Speaker 1: Get in text with Technology with textaff from works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text UFF. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm joined today by nobody. It's just me. So
Speaker 1: it's another solo episode. And today I thought I would
Speaker 1: talk about something that gets a lot of attention. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of articles about this, and you hear
Speaker 1: a lot of talking heads mention it, and you see
Speaker 1: it on social media all the time. And that is
Speaker 1: the concept of disruptive technology. And you hear it a lot,
Speaker 1: but often it is not very well explained and sometimes,
Speaker 1: in fact, often it is misused. Uh. Disruptive technology sometimes
Speaker 1: is being used just to mean something that has a
Speaker 1: lot of buzz around it, but doesn't necessarily mean it's
Speaker 1: going to be disruptive. Uh. The term itself is actually
Speaker 1: pretty specific. It was originally coined by Clayton M. Christensen
Speaker 1: in a book titled The Innovator's Dilemma, and specifically was
Speaker 1: talking about disruptive innovation, not just technology, but innovation in general,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have to be a physical thing. It
Speaker 1: could be a new way of going about doing something.
Speaker 1: And Christensen was saying that disruptive innovation was something that
Speaker 1: in business meant adopting techniques or developing technology that eventually
Speaker 1: completely surpasses or replaces previous approaches, possibly harming whatever business
Speaker 1: back the other older and in the long run, wrong technology.
Speaker 1: So I'd say a type of technology that disrupts an industry,
Speaker 1: sometimes completely changing the way stuff is done, sometimes completely
Speaker 1: invalidating long standing UH industries or business practices. So it's
Speaker 1: it's meant to signify something that is really going to
Speaker 1: be transformative, not necessarily for the better. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the disruptive technology is more powerful or more effective
Speaker 1: or more efficient. It might just be cheaper or easier
Speaker 1: to produce than the previous version. So here's an example.
Speaker 1: You might look at a ah you know, something that
Speaker 1: was made by hand, like a handmade article of clothing
Speaker 1: versus a machine made article article of clothing. One is
Speaker 1: not necessarily better than the other just because it happens
Speaker 1: to be made in a different way. You could have
Speaker 1: handmade clothing that is superior to machine made clothing, but
Speaker 1: because the speed and the expense of using a machine
Speaker 1: can be much lower, or the speed is faster but
Speaker 1: the expense is lower than and if you were to
Speaker 1: rely on a human being to produce that piece of clothing.
Speaker 1: The sewing machine and other automated ways of creating garments
Speaker 1: end up pushing the the handmade version to a niche market. Now,
Speaker 1: you could argue that in cases like that, a person
Speaker 1: could still make a pretty decent living working by hand.
Speaker 1: It's just that the nature of the business has changed.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could argue that by marketing it as handmade,
Speaker 1: you could charge more for your product and thus make
Speaker 1: more money on a per product basis, and that could
Speaker 1: be very helpful. But the industry overall, the giant umbrella industry,
Speaker 1: has changed significantly. So I'm going to look at several
Speaker 1: different disruptive technologies. I'm pulling a lot of these from
Speaker 1: an article that we have on how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you don't remember how stuff works dot Com is
Speaker 1: my employer, Tech Stuff is part of how Stuff Work.
Speaker 1: And the article is ten disruptive technologies you use every day. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one that's not on the list that you certainly
Speaker 1: use frequently. You have to if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast that I think merits special mention, and that is
Speaker 1: the Internet. The Internet is incredibly disruptive and that it
Speaker 1: has changed the way we do lots of stuff. It
Speaker 1: has enabled platforms to exist on top of it that
Speaker 1: have completely shaken up the way things used to work.
Speaker 1: Here's a you know, a simple example is shopping. You know,
Speaker 1: back in the day, you had to do one of
Speaker 1: two things. You order from a catalog, in which case
Speaker 1: you would go through a catalog, you'd fill out your order,
Speaker 1: you'd send it in, and then you would wait for
Speaker 1: stuff to be delivered to you, or you would have
Speaker 1: to go to an actual physical store and purchase things.
