by Ian Khan | Feb 10, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast
Aaron Frank of Singularity University on the Ian Khan Show
In this episode, i speak with Aaron Frank, co-contributor to the book After Shock.
Aaron Frank is a researcher, writer, and consultant who has spent nearly a decade working in Silicon Valley. He was one of the earliest employees at Singularity University, technology education and innovation center based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he most recently served as Principal Faculty.
As a writer, his articles have appeared in Vice, Wired UK, Forbes, Venturebeat, and Singularity Hub.
As a speaker, Aaron has lectured for audiences and organizations including The Coca-Cola Company, Under Armour, the CIA and Department of Defense, FC Barcelona, the NBA and many others.
He routinely advises large companies, startups, and government organizations on trends related to a broad set of emerging technologies, with a focus on augmented and virtual reality.
Aaron began his work with Singularity University on the business side of the organization while it was a startup with fewer than 15 employees. He was a core part of the team responsible for the early stage growth of the company where he managed business development and strategic partnerships.
Prior to joining SU, Aaron worked at a Washington DC-based life science consulting firm.
Aaron is also a founding board member of Community Carrot, a 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission of breaking the cycle of poverty for Washington D.C.’s opportunity youth, now also operating in Seattle Washington. With funding from the local D.C. government, the organization provides entrepreneurship training and access to capital for young adults who grow up in poverty.
Originally from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, Aaron has a degree in Communications and minor in Philosophy from the University of Maryland, and currently enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Oxford.
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About After Shock
The world’s foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50
Contributors include:
Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O’Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan
Publication Details
ISBN Print: 978-0-9997364-4-9
ISBN eBook: 978-0-9997364-5-6
Full Transcript : Hi friends this is Ian Khan and you’re listening to the Ian Khan show. In today’s episode, we’re talking to somebody who’s a contributor to the book aftershock. So this is an aftershock special episode. Today I’m speaking with Aaron Frank who is a researcher, writer and lecturer based at Singularity University as full time principal faculty. His work has been published in devices motherboard, you’ve wired, UK, Forbes and VentureBeat and as a speaker, he’s addressed many audiences across business and governments, including the CIA, the Department of Defense and Under Armour, and many others. Let’s speak with Aaron Frank.
Aaron, welcome to the Ian Khan show. It’s such a pleasure to connect with you, you and I are now bound together by aftershock. This amazing book that our friend, john shorter has put together and I say this every time every time I mentioned john shorter, he needs to pay me $1 I’m going to be a millionaire. Aaron, how are you? I’m doing well considered, how are you? I’m doing well. You know what I’m trying to keep busy. There’s so much to do. And it’s just changed the way I do things. That’s the only thing that has changed posting a lot of leadership live streams. Every Wednesday, we’re doing leadership live streams, we get three, four or 500 people online and they’re talking about stuff, you get people together leaders talking about talking to people. So there’s a lot happening with us keeping me busy. We’re doing podcast recordings, they’re keeping busy. And there’s plus other work as usual, power things over at urine, you’re in San Francisco. Yeah, we’ll check a life what’s happening. Things are a bit volatile at the moment, as you can imagine, but I am in San Francisco, we’ve been in a shelter at home directive now for about a month, I think it’s actually almost exactly one month tomorrow. And we’ve just had it extended out another month at a minimum. So another month of it, I’m continuing to live my life pretty much as it was before I worked from home, I had been working from home primarily a lot before that. And actually, so I’m affiliated with Singularity University as a full time faculty member there. But really my my core research at the moment, actually, for a while looks at the use of online virtual worlds as a way to do remote social experiences, both for learning and development, education, you know, just recreational. And so obviously, that topic has become, you know, far more relevant in the context of, you know, the pandemic, so, yeah, so I have a lot to do a lot of things keeping me busy. You know, it sounds like you’re keeping busy with a lot of online engagements as well, which is, you know, I think that’s gonna be the way the world for a bit. Absolutely. I think there’s, you know, the digital transformation has been put on steroids, and it’s just on such a curveball right now, I’ve been having so many different conversations, one part of which is that it vendors are over flooded with requests, everybody wants to go online, zoom, whatever, name it there, and it’s just changing the way we work. But there’s some industries that are struggling, there’s places where things need to be done physically, and they cannot be done. But and that’s something coming out of my leadership livestream that I’m doing is how’s industry transforming? And what’s happening? Let’s talk about aftershock. You’re very young, generally speaking, I read your essay. And that makes me super qualified, by the way, because I read everybody’s essay before I speak to them. So I am one of those rare people who have read a majority of the book and you weren’t born, you’re a millennial categorization wise. Correct. And you’re in your early 30s, which makes you a young adult. You’re out of university A few years ago, I’m assuming, right? You’re much younger than I am. You’re an amazing generation. I love your generation, right? Because I feel millennials have such a huge potential and they do things in such a great way. And I hate tagging labeling people like a millennial and, but just for the sake of categorization, let’s talk about Toffler. Toffler wrote this book 50 years ago, not this one, Future Shock 50 years ago, and then I was even born then, right, whenever he conjured up whatever you wrote, whatever you thought, My mind is blown, how could he even think and perceive those things? How do you see that book? When you read it? What were your thoughts growing up in an era of technology? Right. But yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because I always had this number being quite fascinated by this idea that, you know, most of what we refer to as science or technology, or, you know, modern infrastructure, or things that, you know, largely haven’t existed for very long, you know, the, it was almost like for, you know, however long you want to measure it 1000s of years, if you were hungry, you had to go out into the woods and, you know, stab something and then now we have, you know, modern supply chains, and you know, everything has blinking lights in it. And I think what Toffler his book does a really fascinating job of doing is, it does look at very specific anecdotes, but it’s not anecdote based. what he’s done is he’s captured a lot of sort of almost longer trends or themes that sort of help. Explain the nature of change and how change unfolds. In a world where, you know, at our current moment in human history, it’s a lot easier now to perceive this rapid speed that seems to be occurring, especially in science and technology, and engineering, and innovation and all of these things. And so I think when you read a book, like Toffler, it’s really interesting, even though it’s a 50 year old, you know, work, it’s still done a nice job of capturing the themes related to understanding how to make sense of change as they occurred in a world where change is happening faster and faster. I really believe that for any generation to live successfully, they need to know what’s happening around them, right, and Toffler, whether you read the third wave, or you read the Future Shock, it’s a really nice read whether you understand 5% of that 10% of the book, or 100%, I really recommend everyone read books and try and understand different perspectives. Now, you grew up in an era where you mentioned in your essay, and here’s a proof that I actually read it that when you were growing up, your brothers and sisters and siblings had these large Disc players, and you know, they would carry them. And that was the era that you grew up. And we don’t even have CD players anymore, right? We don’t even have iPods anymore, because we do. But they’re done because everything is just on one device, or iPods also make phone calls now. Right? That just makes phone calls. Yeah, life has changed a lot. How do you envision this rapid pace of this accelerated change? Do you have you personally seen change accelerating faster? Since since you have been seeing things around you? Yeah, it’s a good question. I actually, I think about it, I think what what’s interesting is perceiving the rate of change in your own personal life doesn’t happen in a uniform speed, where and I think the easiest way to I love thinking about this, because, you know, parts of my life, I live in, like the most rapid, fast changing, you know, 21st century. And and I would say that a good example of that is anytime I’m using my, you know, my mobile phone, you know, I have a, I have an iPhone, you know, it’s, I can download new apps, it’s, you know, software updates. But when I drive to the office, or if I go to work, I’m driving a 20 year old Honda Accord, right. So this is a, my parents gave me this car, and I still drive it, you know, I’m gonna drive it forever, until it disintegrates into dust, it’s a great car. So during my commute, or anytime I’m in the car, I’m living 20 years in the past. So I think what’s interesting is that it really depends on what part of your life you’re living, and perceiving, the rapid pace of change that’s swirling around us in society happens in sort of tachy moments of, you know, because I’m going to need a