I grew up at an inflection point. I was his 1960s kid, but like many baby boomers, I had a front row seat. As it unfolded, I didn’t see it as a change – it was the way things were. Television has brought bands like The Beatles to a global audience. The transistor radio made music portable. Technology and social change were closely related.
We hid in the shadow of the bomb and a new race for technological supremacy began. My childhood nickname was “Sputnik”. I was named after a Russian satellite. It shocked the United States that Russia could technically surpass it. It started racing to the moon.
Then came the contraceptive pill. For the first time in history, women were able to control their reproductive freedom. We witnessed the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution, and in 1969 the so-called Summer of Love. But 1969 was a year of explosive change.
There were two Kennedy assassinations. JFK in 1963. I was seven years old.
In 1968, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, but the words “I have a dream” still rang in my ears.
Demonstrations against the Vietnam War broke out. We saw body bags on TV every day.
And in 1969, the United States officially won the race to the moon with the words “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The word “a” was cut from the transmission.
The world will never be the same.
Televisions, transistors, silicon chips – did technology change society? Maybe not, but the pressure was on the post-war generation and the resulting baby boom. There was a growing desire for social justice. Demographics were changing. We were in the greatest economic boom in history.
But if technology didn’t change it, it accelerated it. It had a catalytic effect and in the years leading up to 1969 we reached an inflection point.
That’s the world I grew up in.
Today is a new world. Graffiti on the wall again. Well, not like a wall, but more like a screen, to be exact.
We are once again in an era of accelerated change, an inflection point. Technological and social changes are taking place. And now it’s exploding.
We have experienced a global pandemic that has changed the way we work and think.
Climate change remains out of control and is a potential threat to our future. Some might argue that we see early signs of its instability.
It’s probably the first time in more than 50 years that world politics has been this unstable.
And we may be seen by some as the culmination of the world’s digital transformation. Artificial intelligence will change our lives forever. It will have a great impact on white-collar and professional work.
Inflection point.
When I learned of Kriti Sharma’s name, I wanted to have her on the show for two reasons. Her spokesperson pitched me the idea: “AI and the Rise of Lawyer 2.0: How legal professionals can focus on higher-value work and improve access to justice.”
I thought it was a great idea. But digging a little deeper into what this young woman has been up to in her career so far, and her remarks on social issues, I was dying to have a conversation with someone who’s been at the forefront of this inflection point. I wanted to get her perspective.
The discussion was exciting. In a rare moment, I became more optimistic about our future.
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