Every year, Jim denOtter, CTO at Computronix, delivers what we have all come to know as Jim’s Tech Rant. It’s an insightful look into advancements in technology and how it affects our daily lives. This year’s Tech Rant was titled “Technology has Consequences” and we thought we’d share it with you. You can read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here.
“Technology can be highly disruptive. How has Amazon disrupted brick and mortar, or ride-sharing apps disrupted taxis? What have music streaming services done to album sales and music? An artist no longer makes their money on album sales but on concerts. It used to be an artist would tour to sell the album but now they create an album to sell the tour. Whole industries have been completely disrupted because of technology.
How does technology disrupt the automotive industry? What is your car doing right now? It’s sitting in the parking lot, depreciating. And we are paying for car insurance even though it is just sitting in the parking lot. It would be way cheaper to just subscribe to something where cars are waiting to be called.
What about the idea of autonomous ride fleets? How might that disrupt the whole automotive industry? If you knew you could subscribe to an SLA that promised there would be a self-driving vehicle to pick you up within 5 minutes and take you to your desired location, why would you want to own a car? AI would ensure enough of these vehicles would be available at a given location so we wouldn’t have to worry about that, and if it drives in autonomous only lanes, then it would be even safer. Subscribing to a service that provides a vehicle on demand would be much more cost effective. There could even be levels of subscriptions where you can pay more for a higher-level service like getting to your location faster or a nicer vehicle to ride in.”
Jim continues his Tech Rant talking about how technology is disrupting the way traditional news and opinion are being reported if hyper-targeted marketing is creating your desire for certain products and how AI and machine learning will continue to “disrupt” the status quo.
Jim’s annual Tech Rant is a part of the Computronix Annual meeting we have all come to look forward to because he provides an insightful look into tomorrow’s technology. Check back for more of Jim’s Tech Rants in the future.