new car at some point. And that experience will be like this mind blowing, you know, I won’t know all the bells and whistles and Bluetooth enabled internet connected cars, you know, being in a Tesla, for me is like, driving around in a spaceship. You know, I’ve, you know, I’ve got some co workers that have, it’s interesting to note that change happens, but it doesn’t happen, you know, it happens in like spurts and growth at different points in your life. And I think, you know, just consumer technology is probably the easiest one to see, just, you know, I remember the cell phone I had, you know, even five years ago is nothing compared to what you know, the device that I currently own, can do and does do, and the fact that I can just sit on a train and watch, you know, European soccer that wouldn’t even have been broadcast into my living room. Growing up in the United States, I can watch, you know, anywhere in the world, from a device in my pocket, these kinds of things. You know, if you really step back and perceive them, you’ll reflect on them. They’re pretty incredible. Yeah, completely different parts of your life where they happen slowly. And there’s many things that are changing. There’s bigger technologies, when we talk about them, okay? The cloud technologies are changing something or social media is changing a lot of things and you have a lot about, and you mentioned, virtual reality, augmented reality. Let’s talk about that. What is the world of augmented reality? What is virtual reality? Is it just these big headsets that we can put on our, what do these devices do? Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. Actually, one of my favorite aspects of this conversation is and I think you’re just kind of touched on it, are the terms like what are the terms mean? Because in the world that I live in, it’s such a new paradigm that no one really agrees on what the terms are yet so usually, augmented reality is referring to a concept where you know, most people are familiar with Google Glass you can enhance your experience of the world with you know, visual or it can be audio you know, if you if you’re listening to Google Maps, in your headphones walking around the city, that that is a form of augmented reality computer, eating your experience of the world with additional information. Virtual Reality, on the other hand, typically refers to you know, the fully immersive headsets that you’re wearing, where you’re completely shut off from, you know, the real world but your digital device But the point that I think is important to note about like, so what are these technologies, the key ingredients, all of these kinds of technologies. And this is a term that’s starting to become more popularized being called spatial computing. And what that means is this idea that what’s true of both augmented and virtual reality is that your computing environment now really, for the first time, it exists in three dimensional space, you know, like, right now You and I are talking on it, we’re looking at each other on a two dimensional window, a screen, you know, fairly soon, not too long, we could actually probably do this today, if we wanted, be sitting across from each other in a three dimensional spatial way where I’m interacting with an avatar, or a hologram of you that you know, has facial place, you know, across the table from me. And so it’s that element of three dimensional space, that’s the really key ingredient to these technologies, that makes them a very big deal and makes them what is likely the biggest shift in computing interfaces paradigm that we’ve seen in quite a while. So amazing, I love it. So the future of technology, as it seems now is that maybe potentially, we’ll still have cell phones for some time, but they might change their form, they might become smaller, they might become sleeker, I don’t know, these are some possibilities, we might have holographic devices that you just hold on your hand. And they open up a new world off a 3d immersive, interactive gesture based voice based interactivity. And it does different things for you whether you know, there’s an avatar that pops up and tells you gives you real time 3d directions of where to go next, or, you know, it points you towards somewhere or pops up a document in front of you in 3d, is that really going to be real? Is that where we’re headed? Absolutely. I think if you think about, you know, we’re so used to this era of computing, where if you think about, you know, how clunky it is, as a skill to learn how to move a mouse on a two dimensional screen or type, you know, onto a keyboard, to look at your, you know, the thing that you’re making happen on your computer happens on a two dimensional window, what you’re describing this idea of, you know, seeing documents, you know, pull out in front of you in three dimensional space, or, you know, like Wayfinding, or navigation, you know, walking around the city for the first time. And instead of, you know, trying to abstract from a two dimensional map on Google Maps, that shows you where to go, which is, you know, it’s useful, but actually imagine being able to see in three dimensional space in the real world in context of the real world, you know, where to go, how to navigate, you know, these kinds of concepts are certainly in development at the core technology, infrastructure to support these kinds of tools are being rapidly developed at the moment by a variety of companies. And I think what it’ll do is it’ll make our computing lives far more intuitive, it’ll feel just more like a natural extension, you know, human, the human mind is a, you know, it’s a 3d thinking thing. We’re born into this world, navigating three dimensional space, you know, we we learn by picking things up with our hands and bumping into things in space. And so just what we’re talking about, and what you’ve just described as essentially bringing our digital lives into that three dimensional landscape, which is a far more intuitive way of participating in our digital lives. So the implications of this could be in different industries, we can think about new ways of learning, right, I have a four year old, and he’s got a certain way that he learns that his age and this could completely change the way kids now learn, right? as they go from their kindergarten to their university or whatever not. And now you have a completely a shift in learning. And we’re breaking that 100 year old tradition of sitting in a classroom. And it’s happening right now as well, right now, because of COVID-19. We can look at healthcare, there could be changes there. When it comes to learning, training, doctors accelerating the pace of how fast they learn the future of work. I mean, we’re going to renaissance of a forced Renaissance with respect the future of work right now, because of COVID-19. But what are the implications with, you know, virtual reality or one of these spatial computing devices? Help us understand maybe a couple of different industries, maybe healthcare and education, if you will, that what could be the possibilities? I’ll talk about education because I think that is for two reasons. One, the most immediately relevant aspect that will impact most people’s lives like every every employee, doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. There’s education is a part of everyone’s job, you have to learn what your role is, you have to learn about your company, you have to learn what the tasks are of whatever, you know, role you’re in. And so I think for the other reason I mentioned education is that education seems to be the most useful application area for spatial computing augmented and virtual reality at the moment, there’s probably no, there’s no limit to the kinds of, you know, tools. Let’s take as an example, probably the most well known is Walmart. So Walmart, for example. So they have around the United States, I don’t know the number, but they have a number of training academies, where if you’re a manager hired by Walmart, you go to, you know, a several day course, where you learn all of the different things like you know, how to stock shelves, so that their fire compliance, how to deal with shoplifters, how to ensure you know, your deli counter is hygenic compliant, all of these things. And so the traditional way of learning all of these skills is you learn in a classroom, you’re sitting, you know, watching PowerPoint presentations. But now what Walmart has done, and they were really one of the first to invest in, you know, developing immersive simulated environments, they put all of their, you know, high potential managers into a virtual environment inside of a virtual reality headset, and they’re actually experientially shown all of these scenarios, here’s how to make sure your shelves are fire compliant, here’s how to deal with crowds, on, you know, a busy shopping day. And what they’re able to do with that is measure the performance outcomes, the learning outcomes, engagement, so they can actually measure how engaged a learner is inside one of these environments based on things like eye tracking, and gaze tracking, performance metrics, you know, sort of like in a gamified way. And so, you know, that’s Walmart, if you can do that. And part of, you know, part of the learning is like very tactical, you know, here’s a skill, here’s how to do something. And part of it is more soft skills. Here’s more like social interaction, here’s what it’s like to experience interacting with a customer in this environment. And so you can, you know, whether it’s a hard skill, like, you know, I’ve been in music simulator, where you learn how to run a DJ control a DJ controller, so if you’re like electronic music artists, never you know, if you ever wondered what those big, you know, Niles dials and knobs are, you know, for you can learn not by watching a YouTube video, but by actually using your own hands how to manipulate these things. And so, basically, I think what I’ll sort of end by this, making this point that what these tools like augmented and virtual reality, whether it’s teaching, you know, surgeons in healthcare, or nurses or salespeople or, you know, doing HR training, these technologies are the closest thing we have to the scene from, let’s say, the matrix where Neo says, I know kung fu, or they just download it directly into your brain. It’s the fastest way of learning and acquiring a new skill, because you’re not just watching it on a screen, you’re actually doing