Daniel Burrus is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He has started six businesses and written seven books, two of them bestsellers. He is also one of the leading tech forecasters on the planet. Daniel has been right in his predictions of where we are going in regards to technology so often that he has acquired the status of a prophet in the field.
Given his area of expertise, it seems logical to ask Daniel his opinion on the way technology has been developing in recent years. It seems that as the pace of technological development accelerates that it is no longer doing so in a way that benefits people but rather in a way that simply leads to more technology. Does he see this trend continuing or will the technology in the end actually bring people up so that we really can benefit from all of our hard work?
Daniel’s response is that the answer is really up to us. Technology is merely a tool. In and of itself, it is not necessarily good or bad. We can use radiation to give cancer or to cure it depending on how we use the tools at hand. That means that we are in control if we want to be. We can be lazy and let technology shape our future for us or we can be proactive and use it to build the future we want.
That means you can’t just coast. Unless you are content with going downhill. As my football coach said, you are either getting better or you’re getting worse. You never stay the same. It’s the same with everything. You can either work to make the change you want or you just wind up getting swept along by the change someone else wants. It really is that simple. Work for what you want or be content with what someone else gives you.
The good news is that there are literal mountains of opportunity available for the proactive. It may not seem that way, but that’s because you are probably watching too much news and letting it turn you into a pessimist. If we could send people to the moon with slide rules while fighting the Vietnam War, what couldn’t we accomplish now if we just put our minds and resources to it? This kind of optimism is usually met with a chorus of ‘buts’ and ‘what ifs’. However, it is the optimist who gets things done, the pessimist usually does very little because he is sure it will fail. Don’t be that guy.
The truth is, there is a lot we take for granted today that would not have been possible just a few years ago and that trend is likely to continue. How likely it is depends on which trend you are talking about. One of the things that has made Daniel so successful at predicting technological development is that he has realized that there are hard trends and soft trends. Hard trends are things that will develop in a predictable pattern so long as we don’t get hit by a stray comet. Think of cellphone technology. We went from 3G to now 5G on a predictable path, a path that will continue through 6G and beyond. A soft trend is one that depends on a variety of variables and can be directed or stopped. Here, think of health care costs. The trend has been a sharp increase but a number of variables can be changed to alter that trend.
All of those trends, all of that change is disruptive to some degree. And it will happen. The question then is not whether or not there will be disruption but what will you do with it? Will you ignore it and allow it to shape you? Will you be a negative disruptor and harness it for your own gain at the expense of others? Or will you be a positive disruptor and harness it to benefit others and bring about needed change? The choice is yours.
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