Augmented

Life in the Smart Lane

By: Brett King, Andy Lark, Alex Lightman, JP Rangaswami

Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen

The Internet and smartphone are just the latest in a 250-year-long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, the way we work, and the way we interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts, and changes that are unparalleled. While consumers today are camping outside of an Apple store waiting to be one of the first to score a new Apple Watch or iPhone, the next generation of wearables will be able to predict if we're likely to have a heart attack and recommend a course of action. We watch news of Google's self-driving cars, but don't likely realize this means progressive cities will have to ban human drivers in the next decade because us humans are too risky. Following on from the Industrial or Machine Age, the Space Age and the Digital Age, the Augmented Age will be based on four key disruptive themes - Artificial Intelligence, Experience Design, Smart Infrastructure, and HealthTech. Historically, the previous "ages" brought significant disruption and changes, but on a net basis, jobs were created, wealth was enhanced, and the health and security of society improved. What will the Augmented Age bring? Will robots take our jobs and AI's subsume us as inferior intelligences? Or will this usher in a new age of abundance?

Augmented is a book on future history, but, more than that, it is a story about how you will live your life in a world that will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 250 years. Are you ready to adapt? Because if history proves anything, you don't have much of a choice.

©2016 Brett King (P)2017 Tantor

A must read

This needs to mandatory reading for every High School student and anyone else who wants to be part of the upcoming revolutionary wave in our new world culture.

Focus on the average or below reviews

The reader did not seem interested in the material. The material itself seemed very narrow in scope and presented the future as if there would be no other jobs outside of tech or occupations that would be replaced by AI
Don’t get me wrong, a good bit of it is accurate, but it presents itself as the definitive guide to the future lives and occupations. It ignores millennials, primary education, as well as the disruption AI will have on non traditional employment such as content creators. The material also doesn’t take into account the exponential development of AI and it learns faster than any human, it will surpass expectations.
Very hypothetical and not worth a read.

Hypnotizing

It's a fairly good summary of prognostications of the time of writing. But, the reading tone is sooooooo way-cool california breezy laid back with a constant sense of suspense ... with hardly a slight breath or pause for the whole mind-bending 12 hours of 'this is really really cool' and 'this is really happening' and this is what is going to kill this or that industry and we arent even going to break a segue or anything just keep on going and going. This book should really be read online, with links to the multitudes of references, and all the visual graphs contributing.
In the ultimate, augmented really speaks of the interweaving of our entire existence into virtual worlds, social networks, commerce networks, health networks ... war networks. It does not, of course, speak of the world past the singularity, since we have no possible idea of what that will entail (thus summarized Superintelligence and 'Our Final Invention'). Thus, the key take-away is the summary of competing technologies, market drivers and disruption effects. This really needs a rigorous study by real economists who can predict the impacts in stages, and guide policymakers in keeping society from disintegrating.

Author is out of touch

This is an interesting read but is obviously written by someone who is an outsider to the AI and ML industry. He delivers many of the facts accurately but his interpretation of intent for companies like Amazon and Microsoft is way off at times. Everything is good until he starts pretending to understand the reason that these companies do what they do and how they are doing it.

I bought this book to listen to a celebration of where AI is going and what is coming next for humanity. I was disappointed to find that most of the book is just his interpretation of computing history followed by doom and gloom predictions where AI and ML are the evil behind everything.

If you are looking for a book that will tell you the wonders that are coming next, this is not the book for you. If you want a history of technology, it may be.

Lots of examples

Not sure how I really feel about this book. It have A LOT of examples on how technology will intertwine with daily life in the future. I appreciate that. But it was almost as if the whole book was put together from thousands of news articles. The audible version was also read in a way that was rather uninspiring.