it and experiencing it, and performing it yourself inside of a simulated environment. And that, I think, is one of the biggest reasons that these technologies are a big deal going forward. Thank you. So when we talk about this entire world that you just opened up for us, there’s many different technologies that are available today from the end, the first one was supposed to Google lens, google glasses, which I don’t know if they’re manufacturing right or not, I don’t think so. But you’ve got many different providers that have come Oculus Rift, and a ton of others who are many of them in Asia, there’s the form factor as is incredibly different. When you go to CES, you see all these new gadgets and devices, help us understand that if I were, let’s say an organization, I was, I was talking to a bunch of manufacturing leaders in the morning. So let’s take manufacturing as an example. And as a manufacturing, industry, CEO, leader, whoever I want to start getting dip my toes into virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and see how I can use that to train my employees or do something with it. health and safety training or product training, how do we get started? What devices or what headsets? Should we look at what tech because there’s so many of them? Like, where’s the starting point of saying, Okay, let me break this down into, you know, three stages, initially, we’ll get our people to just interact second stage will get them to do detailed things, or maybe different types of, you know, levels of this technology help us understand. Yeah, well, I’ll take the manufacturing industry as an example. But I think it might be this is where you start to speciate into different strategies and approaches based on your industry for manufacturing is actually one of the sort of most developed when it comes to deploying these kinds of tools like heads up displays, or you know, using, you know, hands free systems like the Microsoft HoloLens to do maintenance or repair, you know, one of the earliest examples so there’s really two approaches you could either, you know, put a team together to develop and build your own in house capacity or capabilities. So there’s a company in Germany placement group who do elevator manufacturing, repair and maintenance and so they in house put a team together to build using the Microsoft HoloLens, a way to do hands free maintenance work. So what they were really testing for was, you know, how quickly can we get a maintenance worker through their tasks and what they find is that if you actually have to go through, you know, a two dimensional you know, handbook and then abstract into the three dimensional world, it takes a while so you know, This could you know, work that was taking hours or more was reduced down to, you know, 20 minutes or less just by getting hands free information. Here’s the part, here’s what to check, here are the steps, all of that in their field of vision. The other approach, and this is what I might recommend for most people is there are a variety of I don’t want to call them, they’re like full service providers that will give you both the hardware and the software and the training to just do everything. There’s a couple that I know of one beer in San Francisco that I’m familiar with is called scope AR. And they have competitors, there’s another company called upskill. So I don’t mean to suggest that they’re the only one, if you have viewers in Europe, there’s a company in Milan, the name is escaping me, but they’re also quite big. So there’s a few that do this, but the one I’m most familiar with is called scope AR and what they do, and they work with different hardware manufacturers. So Google Glass, for example, does still exist, but they’re specifically for enterprise like manufacturing. And what scope will do is they will basically build for you all of the infrastructure, you need to, let’s say, and so for example, they worked with Lockheed Martin to help their engineers build one of their space capsules that they have in partnership with NASA. And so these are engineers that routinely before to build this, it’s what’s called the Orion spacecraft, they would have, you know, their user manuals are not just like a few pages, like, you know, like building furniture from IKEA, these are, you know, 10s of pounds of pages, 1000s of pages. And so an engineer would have to look up the right, you know, table, memorize the torque setting, go in, and actually, you know, screw in the right screw. Now, all of that information, and they in particular, use the Microsoft HoloLens, they now get all of that information for how to assemble whatever it is, they’re building, hands free. And so with Lockheed Martin, in particular, they actually have now deployed that same approach across all their manufacturing processes across the company. But the point is, to back to your question, there are places where you can go that will help navigate this with you and for you as a business. And there’s a few, there’s plenty of companies that will help you do this. And they’ll give you the hardware that give you the training. And the outcomes seem to be especially in manufacturing, quite dramatic in reducing costs, reducing errors, and overall, just improving efficiency. Amazing. I think there’s so much application out there that we’re still getting just started with, you know, this entire virtual world, there’s a lot of confusion companies, people need to, you know, be, let’s say informed in many different ways as to what the possibilities are. And I think we’re just getting started, we haven’t the surface hasn’t even been scratched. That’s where we are. I personally do find it very promising. And although Toffler didn’t write about it, but there’s definitely things in the book that help you understand the world of tomorrow will be different, because how people will engage talk me and do all of that. I know we have a limited time today. Aaron, I want you to help us understand where people can look you up, maybe contact you or check out your work. I would say the easiest place I’ll give you my email, but on Twitter, I’m just at Aaron D. Frank, you know, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn by email address affiliated with Singularity University is just Aaron. dot [email protected] o RG people can get in touch with me. That’s probably the easiest way just by email or LinkedIn. And yeah, happy to connect. Amazing. Aaron, thank you so much. And here it is. Where’s your copy of Amazon, grab it. And we’re going to do I’m going to post a picture of this later on. But thank you for being part of Aftershock. And thanks to a friend john shorter for doing this aftershock is available on Amazon. And that’s where you can buy it. But thank you so much. You take care and we’ll catch up again but in the future, and I definitely wish you all the best. Stay safe and let’s come out of this COVID-19 bounce back out of it and do something amazing. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. And thanks so much. You take care, you too. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you liked what you saw on my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information also visit my website at Ian khan.com
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by Ian Khan | Feb 10, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast
Rodrigo Nieto, Defense Futurist in conversation with Futurist Ian Khan
In this episode i speak with Rodrigo Nieto, also a co-contributor to the recent book “After Shock”.
Bio
Dr. Rodrigo Nieto is a geostrategist and defense futurist focused on the consequences of the accelerating pace of change in homeland security and policing environments. He is a research professor at the National Security Affairs Department and at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School and has also worked as a certified facilitator and instructor for the Command College for the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) and former instructor at the Executive Academy of the Emergency Management Institute. He is also a faculty member of Singularity University.
Dr. Nieto has a Ph.D. in Geopolitics from the French Institute of Geopolitics of the University of Paris. He holds a J.D. from the State University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
For more than a decade, Dr. Nieto has taught hundreds of high ranking law enforcement, military, and homeland security leaders how to create and execute strategies to transform their agencies to meet the requirements of rapidly changing environments and threat profiles. As an innovation expert and an academically trained geostrategist, he has built a reputation as an expert on future threats to national security and policing and how to confront them. In the course of his research, he studied the geographic conditions that affect the security ecosystem of the U.S. perimeter, conducting terrain research on every mile of this important and conflictive territory.
Dr. Nieto has multiple publications describing the adaptation capacities of global organized crime, the public policy challenges of innovation and intrapreneurship in government and homeland security, asymmetric warfare, and cybersecurity.
Dr. Nieto has been recognized as one of the top 5% performing faculty members at NPS and had the honor of winning on two occasions the NPS LCDR David L. Williams Outstanding Professor Award.
His native language is Spanish and has bilingual proficiency in English, full professional proficiency in French and intermediate knowledge of German.
As an aviation enthusiast, he holds a private pilot certificate.
About After Shock
The world’s foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50
Contributors include:
Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O’Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan
Publication Details
ISBN Print: 978-0-9997364-4-9
ISBN eBook: 978-0-9997364-5-6
Full Transcript : hi friends welcome to the Ian Khan show and you’re watching and listening to aftershocks special episode in this episode and the series I interview contributors to the recent book aftershock. My guest today is Dr. Rodrigo Nieto Gomez and he is a geo strategist and defense futurist who’s focused on the consequences of the accelerating pace of change in security environments and governance. He’s also professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a faculty member of Singularity University. Let’s be with Rodrigo.
