Thank You For Being Late

Thank You For Being Late helps you slow down and take life at a more reasonable pace by explaining the state of our rapidly changing environment, economy, and technology.

One testament to just how fast technology is changing is the fact that Friedman says just in doing research to write this book, he had to consult each technologist at least twice to stay up-to-date. This unprecedented growth in technology is already disrupting the world in huge ways.

Friedman shares the example of dairy farmers who are now adapting to the digitization of their industry. Before the emerging technology that they have now, milking cows was a job of manual labor by many workers. Now, we use computers to monitor everything from udders and milk flow to supply chains. Soon, a cow milker may not be as much a farmer in muddy boots milking cows but an analyst of computer data in business-casual.

For instance, a University of Oxford study in 2013 found that a huge 47 percent of jobs in America were at a very high risk of being lost to computers within the next 20 years. New technologies are morphing so fast that even in just five to seven years they become obsolete.

Just think back to a short time ago when everyone seemed to be on MySpace and had Blackberry phones. Can you even think of anyone who uses either of these now?

Though it may not feel like things are changing day-today, just thinking back five years or so can show you how quickly it’s happening.

In the days of our parents and grandparents, people earned money by gathering knowledge and skills to deliver a product or a service. All that they needed was education or learning a trade and they could be secured a job for life. Today, things couldn’t be more different. Global flows of commerce and information change rapidly and a product having huge success today could be old news tomorrow. Our globalized market isn’t just manufacturing and trading goods anymore. It’s about performing transactions and sharing information on the internet. Just think about the millions of daily exchanges between people on platforms such as Airbnb, Facebook, or Uber. The way in which we are interconnected so readily allows products to go viral like never before. The author shares an example from 2012 where Michelle Obama was photographed wearing a dress from ASOS. Her fashion choice was retweeted no less than 816,000 times and the dress was instantly sold out. Through these changes, companies that have been around for a long time must shift or go out of business. General Electric has had to adapt and now taps into the global market by running…