.040 shaken up multiple times as new players have incorporated different 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.760 strategies and disrupted social media. So while social media has 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:37.560 disrupted larger industries, social media itself has experienced disruption. A 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.600 great example of that is my Space which used to 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:45.400 dominate the social media area, and then Facebook comes along 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:50.600 and ends up becoming incredibly disruptive because of its appeal 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.440 to a large young user base and grew from there, 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.400 and my Space eventually collapsed in on itself and had 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:02.440 to redefine itself and still all is struggling to define 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:07.000 itself as something relevant in today's social media landscape. Has 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.840 of early two, more than half of the people who 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:14.000 use the Internet also regularly use social media, not a 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:16.280 big surprise. In the US that tends to be on 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.720 the high end of the scale, so about as of 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:24.000 January two. In other nations it may be lower, but 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.400 it shows that people are really you know, that they've 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.160 incorporated this into their lives. It's not just something that 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.040 is occasionally used. I mean, I don't know about you, 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.880 but I have Facebook open pretty much the entire time 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:41.520 I'm sitting at any computer. And it may not be 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.679 that I'm on Facebook the entire time solely, but it's 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.600 always got a tab dedicated to it, because this is 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.600 how I tend to interact with my friends. These days. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:55.040 We all are very busy. We all have schedules that 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.280 pretty much prevent us from getting together on a regular basis. 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:00.800 But this is the way I can maintain in contact 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:05.280 without having to you know, put anyone to any trouble, 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:10.160 which is nice. Now, It also, you could argue, is 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.840 less satisfying than other means of interaction, like an actual 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.840 physical get together where you can hang out and spend 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.720 time with one another. And I don't argue that at all. Again, 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.400 the disruption doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Sometimes just means 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:30.680 it's easier or more effective in a way. So, uh, 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.480 you know that, depending on your view of social media, 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.800 you might see it as helpful disruption or very harmful disruption. 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.760 There are a lot of other examples of disruptive technologies 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:45.600 that have utilized the Internet, streaming media being a huge one. 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:50.520 This is enormous. A few years ago I talked about 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:55.480 how people would be increasingly moving away from cable and 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.520 using the Internet to get access to various forms of entertainment. 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.000 At the time, you know, it was it was an 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:07.040 obvious move even when I I said it, but it 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.720 was still something that was only occasionally talked about because 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.400 I think, well, for one thing, the big media companies 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.000 were a little worried about where things were going because 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.120 they relied on old forms of media delivery to get 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.040 their message across. So it's kind of scary to report 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:26.160 on the potential decline of the industry you currently are in, 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.200 but that is exactly what we've seen happen. We've seen 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:35.200 cable subscriptions for cable television decline as we've seen people 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:39.200 start to use other services online more frequently, things like 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:44.920 Amazon or Hulu or Netflix to get their their their entertainment. 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.160 We've also seen the growth of new forms of entertainment, 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:53.160 things like YouTube, where people who are not part of 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:56.520 a larger network are creating their own content and finding 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:01.559 an audience. Uh that has become an incredib dobly powerful 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.560 story where people who normally would not have had an 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:09.480 opportunity to communicate through the Internet suddenly have this outlet. 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:11.920 And not only do they have an outlet, but people 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.600 find what they're saying to be valuable, whether that's entertainment 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:20.120 or its news or just personal opinion or whatever it 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.320 may be. There's now this outlet that that did not 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.280 exist before, and it's actually starting to take a big 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:31.640 chunk out of the traditional media. Now, there's still a 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:33.360 long way to go. You're gonna hear a lot of 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.640 people talk about how this stuff is going to force 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.640 the traditional media companies out of business, and in the 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:41.960 long run, maybe that's going to be the case. I 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.280 think it will probably even out where we're going to 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.440 have a balance across multiple platforms. That's my own personal guests, 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.400 but it's certainly has proven itself to be a valuable 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:59.199 way of getting to an audience. It's been effective, and 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.000 it's just going to continue to grow. The big challenge 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:06.319 moving forward, I think for content creators is getting noticed 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.360 because this space is getting more and more crowded. So 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.800 it may turn out that until something else comes along 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:18.800 and shakes up this industry, the streaming media industry, that 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.560 you're going to have a few really big players in 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.480 the space and then a whole bunch of little guys. 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:30.880 And as someone who creates videos and uh and podcasts 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.880 that are not part of how stuff works, I can 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.880 tell you being one of those little guys, it's tough. 