Speaker 1: I guess theoretically you could have a door to door salesman,
Speaker 1: so maybe there's three, but that that was pretty much
Speaker 1: your only choices, and then you were limited by the
Speaker 1: inventory of the physical space you went to. Uh, you
Speaker 1: were you know, you had to actually make time out
Speaker 1: of your day to travel there. Uh. You had to
Speaker 1: expend a lot of energy just to get from point
Speaker 1: A to point being. These days, we can do a
Speaker 1: ton of our shopping online, never leave the comfort of
Speaker 1: our chair. Uh. The inventory is enormous because there are
Speaker 1: a lot of companies out there that either keep huge
Speaker 1: inventories or they can create on demand, depending upon whatever
Speaker 1: the thing is you're trying to buy and so the
Speaker 1: Internet has really disrupted the shopping industry. You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of stores out there that are struggling to continue
Speaker 1: to make their numbers so that they can remain open.
Speaker 1: We've seen lots of different chains close over the last
Speaker 1: few years, bookstores being a big one. A lot of
Speaker 1: electronics stores have been having problems. That's indicative of the
Speaker 1: disruption we have seen from the Internet. And that's just
Speaker 1: one thing that the Internet has disrupted. Another there could
Speaker 1: be long distance communications in general. The first one on
Speaker 1: our list in the on the side is email, and
Speaker 1: clearly email has been disruptive. It is changed the way
Speaker 1: we communicate with one another. We have this immediacy now.
Speaker 1: We no longer have the long delay between writing something
Speaker 1: and someone else receiving it and then responding, because back
Speaker 1: in the old days, we would write letters and send
Speaker 1: those through the mail, and then we have to wait
Speaker 1: for the postal service to deliver our note. We have
Speaker 1: to wait for the person to read it, then write
Speaker 1: their own response, send it, and we have to wait
Speaker 1: to receive it. So communication was very different by its
Speaker 1: very nature. It had to be. I mean, you couldn't
Speaker 1: be asking a question that you needed an answer you know,
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours that was not going to happen.
Speaker 1: But email has changed things dramatically. It's also kind of
Speaker 1: changed the nature of how we communicate. And you will
Speaker 1: hear people a case really talk about how letter writing
Speaker 1: is now a lost art that people no longer know
Speaker 1: or bother to write letters in a way that they
Speaker 1: used to because email has supplanted. That has really changed
Speaker 1: the nature of communication. But emails cheaper, It's easier than
Speaker 1: handwriting a letter. There's no postage, there's no paper, there's
Speaker 1: no ink. Really, all you need is an internet connection.
Speaker 1: So whether you are paying for internet service or you're
Speaker 1: going someplace like the library, even to send a message, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's all you need really, and uh, of
Speaker 1: course it'll get to where it's going in moments, so
Speaker 1: if the other person is online, you could end up
Speaker 1: getting a response before you have a chance to navigate
Speaker 1: away from the email window. So it's very different. It
Speaker 1: has completely changed the nature of the postal service. Um
Speaker 1: things like greeting cards and invitations, even those have started
Speaker 1: to decline. According to a two thousand eleven Pew Internet
Speaker 1: survey of adults in the US who got online used
Speaker 1: email them used it on a typical day of all
Speaker 1: Americans used email to some extent. That might even mean
Speaker 1: that we're communicating more. It may not be the same
Speaker 1: quality of communication, but the quantity certainly has gone up.
Speaker 1: And of course there's tons of other stuff that we
Speaker 1: send through email. So that's a good example of how
Speaker 1: the Internet has disrupted things. Beyond the shopping aspect, there
Speaker 1: are others as well. Social media, which is number nine
Speaker 1: on the list, also applies. Obviously, they are allowing us
Speaker 1: to have interactions with our friends and family, no matter
Speaker 1: how far apart they may be from us. Um you
Speaker 1: can share information, not just through text, but you can
Speaker 1: share links, you can share videos or music, you can
Speaker 1: share photographs. You have this up a tunity to have
Speaker 1: these interactions that before would have been limited to whenever
Speaker 1: you were with one another, or perhaps you had to
Speaker 1: rely on something like the snail mail service. So again,
Speaker 1: incredibly disruptive, and we've even seen this this pocket get
Speaker 1: shaken up multiple times as new players have incorporated different
Speaker 1: strategies and disrupted social media. So while social media has
Speaker 1: disrupted larger industries, social media itself has experienced disruption. A
Speaker 1: great example of that is my Space which used to
Speaker 1: dominate the social media area, and then Facebook comes along
Speaker 1: and ends up becoming incredibly disruptive because of its appeal
Speaker 1: to a large young user base and grew from there,
Speaker 1: and my Space eventually collapsed in on itself and had
Speaker 1: to redefine itself and still all is struggling to define
Speaker 1: itself as something relevant in today's social media landscape. Has
Speaker 1: of early two, more than half of the people who
Speaker 1: use the Internet also regularly use social media, not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. In the US that tends to be on
Speaker 1: the high end of the scale, so about as of
Speaker 1: January two. In other nations it may be lower, but
Speaker 1: it shows that people are really you know, that they've
Speaker 1: incorporated this into their lives. It's not just something that
Speaker 1: is occasionally used. I mean, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I have Facebook open pretty much the entire time
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at any computer. And it may not be
Speaker 1: that I'm on Facebook the entire time solely, but it's
Speaker 1: always got a tab dedicated to it, because this is
Speaker 1: how I tend to interact with my friends. These days.
