Speed Changes Everything

As a futurist, I often find myself discussing how emerging technologies might impact jobs.  We talk about automation, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies that are all obvious candidates for human displacement.  We don't, however, think enough about the physics-related notion of speed. 

Speed refers to how much distance can be covered in a unit of time. If a car moves at 3 MPH, the driver can safely look around, take a drink of water, and eat a burger while driving.  However, if the car is moving at 120 MPH, the task of driving requires all of the driver's attention just to keep it under control.  The difference in speed completely changes the nature of the job.

The following is a list of just a few ways people, things, concepts and processes can be changed when speed increases:

1. Faster operational tempos require faster decision-making.  At a certain point humans reach their limit.  At that point processes must be automated and decisions made by algorithms to progress.
2. Speed changes organizational charts. Faster operational tempos require flatter organizational charts and fewer humans in the decision chain.
3. Speed requires faster acting and reacting.  Again, humans have their limits.  At a certain point automation and algorithms must take over to manage the speed of action.
4. Speed mandates continuous  and increased levels of attention and concentration.  Humans tend to quickly lose concentration, which soon becomes a big liability.  Automation will need to take over in a 24x7x365 - always on world.
5. The faster the speed, the more precision is required.  Often this precision can be lost as humans get tired and lose focus.
6. Speed quickly destroys the quality of a human experience.  Even a race car driver must rest, recuperate and be restored before returning to the track.  Continuous speed forces humans out of operational processes.
7. The increasing speed of innovations, invention and transformation makes long-term planning obsolete.
8. The speed of innovation far outpaces government's' ability to study, regulate and monitor it in order to build guardrails and protect their citizens from potential dangers.
9. Speed changes how markets operate.  Instant and automated digital trading based on algorithms can cause huge market swings and unanticipated swarming events and bring instability to the global financial system.  There is no time left in this process for wise industry sages to deliberate and ponder.
10. Speed changes how commerce and e-commerce are conducted.  Consumers want instant information, transactions, confirmations, approvals, feedback, real-time rating, comments, chats YouTube explanations and instant personalization.  Real-time equals automation, as humans cannot operate at digital speeds.
11. Speed changes how sports betting is conducted.  As more information is produced about every competitor, team, event and environment at a faster pace than ever before - the nature of betting changes.  Sensors, digital twins, data analytics, algorithms and speed increasingly becomes a source of advantage for sophisticated gamblers.  The nature of the game has changed.
12. Speed changes how democratic elections must be managed and safeguarded.  Media-reporting on elections based on near-real-time data, projections and speculation across different regions, time zones and methods of voting can create confusion, concern and conflict that interferes rather than promotes democracy.  
13. Speed changes the manner in which styles and cultures evolve.  Influencers can publish media and can instantly change the direction of fashion, create swarming events, or destroy the reputation of other people or things.
14. Speed changes how languages evolve.  Historically, time and distant provided environments where languages evolved slowly in near isolation or with limited outside influence.  Today, with global media broadcasting, and routine travel around the world the trajectory and pace of language evolution is greatly impacted.
15. Speed changes how conversations take place.  From face-to-face often requiring travel, to letters requiring travel and delivery, then phones, to email, texting and then chat, as each of these means of communication changed, so also did the way we format information and present it.  It changes our writing style and habits.

16. 

    Sloths are the definition of anti-speed

    Speed changes relationships - think online dating.  From proximity being a key selection filter to now opening the doors instantly to the world's population, much of what was historically involved with developing a relationship has been impacted by data and speed.
17. Speed changes the nature of conflict, battles and warfare.  In the roman era, leaders estimated that armies could generally move at 20 miles a day.  So armies separated by 60 miles were thought to be 3 days a part.  Three days allowed time to anticipate, prepare for battle or negotiate for peace.  Today, with stealth aircraft, drones, missiles and hypersonic weapons attacks can occur with little to no warning.  There is no time for negotiation, contemplation and conversation.  The nature of conflict has changed as a result of speed.
    

Today, speed is tightly integrated with the notion of digital.  As things becomes digitally enabled, speed transforms it.  This transformation often pushes humans beyond their limits.  They become the friction in a world running at un-human speeds.  A place where only more sophisticated digitally enabled things (i.e., robots, AI, algorithms, automation) can work at this new and future operational tempo.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Future of Speed, Time and Consequences

When supercomputers are upgraded the amount of information they can process in a second of time increases. Researchers report that between the years 1956 and 2015, there was a one-trillion-fold increase in what a supercomputer could process in a second of time.  Our brains, however, haven't noticeably improved their processing speed during the same timeframe.  

Speed can create interesting phenomena.  Speed has the effect of stretching a second so more can be accomplished during it.  It's almost as if the faster something moves the slower time passes.  We see this illustrated in the movie Matrix. Neo was taught to stretch time so he could avoid incoming bullets.  Today's supercomputers have Neo-like capabilities - they can stretch a second so more gets done.

The Loss of Distance and Justification to Worry

Historically distance has limited what we must worry about.  Our cave-dwelling ancestors only had to worry about being heard, seen or smelled by predators or enemies in their immediate surroundings. 

As time went by large human armies could retreat and separate themselves by 100 miles, which during the Roman era equated to 5 days of marching.  That meant they didn't have to worry about a battle happening for at least 5 days.  Today it is different. One hundred miles equates to mere seconds. The security of distance has died.  Today, we must worry about wider circles.

Information and Flash Mob Tactics - Plus Paul Revere's Speed

Recently anti-mask and anti-testing activist, using mobile phones, video and social media platforms, called for a flash mob style protest at the Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center emergency room in Vancouver, Washington.  They were protesting against the hospital's requirements that patients be tested for Covid-19 upon entering the hospital.

