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I grew up at an inflection point. I was just a kid in the 1960’s but I had a front row seat, like many baby boomers. As it unfolded, I didn’t see it as change – it was the way things were. Rock and roll music, a phenomenon from the 50’s exploded. Television gave bands like the Beatles a world wide audience. Transistor radios made music portable. Technology and social change went hand in hand.
We lived in the shadow the bomb and the start of a new race for technological superiority. My nickname as a kid was “Sputnik.” I was named after the Russian satellite that shocked the US into thinking it was possible that Russia could eclipse it technologically. It started the race to the moon.
Then came the birth control pill. Women were able to control their reproductive freedom for the first time in history. We saw the rise of feminism and the sexual revolution and in 1969, what was called the summer of love. But 1969 was a year of explosive change.
There were two Kennedy assassinations. JFK in 1963.I was seven.
In 1968 Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, while the words “I have dream were still ringing in our ears.”
Protests erupted against the war in Vietnam. We saw the body bags every day on our TV sets.
And in 1969, the US officially won the race to the moon, with the words, “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The word “a” was cut out of the transmission.
The world would never be the same.
Television, transistors and the silicon chip – did technology make social change? Maybe, maybe not, the pressures were there with the post war generation and resultant baby boom. The desire for social justice was growing. Demographics were changing. We were in the greatest economic boom in history.
But if technology didn’t make change, it accelerated it. It had a catalytic effect and thos few brief years leading up to 1969, took us to an inflection point.
That’s the world I grew up in.
Today it’s a new world. Once again writing is on the wall. Well, not on the wall, exactly, more like on the screen.
We are again at a time of accelerated change – an inflection point. Technological and social change has been brewing. And now it’s exploding.
We’ve lived through a worldwide pandemic that changed the way we do work and the way we think about it.
Climate change still remains out of control – a potential threat to our future. Some might argue we are seeing the initial signs of that instability.
World politics probably haven’t been this unstable in more than 50 years.
And we are in what some might see as the culmination the digital transformation of our world. Artificial Intelligence is going to change our lives forever. It will have a huge impact on white collar and professional jobs.
An inflection point.
So when I came across the name of Kriti Sharma, I wanted to bring her on the show for two reasons. Her PR person pitched me on the idea of “AI and the Rise of Lawyer 2.0: How the Legal Profession Can Focus on Higher Value Work and Improve Access to Justice”:
I thought that was a great idea. But as I dug a little more into what this young lady has done with her career to date and her statements on social issues, I was dying to have a conversation with someone who has a front seat at this inflection point. I wanted to get her perspective.
The discussion was invigorating. For a rare moment, I felt more optimistic about our future.
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