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The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society Kindle Edition

by Azeem Azhar (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 191 ratings
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*2021 Financial Times Best Book of the Year*


A bold exploration and call-to-arms over the widening gap between AI, automation, and big data—and our ability to deal with its effects

We are living in the first exponential age.

High-tech innovations are created at dazzling speeds; technological forces we barely understand remake our homes and workplaces; centuries-old tenets of politics and economics are upturned by new technologies. It all points to a world that is getting faster at a dizzying pace.

Azeem Azhar, renowned technology analyst and host of the Exponential View podcast, offers a revelatory new model for understanding how technology is evolving so fast, and why it fundamentally alters the world. He roots his analysis in the idea of an “exponential gap” in which technological developments rapidly outpace our society’s ability to catch up. Azhar shows that this divide explains many problems of our time—from political polarization to ballooning inequality to unchecked corporate power. With stunning clarity of vision, he delves into how the exponential gap is a near-inevitable consequence of the rise of AI, automation, and other exponential technologies, like renewable energy, 3D printing, and synthetic biology, which loom over the horizon.



And he offers a set of policy solutions that can prevent the growing exponential gap from fragmenting, weakening, or even destroying our societies. The result is a wholly new way to think about technology, one that will transform our understanding of the economy, politics, and the future.
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  1. Print length
    403 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Diversion Books
  5. Publication date
    September 7, 2021
  6. File size
    1575 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for The Exponential Age


“The world is in the midst of [an exponential] transformation, argues Azeem Azhar….With his experience as a startup entrepreneur, tech investor, innovation executive at big companies and journalist, Mr. Azhar is well-placed to decrypt these digital trends. He has a knack for interrogating and inverting conventional thinking, for example in making the case that the adoption of exponential technology leads to job increases, not cuts—witness the rising headcounts of expanding businesses such as Amazon or Ocado, a British online grocer. The unemployment that results, he says, is down to the firms that fail to adapt, not those that do.”  

—The Economist


“Azeem Azhar is one of the best-regarded thought leaders in the industry. But more importantly, he has a broad understanding of the exponential ways technology can be used to solve our biggest problems, shape our society, and bridge cultural divides.”

—Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify 


“As high-tech innovation accelerates in ways that deliver huge benefits to society but also create unique challenges, Azeem delivers a comprehensive but lively take on the key issues informing what he calls the Exponential Age. It's an essential addition to the ongoing discourse about where these remarkable new technologies can take us, and where we should be aiming to go. Highly recommended!”

—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and co-author of Blitzscaling

"While many talk about the rate of innovation, too few talk about its direction. Azeem’s new book helps bring that directionality to the surface through a dynamic understanding of the connections between economic, social and technological forces. Read this book if you are interested in how we can design a more inclusive and sustainable system with a redirection of technological change at its center."
—Mariana Mazzucato, Professor at University College London, and author of Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

“Every generation fears technology is changing frighteningly fast. Usually it is hyperbole, the fear of the unknown, but today technological shifts are posing challenges to our security, our democracies, our way of life, and our sanity. Azeem Azhar’s brilliant book demystifies these exponentially fast changes and—importantly—shows how the chronic volatility can be harnessed for good. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how to reclaim a good society from the snapping jaws of looming chaos.”
—Robert Peston, ITV News’ political editor and presenter of ITV’s show Peston

“Azeem is a master at interpreting a dazzling array of trends and illuminating the future. Exponential is a must read to understand the problems, promise, and paths forward on the exponential journey ahead for us as individuals, businesses, and society.”
—Paul Daugherty, Group Chief Executive Officer, Technology, Accenture

“Most businesses and business leaders measure and think in linear terms. Azeem Azhar understands and writes about how the truly important breakthroughs take the form of exponential functions. In The Exponential Age, Azeem builds the case for exponential thinking through insightful examples of technologies that have made possible discontinuous leaps forward.”
—Tom Glocer, Former CEO of Thomson Reuters, and Executive Chairman at BlueVoyant LLC and Capitolis Inc

