The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
—Alan Kay
The best way to predict the future is to inspire the next generation of students to build it better.
—Jim Spohrer
The ATOM Is a Blueprint for Building the Future
Too many people are pessimistic about the future. In this book, Kartik Gada paints an optimistic view of the future, with no taxes, no inflation, smaller government, boundless growth, and more freedom for individuals to pursue their dreams. Too good to be true? Maybe not. The engine of change that Gada describes is driven by the exponentially decreasing costs of accessing technology-enabled resources, both product and service offerings, in our lives. From a service science point of view, Kartik Gada is what we call a bona fide T-shaped innovator, who is deep in finance and accounting, and has broadened his abilities to understand and integrate a range of topics including technology, macroeconomics, and government public policy.
How I Find Out About the ATOM
I met Kartik online when he sent a link to his magnum opus the ATOM to members of the I4J (Innovation for Jobs) e-mail forum, started by David Nordfors and Vint Cerf. I read the ATOM, and found that it changed my worldview, as much as reading Vargo and Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic (Vargo and Lusch 2004). Changing a worldview is not an easy thing, so I immediately wanted to meet Kartik and see if I could help him spread the word. He invited me to a talk he gave at Google, and I quickly invited him to publish the ATOM in this book collection that Prof. Haluk Demirkan (University of Washington) and edit for Business Expert Press, and the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP.org).
The Hard to Believe Statement That Inspired the ATOM
Kartik was reading an essay by Ray Kurzweil (Kurzweil 2001), and remembers being struck by Kurzweil’s prediction prices in the future would be lower for things, including oil, because of something called technology deflation. Aren’t scarce resources, like oil, that are dwindling in natural reserves, and can be used up, going to be more and more expensive? Well yes, that was true in the past, but in the age of accelerations that Kurzweil describes, artificial oil will someday be as plentiful and cheap as it needs to be for just about any purpose. Kartik wrapped his head around this, convinced himself it was true, believed it, and set out to explore the consequences, and that is what led to the ATOM being written.
A Summary of the ATOM
Those who are familiar with Kurzweil’s essay on The Law of Accelerating Returns (Kurzweil 2001) may be tempted to skip the first 20 percent of the ATOM, which deals with exponential trend line of economics growth and that technology disruption is pervasive and deepening. Don’t do it. Gada treatment has several nuances like a stronger connection to GDP factors that will be important to understand later in the ATOM argument. Also, to get deep into the ATOM, you will want to delve into Prof. Mark Perry’s essays, several key ones are referenced. In the section on the overlooked economics of technology a key statement was:
We have established earlier that while people have grown accustomed to seeing all forms of consumer technology continuously decline in price, very few take the next step and observe the ever-widening array of products that continue to merge into this river of technological deflation.
This statement matters because in the next two sections on government policy, the words of Ray Dalio echoed in my thoughts—government knows how to deal with inflation much better than deflation. The ATOM is all about the tools we (individuals, families, businesses, and of course governments) need to develop and wield to deal with technology-driven deflation. Once we all master these tools, the future will unfold differently, and much more rapidly—with taxes disappearing and more financial freedom for individuals to pursue their dreams.
What Surprised Me Most
How much money do you think governments around the world (United States, Japan, China, etc.) are printing every month to keep the economy going? Between $200B and $300B per month, and that amount is expected to keep increasing. Why does printed money go to the central banks, and not directly to people? Read the ATOM and find out.
What Is Still Missing?
From an academic perspective, linkages to the work of Doug Engelbart (1962) and Stephen J. Klein (1995) would help the reader interested in the potential form of specific technologies for augmenting intellect of people, and further accelerating the pace of discoveries and the sociotechnical system design loop we are all part of. Also, the service science community will see many opportunities for better understanding the evolving ecology of service system entities, their capabilities, constraints, rights, and responsibilities, as well as these entities value cocreation and capability coelevation mechanisms (Spohrer et al. 2013).