Radical innovation is disruptive. It creates an inflection point that generates fast growth for the innovators and inevitable decline for those that are stuck in old paradigms. The large automation companies are developing mostly extensions of old stuff, reincarnations of tired concepts that can’t generate real growth and just will not cut it much longer. They are too conservative to do much beyond short-term extrapolations.
You know what Steve Jobs said, “If it is good, do not do it – it has got to be insanely great!” Perhaps only a gutsy CEO with good market insights can make that kind of call. And how many of those are there in the automation business?
The two largest segments of industrial measurement and control systems – programmable logic controllers (PLC) and distributed control systems (DCS) – were both 1970s era developments.
While there are isolated pockets of growth in the automation business, no other innovations have succeeded in achieving an equivalent inflection point by offering improvements of 10 times or more in price, performance and operating advantages.
Automation is overdue for a revolution, an inflection point. Here is a major case in point – decentralised control.
How effectively would the Internet operate if it ran primarily with centralised intelligence? Well, that is how process controls and automation systems operate today – deterministic, centralised, hierarchical systems.
The inventor of the PLC, Dick Morley, has been preaching peer-to-peer decentralised control systems for two decades, but no one has really run with it to prove the practical advantages of real alternatives in large systems. The automation majors are too chicken to invest significantly to prove the point. They are waiting for some gutsy little company to prove the overwhelming benefits.
Meantime, most top managers in the automation world are too busy looking into their rear-view mirrors to see the future coming at them. Look for new leaders to blaze the path to explosive new growth.
Internet is changing the brain
The Internet is actually changing our brains. It has become a primary form of external memory and our brains have become reliant on the virtually instant availability of information. Our brains are adapting, and some think that intelligence is improving.
When faced with questions, people rarely consider encyclopaedias or history books anymore; they think about computers. It is a new impulse that now exists in the brain. With smartphones, the information is in their pocket.
Rote memorisation wastes valuable brainpower. People do not need to remember addresses or phone numbers anymore; they can just look them up. Clearly, modern education should focus not on learning by rote any more, but on creative thinking.
Some think that multi-tasking – the phenomenon of continuous partial attention – causes an actual adaptation of the brain. Instead of focusing on tasks, incoming e-mail becomes a distraction and cannot be ignored.
Deep, focused reading is becoming increasingly difficult. Online browsing has created a new form of ‘reading’ in which people are not really reading, but rather power browsing. Instead of left-to-right, up-to-down reading, they seem to scan through titles, bullet points, and information that stands out. When it comes to reading more than a few minutes, the mind begins to wander. Certainly comprehension and attention are at risk.
When you are online, you are frequently attacked by bursts of information, which is highly stimulating and even overwhelming. Too much and you can become extremely distracted and unfocused. Even after logging off, your brain remains wired. The lack of focus and fractured thinking persists, interrupting work, family, and offline time.
Gradually, Internet use is changing neural pathways; it is addictive. Even after unplugging, habitual users feel a craving for the stimulation received from gadgets. This is caused by dopamine, which is delivered as response to the stimulation. Without it, boredom sets in; people get irritated till they get their ‘fix’. After spending time online, their brain wants to get back for more, making it difficult to ‘unplug’ and concentrate on other tasks.
How will these effects of technology addiction extrapolate in the future?
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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