Speaker 1: We all are very busy. We all have schedules that
Speaker 1: pretty much prevent us from getting together on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: But this is the way I can maintain in contact
Speaker 1: without having to you know, put anyone to any trouble,
Speaker 1: which is nice. Now, It also, you could argue, is
Speaker 1: less satisfying than other means of interaction, like an actual
Speaker 1: physical get together where you can hang out and spend
Speaker 1: time with one another. And I don't argue that at all. Again,
Speaker 1: the disruption doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Sometimes just means
Speaker 1: it's easier or more effective in a way. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that, depending on your view of social media,
Speaker 1: you might see it as helpful disruption or very harmful disruption.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other examples of disruptive technologies
Speaker 1: that have utilized the Internet, streaming media being a huge one.
Speaker 1: This is enormous. A few years ago I talked about
Speaker 1: how people would be increasingly moving away from cable and
Speaker 1: using the Internet to get access to various forms of entertainment.
Speaker 1: At the time, you know, it was it was an
Speaker 1: obvious move even when I I said it, but it
Speaker 1: was still something that was only occasionally talked about because
Speaker 1: I think, well, for one thing, the big media companies
Speaker 1: were a little worried about where things were going because
Speaker 1: they relied on old forms of media delivery to get
Speaker 1: their message across. So it's kind of scary to report
Speaker 1: on the potential decline of the industry you currently are in,
Speaker 1: but that is exactly what we've seen happen. We've seen
Speaker 1: cable subscriptions for cable television decline as we've seen people
Speaker 1: start to use other services online more frequently, things like
Speaker 1: Amazon or Hulu or Netflix to get their their their entertainment.
Speaker 1: We've also seen the growth of new forms of entertainment,
Speaker 1: things like YouTube, where people who are not part of
Speaker 1: a larger network are creating their own content and finding
Speaker 1: an audience. Uh that has become an incredib dobly powerful
Speaker 1: story where people who normally would not have had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to communicate through the Internet suddenly have this outlet.
Speaker 1: And not only do they have an outlet, but people
Speaker 1: find what they're saying to be valuable, whether that's entertainment
Speaker 1: or its news or just personal opinion or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. There's now this outlet that that did not
Speaker 1: exist before, and it's actually starting to take a big
Speaker 1: chunk out of the traditional media. Now, there's still a
Speaker 1: long way to go. You're gonna hear a lot of
Speaker 1: people talk about how this stuff is going to force
Speaker 1: the traditional media companies out of business, and in the
Speaker 1: long run, maybe that's going to be the case. I
Speaker 1: think it will probably even out where we're going to
Speaker 1: have a balance across multiple platforms. That's my own personal guests,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly has proven itself to be a valuable
Speaker 1: way of getting to an audience. It's been effective, and
Speaker 1: it's just going to continue to grow. The big challenge
Speaker 1: moving forward, I think for content creators is getting noticed
Speaker 1: because this space is getting more and more crowded. So
Speaker 1: it may turn out that until something else comes along
Speaker 1: and shakes up this industry, the streaming media industry, that
Speaker 1: you're going to have a few really big players in
Speaker 1: the space and then a whole bunch of little guys.
