The Future Is Faster Than You Think is a must read! A timely book for today’s ever changing world, it captures new technologies on the horizon that will be a paradigm shift for society. Peter Diamandis is a leading futurist in the field with insights from his many ventures and authoritative speaker on next generation technology. Steven Kotler brings his expertise on flow and peak performance to analyze how this tech convergence will impact our lives. If you ever wondering what the future experience of shopping, entertainment, education, healthcare, food, and beyond, this is the book to read!

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – Arguments
82%

The arguments in this book are structured by recalling past advancements in technology, reporting current advancements in technology, and using the comparisons to predict the exponential growth of technologies into the future. Most of these arguments held water in my assessment.

There were several points where the optimism of the book overtook the logic, though.

Specifically, I took issue with the claim of quantum computing already being available to the masses – it is not. Perhaps the authors were excited and simply overstated their position.

I also had a laugh at the idea of being rid of advertising as we know it. I think this was a jump too far given what they proposed as evidence to this effect.

And while the authors addressed the inability of governments to move quickly enough to keep pace with their predictions, they never really acknowledged active resistance from politicians, constituents, and corporate lobbyists, which I see as a much larger problem.

They didn’t entirely neglect resistance to change; they even labeled it as risk aversion. But they didn’t give it as much weight as I would have in determining its threat to progress.

Neglecting resistance as an overall threat to their predictions would make more sense to me if they were writing for the long term – as Max Planck pointed out, eventually the old die and the young never knew any different.

But most of what the authors are predicting in this book is supposed to take place in the next decade, and even their title is focused on how fast they’re anticipating these changes. So resistance deserved more attention in the text.

That said, I hope the optimism contained in this book wins.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Excellent” for arguments.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – Practicality
64%

This book was meant as fodder for thought, not as a handbook to the future. I don’t hold it against the authors at all that there was little in the way of practical value in this text.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Decent” for practicality.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – Readability
100%

This book is an easy if lengthy read. Nothing about its composition detracted from its value.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – Enjoyability
77%

I enjoyed this book a great deal.

It lost some points for redundancy, and also for the chore-like experience in some sections having to wade through so many facts to get to the point. Necessary, but not enjoyable.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Decent” for enjoyability.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – External Resources
100%

There were no calls to action or external resources referenced in the book. Everything was included in its pages.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Excellent” for external resources.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – Rhetoric
95%

The only thing I found being sold in the book’s pages were the authors’ ideas. Mostly their optimism for the future.

If there was a call to action, it was to participate in the future they have predicted.

They might have been a bit fanboyish on certain players in the tech world, but that’s to be expected – and I think is totally forgivable – given their subject matter.

The only points they missed for the Rhetoric section is for not being highly targeted. This book was written for a broad group of people, as is the case with many popular books – and part of why a book becomes popular in the first place!

The unfortunate side effect, however, is some dilution of the content.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Excellent” for rhetoric.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think Review – In Total
85%

This is a solid score by The Entreprising Rubric given the lack of business practicality found in this book.

I recommend this book as an exercise for your brain and imagination. It’s both fun and informative, and there’s a ton of conversation starters to be found within its pages.

I’ve been talking about this book nonstop since I read it.

And I’d love to know what you think. So give me a shout at tonya@entreprising.com.

By The Rubric, The Future Is Faster Than You Think scored “Excellent” in total.

This next installment in the Exponential Technology series, which includes Abundance and Bold, stands quite confidently on its own.

The Future is Faster Than You Think is a dizzying, yet ultimately hopeful, tour de force of what is already possible with technology, and what is on and over the horizon.

Peter and Steven do an admirable job of not only curating the vast field of emerging technologies, but also in showing how these technologies are converging with one another to create novel and accelerated offerings.

With converging technologies in every area of human life, from agriculture, to transportation, to healthcare, to you-name-it, the future is not only going to be faster than you think, it is going to be better than you think.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler have done it again. In The Future Is Faster Than You Think, the third installment of their “Exponential Mindset Trilogy”, they’ve built upon the concepts presented in their previous books Abundance and Bold to describe how technology can open up new possibilities and change the world. This book is a must-read for entrepreneurs, and business and civic leaders in any industry who are looking for a playbook on how to prepare for the seismic changes ahead and protect their organizations from becoming disrupted by the technological forces that are coming at an ever-increasing rate.

In the first part, they examine the forces of acceleration and describe how converging technologies are creating an environment of unprecedented change. In part two, they provide a wealth of material covering multiple industries, showing how these technologies will impact our daily lives over the next ten years. In the final section, they expand their time-horizon to the next one hundred years and describe the environmental, economic and existential risks that threaten the progress made to date.

A highly-engaging, mind-blowing, can’t-put-it-down read. The practical take-aways from this book are invaluable. Essential reading for anyone interested in technology, disruption and and innovative thinking. Add this to your reading list now.