INTRODUCTION We live in a moment of history where change is so…

INTRODUCTION




We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that
we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
--R. D. LAING


             here are the flying cars?

W                For me, born in the early 1960s and one of the millions
             who watched all the Apollo moon landings, the prediction of the
future that stands out in my mind best is that we would all be commuting in
cars that flew. No more traffic jams. No more toll roads. Perhaps they all had
small nuclear reactors in them so there was no need for gas or any other fuel.
The plan was for The Jetsons to look like a reality television show.
     Almost forty years after man first landed on the moon, my car is still
permanently land-based, I still pay tolls, and I'm still filling it with gas.
What did the promised transportation revolution deliver instead? The Seg-
way. The company first marketed itself as "the next generation in personal
mobility,"1 which apparently meant traveling at about 12.5 miles (20 km)
per hour with a range of 24 miles (38 km) before you had to recharge the

1   See http://www.segway.com/products/.
xvi THE FUTURE OF LESS


lithium-ion battery packs. As revolutionary as The Jetsons? This can't even
compete with the Batmobile.
     The inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen, once predicted that "the
Segway will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy."2 I
remember the buzz that the Segway would mean the end to walking. It is
hard to support the idea that the next transportation revolution should be
the end of walking.
     Dean Kamen is a smart guy--certainly smarter than I am. But the Seg-
way was obviously designed in a vacuum, devoid of consumer input. The "if
you build it, they will come" model of product development--focused on
engineering rather than consumer research--is based on hope and, as the
cliché goes, hope is not a strategy. So I try to contrast my ideas--whether you
think they are any good or not--with those of engineers, like Kamen. Since
I'm not an engineer, I consider myself instead a technologist, which I define
as such: the optimist sees the glass half full; the pessimist sees the glass half
empty; and the technologist wonders why the engineer didn't talk to anyone
before building a glass that was twice as large as anyone wanted or needed.


THE FUTURE IS HERE

Much of the rest of the world is way ahead of the United States in embracing
and implementing the wireless, paperless, and cashless revolutions I describe
in this book. As the science-fiction author William Gibson is credited with
saying, "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." The reasons
for this are often cultural or regulatory, not technological. For the United
States, the good news about being the second or third mover in the market-
place is that it could offer us a chance to catch up eventually by eliminating
the need to try technologies that failed elsewhere. And by the time we imple-
ment these technologies, some economies of scale may have kicked in and
dramatically lowered their costs, both for MNOs and for consumers.
     Culture and regulatory issues change more slowly, but change does come.
The Internet and the World Wide Web are case studies in how technology
can change culture and force governments to embrace a new regulatory vision.

2   Rivlin, Gary. (2003, March). Segway's Breakdown. Transportation Alternatives. Retrieved
    May 12, 2008, from http://www.transalt.org/press/media/2003/030301wired.html.
                                                                   Introduction   xvii


Can you imagine the government not trying to tax anything and everything
it can? Yet most interstate e-commerce transactions in the United States are
not taxed. It is remarkable. And not too long ago filing your income taxes
online was impossible from a regulatory standpoint, even though the technol-
ogy had been around for more than a decade. Regulatory change does come,
however slowly, when people demand that the government allows them to do
what technology allows them to do.
     So it is with good ideas, technology, products, and services--they can
change as people change and as technologies around them change. Of the
three revolutions I address in this book, the most important one is the wireless
revolution, because it enables and enhances the other two. Man is inherently
a mobile creature, and wireless technology--coupled with the Internet and
the World Wide Web--allows us to store and retrieve information anywhere,
anytime, on the move. The wireless revolution enables a modern world where
BlackBerrys are more commonplace on a belt than in a cobbler. But certainly
wireless isn't important just because it is making the migration to a more
paperless and cashless society possible. The mobile phone is the most sought-
after consumer electronic product globally, ahead of the personal computer
or the car. In many parts of the world, a mobile phone is the user's personal
computer. I have been to more than thirty countries on six continents, and
only the near ubiquity of the mobile phone is common everywhere I go.
     The second revolution can seem less welcome. For many of us, going
paperless seems like something we should do or something we have to do, not
something we want to do. It's like eating vegetables as a child, and most of
us never volunteered for lima beans. For the first of what will be many times
in the pages that follow, let me state the following clearly: paperless doesn't
mean no paper. The overwhelming majority of you reading this are doing so
with a device that doesn't need electricity to run, starts instantaneously, and
never needs to be rebooted: a book. The irony of writing a book about going
paperless is not lost on me.
     Nonetheless, the paperless revolution is important for two reasons. Paper-
less communication allows for the digitization of ideas, which makes them
faster and easier to share across distances. If the global citizenry is capable of
accessing information using mobile phones, then let's not only print informa-
tion in big, heavy, expensive books. Let's also put it on the World Wide Web
xviii THE FUTURE OF LESS


so the broadest possible audience has access to that information at the lowest
possible price. The paperless revolution is also inherently eco-friendly, since
it means cutting down fewer trees, using fewer chemicals and less energy in
recycling paper, and fewer printer ink cartridges to dispose of.
     While writing this book, I tried to complete the paperless section paper-
lessly. Instead of using the usual research techniques of getting books, pho-
tocopying pages, and clipping magazine articles, I did almost everything
digitally. I stored the research on my computer (I converted the articles to
.pdf just in case the content disappeared from the Web) and did my edits
onscreen rather than with a red pen on printed paper. It was not easy at first,
as old habits are hard to break. But as someone who travels a lot, I enjoyed the
convenience of always having all my research with me without having to drag
around manila folders stuffed full of articles and photocopies. But paperless is
possible and, like eating most vegetables, you should probably do it whether
you like it or not. I still wouldn't volunteer for lima beans.
     Of the three revolutions under discussion, the cashless future might be the
easiest to envision given the huge role that credit and debit cards already play
in the U.S. and global economies. The notion of a cashless society is appeal-
ing because I think the end of cash will mean a huge reduction in cash-related
crimes like muggings and bank robberies. No cash means no cash to steal, no
money for the government to mint and for us to lose, and no more having too
much or too little change. Cashless means convenience and safety.
     The ideas, technology, products, and services that are part of the wireless,
paperless, and cashless revolutions have changed and will continue to change.
What we know today as cellular phone technology was designed solely to talk
to other people, not text message, get driving directions, or access the World
Wide Web. Life without paper hasn't been viable since shortly after Guten-
berg commercialized movable type. And to almost everyone in the United
States--at least those who haven't read this book--using a credit or debit card
at the register is the full extent of the cashless revolution. But change is com-
ing, and with a look to the early-adopter culture of South Korea (included in
each chapter of the book) we can get a pretty good idea of what it will be. The
question is now only this: are you ready for the revolutions?