The Inevitable

Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

By: Kevin Kelly

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

A New York Times Best Seller

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives.

Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture - can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends - interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning - and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another.

These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading - what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place - as this new world emerges. 

©2016 Kevin Kelly (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Predicting is hard, especially about the future

The author uses twelve verbs to frame the inevitable forces shaping our future.
These are:
Becoming: Things will change faster
Cognifying: Things will have intelligence
Flowing: Things will be streamed
Screening: Things will be on screens
Accessing: Things will be on the cloud
Sharing: Things will be Shared and collaboratively created
Filtering: Things will be personalized
Remixing: Things will be edited and remixed
Interacting: Virtual Reality will increase
Tracking: Things will be tracked
Questioning: Questions will be more important than answers
Beginning: Things will continue changing

This is largely just a survey of current and cutting edge technologies and predicts these trends will continue and accelerate. I think history shows this is the easiest. most common, and most commonly wrong, form of prediction. The author has a quite positive outlook on the future, but it is not clear this optimum is well founded.

The author puts a lot into the cognifying verb. This includes robots and all of Artificial Intelligence. Yes this will continue, but the specifics and consequences are difficult to predict.

The best chapter was the last which makes clear just how much we don't know.

My main takeaway from this was we really don't know what is Inevitable plus ONE interesting idea. One of my concerns about the future has been that throughout history insulated societies have become somewhat stagnant until they came in contact with a quite different culture than a period of transformation occurs. With global information sharing, I feared this pattern might come to an end (unless we bump into some aliens). Instead Kelly points out we don't need aliens. We will build them in the form of AI, and the pattern will not only continue, but accelerate. I was chagrined that I did not think of this myself.

The narration is quite good but most of the ideas seem a bit trite.

Most Important Book I'll Read This Year

This book was written at a level where it could be accessible to anyone, and that's perfect, because everyone should read it. I am absolutely blown away by what I've learned, and feel that I'd be very much in the dark moving into the future if I hadn't read it. Technological shifts are about to irreversibly alter the way humanity exists, and Kevin gives a brilliant and informative glimpse into that coming world. Highly recommend.

Clever bloke

No single person can reliably predict the future.

If you review past predictions about the present, they are always massively wrong, with a few tid-bits of accuracy. Some things are obvious: the population will increase, technology will improve, etc., but there are always events, ideas, developments and emergent properties that no single person’s brain is likely to be able to predict (a panel of experts wouldn’t do much better either).

What’s good about this book is that the author outlines the general trends and directions in which the future is likely to develop – from a technological perspective that is – so this book talks a lot about what will happen to the internet, along with many other technological subjects like robots and artificial intelligence. He classifies this into several themes: ‘flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking and questioning’ and then discusses each of these in turn. Actually, now I come to think about it, the book is really about the future of INFORMATION technology rather than the future of technology in general.

Because the focus is mostly on information technology rather than on wider geopolitical, social or environmental issues, he doesn’t really make an attempt to predict what will happen regarding major problems affecting the future of humanity and the planet: population growth, poverty, global warming, pollution, loss of biodiversity, warfare, space exploration etc., but he does present a well-reasoned, imaginative and entertaining discussion of how the future of information technology might develop. I enjoyed it.

You should set your expectations right

Kevin Kelly describes his meeting with inventor of hypertext Ted Nelson. He talks about Nelson's convoluted sketches of hypertext and with even some irony telling how nobody even dreamed off what will it become and what will be driving force of the web.

I think that this book should be treated the same... Kevin Kelly gives some convoluted sketches of future development and hypotheses on directions and driving forces and try to imagine how all that will look like but most probably from distance of 20-30 years we will look at those hypothesis and say wow that was a wild guess and it was so wrong but still there was something.

Just for the sake that there might be something I give 5 stars, performance is also excellent but overall still 4 stars for the frustrations of oversimplifying some things pr omitting important moments.

