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