“Azeem Azhar’s The Exponential Age presents an audacious spectrum of interconnecting trends, which already profoundly impact our lives. In the book, the risks and challenges arising out of the exponentially leaping technologies are masterfully balanced with opportunities and proposed policy actions. The book is an essential read for leaders and enthusiasts who care about the better future for all.”
—Giedrimas Jeglinskas, Assistant Secretary General at NATO

“Using countless stories and insightful analysis, Azeem Azhar guides us from the industrial assumptions we grew up with to the exponential realities that define our future.”
—Tom Wheeler, Brookings Institution, author of From Gutenberg to Google: A History of Our Future

“Azeem Azhar is that rare thing: a thought-leader who has also been a tech founder. The combination of big-picture vision and real tech experience shines through in this unmissable book.”
—Stian Westlake, Chief Executive, Royal Statistical Society

“Azeem's new book charts a clear path through an uncertain and complex future, one shaped by technology and one which accelerates at an exponential rate. He takes us on a journey into our collective future, asks the hard questions and provides a compelling possible future for all of us. A must-read for anyone who wants to actively shape the decades ahead.”
—Pascal Finette, Founder, be radical

“Azeem Azhar is a globally recognized voice on technology and its impact. He has written a fascinating and important book. It’s required reading for anyone seeking to understand the new economy and the massive global corporations that seek to dominate that economy.”
—Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA

“Azeem's kinetic mind is uniquely able to connect social, political, economic and technological trends in ways that inspire and challenge. The Exponential Age is a natural extension and expansion of Azeem's unique ability, on display in his podcast and newsletter, of isolating, unpicking and retying the threads which make up the fabric of our technosociety.”
—Carly Kind, Director, Ada Lovelace Institute

“You will be exponentially smarter after having read Azeem Azhar’s book.”
—Laure Claire Reillier, COO and Co-Founder Launchworks & Co, Co-Author Platform Strategy
 
“A much-needed manual for unlocking opportunities and overcoming vertigo in a world that seems to be spinning out of control. Azeem Azhar, a genius networker, proves to be a brilliant guide to our intensely networked age.” 
—Kevin Werbach, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania


“I can’t think of a more important book to bring into sharp relief the rate of technological change we are currently living in. It is no longer a matter of linear change over time. It is a matter of transformative and exponential shifts in all matters of life.”

—Tsedal Neeley, Senior associate dean at Harvard Business School

About the Author

Azeem Azhar is the creator of the Exponential View, a global platform for in-depth tech analysis. His weekly newsletter is read by nearly two hundred thousand people from around the world, and his chart-topping podcast has featured guests including Yuval Noah Harari, Reid Hoffman, and Tony Blair. Over the last three decades, Azhar has founded and invested in a number of successful tech companies bought by firms like Amazon and Microsoft. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council, a senior advisor at PwC, and a contributor to publications including the Financial Times, Prospect, and the MIT Technology Review. He served as the Economist’s first ever internet correspondent. He lives in London.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093TQWD4Y
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Diversion Books (September 7, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 7, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1575 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 403 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 191 ratings

About the author

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Azeem Azhar

Azeem Azhar

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Azeem Azhar is the creator of Exponential View (www.exponentialview.co), one of the world's leading platforms for understanding the impact of technology on society. His weekly newsletter is read by 200,000 people from around the world, and his chart-topping podcast has featured guests including Yuval Noah Harari, Tony Blair and Reid Hoffman.

The founder of a number of tech companies, Azhar is an active startup investor and has advised the World Economic Forum, McKinsey and Accenture. He is a contributor to publications including the Financial Times, Wired and the MIT Technology Review.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
191 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Naveed B
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview on one of the major issues of our time
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
In Exponential Age, Azeem has done a world class job of exploring the transformative power of exponential technologies.

His central thesis is derived from
multi-disciplinary views such as technology, economics, politics, geography, and climate.

He takes a balanced view on the positive and negative impacts that have resulted in our rapidly changing society. He provides powerful insight and a unique perspective combining both the humanities and the technological. He details how these changes have quickly outpaced our institutions abilities to control them and provides a useful roadmap to resolve this issue.