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.160 I mean, it's tough to get noticed, but uh, ultimately 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.360 it all depends on why you're doing it. If you're 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.440 doing it for fun, like I do for my outside projects, 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:49.920 it's not as big a deal because you just do 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.000 it until it's no longer fun, and then you stop 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:53.840 doing it. If you're doing it to make a living, 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.320 then it's a much bigger deal. Obviously, you have to 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.320 figure out how to reach that audience so that you 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:02.040 can get paid. However that may be, whether it's through 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:06.320 sponsorships or direct contributions through Patreon or something along those lines. 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:11.440 But these streaming services have really created a new story 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:16.200 that didn't exist just a few years ago. Back then, 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:18.240 I mean, the only way you could end up getting 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:21.320 on television if you didn't already have a job there 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.920 was through like a public access station, or maybe if 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:28.160 you went to college and they had a college television station, 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.240 that was a way you could break into the industry. 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.400 But otherwise it was pretty tough. So it's been amazing 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:38.520 to watch this particular transition. Next on the list is 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:42.680 e readers and e reader apps, obviously one of the 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:47.440 hallmark disruptive technologies to come along over the last decade so. 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:49.240 E readers have been around for a while, but it's 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:53.400 only been you know, a few years since the first 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:58.520 e paper uh devices really became affordable to the average 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:04.080 person and paired with the right you know, service like 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.480 Amazon and by right, I mean it makes it really 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:11.840 super easy to get stuff onto that book. They've become 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:16.640 powerful tools. So whether you like Amazon's business approach or not, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:22.360 it's impossible to deny their effectiveness. Because you go out 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.280 and buy a kindle, it is incredibly easy to purchase 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.160 content for your kindle through the kindle. You know you're 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:33.000 buying it through Amazon, and that was their business model. 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.960 It makes incredible sense, the idea of selling this piece 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.040 of hardware that makes it really easy for you to 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:44.360 get content, and people are able to grab books and 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.640 movies and music through Amazon and experience it through their 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.920 various devices. It has been a huge blow not just 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:57.600 too brick and mortar book companies, but publishers as well 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:03.920 as music companies and film. Honestly, home video clearly has 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:07.880 taken a huge hit. Whether it's the brick and mortar 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.159 retail stores where you would go and buy a DVD 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:14.119 or Blu Ray, or it's uh, you know, rental places. 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.040 There are very few of those left around. You've got 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.600 Red Box and a couple of others, and here in Atlanta, 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.639 we've got some independent companies that are still around that 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:28.480 are really charming and have very Eclectic Collections Video Drome 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.879 in Atlanta. If you were ever in Atlanta and you 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:37.120 want to see a real quirky, weird video rental place, 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.679 go to Video Drome. UM. It's at the corner of 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:45.280 Highland and North Avenue and it is amazing. They have 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.360 a lot of character. But obviously that business model, which 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.600 used to be enormous, I mean Blockbuster Video and other 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:56.760 companies like it dominated various strip malls across the United States. 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.480 You could not go very far without seeing another one. 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.320 In these days, they're long forgotten. Well. E readers UH 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.520 and e readers and other devices, streaming devices and streaming media, 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.280 as well as the shopping I was talking about earlier, 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.680 have all contributed to seeing those kind of fade away. 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.919 Smart mobile devices similar approach. It's also something that has 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:26.639 really been disruptive. It's number six on the list. UH. 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.560 It was just a few years ago that everyone assumed 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.120 that cell phones were just going to continue to get 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:35.560 smaller and smaller in the future, because that was what 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.159 was considered to be sexy. You would get a phone, 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.760 the next model would be even smaller and more compact. 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:47.119 There were lots of UH sketches on television, particularly starting 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:51.639 that live of characters who had comically tiny phones because 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.320 it was a status symbol supposed to show how important 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.679 that character was, or how important that character wanted to 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:00.399 seem to be. And that was the joke, was that 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.280 it was just going to continuously get smaller and smaller. Uh, 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.960 smartphones turned that all around. So smartphones disrupted the phone 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:11.080 the mobile phone market, because once the iPhone came out 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:17.040 and showed that there was a compelling way to access 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.119 things like the Internet through your phone, it meant that 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:22.960 you wanted to have a screen that was of a 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:24.760 large enough size for you to be able to read 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:27.440 things and interact with it. And then we saw the 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.600 trend start to reverse until now we're at the point 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.719 where you start seeing the comically large phones, the fablets. 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:35.320 I own one of those. I have an next to six. 