Rodrigo. Welcome to the Ian Khan show. Thank you so much for joining us. And we are here doing an aftershocks special episode. How are you Rodrigo? Very good. Thank you so much for the invitation. It’s been certainly an interesting time. And it’s probably an interesting time to be talking about the issues of Future Shock right now. Absolutely. And one of the things that is so profound and Future Shock is that it has talked about a lot of things. But I think it didn’t talk about many of the things or many aspects of our life. And let’s talk about that right now. I want to know who you already go tell our audiences? Who are you? You’ve done so much. I want to see how you see yourself. Thank you so much. Well, I work for the Department of Defense of the United States of America government. As you can hear by my accent, I’m Mexican born. So I was born and raised in Mexico, I studied law there became a NAFTA lawyer. So a lot of my companies were either Canadian or American companies that were working in the NAFTA zone. These was around the time in which we were seeing an increase in this bureaucracy in America that we call Homeland Security, I got more and more interested on that side of things a lot less on the commerce and trade aspects. So I ended up doing a masters and a PhD in geopolitics at the French Institute of geopolitics of the University of Paris, in France. After that I moved to America, I and since then, I’ve been working for the Department of Defense on the intersection between Homeland Security, what we call home security, or security, and innovation and technology, adoption. Amazing. There’s probably so much knowledge in your mind, it’s going to be impossible to take it all out. But we’re going to talk about some of those things. Nothing confidential, though. So let’s talk about aftershock. I’ve read your piece, I’ve read your piece amongst all the other interviews that I’ve been doing. So I read everybody’s piece. And then I interview those folks. And your piece is one of the longest one of the most profound, and one of the most timely ones because it talks about the red tape, it talks about policies, it talks about all of these things that the bureaucracy that we’re facing in current times and was Alvin Toffler able to predict it. And if not, where are we going with this? You’ve written a lot you’ve written about, you’ve written about the congressional hearing that Mark Zuckerberg had, and and what the response of the Congress was, and many, many other things, our relationship with cell phones and devices and technology, how do you? What is your current vision of the world right now? Well, that’s an interesting question to ask right now, right? So we are all socially isolating, although we shouldn’t be using that term anymore. A good friend of mine, a police chief of the beat from the Bay Area told me we shouldn’t be describing these social isolation, we are physically distancing each other because we need to in order to slow the growth of COVID-19. But we should be connected more than ever before we need to support each other. Right. And in that regard, I can see how technologies like the internet are becoming the backbone of societal interaction, at least in the developed world, the developing world is a different story. So the world today is very different than the one that we have a month ago, right? If we would have had this podcast at the time, and that’s probably one of the issues about future shock is that it can surprise you in ways that you don’t anticipate. And bureaucracies like Homeland Security and the things that I work are built in theory to respond to events like these one, how well does response was, well, that would be a matter for many articles analysis of the future. So right now, what I see to answer your question is a world that is more and more dependent on scientific and technological revolutions. We are all praying for one particular innovation like COVID-19 vaccine, we want to get there as fast as we can. And we’re seeing the ramp up of innovation effort, like we’ve never seen, probably since Second World War. So we are single minded, we are dealing with the dramatic consequences of an event like this one. And I don’t think that we will go back to what we were before COVID-19, I think that we’ll come back to something that will be different, hopefully better. Absolutely. And I completely agree with you and I appreciate your comment. I have the same thoughts and feelings about the current era that we’re going to I also believe that humanity is undergoing a very big stress test. This is a test we didn’t call out for but it has happened because of the consequences of us living in a very complex world. It’s a world with free flowing trade. commerce flights, millions of flights taking over every single day. We’re very connected. The world today is very, very, very connected in all senses. And maybe that’s one of the reasons why the virus has spread the way it has. And it’s spreading. In today’s era, we are also very much isolated from each other because of technology. We are all glued to our technology or our devices. But we’re still interconnected. Such a different proposition. How do we fight something? What is happening right now? It’s Yes, at a inventing a sure is great. But behaviorally, what should we do in order to avoid any of this in the future, and this goes to the point that I tried to explain on that article, there is an effort to build a bureaucratic infrastructure around this idea of Future Shock, and sometimes that construction might be aiming at the wrong thing. And I specifically point out that some of our immigration fears that we saw in the first half of the 21st century, and that have to do with less technological and more demographic changes, right, the fact that some of the global north demographic composition is changing with the influx of people flip from the global south, and we saw the bureaucracy created, but right now you’re completely right. So the ultimate goal in the next two years is going to be the creation of a vaccine that allows us to respond with the most definitive kind of answer that modern medicine can give abroad. But before that, we have what I think are at least three stepping stones, right? So the aggressive non pharmaceutical interventions that we have right now, and p is epidemiology call them, these what you and I are doing right now, when you’re staying at home, away from your loved ones, with the sacrifices that that implies you’re doing a non pharmaceutical intervention. And it’s a really important one, because the only low hanging fruit that we have that doesn’t require science and technology, we can do it now and doesn’t require more innovation. Even there, though, you see immediately how innovation place right? So you see how in this talk about future certainly or time horizons went from strategic plans for 10 years to strategic plans for 10 weeks, right? So and even there, we’re getting them wrong. But we need rapidly solutions to making sure that people can have a job and keep working either from home or those need to be physically somewhere I mean, what is happening with that and lack of N 95 masks, all the thing hospitals, but also in the fields, where farmers are picking up the fruits and vegetables that were ordering online, we need to rapidly innovate to make that viable, we need to make a society, at least in the short term that is viable under these conditions, right? Just here in the United States, you you’ve seen the unemployment numbers, it’s 12 million people without a job like this. That’s not sustainable, right? So society will adapt. And in this case, government infrastructure and big corporations, foundations have to do as much as we can to make sure that in this short term, we have the tools that we need to do so and then their next steps, right, like regular testing public health breakthroughs, until we get to that vaccine. Absolutely. You’ve talked a little bit about things such as Uber, Airbnb, the evolution of all of these newer, and I’m literally looking at the book, all of these newer technological changes that have changed how business is conducted, what is your outlook on how do these things change society? How do they change our behavior? Is that something that you’re trying to tie in with your article as well? And yeah, as well, and you just, I mean, you just said, this is a stress test. And I think that’s a beautiful thing, a beautiful way of thinking about this, we probably should come out of this pandemic crisis with a new structure, part of the bureaucracy I talk about part of that is just new ways of doing business, almost with a switch. And so you can flip the switch and go into pandemic mode and not collapse society, the process, right, so there should be a way the same way. Every summer, we all migrate to beaches, and every winter we move into holiday season, every time that an outbreak in the heavily interconnected world that we have appears there should be a way hopefully, regionally and globally, but to be able to lock down that part of society and that lockdown doesn’t mean necessarily the destruction and obliteration of jobs, or companies, etc. Over instacart in America don’t have you have it in Canada, so all of the grocery shopping apps, they have become the lifeline of our society, right? So especially in urban environments, when we’re asking people to isolate them, these are the services that now we assumed are keeping our society alive. So it’s not only a stress test, it’s also an A B test. We have the 1918 namic as one example. And then we have the 2020 pandemic as another one. And one thing that has changed is that we have the internet and we have internet platforms on top of them. So I can assure you that after these jobs that are associated to activity that can be performed even without the colocation in an office space are going to be more coveted within your organization. He’d be more interested in a job like that, seeing what you’ve seen and being through what you’ve been through if you knew that a job can be performed from home, and it’s pandemic proof, let’s say or, or pandemic resistant, so that those changes, I think will be with us, even after we’re out of pandemic COVID-19. Hill. Yeah, I think from people perspective, people will find, first of all, I find there’s different types of people and their reactions are very different with respect to something like that, I’m seeing a lot of people who are doing nothing about the pandemic, they are, they’ve either been laid off, or their business as