Speaker 1: And as someone who creates videos and uh and podcasts
Speaker 1: that are not part of how stuff works, I can
Speaker 1: tell you being one of those little guys, it's tough.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's tough to get noticed, but uh, ultimately
Speaker 1: it all depends on why you're doing it. If you're
Speaker 1: doing it for fun, like I do for my outside projects,
Speaker 1: it's not as big a deal because you just do
Speaker 1: it until it's no longer fun, and then you stop
Speaker 1: doing it. If you're doing it to make a living,
Speaker 1: then it's a much bigger deal. Obviously, you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to reach that audience so that you
Speaker 1: can get paid. However that may be, whether it's through
Speaker 1: sponsorships or direct contributions through Patreon or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: But these streaming services have really created a new story
Speaker 1: that didn't exist just a few years ago. Back then,
Speaker 1: I mean, the only way you could end up getting
Speaker 1: on television if you didn't already have a job there
Speaker 1: was through like a public access station, or maybe if
Speaker 1: you went to college and they had a college television station,
Speaker 1: that was a way you could break into the industry.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it was pretty tough. So it's been amazing
Speaker 1: to watch this particular transition. Next on the list is
Speaker 1: e readers and e reader apps, obviously one of the
Speaker 1: hallmark disruptive technologies to come along over the last decade so.
Speaker 1: E readers have been around for a while, but it's
Speaker 1: only been you know, a few years since the first
Speaker 1: e paper uh devices really became affordable to the average
Speaker 1: person and paired with the right you know, service like
Speaker 1: Amazon and by right, I mean it makes it really
Speaker 1: super easy to get stuff onto that book. They've become
Speaker 1: powerful tools. So whether you like Amazon's business approach or not,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to deny their effectiveness. Because you go out
Speaker 1: and buy a kindle, it is incredibly easy to purchase
Speaker 1: content for your kindle through the kindle. You know you're
Speaker 1: buying it through Amazon, and that was their business model.
Speaker 1: It makes incredible sense, the idea of selling this piece
Speaker 1: of hardware that makes it really easy for you to
Speaker 1: get content, and people are able to grab books and
Speaker 1: movies and music through Amazon and experience it through their
Speaker 1: various devices. It has been a huge blow not just
Speaker 1: too brick and mortar book companies, but publishers as well
Speaker 1: as music companies and film. Honestly, home video clearly has
Speaker 1: taken a huge hit. Whether it's the brick and mortar
Speaker 1: retail stores where you would go and buy a DVD
Speaker 1: or Blu Ray, or it's uh, you know, rental places.
Speaker 1: There are very few of those left around. You've got
Speaker 1: Red Box and a couple of others, and here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: we've got some independent companies that are still around that
Speaker 1: are really charming and have very Eclectic Collections Video Drome
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. If you were ever in Atlanta and you
Speaker 1: want to see a real quirky, weird video rental place,
Speaker 1: go to Video Drome. UM. It's at the corner of
Speaker 1: Highland and North Avenue and it is amazing. They have
Speaker 1: a lot of character. But obviously that business model, which
Speaker 1: used to be enormous, I mean Blockbuster Video and other
Speaker 1: companies like it dominated various strip malls across the United States.
Speaker 1: You could not go very far without seeing another one.
Speaker 1: In these days, they're long forgotten. Well. E readers UH
Speaker 1: and e readers and other devices, streaming devices and streaming media,
Speaker 1: as well as the shopping I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: have all contributed to seeing those kind of fade away.
Speaker 1: Smart mobile devices similar approach. It's also something that has
Speaker 1: really been disruptive. It's number six on the list. UH.
Speaker 1: It was just a few years ago that everyone assumed
Speaker 1: that cell phones were just going to continue to get
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller in the future, because that was what
Speaker 1: was considered to be sexy. You would get a phone,
Speaker 1: the next model would be even smaller and more compact.
Speaker 1: There were lots of UH sketches on television, particularly starting
Speaker 1: that live of characters who had comically tiny phones because
Speaker 1: it was a status symbol supposed to show how important
Speaker 1: that character was, or how important that character wanted to
Speaker 1: seem to be. And that was the joke, was that
Speaker 1: it was just going to continuously get smaller and smaller. Uh,
Speaker 1: smartphones turned that all around. So smartphones disrupted the phone
Speaker 1: the mobile phone market, because once the iPhone came out
Speaker 1: and showed that there was a compelling way to access
Speaker 1: things like the Internet through your phone, it meant that
Speaker 1: you wanted to have a screen that was of a
Speaker 1: large enough size for you to be able to read
Speaker 1: things and interact with it. And then we saw the
Speaker 1: trend start to reverse until now we're at the point
Speaker 1: where you start seeing the comically large phones, the fablets.
