Brett King - Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

As a long-time R&D project manager in military technology innovations and national security policy, I am deeply impressed by the potential value of Augmented. It has great potential to inform evolving security policy and creative new options, and to prepare government and industry leaders for the emerging future. King, Lightman and their contributors are to be congratulated for their thought-provoking work. The book should be required reading for professionals in the US and international defense and security organisations.

Dr. Christopher Harz, RAND, DARPA, DHS and NATO
research analyst and project manager, author of Electric Blue,
and co-author of Food Security via Clean Energy.

If you wonder about what your life will look like in 20 years, read this book. Things are about to get real, and Brett and Alex lay it out beautifully in a way that is accurate, easy to understand and only a little bit scary.

Dave Asprey, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Bulletproof Diet

You may think youve heard all there is to know about the dramatic changes to come in our digital future. Well, prepare to have your mind blown... again. In a crowded field of prognosticators, Brett King stands out for his clearly articulated vision of how technology is changing who we are.

Michael J. Casey, author of The Age of Cryptocurrency:
How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order

As one of the worlds most followed and provocative voices in digital finance, Brett King has once again thrown down the gauntlet. Bretts vision of the future should be required reading for governments, think-tanks, investors, or basically anyone wondering how transformational technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, Bitcoin and gene-editing may impact our society.

Seth Wheeler, former White House advisor on financial services and Brookings Institution guest scholar

Whole industries have been vaporised by technological progress but as Brett King show us, this trend is just getting started. Augmented is your guide to a world in chaos, where each wave of technological innovation collides with several others. Get ready, get smart; read this book.

Robert Tercek, author of Vaporized

We live in a world where software is getting smart enough to automate tasks that only people could do just a few years ago. This is going to radically change the way we educate our children and the way people work in the future. Augmented is a wake-up call for a whole swathe of industries including the accounting profession. If your job can be automated, it probably will be.

Artificial intelligence, embedded experience design and real-time advice will undermine many of the professional services industries that grew rapidly last century. The future is one that is very different and King, Lark, Lightman and Rangaswami are the best guys on the planet to explain how we might get there.

In the next 20 years well see professions like accountants, financial advisors, bank tellers and others dramatically effected by automation, experience design and artificial intelligence. Augmented shows us that these changes are typical of historical disruptions, but this time the changes are happening much faster. This book really blew my mind. All I can say is: Im glad I run a technology company.

Rod Drury, CEO of XERO

When someone as obsessed and thoughtful about the future as Brett King gets ahold of a keyboard and sufficient time to think and writewatch out, world. Here comes a book that will broaden your mind and make you re-examine what you think you know about tomorrow.

David Wolman, author of The End of Money
and contributing editor at Wired

What happens when you take accelerating exponential change for granted? The augmented world of the future described by Brett King and Alex Lightman is shaped by the profound consequences of this understanding. The social transformation, the radical impact on the very definition of being human and the huge economic upside of the global opportunities are all deeply analysed and richly illustrated in this inspiring book.

David Orban, Managing Partner of Network Society Ventures

If you want real financial security and the ability to fund your dreams in the future, then you need to see what is coming next. Brett Kings Augmented is a roadmap of the biggest changes and the most disruptive technologies well need to navigate to get there.

David Bach, New York Times Bestselling Author of
The Automatic Millionaire

2016 Brett King

Cover design by Kylie Maxwell

Book design by Benson Tan

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Name(s): King, Brett, 1968- | Lightman, Alex, 1961- contributor. | Rangaswami, J. P., contributor. | Lark, Andy, contributor.

Title: Augmented : life in the smart lane / Brett King, with contributions from Alex Lightman, JP Rangaswami & Andy Lark.

Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2016]

Identifier(s): OCN 906658326 | eISBN 978 981 4677 58 5

Subject(s): LCSH: Technology--Social aspects. | Technological innovations--Social aspects. | Technological forecasting.

Classification: LCC T173.8 | DDC 303.483--dc23

Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy

To my daughter Hannah who has learned strength is best measured from the inside. And to Michael Armstrong and Peter Brooks whom I can never thank enough for starting me on this journey.