Does Disruption Create Opportunities?
This week’s Convenience Matters podcast looks at the history of technology advancements and what the future might hold.
Feb 27, 2019
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Augmented Age,” hosts Jeff Lenard and Carolyn Schnare of NACS take a look into the future with Brett King, futurist and CEO of Moven.
Disruption has been around for a long time. Schoolchildren learn about how the Industrial Revolution disrupted the way people lived and worked, and impacted basic sanitation, medical services and transportation. That time also gave us the term Luddites, who were textile workers disrupted in 1812 by the steam machine.
“Some say Ned Lud was the first textile worker to throw a wrench into a steam machine weaving loom to disrupt this technology shift,” King said. “Today, we read about Waymo testing autonomous vehicles in Arizona and people slashing the tires of these vehicles, throwing rocks at them and trying to drive them off the road because they’re seeing them as disruptive technology.”
All technology has the tension of creating new opportunities while destroying the old way of doing things. “That’s the core of disruptive behavior,” King said. “The real question is will this new technology...create more jobs than they destroy?”
King also recently spoke at the NACS Leadership Forum, where he shared with attendees what the already disrupted future will bring.
Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 60,000 times in 80 countries.