Speaker 1: I own one of those. I have an next to six.
Speaker 1: It's enormous, So that trend ended up reversing. We've also
Speaker 1: seen that they these devices have disrupted other industries, including
Speaker 1: e readers and tablets, and we've seen them disrupt some
Speaker 1: gaming industry too. Because of the way that apps have
Speaker 1: reshaped the gaming landscape. You have gamers who are truly
Speaker 1: dedicated to specific cons rolls or two computers to PCs,
Speaker 1: and then you have others who are happy to play
Speaker 1: whatever on whichever platform. And mobile devices are incredibly handy
Speaker 1: because you almost always have one with you, and the
Speaker 1: experiences can be really satisfying, depending upon the design of
Speaker 1: the app. Obviously, not all apps are created equal, but
Speaker 1: we've also seen smartphones replace other stuff, things like uh,
Speaker 1: day planners, which you might think, well, that's not that
Speaker 1: big a deal, but there are companies that just made
Speaker 1: day planners, or they made day planners as part of
Speaker 1: their business, and there's less and less reason to go
Speaker 1: out and buy one of those. Or digital cameras. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, we used to have digital cameras as
Speaker 1: standalone devices because they've took much better photos than our
Speaker 1: phones could. Phone images would be really low resolution, very grainy.
Speaker 1: But to ay, we're seeing better and better sensors incorporated
Speaker 1: into phones, and I rarely carry around an extra camera.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I do in very specific circumstances, but most of
Speaker 1: the time I'm happy to just carry my phone. Same
Speaker 1: thing is true with MP three players. I used to
Speaker 1: be the person who wanted to have an MP three
Speaker 1: player dedicated solely to MP three playing, and that's it.
Speaker 1: But as phone uh storage got larger and larger, and
Speaker 1: as cloud storage began to become a thing, I stopped
Speaker 1: doing that. Cloud storage would be another great example not
Speaker 1: on the list here, but I'll talk about it for
Speaker 1: a second. Cloud computing and cloud storage in general has
Speaker 1: been incredibly disruptive because by offloading the processing and storage
Speaker 1: requirements from a localized area to the cloud, you disrupt
Speaker 1: all the businesses that used to provide the machines that
Speaker 1: either processed information or stored it. So more and more
Speaker 1: companies are moving to cloud based server us is it
Speaker 1: decreases the demand they have for powerful machinery on the
Speaker 1: front end, and it means they can make a lower investment.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the employees at a business might
Speaker 1: end up with cheaper laptops, but in the end it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because the laptops aren't really doing all the work.
Speaker 1: A lot of the work is being offloaded to the cloud.
Speaker 1: So very disruptive. It also means it creates new opportunities.
Speaker 1: If you're the one making those inexpensive laptops, you've got
Speaker 1: a powerful business now because of these other companies that
Speaker 1: have created these powerful cloud services. Next on the list,
Speaker 1: we have mobile payment options. There's so many of these,
Speaker 1: Apple Pay being one that's in the news quite a bit,
Speaker 1: but there are other ones as well, things that end
Speaker 1: up taking the the the sting out of having to,
Speaker 1: you know, keep track of all your various cards, reward systems,
Speaker 1: things like that, all of that being wrapped up into
Speaker 1: an app that can keep track of everything for you.
Speaker 1: Very powerful, also extremely disruptive, really good example in this list.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of different options here. I
Speaker 1: mean there's the Google Wallet, there's Apple Pay, there's into
Speaker 1: it go payment, There's lots of stuff out there. And
Speaker 1: this applies both on the user side and on the
Speaker 1: vendor side. You've got companies that are using this stuff
Speaker 1: in order to be their point of sale, and it's
Speaker 1: really great tool for them because they can end up
Speaker 1: offloading that and they don't have to invest in you know,
Speaker 1: larger technologies like cashiers and things like that, or cash
Speaker 1: registers I should say, not cashiers, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're seeing more of this sort of approach where you
Speaker 1: can do the tap and pay and that ends up
Speaker 1: decreasing the need for sales personnel. Thus, this is disruptive.