businesses have suffered, and they’re just waiting for things to open up, many of them will close the doors of their business forever. Have some of them are waiting for government aid. Like there’s a category of people who are unable to do anything about this at all, they can’t move. And it’s really unfortunate that it is the situation that they’re in, there are some who are trying to struggle who are trying to pivot or trying to find different means of doing things. And there’s some professions that have in job titles and jobs and roles that have really become busy doctors and nurses and frontline healthcare staff. And in one way, you know, when you stretch something, a balloon, or an elastic band just stretches things in a different way and puts tension and pressure in different places. That’s what’s happening. I think we’ve just been stretched like a string or a rubber band. And we’re trying to figure out where we are going to come back when this elastic band comes back again. But yeah, it’s I’ve spoken to literally 10s and hundreds of people I’m doing a few different things, live streams and conversations and calls is just completely different situation. Some places some markets are completely shut down, what have you seen in terms of shutdowns with respect to COVID-19, and it being maybe a new normal, as many people are seeing is this how we should live separate from each other? I don’t think that in the long term, if we’re talking more than two or three years, this will be the case this too shall pass. Right. So now, if for all of us who had the blessing of still knowing our meaning, or grandparents, many of them went through difficult things like that either a second world war, or my parents, my grandparents went through the Mexican Revolution that killed the big percentage of the population in Mexico. And you could see how even after decades of that their behaviors were adapted to that they would finish the food on their plate, they would know that not everything. And I think some of that will happen now. So I don’t think Americans will come back to what they were before. And that might be we are seeing more innovation in certain fields, companies that were reluctant to adapt the digital transformation strategies have done more in two weeks that they’ve done in 20 years before and businesses that were not the multi channel, for example, restaurants that were so successful that they wouldn’t even take takeout orders. So they are struggling and those who were already on the internet and take phone calls and delivered and were Luber eats only were more resilient. So one of the things that we’re learning is that multi channel matters, because one channel shuts down, you still have the orders to be able to keep functioning, continuity of operations, continuity of government, the government’s who are able to immediately jump to one SAP or assume with all its privacy flows that it might have, it’s been a lifeline for many specialty small governments that wouldn’t have the budget to immediately set up their own video servers on their own. So Cloud computing is showing us how much we can sustain operations even in a level of disruption like these one. And frankly, I mean, this is gonna make a big difference. My favorite restaurant, my favorite sushi restaurant doesn’t deliver on the internet, my second favorite DOS, guess which one has been taking all my money during this pandemic? So taste is just one factor. And in this case, companies that learn I think that they can succeed under extreme conditions, we’ll learn lessons that they can carry forward. That’s what bureaucracies do when they do it. Well. Absolutely. I want to read something from the book. This is part of your essay, and quote, the global society reacted with Future Shock or risk symptoms to this accelerated pace of technological change with what the media has now labeled as the tech lash. The tech lash is nothing other than a backlash against future shock. What exactly is this? What exactly is a tech lash? Yeah, so you might remember, right? So around 2018, right, we started to see these very big anti technology narrative or politics before right it had to do with the quantum analytic scale scandal for Facebook. But it also had to do with the issues of the lack of job security or quality of jobs around the gig economy or the platform based economy. gig economy is a pejorative term in itself. So when you start to see that probably the first 1015 years of the 21st century where time of all for Silicon Valley like companies and I’m using Silicon Valley here as an IBM not not as a place high tech companies that accelerate that can scale very rapidly. We know what companies were talking about by 2018. We were having what others are calling a tech lash, right? That a counter policy movement of people who felt that these companies have flown too close to the sun, that their ovaries was affecting us that they were changing society too soon. Right. So this is Alvin Toffler. One, one that their changes were so fast, they were moving fast and breaking things, and that we wanted to hit the brake and the way society hits the brake is through asking for regulation. It puts pressure on political entities. And we’ve seen this one, for example, in Germany or Singapore, where Uber is not allowed anymore to operate the way it wants to operate. And that tech lash was the story regarding technology for 2018. That story’s a little bit on the backburner right now, because suddenly, we need them. Right. And we need what they give us. We’ve seen the conversation, right, we see that some Amazon workers are asking, and probably the right for better protective equipment. And we’re seeing that instacart shoppers are being treated as heroes, because they’re the ones who are allowing urbanites to socially isolate. But I think that we have transitioned from thinking that this is bad as a element of the economy, to thinking of how do we make it better, but right now they have become essential workers. Right. So that’s a big change. Absolutely. Thank you, Rodrigo. I love it. Tell me a little bit about there’s so much going on. So I want to encapsulate our conversation into actionable points. For our listeners, whoever’s watching this video, hoping that they are able to create a change in their life business organization future because of our conversation, what would be maybe say the top three things that you would suggest anybody to do? What should they do about the filter to be bright, though, some of these are going to be trite, and they probably have heard them before, it’s just that the context has changed. One is gentleman psyche, right. So if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less. So right now we don’t have the luxury. And therefore, change is unavoidable. So if you can find a way of making this change work for you, this will matter. Secondly, and this is there are many people who have said this, but it also matters. Don’t let the crisis go to waste, right? This is a stress test. And sadly for you, you didn’t plan for it, and you didn’t want it, but you have it. And you’re seeing now where the failure points of your organization are located. Right. So this is an opportunity if you survive, and hopefully you will, if you can fix those failure points, you will come stronger out of this one. And third, remember what matters, right? At this point, this might be forcing us to reevaluate our loved ones or relationships. Also, those who have been in the startup world know that nine to five is a luxury we don’t have when you are building a startup, it’s okay. It’s a phase of your life. But at the end, the things that matter are the people you can hug and we’re missing them right now. Right? So So work balance matters to be successful. Absolutely. I completely agree. I always tell people that change will disrupt you interrupt you or help you grow. And it’s how we use the impact of change, because it’ll keep on happening. Different kinds of change will always happen in your life. Rodrigo, thank you so much for this amazing conversation. where can our viewers and listeners find out more about your work? So yeah, thank you so much. I’m on Twitter. I’m on LinkedIn, and also www Rodrigo Nieto gomez.com. It’s probably I should update it, because I haven’t been a while in the middle of these. But all of that is available. And of course I answer as much as I can to come in for through all the platforms already. Thank you so much, Rodrigo. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for being a contributor to aftershock. And aftershock is available on amazon.com. Thanks to our friend john Schroeder, who’s put it together and brought us all together under this one platform. Rodrigo. Have a safe time. I wish you and your family all the best. And we’ll definitely be in touch and connect soon. And I really appreciate it. Thank you so much to you and all your viewers. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you liked what you saw on my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information also visit my website at Ian khan.com
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by Ian Khan | Feb 10, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast
John Sanei Futures Strategist in conversation with Futurist Ian Khan
In this episode I interview John Sanei, fellow Futurist and one of the world’s best futures strategists and motivational speaker. John and I are also co-contributors to the book After Shock.
Bio
John Sanei comes alive at the intersection of human psychology and futurism, and uses his truly unique perspective to discover elegant ways for his global audience to build the clarity and courage needed to approach the future with confidence.
Not only is John Africa’s first Singularity University faculty member and a lecturer at Duke Corporate Education, he is also an Associate Partner at The Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies – the only person on the planet to hold these three positions.
His rare ability to combine his fascination with emerging technology and its impact on society with a clear understanding of the way memories and stories influence our reality has seen him share the stage with several world-renowned speakers, including Simon Sinek, Yuval Harari, Nassim Taleb and Robin Sharma, amongst many others.
John expresses himself through regular columns, radio, TV and podcast appearances – he also hosts The Expansive podcast – but is best known as a prolific author and dynamic speaker on technology, quantum- and neuroscience, and business strategy.
