The Promethean Option

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

-         Roy Amara

Back in the 90’s, it sounded as if everything that could be digitized would be digitized. And yes, while that indeed happened (think ticket bookings, tax returns and e-books), in the longer run, software has disrupted more and more industries that seemed non-digitizable. Like cab services getting replaced by Uber; manned spy planes being replaced by drones; and as Venkatesh Rao points out:

“The Nest thermostat achieves energy savings not by exploiting new discoveries in thermodynamics, but by using machine learning algorithms in a creative way.”

But what’s different from previous technological upheavals is this:

“It is a revolution that is being led, in large measure, by brash young kids rather than sober adults… and proceeding largely without adult supervision.”

And another key difference?

“Instead of vying for control of venerable (political, economic and social) institutions that have already weathered several generational wars, young people are creating new institutions based on the new software and new wealth.”

Even when the idea is conceptualized by the old guard, they don’t always know how to (or are unwilling to risk) productize it. Rao calls this the “Promethean character” of technological change these days:

“Technologies capable of eating the world typically have a Promethean character: they emerge within a mature social order (a metaphoric “heaven” that is the preserve of older elites), but their true potential is unleashed by an emerging one (a metaphoric “earth” comprising creative marginal cultures, in particular youth cultures), which gains relative power as a result.”

And, as Chris Dixon said, this change is often being brought about without it being someone’s full time job!

“What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”

And that last comment from Dixon means the old way of trying to guarantee a good future for your kid (school -> college -> degree -> well-paying job) no longer holds. The way forward, as per Rao?

“Today, the future depends on increasing numbers of people choosing the Promethean option.”