Speaker 1: It means that people who would normally be able to
Speaker 1: get a job doing that, being a sales representative at
Speaker 1: a retail establishment. They might find it harder to get
Speaker 1: that kind of job because there's less need for it.
Speaker 1: So sometimes disruptive can mean pretty tough consequences for people,
Speaker 1: at least in the short term, until you figure out
Speaker 1: some other place where you have a need that people
Speaker 1: can go and work at and fill that need. Plus
Speaker 1: they can go and get paid for the work they do.
Speaker 1: So disruptive does not always mean great. It might mean
Speaker 1: great things for that whatever technology is just doing the disrupting,
Speaker 1: but it could have other consequences that roll out to
Speaker 1: lots of other people. Self checkout stations is similar in
Speaker 1: that way. It's also on the list. It's at number four.
Speaker 1: Very disruptive. Obviously. If you go to a grocery store
Speaker 1: and you see that there are only three lanes open,
Speaker 1: there's twenty lanes there. Three of them are open with
Speaker 1: with cashiers and the rest are are empty. And it's
Speaker 1: because these self service lanes have taken a lot of
Speaker 1: the load off. You don't need to employ as many
Speaker 1: people to handle the shopping requirements of your customers. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's powerful and again just as I was saying with
Speaker 1: the other one, it means that it might put some
Speaker 1: folks out of a job. That's tough. Number three in
Speaker 1: the list is wearable fitness devices. This is interesting to me. Um,
Speaker 1: We're still kind of casting about for the perfect one.
Speaker 1: There are a lot on the market, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been testing out different ones, and companies
Speaker 1: keep coming out with new ones. And whether it's something
Speaker 1: simple like a fitbit, which is what I'm wearing right now,
Speaker 1: or it's more complicated like a smart watch that also
Speaker 1: has step tracking and maybe a heart monitor and other
Speaker 1: items that are related to fitness apps. Uh, They're everywhere
Speaker 1: and they are disruptive. Uh. They are also you know,
Speaker 1: really powerful in the sense of they raise awareness, at
Speaker 1: least of fitness. Whether they actually drive fitness is still
Speaker 1: a matter of debate. I've seen studies that suggest that
Speaker 1: if you are already motivated, then you are likely to
Speaker 1: use these properly. But in that case, you're using it
Speaker 1: to help keep track of what you were already going
Speaker 1: to do. It's not like the fitness device encouraged you
Speaker 1: to do, you know, to be fit, but rather that
Speaker 1: it enabled you to keep better track of it. So
Speaker 1: it may be that these devices really just replace more
Speaker 1: simple devices like your standard pedometer, but still pretty disruptive. Uh.
Speaker 1: The last two on the list of I've actually already
Speaker 1: covered because there's cloud computing in the Internet. They are,
Speaker 1: uh the number one and number two. Um, but I
Speaker 1: already mentioned though, so I'm not going to go through
Speaker 1: that again. There are a couple of others that are
Speaker 1: not on the list that I want to mention that
Speaker 1: I think have been that are either incredibly disruptive or
Speaker 1: have the potential to be really disruptive. One is the
Speaker 1: Internet of things. Obviously, the Internet of things we've talked
Speaker 1: about so many times, but just in case you're new
Speaker 1: to the program, you haven't heard about it, or or
Speaker 1: you you're kind of confused, what does the Internet of
Speaker 1: things really mean? Internet of things ultimately refers to a
Speaker 1: world in which you have Internet connected sensors and actuators,
Speaker 1: things that can either take information from the environment or
Speaker 1: interact with the environment in some way, and they're all
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet, uh, in order to process information
Speaker 1: or send information. So here's an example. Let's use a
Speaker 1: house as our model, and you have you walk into
Speaker 1: your house and you've got motion sensors that are connected
Speaker 1: to the internet. Um, they activate your lights and a
Speaker 1: sound system when you walk in, The sound system plays
Speaker 1: from a playlist that you have selected, or maybe it
Speaker 1: even interacts by checking the information from a wearable you
Speaker 1: have on that detects your heart rate, and based on
Speaker 1: your heart rate, the house selects music that should complement