He has 4 best-sellers to his name, and he was also the only African invited to contribute to After Shock, a collection by the world’s 100 most prominent futurists, and a contributor to 90 Rules for Entrepreneurs: How to Hustle Your Way to a Business That Works, and The Book Every Business Owner Must Read.
John’s passion for writing and personal development also prompted him to create Future Self Academy, an online platform that helps people to enrich their perspectives by taking author-led online courses based on their favourite books.
Visit John at https://johnsanei.com/
About After Shock
The world’s foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50
Contributors include:
Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O’Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan
Publication Details
ISBN Print: 978-0-9997364-4-9
ISBN eBook: 978-0-9997364-5-6
Full Transcript : Hi friends, you’re listening to the Ian Khan show and this is an aftershock special episode. I’m speaking with a co contributor to the recent book aftershock. And it’s all about the future. It’s all about what else is there to come. Today I’m speaking with John Sanei, who is an author, speaker and trend specialists who’s fascinated with what it takes to activate the foresight needed to create an abundant future. JOHN is a writer. He’s an author, and really well known across futurist circles. Let’s speak with john, welcome to the show. I have with me today one of the most renowned future as they have been falling for a long time. And here we are part of Aftershock that was put together by a friend john shorter. I have with me today, john sanei, all the way from South Africa.
JOHN, welcome to the show. How are you? Wonderful, man, thank you so much for having me on. So we all undoubtedly are stuck right now, not just travel. That’s a small part of what happens in everyday life, but in expressing ourselves and doing what we do best. And that’s helping other people understanding the future helped create the possibilities. How’s life for you in COVID-19? How has 2020 been for you, and then we’ll talk about aftershock. Well, how’s 2020 be? Well, I gotta be honest, like everybody else, total surprise, if anything else. But once the dust settled from the shock of what is going on around us, and for the first time as humanity experiencing anything like this, I have found the space to be my most creative yet, I’ve had time to think like never before, I’m very fortunate to be able to have assessments around money and food and environment to keep me in a good state of mind, but really just started writing really fascinated with how things are changing how much more we can help people in a new world, because with any sort of crisis of this magnitude is always a renaissance that comes out of it and to be part of the Renaissance and help as many organizations to restructure, but what’s coming. So I’ve had, I’ve had a fascinating time researching and watching and learning a whole bunch of new things, because I’m sure you’ll agree that much of the work that we did before COVID-19 has become kind of irrelevant, because everything now has to come with a perspective of what COVID-19 has bought us as humanity. Absolutely. And let me tell you, I really find COVID-19 to be a big refresh. It’s like, you know, you press the press those refresh buttons and everything kind of goes back to a different normal that we didn’t know, I kind of agree with the fact that everybody’s calling this the new normal. I don’t feel this as a new normal because we’re in a state of chaos and chaos never stays forever, traditionally, and we haven’t seen it but I think we’re just going through a transition. It’s it’s a leveler. It’s a wake up call. It’s all those things that help us think more. Oh, you know, 50 years ago, Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock and I have it somewhere near right behind me. And then our friend john Schroeder came along and said, hey, let’s put together another book called aftershock, which is 50 years after Toffler wrote his book, he talked about the future 50 years ago. I mean, it seems like a light year ago right now, uh, given how that progressed in the last 1015 years. And Toffler wrote about many different things. He didn’t write about pandemics a lot, but change, change, change is happening. And that’s what’s happening. Right, you practice. Change your I’ve read your essay in here as well. It’s amazing. I really love the insights that you shared. Tell me a little bit about how did you end up you know where you are today? And what was your journey, if you will over the last couple of few decades? Sure. Great question. I think I’ve always been an early adopter, I’ve always been able to see a trend just before somebody else was that was just the way I’m inclined, I’m always looking for the fresh the new. And so that was very easy for me, that part of it. And so I could connect these sort of invisible dots that other people couldn’t. And in my in my book foresight, I talk about the fact that interior designers have a skill set that can connect looks and feels to make a place look like a home, I don’t have that skill. And a great hairdresser can look at your face and say look, the best haircut for you would be I don’t have that skill either. But my skill is this early adoption skill that I’ve just always had. And I did really well with it until I was about 28 years old because I utilized the skill to invest and become an entrepreneur and opened up many businesses and became very successful. But I fell into the trap of not changing my world and staying constant with what I was doing. And in that process, lost track of the market and went bankrupt. And so I moved from this early adoption personality to one that was just staying safe because I started making money and I didn’t want to rock the boat too much. And now we’re talking back in 2007 2008 2009 somewhere around there. And then when I went through my bankruptcy at around 30 years old, I became really depressed and it depressions of weird thing because you don’t realize you’re often depressed because it happens so slowly. And what happens is that your group of friends around you acts like you do you shame and blame everything around you don’t really take responsibility and that’s kind of what depression is. And so I find myself circling this. I don’t know this like shoot of feeling bad for myself and being angry for what had happened. You can imagine a 30 year old guy whose life is built on his persona in businesses. Cause and that gets taken away. Who are you? I mean, you really just nobody. And you have to reinvent. And so I went on a very clear path of self discovery and that process, because I’m just the type of guy that I am, I’m incredibly ambitious and driven. And so I really dive deep into self development and came out of it on the other side with a clear understanding of victim Victor money consciousness, self value, projection, the five laws of creating anything you want from intention setting to allowance to law of attraction, so and then I started diving deep into neuroscience, because I wanted to understand how it could even get more powerful as a beam of creation. And what started happening is I realized that if I combine human psychology, neuroscience and the future, you start getting a really beautiful mix. Because what I think what usually happens is we tell people about the future, but they scared of it. And they’re fearful. And the reason that is, is that they stuck in the old psychology, they stuck in their memories of their past successes. And so if you understand neuroscience, we can untangle your past in order to create a real clean slate to create into the future with you combine that with categorizing, and conceptualizing the future in a cool way. People then develop trust, they develop clarity, and they make decisions now with much more ease rather than being stuck in paralysis of analysis. Yeah, so rightly said, I love how you put it together. You know, it’s really like, you know, you give somebody a box of Lego pieces, and you tell them go and create what you want to create. And I face this many times when people ask you to face this many times as well. But when people ask you with that tone of voice, so what does a futurist do, and they’re expecting that you’re going to say, Well, I look into my crystal ball every night, and then the nonprofit, but it’s not about that, it’s about being able to tick that box of Legos and saying, well, this, these are the possibilities. And there could be many possibilities, you can build so many different things. I really believe that people have access to those Lego blocks of their life, and they know their blocks more than anybody else. So well, but they don’t use it, they just feel confused that, hey, I can do nothing with these blocks, because I don’t know what to do with them. And that’s what you see, you know, that lack of clarity means that I’m so stuck in my past that cannot identify with a new version of myself and my new capabilities. And so what happens is they Lego boxes in their memories that have been created a Lego box of the future, so they don’t have clarity of what the new GPS coordinates are. And I often talk to companies and personal people in companies and say, Look, instead of doing a to b, a to do list created to be list, who do you want to be? How do you want to show up? And what sort of world do you want to be? And if you don’t have those GPS coordinates, how you know, you ever arrived, I made a video a little while back, and I said, why is it that most people can describe their next holiday in more detail than they can describe the future that want to live? And so like, if you don’t have that clarity, what do you think is going to happen? You’re going to be stuck in your past. And so yes, that’s my unique flavoring. Like if you had to think about a chef, but like Indian and Persian and Argentinian food that I’m putting together. And I guess the way I tell my stories and the way I do that, as I like to combine those two, you know, for people to take responsibility for the creation of the future rather than avoided. