Shawn Dubravac - Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Transform the Way We Work, Live, and Communicate

PRAISE FOR

DIGITAL DESTINY

As I started reading Shawns book I thought it overly optimistic, but he provides many current, real-world examples of how connectivity and online services are changing our lives today, let alone tomorrow. Very thought-provoking and, for me, cautionary.

Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google

Shawn DuBravac works at the epicenter of technology and society. He brings a data-driven yet human perspective to understanding trends in the world we live in. When he talks, I listen.

Doug Solomon, former Chief Strategy Officer at Apple

DuBravacs work gives him a unique perspective on this revolutionclose enough to see the details and broad enough to understand its long term trends. No mere speculation hereDigital Destiny is a clear and brilliant overview of the revolution yet to come, grounded in what has already come to pass.

Paul Saffo, futurist and forecaster

DuBravacs message is clear: the digital revolution will profoundly change how we communicate with one another and with the world around us. Digital Destiny explores how sensor-driven data will unlock potential for new business and industry in ways never before imaginable.

Tyler Cowen, one of Foreign Policy magazines Top 100 Global Thinkers

Shawn DuBravac has written a highly intelligent and fair interpretation of the networked future. This is exactly the kind of nuanced and well-informed analysis of our big data world which will make this future more inhabitable. Strongly recommended.

Andrew Keen, Internet entrepreneur and author of The Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo, and The Internet Is Not the Answer

Starting from his unique vantage point as Chief Economist for the Consumer Electronics Association, DuBravac takes readers on a non-stop trip to our data-driven, 3D-printed, sensor-rich, autonomous, and automated near future. Better strap in, though. While the destination is inevitable, the road is not without some bumps and sharp curves.

Larry Downes, New York Times bestselling author

Digital Destiny is a welcome antidote to the now all too common stream of ill-informed anti-technology screeds that seek to convince us that the digital revolution is a force for ill. DuBravac sets the record straight, eloquently demonstrating how the emerging data-driven era is a force for progress.

Robert Atkinson, author of Innovation Economics

Copyright 2015 by Consumer Electronics Association

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Regnery is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DuBravac, Shawn.

Digital destiny : how the new age of data will transform the way we work, live, and communicate / Shawn DuBravac.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-62157-380-7 (eBook)

1. Technology--Social aspects. 2. Technological innovations--Social aspects. I. Title.

T14.5.D78 2015

303.4833--dc23

Published in the United States by

Regnery Publishing

A Salem Communications Company

300 New Jersey Ave NW

Washington, DC 20001

www.Regnery.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com.

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New York, NY 10107

To my three digital nativesNick (eleven), Ryan (nine), Gavin (seven). May you each secure the destiny you seek.

CONTENTS

D igital Destiny is about the future. It will give you a roadmap to the world we will soon inhabit. It will allow you to make decisions, knowing where remarkable innovation is taking us. It will even give you insight into when and how you should buy products. And it may inspire ideas for you to create a new business.

The legendary ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky said part of his strategy for success was to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Digital Destiny shows us where the puck of innovation is going to be.

This book will be right in many of its predictions. It will also be wrong in others. Intervening world events and unexpected breakthroughs in technology, costs, and consumer demand can and will affect how and when companies offer products and services and even whether new industries can and will be created.

Even the actions of government can and will affect innovationa concept I discuss in my 2011 New York Times bestseller The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. We see this today as governments fight to protect status quo industries from citizen-to-citizen services such as Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber. In fact, its why the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), where Shawn and I work, created the Innovation Movement, as we believe fostering innovation should be a key national strategy, to give the next generation a better life.

But despite political uncertainty, Ill bet on Shawns predictions and vision. I have worked with Shawn for over a dozen years, enjoying scores of his presentations, and marveling at his ability to extrapolate commercial markets from breakthroughs and trends in innovation. Shawn and his colleagues at CEA regularly forecast the next several years of the sales of hundreds of consumer technologies.

Shawn is known for accurate predictions. He told us and the world about the potentially huge market for a portable mid-screen device long before Apple introduced the iPad. He helped accurately forecast the annual sales of HDTV over ten years, long before the product was even in the American lexicon. And he foresaw the popularity of using the real estate of the wrist and body to house new categories of devices.

If its difficult to predict the near to mid-term future, its even tougher to write a book about it.

For one thing, this isnt barroom talk or even one of Shawns compelling keynote speeches. It is a record for history, by which he will be soon judged. In that way, this book is very much like the ambitious and brilliant masterpiece The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, which meticulously describes progress in several areas of science to present a world decades from now, when new levels of human and computer thought are realized. On the other hand, Digital Destiny is accessible to even the least tech-aware reader. By no means simple, it is nevertheless a fun and easy read that turns complex, abstract ideas and principles into compelling, enjoyable prose.

Describing the future in an interesting way is a challenge, because rarely is the real future the stuff of science fiction. We wont have flying cars; there wont be spaceships; and Im pretty sure we wont have ray guns. As Shawn makes clear, our future is about dataand how human beings will use that data in new, inventive, and life-saving ways. Yet