The anti-maskers that organized the 15-20 person flash mob protest stated their goal was to be able to "push a button on their mobile phone" and send information that would summon 10 activists in 10 minutes, 100 in 100 minutes and 1,000 in 1,000 minutes."  A speed they hoped would be fast enough to surprise the targets of their protest.

That got me thinking about information and "summoning" speed.   I wondered how long it took the American colonists to distribute information and summon their militia to meet the British in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775?  

Here is what my research found.  Paul Revere's 12.5 mile ride on a horseback to warn the colonists that the British were coming took approximately one hour.  Paul arrived in Lexington about 12:30 AM on April 19.  

Once the colonist received the warning information that the "British were coming!" they got dressed, grabbed their weapons and ran, walked or rode their horses to meet the British in Lexington.  The "shot heard around the world" was fired just after dawn in Lexington.  Based on these records it appears it took around 6 hours to distribute information and summon 500 colonial militia to confront the British.

One of the anti-maskers stated goals was the ability to summon 1,000 protesters in 1,000 minutes (16 hours). With today's social media, internet and mobile devices is that a stretch goal? In about 6 hours the American colonists had gathered approximately 500 militia, and the information was distributed on horseback. 

At least in this instance, it appears Paul Revere's team and their horses beat the "summoning" speed goals of today's anti-maskers.  Paul's team was able to carry information out and summon more people at a faster rate.

I recognize this certainly will not always be the case, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying this bit of silly trivia.

Don't forget to subscribe or follow me if you want more silly trivia, plus not so silly discussions on the future.

 

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Operational Tempo and Speed as a Competitive Advantage

The concept of speed as an advantage is not new. Over the course of 700 years, the Romans built and maintained a system of roads extending over 55,000 miles to enable speedy communications and the quick movement of troops and supplies across the vast expanse of the empire. 

Today digital technologies have altered our perception of time and space while expanding our expectations of what can be accomplished in a given time. We expect to accomplish one hour's worth of shopping in a brick and mortar supermarket, in seconds shopping online. These expectations significantly impact the way businesses must operate in a digital era to compete and remain relevant. 

Achieving Transformational Business Speed

It took Magellan’s crew three years sailing ships to circumnavigate the earth.  Today, at hypersonic speeds of 7,680 MPH, it takes just over three hours to circumnavigate the earth.  Data on the Internet, however, travels at 670 million MPH, which means it only takes milliseconds to circumnavigate the earth.  In this age of digital businesses and digital interactions, companies must digitally transform to work effectively in a world where mass information moves at these unimaginable speeds.

It's not just IT systems that are impacted by the volume and speed of information.  The creators of business processes that were designed and developed in an analog area, simply never envisioned a business environment that would require these operational tempos.  Analog business processes were designed to have humans involved.  These dependencies were designed to slow down the process to ensure accuracy, compliance and accountability.  Today, however, operating at the slow speeds of an analog, human dependent business process, will doom your company.  Analog business processes must be quickly automated via robotic process automation (RPA) using artificial intelligence and machine learning to effectively interact with impatient digital customers and B2B partners.

Space, Pandemics, Roman Roads and Air-Conditioners

The author on a
Roman Road

The only definitive protection against the Covid-19 coronavirus so far in this pandemic is space – at least six feet of it.  Isn’t it interesting that space the infinite 3D realm in which all material objects are located and all events occur, is the solution to stopping a global pandemic?  Space between people, in great abundance in Idaho, is in high demand and low supply in many heavily populated urban environments where the Covid-19 coronavirus is having the deadliest impact.

Krys Johnson, an epidemiologist at Temple University explains the origins of the six foot space for social distancing commonly referenced during the pandemic, "Six feet is the average distance that respiratory droplets from a sneeze or cough travel before they settle and are no longer likely to be inhaled by other people.”  Space offers protection and the more space, the more protection.

In Roman times, soldiers were expected to be able to march at the pace of 20 miles per day on carefully constructed roman roads.  Roman Generals would use the rule of 20 miles/day to plan military campaign time schedules and resupply points.  Opposing armies knew the 20-mile rule and recognized space equaled time.  One hundred and twenty miles of space between armies equated to six days of time with which they could use to either retreat, or to prepare an attack.  Space offered protection and the more space, the more protection.

The problem today is that space, once in abundance has been shrinking for many centuries as a result of speed.  Speed eats up space, much as Marc Andreessen wrote, “Software eats the world”.  As mentioned previously, each 20 miles of space between armies in the Roman era equated to about one day’s worth of time and protection.  That equation however, changed when soldiers began riding horses, taking trains or flying in airplanes.  Soon 20-miles/day became 20-miles/hour and then to 20-miles/minute.  As a result, the protective value of space was deflated because of speed and it lost much of its strategic value in military terms, and not surprisingly in Covid-19 terms as well.

I recently came across the news headlines, “Air-conditioning spreads the coronavirus to 9 people sitting near an infected person in a restaurant.”  In a restaurant in Guangzhou, China nine people became sick as a result of an added “speed” element from an air-conditioner.  The air-conditioner’s fans carried the viral droplets farther and faster across the restaurant, thus the six-foot social distancing rule was “eaten by speed” and lost its value.  

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Precision as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Transformation

Throughout history military leaders have suffered through the "fog of war," where they desperately sought answers to six key questions:

• Where are my enemies?
• Where are my friends?
• Where are my forces?
• Where are my materials and supplies?
• What capabilities are available now and at what location?
• What are the environmental conditions?

These “unknowns” impacted the strategies and tactics military leaders employed. Their time and energy as leaders were heavily focused on defending themselves against these unknowns.