The Adaptation Advantage

3You're Already Adapting and Not Even Noticing

Key Ideas

1. As we adopt new technologies, we are augmenting our human capabilities, often without even realizing it.
2. Technologies impact work in three ways—augmentation, atomization, and automation—and each of these has implications for the future of work and require that we upskill and reskill regularly as part of work.
3. We have already begun to adapt. Our ability to do so with agility and without fear is fundamental to our future productivity.

We've Already Begun to Outsource Our Memory

In the early days of 1996, Jeff Hawkins took the stage at the technology industry's DEMO Conference to introduce the PalmPilot to an audience of technophiles eager to see the future of mobile computing technology. This was the first widely adopted personal digital assistant (PDA) and the precursor to the smartphone, which Hawkins and his team at follow-on company Handspring would bring to market six years later. The PalmPilot included a contact list, datebook, calculator, to-do list, and notepad. By today's standards, this was a very simple device, yet it had a profound impact. The day the PalmPilot came to market was the day we began to outsource our memory to digital assistants.

In truth, though, this outsourcing began long, long ago. That's the way it is with “technology.” The most rudimentary hand tools extended human potential. The invention of written language meant humans could document their stories to be remembered for generations. ...