I consider myself fortunate to experience a critical part of the journey of human history. While I wasn’t around for the Industrial Revolution –obviously, I lived through the “Internet Revolution”. The era when people are making a web-version of everything.
Then came the “Smartphone Revolution”. We were transforming from a mobile phone that can only do what the manufacturer allows it to to a mobile phone that lets anyone build on top of it, essentially let it do what you want. Similar to the “Web Revolution”, everyone builds an app for anything. There are apps with functions solely to show those 5 items in Pancasila. I’m not kidding. In countries like Indonesia, this is a frog leap. A big one. Computers are not common across Indonesians households, let alone internet access. Then suddenly everyone had a smartphone with them. So we (Indonesians) jump from no computers, no internet, to smartphone plus internet. The term was “mobile first country”.
IoT (“Internet of Things”) also happens in parallel. Not just web for everything and an app for anything, now anything connected to the internet. Your wall clock is connected to the internet. You can remote it from anywhere. This might sound silly 15 years ago, but joke on you (or me).
After these three revolutions, it quite slowed down. Yes, there was this “Cloud” of everything. But I consider it as part of those 3 above. Hmm, when you come to think about it, maybe the “Cloud Revolution” is the foundation for all those 3 revolutions. Isn’t it?
Anyway, now we are in a big critical part of humankind history, Artificial Intelligence (A.I). Needless to say much about this. If you are reading this I believe you had experience with it already. You have probably done one of these: Creating cute memes, drafting writings, do (cheating?) your homework or even actual work, translating things, making presentations, etc. And of course, another magical capability it brings: creating software with human language (vibe code).
In the past I was kind of able to sense what will come in the future. The Internet opens up possibilities for many things, even so still on my imagination limit. But AI with today’s capability, wow, that never crossed my mind. I am even quite skeptical when AI like we know it today will be available back then. I thought I would only become real long after my days were gone. Huh, joke on me!
AI arrived a lot earlier than initial estimation, predicting the future becoming wild. Things I thought will become reality in the span of ten years also might be a reality next week. Creating software has always been the major entry point barrier for a long time to make innovation. Now you can make it in one day. Well, at least the early fully functioning version of it.
I have a lot of ideas of online solutions that can be built as a web or app. It used to be exciting to imagine where it would get me if I put the energy to actually build it. Now everyone who has the same idea can launch it today. There might even be more than 10 people launching that same idea as I write this.
I took one example. I always have a personal financial tracker that not just tracks my spending, but also my investments. I’ve been coding it for a couple of days. Talk about it with my team at the office. One of them also has the same idea. In a week or so he has built the same app, but better. He put a lot of effort into it, while I’m making it as a side quest. Cool, eh?
Sometimes I feel like it’s moving too fast. Seems like not everyone is ready. But so did when the “Internet Revolution” happened. It kills a lot of businesses and jobs, but more opportunity is created. The challenge is the opportunity open up only to those who embrace it. Those who reject this reality or (sadly) unable to embrace it even if they try, will be left behind.
I don’t know what the next revolution will be. But one thing that I’m sure of, it will come faster. The cycle has become shorter each day. We have to buckle up to catch the next train.
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