Interesting but not Arresting

The concept of the book is solid. And it is written well. I got the impression that the author might have been stretching for material as opposed to stretching to get to all the material. This book attempts to bring into focus trends, not technologies. I wish the author had done it with fewer words. But I also cannot deny that the lengths he went to to make the case for the trends he argues for is comprehensive and compelling.

One interconnected super intelligence

Books about the future that are clear, believable and comprehensible are few and far in between.

This book delves into the massive interconnectedness of all the data in the cloud.

Basically billions of devices and their associated data become one organism, one super intelligence. One mind.

One other book I highly recommend that deals mainly with AI is Life 3.0 written by an MIT professor.

Like listening to one long list after another

There were several interesting ideas in the book. However, I was expecting more of a Malcolm Gladwell type of writing and felt like I got one long list after another of where screens will exist in the future as an example.

Not worth the time

This book is incredibly general and really written for an audience with minimal involvement in technology. The first and last chapters are the only ones with substance and are rehashing of ideas in Kelly's prior book: "What technology wants". Just listen to that book and be done.

The Future Has Arrived

This book is an interesting highlight on the future of technology and society. The chapters provide an exciting and detailed look into how humans will change the way they think alongside evolving technology.

Worth it's weight in gold

Has tons of very interesting and incredibly useful information! It's like if somebody in early 90's wrote a book, about how powerful e-commerce, social networks, user generated videos, crowdfunding, etc. are going to be.

Unimaginative and unrelentingly tedious

The future, told at great length as seen through the narrow squint of a silicon valley tech optimist. Forget genetics, economics, cheap solar power, climate change, politics, developing countries, religion, poverty...
The book starts by saying that the future is complex and wildly unpredictable. Then predicts a future based on tech startups producing better faster computers, better AI and better screens and more joined up versions of what we have now.
It feels like one of those old General Electric World of Tomorrow films, but produced by Google or Facebook.
I don't know what the future holds, but I know it will be a lot more interesting than this.

Interesting recap of tech trends, blasé side-stepping of concerns

The narration is fine and the main points are worth a listen. These things seem genuinely inevitable so everyone should be aware of where they might lead. But the author’s decision to ignore (or embrace) real social drawbacks is infuriating. Just because something is inevitable doesn’t mean we have no choice about the speed of its takeover or how it is used.

Most Prophetic

There is a lot packed into this book
Its dense , and the narrator handled the content well, all be it in erring towards robotic away from melodic.

But it suited the nature of the book
There is a lot in here that really meets the title of the inevitable.

Its a great step forwards to understanding todays emerging connected society and big data and how and why things are changing as they are.
Well worth the time to listen.

Good book but...

Short and sweet on this one. This book is very informative and contains a lot of info. But KK's writing style is very repetitive. He makes the same points over and over again. Didn't need to be over 11 hours.

Lots of good info, and he certainly knows what he's talking about, but I couldn't say that I enjoyed it... it was more like a workout. But maybe that's what he was going for.

Not engaging

I may have purchased this book too late. There were very few revelations and the contents did not flow for me. I found myself re-reading several sections.

Enlightening, inspiring and cautionary predictions

I like Kevin Kelly's enthusiasm for the digital changes on the horizon. I'm not sure that he included enough cautionary balance though. There will be vast swathes of the globe that will be left out of these changes and some that vehemently challenge them.

In the third chapter and I adore this book already

As a Sci fi writer this is fuel to the mind. Kelly really unravels much deeper and richer framework to think about the biotech revolution.

Thought provoking and convincing

Worried this might be a little shallow and just a rough overview of some obvious trends. But it is well structured, well argued and very convincing in its future vision. A very valuable book

Nothing that we don’t know

I was expecting more revelations than statistics and facts that we already know. It didn’t impress me :(

An absolute chore to finish. Terrible.

I was expecting a fascinating book on what we can expect from the tech industry in the future. What I got was a guy droning on and on about the future of e-book readers and not really going anywhere with it.

All in all, the worst book I’ve read in my life.