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.760 It's enormous, So that trend ended up reversing. We've also 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:44.760 seen that they these devices have disrupted other industries, including 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.679 e readers and tablets, and we've seen them disrupt some 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.760 gaming industry too. Because of the way that apps have 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:58.200 reshaped the gaming landscape. You have gamers who are truly 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:03.360 dedicated to specific cons rolls or two computers to PCs, 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.080 and then you have others who are happy to play 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.399 whatever on whichever platform. And mobile devices are incredibly handy 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:16.280 because you almost always have one with you, and the 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.439 experiences can be really satisfying, depending upon the design of 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.640 the app. Obviously, not all apps are created equal, but 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:30.200 we've also seen smartphones replace other stuff, things like uh, 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.040 day planners, which you might think, well, that's not that 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.920 big a deal, but there are companies that just made 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.119 day planners, or they made day planners as part of 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.960 their business, and there's less and less reason to go 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.760 out and buy one of those. Or digital cameras. Back 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:50.600 in the day, we used to have digital cameras as 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:55.000 standalone devices because they've took much better photos than our 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:59.600 phones could. Phone images would be really low resolution, very grainy. 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:02.840 But to ay, we're seeing better and better sensors incorporated 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:08.360 into phones, and I rarely carry around an extra camera. 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.760 Sometimes I do in very specific circumstances, but most of 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:13.960 the time I'm happy to just carry my phone. Same 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:16.760 thing is true with MP three players. I used to 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.720 be the person who wanted to have an MP three 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:24.280 player dedicated solely to MP three playing, and that's it. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.639 But as phone uh storage got larger and larger, and 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.560 as cloud storage began to become a thing, I stopped 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.359 doing that. Cloud storage would be another great example not 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:38.560 on the list here, but I'll talk about it for 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.239 a second. Cloud computing and cloud storage in general has 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:46.480 been incredibly disruptive because by offloading the processing and storage 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:50.720 requirements from a localized area to the cloud, you disrupt 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:54.199 all the businesses that used to provide the machines that 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.320 either processed information or stored it. So more and more 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.000 companies are moving to cloud based server us is it 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.960 decreases the demand they have for powerful machinery on the 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:10.040 front end, and it means they can make a lower investment. 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:13.600 So in other words, the employees at a business might 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.560 end up with cheaper laptops, but in the end it 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:20.920 doesn't matter because the laptops aren't really doing all the work. 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.080 A lot of the work is being offloaded to the cloud. 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:27.160 So very disruptive. It also means it creates new opportunities. 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:31.720 If you're the one making those inexpensive laptops, you've got 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.359 a powerful business now because of these other companies that 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:40.040 have created these powerful cloud services. Next on the list, 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.159 we have mobile payment options. There's so many of these, 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:46.360 Apple Pay being one that's in the news quite a bit, 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:49.959 but there are other ones as well, things that end 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:53.399 up taking the the the sting out of having to, 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:58.920 you know, keep track of all your various cards, reward systems, 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:01.040 things like that, all of that being wrapped up into 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.480 an app that can keep track of everything for you. 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:09.240 Very powerful, also extremely disruptive, really good example in this list. 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.480 So there are a lot of different options here. I 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:17.080 mean there's the Google Wallet, there's Apple Pay, there's into 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:20.639 it go payment, There's lots of stuff out there. And 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:25.480 this applies both on the user side and on the 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:29.960 vendor side. You've got companies that are using this stuff 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:33.400 in order to be their point of sale, and it's 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:37.600 really great tool for them because they can end up 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:41.320 offloading that and they don't have to invest in you know, 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.960 larger technologies like cashiers and things like that, or cash 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:49.000 registers I should say, not cashiers, and uh, you know, 0:23:49.359 --> 0:23:51.720 we're seeing more of this sort of approach where you 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:54.719 can do the tap and pay and that ends up 0:23:54.760 --> 0:24:00.760 decreasing the need for sales personnel. Thus, this is disruptive. 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:03.119 It means that people who would normally be able to 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.760 get a job doing that, being a sales representative at 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:10.240 a retail establishment. They might find it harder to get 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:13.120 that kind of job because there's less need for it. 0:24:13.680 --> 0:24:19.119 So sometimes disruptive can mean pretty tough consequences for people, 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:21.960 at least in the short term, until you figure out 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:24.680 some other place where you have a need that people 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.480 can go and work at and fill that need. Plus 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:29.960 they can go and get paid for the work they do. 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:32.960 So disruptive does not always mean great. It might mean 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:36.439 great things for that whatever technology is just doing the disrupting, 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:40.000 but it could have other consequences that roll out to 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:44.280 lots of other people. Self checkout stations is similar in 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:46.920 that way. It's also on the list. It's at number four. 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:51.080 Very disruptive. Obviously. If you go to a grocery store 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:53.760 and you see that there are only three lanes open, 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.439 there's twenty lanes there. Three of them are open with 0:24:56.440 --> 0:25:01.160 with cashiers and the rest are are empty. And it's 0:25:01.200 --> 0:25:05.159 because these self service lanes have taken a lot of 0:25:05.200 --> 0:25:07.280 the load off. You don't need to employ as many 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:12.640 people to handle the shopping requirements of your customers. I mean, 0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:15.639 that's powerful and again just as I was saying with 0:25:15.680 --> 0:25:18.479 the other one, it means that it might put some 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:22.159 folks out of a job. That's tough. Number three in 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:26.960 the list is wearable fitness devices. This is interesting to me. Um, 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:30.600