By now, most of us who have been working from home or laid off because of the virus. Our lives have changed. At the same time, we are entering the next major revolution called “Autonomous Revolution.” As humans, we have evolved through the agricultural revolution and then the industrial revolution, which included a massive rise in the use of technology. Now, we are in the midst of the Autonomous Revolution and who would have ever thought a virus would accelerate the cause-effect of what the Autonomous Revolution is bringing.

I would highly recommend reading the book “The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future we’ve sold to Machines” by William Davidow and Michael Malone. The industrial revolution has moved us as a society to new levels never dreamed.

Human beings are now experiencing social phase change, as we have never experienced during the last two revolutions. We are using new tools, different tools, and we are developing technologies that will autonomously perform many functions that we as human beings have been doing for the past one hundred years.

The most significant social phase change will be impacted by how we distribute wealth, which means how we make a living.  The Industrial Revolution established norms that people would work for wealth. The Autonomous Revolution is bringing about a world where people will not just work for wealth. Still, it will provide intellectual and valuable services to the society for which we don’t have a “pay to work’ model established. Wealth may not become the means to the end. This will be especially true in information-oriented businesses, such as finance, cybersecurity, various research industries, consulting, teaching, government, retail, and so forth.

Corporations must weave new strategies into one seamless garment to survive and grow. What makes some businesses successful quicker than others? The rate of change and the acceptance of evolution. The difference is nothing new. When we confront change, we get a pit in our stomach and dig our heels in deep. Fear of the unknown takes over.

The adoption of the industrial revolution brought about new and necessary tools for survival. They brought in new forms of measurements for the way we distributed wealth.

But in the Autonomous Revolution, technology will not necessarily bring about higher productivity. We must see beyond productivity to see the greater good for society and for us individually as human beings.

I would argue that we need to develop a mindset that we must always follow a process of continual reinvention, which becomes a process of on-going improvement and have the means to implement and support the operations. Change is adopted when we grab hold of the technologies of the Autonomous Revolution and transform our lives with the technologies. Think about how amazing all this is; giving credence to the old phrase the last big thing creates the next big thing.

Organizations need to become opportunistic as they evolve through these revolutions and now embark on the reality of the Autonomous Revolution. This requires dynamic and visionary leadership throughout the ranks. Management must expect the involvement of technology in the business strategy to be active, and the Autonomous Revolution will demand that it be productive in ways that advance and enhance what it means to be a human being and not necessarily in terms of wealth creation.   Social phase change will enhance the way we live our lives. We must realize many businesses and organizations will perish in the process because they will not understand the transformation, or accept the transformation and just flat out deny it is happening.

For the first time since the dawn of the Internet, technology infrastructure has become cost-effective and global. The technologies of the industrial evolutions are the catalyst of change in our relationships with our customers because of breakthroughs in some fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, The Internet of Things, 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles. The Autonomous Revolution is drastically changing the world of DevOps, we will see applications developed without traditional code and performed by business sales, marketing, HR staff by just speaking what they want and explaining verbally the cause/effect desired for the creation of algorithms. We will see a new world of telecommunications, a world that becomes “FLAT” and all “communications” occur via the mobile Internet and the “new internet” of the future. Think of the implications for applications when we realize every corner of the Earth (96.8 %) is covered by an Internet cellular or another reasonable facsimile thereof signal 7X24. Your intranets will have to adapt to the new flexible standard architecture of the intranet so that companies can easily incorporate the latest technologies and be able to retain their customers and expand their markets and grow organically.

The future of what we call the “IT departments” of the Autonomous Revolutions can no longer be static as they were in the 1980s and 1990s. I am amazed at how many companies today have siloed IT departments, and their strategies are immobile and unable to accommodate a dynamic environment. Organizations that choose to evolve through the next iterations of change will achieve rapid market dominance from insurance, trading, medicine, education, banking, supply chain, and retail. Those who adopt will outpace their competition.

Survival means getting your business to the future when the present is evolving. If you do not see these technologies in your future, your company will have none. If you do not adapt to the Autonomous Revolution, you will severely handicap your business, your customers, and your employees for any real competitive chance of success.

The technologies of the Autonomous Revolutions are “democratizing” access to your business.
Look around at your current strategies both in business and technology, are you driving change in your organization to embrace the Autonomous Revolution? Do people in the organization wonder what the Autonomous Revolution means to them?

Are you or your leadership, a passenger in the backseat, hoping you arrive at your destination in one piece? Or are you that armadillo upside down on the side of the road.
Above all, the key to survival and growth will be an understanding for the first time in centuries that the world of technology has philosophical implications.

Within the Autonomous Revolution, We are coming to an understanding of the difference OF being human and the difference IT makes.