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now you’ve written quite a few books, you’re obsessed with writing you love writing, which is amazing. So we’ll talk about your some of your upcoming books. But I want to read something that you’ve written in, in aftershock. And this is about really adding to what you’re just saying. So you know, the quote is, hindsight is useful when you’re looking for patterns. But a familiar past is only ever going to give you predictable ideas. And that’s of no real use in our unreasonable, unfamiliar future. And that’s what you’re exactly talking about is, you know, using the past hindsight foresight, you’ve written about the hindsight foresight, help us understand what these are, what is hindsight, what is foresight, I decided to describe foresight differently in our perspective. And what we have as human beings is four perspectives. We have hindsight, plain sight, insight, and foresight. And so people move between these different sites based on different aspects of their lives. So hindsight is obviously somebody who’s more focused on who they were than who they need to become. There’s a great quote from Dr. Joe dispenza, is also in the book. He says, Are you more focused on your memories of your past? Or are you more focused on the future that you want to live and most people are stuck in the hindsight and business owners are doing what they used to do just a bit more efficiently. And that’s not really what you need, right? So they can’t break away from that, because not even aware they’re doing then you get plain sight and people that live in plain sight are the ones that are stuck into Newtonian science from last century. And Newtonian science is one principle, that reality is objective. And outside of you, quantum science is not proving the exact opposite. It says that reality is subjective, and it’s inside of you. And people that suffer from Plain Sight are the cynics. They don’t believe there’s a better future because of their own old patterning, and they don’t want to have the opportunity to take responsibility to want to project in the new quantum science research that’s been proven. And then you get insights. And I think the biggest problem we have in the world today is people with insight and what insight is people with incredible levels of knowledge clever people that are focused on being experts at yesterday. rules. And if you look at the rules and the people that run the world today, what are they they’ve been trained in great universities and worked in corporate since the 80s. They in their 60s and 70s. And they’re excellent at the rules of yesterday. So they have incredible left brain power. But they’re not adaptable. Because people that live in the expert world is so experts in what they do, they can’t be adaptable. It’s focused on what they’ve known. And so what you get is you get foresight, which gives you this ability to be adaptable, flexible, and optimistic. And the two characteristics that I found through interviewing people around the world was they were one curious and two wise curiosity means a follow up shines brightest for me, what makes me most excited, what gives me access to most of my energy, what makes time disappear, what wisdom is, is healing your past. So you’re not expecting and channeling different stain patterns over and over and over in your life, where you focus on accomplishment, not purpose. And so many people are accomplished, but never reached their purpose. So they’re miserable in their high paying jobs with their fancy cars. So what you want for the human of the future is somebody with foresight, adaptability, and flexibility that’s curious and wise. And in this way, you can now be the superhero of the future, because now you’re adaptable naturally, and you become highly specialized in your skill because you love it. And so I use myself as an example. You know, I’ve never studied anything that I’m teaching. This is all self taught, all based on my own fascination. I in fact, never even went to university and I lectured universities based on my own curiosity and wisdom. Incredible. You’ve written in the book in aftershock as well. And you mentioned Alan Watts, who said, it’s, you know, a person who’s wise always unlearned, you’ve got to be able to uninjured. And when the glass is full, I mean, what do you put in it? people’s minds are so full of news media, tick tock YouTube videos. And so how do you how do you, you know, expect the world around you to be different when you’re not putting in that effort that inputs? I think it’s really important that people procreate, they actually take action towards building this better tomorrow that they want and that they’re envious off, whether it’s money, it’s fame, it’s health, it’s whatever, whatever. You just have a direction. Yeah, it’s, yeah, but remember, compound interest is created from helping you just helping yourself through the process. It doesn’t have any compound interest, because it’s just you, me, me, me, me, me, me. Yeah. And so I think really, the future is about this collaborative pneus. Instead of competition, we should be cooperating, we have a very intelligent consumer and the more intelligent he or she becomes, the better solutions, we need to have a better solutions abroad through cooperation or competition. So I really think that this COVID reset is a wonderful opportunity for us to develop a new way for us to interact because we’ve got an abundance of a lot of things in the world. And I’m sure you know, Jeremy Rifkin, his work around the zero marginal cost society where many things become free eventually. So now that we’ve got this abundance, how do we restructure, and that’s what fascinates me most is that really hard to collectively dream about what we can create, I’ve seen some really nice and progressive governments, especially in the UAE, progressive, because they do a lot of things that are different. And I was part of an exercise with one of the departments or agencies to understand the rule of transportation by 2017, to 070. And that’s the centennial anniversary of the UAE. And so, you know, we finished that exercise, and somebody else was running it as part of it, though. And it’s really nice to see that governments are thinking 5060 100 years from now, what are the possibilities, they’re not going out and building that right, the second, but you at least got to have an idea of where you’re headed, why you’re headed that way, how you’re headed that way. And then you can make decisions based on that know, both from an individual perspective, as well as from an organizational perspective, it’s important to have a clear direction on where you’re going. That’s what I wanted to say, what were you gonna look at one of the great things about Dubai and why I decided to live there was that city doesn’t suffer from any legacy thinking. It’s not London, it’s not New York, it’s not any of these cities that are so caught up in their past successes. And you know, in London, it’s like, No, son, that’s always how it’s been done. We’re not going to change anything here. And you get that overtone that sets the tone of what’s expected in that city. And Dubai has no past, it is starting on a clean slate. And that’s why I love it so much. There’s an energy of anything is possible, then it’s a wonderful place to live. And for the moment, it’s a hub that connects me to everywhere else. But let’s see how everything actually resets off the COVID and see what happens after that and what sort of travel restrictions we’ll have. Yeah, I mean, personally, I’m just expecting maybe a couple of months off, complete lockdown, and hopefully things will will get start getting better. Let’s talk about your books, your writing a lot. As I said before, you mentioned before we got started, tell me a little bit about your journey as a writer and helping others understand the future, especially through your new series that’s coming out. Well, thanks so much. You know, I failed school. I wasn’t really good at school and English was one of the worst subjects. And what I started to realize is I became so impassioned and so enthralled what I could when I was researching and I was in automatic risk funds and almost was, you know, like feng shui as a great principle. It says, in order to bring anything new into your life, you need to get rid of the old. And it was almost like I had this massive brain release after writing my first book. And what it did was it got me ready for more information, it almost like was such a download of information that was sitting inside my head for so long. And so I decided to make one of my presentations into a book. And that’s how the journey began. And I work with a copywriter, because I’ve got a lot of ideas going on and a whole lot of different subjects. So I have a thinking partner, that is a much better writer than me. And so we share and talk and share and talk continuously. And I’m writing and voice noting, and then it comes into a book format, and we chisel and chisel and chisel away. And then it becomes a book and also every book that I’ve written, and I’ve written three books in the last three years. And what I’ve decided to do is write a book a year, because what it does, it forces me to become a researcher and really fascinated at something because the best way to learn something is to teach it. And when I put myself under that sort of pressure, I really get new information, new stories and new uptake on my brand and what I’m thinking about the audience. So what I was doing before COVID-19 was writing my fourth book, and unfortunately, COVID-19 happened. Fortunately, it happened. And I decided that my fourth book wasn’t that relevant because not everything needs to be framed at COVID-19. And when I settled into my parents farm and took a couple of days to breathe, I realized this urge to want to get something out was really strong inside me. So I started writing a trilogy. And the reason I’ve decided to write a trilogy of ebooks, and again, why I’ve decided to write an E book is because I think things are changing at such a rapid pace, who’s got time to write a 30 40,000 page, I mean, 30 40,000 word book right now and things are changing, waiting for it to print, etc, etc. So I decided to write future now future how and future next and future now is about the mental state that we need to have in the now to develop the future. Future. How is about the new economic system that I’m suggesting that I’m starting to see, and many other sort of people around the world are talking about a new economic system, a new capital, and the 14th century saw the devastation of the black plague. And after the black plague, it triggered the end of feudalism. And feudalism, then by it ending