Speaker 1: your current mood based upon just the limited information it has. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it has information about what you had for dinner
Speaker 1: last night and has suggestions on things to eat tonight
Speaker 1: that might be interesting to you. These are all based
Speaker 1: on simple things that end up monitoring information, sending it
Speaker 1: to some other source where it gets processed, and then
Speaker 1: the processed information comes back to affect you in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way. Another great example would be traffic infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: let's say we have real time sensors out along the
Speaker 1: various roads of a busy city like Atlanta. It's a
Speaker 1: great example, and those sensors are picking up traffic patterns
Speaker 1: and sending it to a centralized processing station which is
Speaker 1: able to monitor the information and make useful conclusions such
Speaker 1: as maybe it needs to adjust the timing on certain
Speaker 1: intersections so that traffic can flow more freely. Through there
Speaker 1: to alleviate some traffic congestion. It's being a smart traffic system. Well,
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things is like that, but imagine that
Speaker 1: with everything. So you might have an experience where when
Speaker 1: you step outside, things are very much tailored to your
Speaker 1: preferences or your current state of being, and so you
Speaker 1: it ideally would have a very wonderful experience wherever you
Speaker 1: went all the time, it was always going to be
Speaker 1: catered to you. The reality will probably be a little
Speaker 1: less science fiction Ee and Disney than that is, but
Speaker 1: we're already seeing examples of this, and so the Internet
Speaker 1: of things is going to be really disruptive as it
Speaker 1: makes regular tasks more efficient and or effortless where we
Speaker 1: don't have to have middlemen to kind of negotiate things
Speaker 1: on our behalf. You know, we were able to have
Speaker 1: that stuff happen kind of automatically. Uh, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: really disruptive. Um, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to
Speaker 1: put lots of people out of work, although I imagined
Speaker 1: that first at least some things, that will be the case.
Speaker 1: But it definitely means that it's going to change things.
Speaker 1: And again, it may not necessarily be better. It may
Speaker 1: just be that that's the easiest way to do things,
Speaker 1: and so it might not be better, it might be
Speaker 1: the way things are. The last one I would pick
Speaker 1: to talk about is autonomous cars. Autonomous cars are definitely
Speaker 1: going to be disruptive. They've already started to be disruptive,
Speaker 1: and they're not even something that consumers can get their
Speaker 1: hands on yet. Autonomous cars will be disruptive for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones is that it will open
Speaker 1: up the potential for people to no longer younger own
Speaker 1: a personal vehicle. The idea here is that you could
Speaker 1: have a fleet of autonomous cars in a city. Let's
Speaker 1: say this would really only apply to folks who are
Speaker 1: living in urban environments for the most part. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you've got a fleet of autonomous cars and they're
Speaker 1: on the street, driving very safely because they're relying upon
Speaker 1: high tech sensors that allow them to react in a
Speaker 1: fraction of the time it would take a human to react.
Speaker 1: So we've got these safe autonomous cars roving around. When
Speaker 1: you need to go somewhere, you use an app and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I need a ride, and one of these autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: pulls up and you get in and it drives off.
Speaker 1: When an autonomous car needs to rest, like it needs
Speaker 1: to refuel or probably recharge, because I imagine that this
Speaker 1: is going to be largely an electric vehicle fleet, then
Speaker 1: it'll just take itself off the grid in another car
Speaker 1: come online to replace it. And this would mean that
Speaker 1: you would travel whenever you needed it. But otherwise you
Speaker 1: know you did, you wouldn't need a vehicle, So people
Speaker 1: would not have to spend the money on a personal car.
Speaker 1: They could just rely on this service. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that has actually been bandied
Speaker 1: about as a possible business model. Uber is looking into it.
