The Signals Are Talking: Why Today s Fringe Is Tomorrow s Mainstream
Hardcover – December 6, 2016
Description
An Amazon Best Book of December 2016: At this moment, it seems obvious that we could all stand to brush up on our skills as prognosticators. And not just so we can avoid being blindsided by seismic elections, but because technology promises to continue its disruptive march through our societies and economies. What will cabbies do when cars are self-driving, and what will warehouse workers do when robots can pick, pack, and ship without lunch breaks and health care benefits? Forget NAFTA; the shift is toward Silicon Valley. But where to start? The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream is a good place. Sitting somewhere between Nate Silver and The Tipping Point , Amy Webb's book provides a practical guide for leaders - at any level - in the age of Big Data, offering tools for picking out the “true signal, a pattern that will coalesce into a trend with the potential to change everything” - and land on the right side of disruption. --Jon Foro, The Amazon Book Review "The clear, insightful, and humorous Amy Webb has crafted a rare treasure: a substantive guide written in a narrative that's a delight to read. While most futurologists want guru status through a few Nostradamus-like visions that never materialize, Webb modestly reports with depth and discipline, and creates a system and tools we can all use to better navigate the future. Through her deep research, specific anecdotes, and brilliant insights, she has performed the selfless but hugely valuable act of teaching us all to fish at the fringe." --Christopher J. Graves, chairman, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide"Amy Webb, with insight and a big dose of pragmatism, shows how to clearly see the next big disruption and then take action before it strikes." --Ram Charan, advisor to CEOs and corporate boards, author of The Attackers Advantage , and coauthor of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done "Forecasting the future is a challenging-and absolutely necessary-part of every leader's job. In this ambitious and timely book, Amy Webb shows not only how to identify actual trends and surprises emerging from the fringes but-even more important-how to do something about them so you can thrive in the face of the unexpected."--Craig Newmark, founder,Craigslist The Signals Are Talking: Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream is my complete methodology for how to predict future trends in technology and society, as well as their impacts on how we will work/ live and govern. It also makes an argument why now, more than ever, every single one of us must use the tools of a futurist.We've fetishized the future, but there just aren't enough people dedicated to researching the implications of our technological progress. We've allowed ourselves be handicapped by a future blindness. Without being able to see the signals for soxa0long, we've developed bad habits. It's a lack of futures thinking that led to Blackberry's demise and recent announcement of yet another round of layoffs. It's why news organizations have had such a difficult time staying afloat. It's why you might be worried, right now, about the future of your organization.xa0The best time to have started planning for the future was decades ago. The second best time is right now, today. Amy Webb is an author, futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading future forecasting and strategy firm that researches technology and answers "What's the future of X?" for a global client base. Her future forecasting work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company and more. Her research has also been cited in several academic papers. She is a lecturer on the future of media at Columbia University, and this fall, she will join NYU's Stern School of Business as an adjunct professor to teach a new course on forecasting the future of technology. She was a 2014-15 Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She founded Webbmedia Group (FTI's predecessor); co-founded Knowledgewebb Training, which facilitates hands-on workshops; and co-founded Spark Camp, a next-generation convener that facilitates important conversations on the future of a better society. Data is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production. Her previous book Data, a Love Story is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production. Read more
Features & Highlights
- Winner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award in Business Technology
- Amy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future.
- The Signals Are Talking
- reveals a systemic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon-distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know today what developments-especially those seemingly random ideas at the fringe as they converge and begin to move toward the mainstream-that have long-term consequence for tomorrow.With the methodology developed in
- The Signals Are Talking
- , we learn how to think like a futurist and answer vitally important questions: How will a technology-like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things-affect us personally? How will it impact our businesses and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think-and how should we prepare for it now?Most importantly, Webb persuasively shows that the future isn't something that happens to us passively. Instead, she allows us to see ahead so that we may forecast what's to come-challenging us to create our own preferred futures.