started the Italian Renaissance. So I think we have a perfect situation to reset our economic system. And then future next will be the next trends that I’ll be tracking, which are changing minute by minute. So we know we in the process of writing those three at the moment. Excellent. I love it. JOHN, you’ve got so many different ideas. You’ve worked with so many organizations, you will have so many organizations. And of course in addition to what you’ve done already aftershock with joins you and me together and 50 other Aha, I think all of us together into creating a body of work that will live for a long, long time. And the more we are scientists, many of them are not even into foresight, but they do things that are really radical. And it’s really nice to be in a group of people who do this because it keeps us stimulated is a huge privilege. For me, I’ve got to be honest, you know, I must have taught guides, I see people like you and doctors that are like, wow, I’m so like chuffed to the gentleman. So it’s really great for me. It’s my honor, I am honestly humbled at every conversation that I have, as part of my podcast, I want you to give our viewers the formula, the formula that you think is going to help them succeed, help them unlock their potential have a better financial life, health, wealth, wellness, whether it’s reading a book a week, what like what are the subtle things people can do to create change, like literally the action points of the habits that they should build? What’s your take on it? How do you think people can change their tomorrow? Look, our state is who we are how we perceive and project into reality is actually who we are. We like to think we somebody else. But if you know we’re not coming at the day with the right states, we just aren’t ourselves to our full potential. So the way I go about it is I break my life down in emotional, physical and mental. And throughout the day, I have two meditation pitstops one when I wake up in the morning, and one before I go to sleep, it’s killed my social life. But that’s a whole other story. It’s also I also journal quite extensively. And that takes care of my emotional, emotional state, and I have a coach and then when it gets to mental states, I break up my day into what am I learning? How am I growing? And when am I chilling, so that I have a very clear distinction between three aspects of my day. And that keeps me active. And ultimately, and finally physical. I do 220 minute workouts a day because I really want to be able to have the most focus and the most sort of flexibility in the way I think. So all of that together. The most important thing I think we need to do is become curious about why we here on earth. And as Mark Twain said, the two most important days of your life or when you’re born and when you find out why figure out why you’re here, get busy getting curious with that topic, add value to the world and watch your life become magical because when you become unique and authentic in what you do, the energy you have access to is endless. your creativity is endless. And all of a sudden you become a specialist in what you do just based on your fascination with the sun. People pay for you to travel around the world and tell them stories. I mean, what sort of life are we living? It’s a fascinating world that people get paid to do that. And lucky as that we do, but based on curiosity and making sure that your emotional, physical and mental state are focused, absolutely, I want to make it clear to everybody that it’s a lot of work to, to do that initially, when you’re even getting started, it looks impossible. Like when you tell people to do these things, it just seems like so much to do that, oh, I don’t want to do that. It seems like so much work. And I don’t want to read and I don’t want to put I don’t want to start journaling. But once you overcome that initial hump, you’re over the, you know, the first speed bump, then things become smoother, you get into a free flow state, it becomes a part of your life. And that’s why people like yourself, and many other you and me and all of us, we travel a lot, but then it’s part of our life, and it becomes the new normal for us, or we speak at events or where you’re writing a book, The first book is the most toughest, it’s it’s just impossible. First Book, and then the second one is your third one, it becomes a little bit more easy. Yeah, I think what happens is that your discipline is created. Once you’ve decided who you want to be. If you haven’t decided who you want to be, then you’ll always be lazy, you always need motivation. You always snooze your alarm clock. But once you’ve decided who you want to be, and you work backwards from that, you up five minutes before your long podcast, you’d look forward to your journal, you look forward to your meditation, because you’ve got a long term view of what you’re trying to achieve. And again, it becomes clear that the more clarity you have, or who you want to be, it becomes easier. So whether you’re a futurist or a teacher, or a physical fitness person, just is a human thing that’s required, you know, and so this is something I take my clients through a lot, you know, it’s like the emotional perspective, as well as the future sort of categorization and context. Yeah, absolutely. I put a lot of emphasis on actually doing the thing that will take you forward execution of your ideas, and you’re putting the pen to paper when it’s writing the book. And I think is just one point that is so undermined and people don’t people think and they dream and they believe and they want all these things, but they don’t actually, you’ve got to act, you know, stumbling ball fail forward, Les Brown, and so many other people just say just feel free, just do the thing that you need to do. Tell us a little bit about one final thing. Where can people find you? Where can they look up your work? Where Where can they buy your books, or have access to them? Do you have a mailing list, people can sign up towards something? Yeah, thank you so much. Out of the seven and a half billion people in the world. I am the only johnsonii I mean, what are the chances of that? And so I’m the only johnsonii and Google and on Facebook and on LinkedIn, it’s Joe HN, sh and Ei and I’m constantly sharing information that I’m researching. I find it solidifies better into my mind when I make a vlog about it or blog about it. So y’all please follow me on any of those my books are available on Audible on Amazon on Kindle is a mailing list, you can join all of the above just look forward to sharing as much as I can and adding as much value as possible already. Thank you so much on Sunday. Thank you so much for being part of the show. And aftershock aftershock is available on Amazon, as far as I know, and please grab a copy of this. Everybody was watching this. It’s really an incredible read. And you can also read about what john thinks and how he thinks right here in this book. Thank you so much, john, you take care and we’ll talk again. Thank you, john. Thank you. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you liked what you saw in my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information. Also visit my website at Ian khan.com
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by Ian Khan | Jan 30, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast
Deborah Westphal is on the Ian Khan show. It’s such a pleasure to speak to someone who has worked so closely with Alvin Toffler and Toffler Assocates. This episode is a special After Shock episode and Deborah’s insights have been so exciting.
Bio
Deborah Westphal is a passionate humanist who has guided our era’s top minds and leaders to challenge biases, ignite ideas, and build connections and resilience for a secure and sound future.
Her career spans more than 30 years, government agencies and Fortune 100 companies, and virtually every continent. Alvin Toffler tapped her as one of the founding members of his eponymous consulting firm. Through her work, she has guided notable organizations including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Marriott, U.S. Air Force, Baxter International, Bayer, Heinz, Microsoft, Koppers, PPG, DARPA, National Security Agency, Loral Space Systems, NASA, Qwest, Verizon, and Westinghouse.
Deborah’s empathetic and thought-provoking style helps readers spot patterns that signify future risks and opportunities. She’s a sought-after speaker and writer who provided the Foreword to After Shock.
Deborah is a world traveler who enjoys time with her son and running in the mountains. Find her at deborahwestphal.com.
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by Ian Khan | Jan 30, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast
Vikram Mansharamani is on the Ian Khan show. I am very excited to have Vikram on the show where he shared some key insights and future related ideas.
Bio
Dr. Vikram Mansharamani is a global trend-watcher who shows people how to anticipate the future, manage risk, and spot opportunities. He is the author of the recently-released THINK FOR YOURSELF: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and BOOMBUSTOLOGY: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. He has been a frequent commentator on issues driving disruption in the global business environment. Vikram’s ideas and writings have also appeared in Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times and a long list of other publications. Linkedin twice listed him as their #1 Top Voice for Money, Finance and Global Economics and Worth has profiled him as one of the 100 most powerful people in global finance. Millions of readers have enjoyed his unique multi-lens approach to connecting seemingly irrelevant dots.
Vikram is currently a lecturer at Harvard University, where he teaches students to use multiple perspectives in making tough decisions. Previously, he was a Lecturer at Yale University. In addition to teaching, he also advises several Fortune 500 CEOs to help them navigate the radical uncertainty in today’s business and regulatory environment. He has a PhD and two Masters degrees from MIT and a Bachelors degree from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Vikram lives in Lexington, MA with his wife, daughter, son, golden-retriever, and two cats, one of which he believes may be clairvoyant.
Visit Vikram on his website at www.mansharamani.com
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