I read the book in about 4 hours. Extremely easy to digest and enjoyable to read. Loved it.
17 people found this helpful
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Eric M. Robken
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking--albeit sometimes a bit naïve and repetitive
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2021
Verified Purchase
He provides a good summary of how Information Technology (IT) came to be from the dawn of the internet, and what the present state of IT means for today's social structures, governments, business, and society. Like others, the author is suggesting the government cope by becoming more "agile" and demanding transparency from the IT oligarchs, but offers few details on how to actually accomplish this.

Like many Silicon Valley books, the author displays a bit of a home-field bias, obfuscating "technology" with the more narrow field of IT. Obviously, there are forms of technology outside of IT, many of which are stagnating and decidedly un-Exponential (see Flight, healthcare, transportation, energy). We are basically a society who has forgotten how to build aircraft, public transport, nuclear power, and basic materials like shipping. The author has some biases and blind spots with regards to energy, for example, the transition to renewables is far slower than many anticipated. There is clearly a wave of new demand for energy which cannot be met with renewables alone, given our dearth of natural resources in lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth metals. That the author does not even mention crypto or blockchain, shows the level of naivete here.

Nevertheless, the author delivers a solid narrative of the problem of exponential IT in an incremental world, providing a useful model for how to frame some of today's most pressing issues.
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Analysis of Where We Are and What we need to do about where we are going
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2023
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Azeem has done a great job of framing how we come to be at this juncture, what the challenges we face are, and here is where the book differs from many others, very specific ideas on the kind of social and political changes we will need to explore and put in place to successfully navigate this transition. The challenge is that few of our leaders understand these issues let alone have ideas around possible solutions. We will all have to participate in this dialog and hopefully leaders will emerge that will take us forward on these many fronts. This book should be required reading for the political class as well as technologists creating the technologies of tomorrow.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for those managing innovation
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021
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This book offers a robust analysis that draws on the author's in-depth experience of the accelerating pace of technological change to warn of the mpact of this on society that is struggling to keep up wth such rapid change. Read from the perspective of someone leading a high-tech company it also offers valuable nsights into managing innovation in terms of the institutonal barriers to adoption that must be overcome in the early years before success can be achieved. More than that, this book obliges innovators to reflect deeply on the impact of our technologies on society - who has access (or not) to the benefits it brings, under what conditions and wth what outcomes. The first Industrial Revolution disrupted European society, brought forth the French Revolution and sowed the seeds of enfranchisement in Europe. The author offers some insights into how our societies can adapt to the pace of unprecedented change, however that problem is being lived NOW (e.g. access to COVID vaccines, safe drinking water, online education etc. ) and is giving rise to immense stresses that are not being addressed
19 people found this helpful
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sslafter
3.0 out of 5 stars some interesting points
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2024
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A good discussion of the general environment concerning the advancement of technology as balanced against the preparedness of society to deal with the changes. A decent read for those beginning this exploration.
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James Yoon
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2022
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Great book and analysis. The author provides an solid overview and framework for understanding exponential technology and its impact on society. While I may disagree with certain points, I agree with his main point of human agency and choice in the face of rapid technological change. Nothing is inevitable. Of course, nothing can be done without first understanding the issues and challenges. The book is a great start.
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CanPanDave
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2021
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Well written and fast paced look at how the increasingly fast development of technology is affecting our lives now and on the future
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David Tharp
5.0 out of 5 stars A good summary of out current evolution status
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2021
Verified Purchase
I like the current report of out status in both technology and institutions. Foundational learning is important, but ways of critical thinking and a strategy for lifelong learning needs to be the norm and not the exception. We need to establish a base of tax or contributions from our super companies to fill the gaps between what we can do and what is being done by the average members of our society.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Fernando j. Martinez Cue
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy bueno
Reviewed in Mexico on February 19, 2023
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Inspirador refleja nuestra situación actual y proyecta hacia el futuro . Empresas, gobierno, sociedad volcados hacia una nueva situación que transforma nuestro mundo y su desarrollo
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