Inflection Point: How the Convergence of Cloud, Mobility, Apps, and Data Will Shape the Future of Business

2. The Storm on the Horizon

Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take thirty steps linearly, I get to thirty. If I take thirty steps exponentially, I get to a billion.

—Ray Kurzweil, author, inventor, and futurist

My wife and I bought an older convertible for our son Henry when he turned sixteen—a typical American rite of passage. Almost immediately, one of the plastic emblems fell off the front wheel. My son, being part of a generation whose smartphones are always planted firmly in their hands, went into action. He took a picture of the plastic emblem from the other front tire. An app using visual recognition technology immediately identified ...