Speaker 1: There have been studies that have shown that such a
Speaker 1: model could potentially reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from cars
Speaker 1: by nine Now keep in mind that car greenhouse gas emissions,
Speaker 1: that's a problem, but it's a tiny fraction of the
Speaker 1: overall greenhouse gas emissions that we see. So clearly, if
Speaker 1: all of those cars, those electric vehicles are being powered
Speaker 1: by coal fire, coal fired power plants, really you haven't
Speaker 1: you haven't really addressed the underlying problem, which is that
Speaker 1: you need to find some other means of generating electricity
Speaker 1: that does not dump out that many greenhouse gases in
Speaker 1: the process. It's always one of those issues where you
Speaker 1: gotta look at the bigger picture. But that autonomous approach
Speaker 1: could end up disrupting the automotive industry. If people don't
Speaker 1: need personal vehicles, then that's going to be a huge
Speaker 1: hit to multiple companies. Of course, any company that is
Speaker 1: the one that's actually supplying those autonomous fleets, they're gonna
Speaker 1: make it killing, but everyone else is going to have
Speaker 1: a real hard time of it. On top of that,
Speaker 1: things like taxi companies, they'll have a real hard time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it'll be a lot harder to get employment
Speaker 1: as a taxi driver if you have all these robot
Speaker 1: cars that are available and are really efficient, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about a robot car having a
Speaker 1: weird conversation with you because it's just gonna take you
Speaker 1: to where you want to go, as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about some weird thing in the news or an
Speaker 1: odd personal problem that sometimes you get with taxi drivers.
Speaker 1: So it could be an incredibly disruptive Now this is
Speaker 1: just a selection of disruptive technologies. There are tons of
Speaker 1: other ones that we could talk about. VR and a
Speaker 1: R virtor reality and augmented reality another potentially disruptive technology.
Speaker 1: Hollow lens in particular Microsoft's approach and Magic Leap being
Speaker 1: another could really disrupt things like if you can turn
Speaker 1: any surface into a monitor, you don't need to buy
Speaker 1: a monitor anymore. You just need the headset, and so
Speaker 1: there's a possibility that you could change lease. You also
Speaker 1: could have a new means of interacting with your computer
Speaker 1: using voice and just your controls. If it's compelling enough
Speaker 1: and easy enough and versatile enough, that could be incredibly disruptive.
Speaker 1: We have seen the model of the PC to be
Speaker 1: largely unchanged since the early nineteen eighties. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got your keyboard and mouse, and that's the chief way
Speaker 1: you interact with computers these days. But it's possible that
Speaker 1: if you created a system that is easy enough to
Speaker 1: use and does what you needed to do, we could
Speaker 1: finally see that model fade away or at least end
Speaker 1: up competing with a different model. Uh. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's necessarily going to happen. I haven't had my
Speaker 1: hands on a hollow lens yet, and there are probably
Speaker 1: going to be plenty of applications where you're going to think, no,
Speaker 1: I want a computer with a keyboard and a mouse
Speaker 1: to do this. It doesn't make sense for me to
Speaker 1: do it using this other model. But there might be
Speaker 1: enough cases where the hollow lens could be truly disruptive
Speaker 1: and be the next or you know, not just the
Speaker 1: hollow lens, but augmented reality in general be truly disruptive
Speaker 1: and be the next step in how we interact with information.
Speaker 1: So that's another great example. There's tons of other ones
Speaker 1: obviously that have been in the news on and off,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious to hear what you guys think. I
Speaker 1: want to know what you think is the most interesting
Speaker 1: disruptive technology, and keep in minding, disruptive technologies are not
Speaker 1: a new thing. There have been disruptive technologies for as
Speaker 1: long as there's been technology. Great example is the printing press,
Speaker 1: very disruptive technology. It ended up disrupting all those monks
Speaker 1: who are illuminating scripts. Um. So this is something that
Speaker 1: has been around pretty much as long as technology has
Speaker 1: been around. But if you guys have a favorite one,
Speaker 1: you should let me know. There's some that are still
Speaker 1: on the you know, debatable side, like bitcoin. It could
Speaker 1: be truly disruptive in the long run. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: still kind of justifying its existence. It has its dedicated
Speaker 1: followers for good reason, but it hasn't received widespread adoptions. However,
Speaker 1: if it ever does, that will be an incredibly disruptive technology.
Speaker 1: So stuff like that. If you have any suggestions, like
Speaker 1: specific examples, things that you would love be to cover
Speaker 1: in future episodes, maybe dedicate an entire episode to a
Speaker 1: specific technology to tell you the story of how it
Speaker 1: came to be and where is it going. You should
Speaker 1: write me and let me know. The email address you
Speaker 1: should use is text stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: where you can drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter
Speaker 1: or Tumbler. The handle it all three is text of
Speaker 1: hs W. I look forward to hearing from you, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and bass another topic because it has stop works
Speaker 1: dot com