Age of Invisible Machines

CHAPTER 5How Hyperautomation Can Change the World

At its best, technology improves the efficiency, productivity, and convenience of everyday processes while also getting out of the way. As Bill Gates put it: “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.”

While technological innovations have arrived piecemeal up until now, the paradigm is changing. Instead of focusing on one-off innovations, we've started connecting established and nascent technologies into integrated processes.

This development comes at a pivotal moment that calls on us to rethink much of what we do and how we do it—even why we do it. It's a massive revolution, a leapfrog moment in our evolution. This means reevaluating every aspect of our relationship with technology, because we're no longer living in an era when technology will be used to just passably mimic the ways humans do things. We can now put technology to work in ways that will surpass the problem-solving abilities of humans alone. No longer will we be holding technology by the hand; it will now hold ours.

There are two gigantic forces driving these changes: hyperautomation and hyperdisruption. These two concepts are intertwined, and it's worth developing the proper framework for thinking about them, because they are going to change everything.

FIGURE 5.1

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