The pace of change can sometimes be frightening. There have been a few industrial or economic revolutions all of which had a seismic change in the way business was run. Each was profound in their own way but now we see that the time to bed in between each is getting shorter and shorter. The Mechanical revolution introduced the world to steam power. Rail travel opened up new regions and factories created masses of new jobs. Machines like The Spinning Jenny vastly increased textile productivity. Around 1870 the use of electricity, gas engines, telephony and assembly lines ushered in an era of mass production. Industrial scale manufacturing processes dominated and the quest for efficiency reached a zenith with the advent of Taylorism. Move forward a century and computers spearheaded further change and marked the start of a digital revolution. These gradually became smaller and more easily carried around and Steve Jobs prediction of a computer in every pocket came true. The rise of the internet changed the world incredibly. Websites replaced bricks and mortar as shopfronts and information became far more democratic in nature. And now we have a further iteration of that pace of change in AI. Like many I'm still trying to get to grips with this. Playing around with Claude recently and I've seen things I thought I would never see. Telling it to make changes to a spreadsheet or linking it with another document and sitting back and watching it very intelligently reading, analysing and produce something in 5 minutes that would otherwise have taken me a day. What history tells us is that those who don't embrace that change get left behind. I remember going to an exhibition once and asking why a provider didn't have a cloud solution only to be told "it won't catch on as people want their own systems". That company isn't around anymore. Yes the pace is somewhat bewildering. But it needs embracing and moulding into something that we own and control. Because if you don't then others will.
