hands up who here is the owner of an
iPhone 6 or an iPhone 7 okay hands up
who here would like five trillion
dollars there we go
what if I were to tell you that the
iPhone six or seven in your hand in your
pocket or in your handbag contains a
computer and that in 1984 that computer
would have been worth five trillion
dollars
isn’t that crazy to think that in 33
years the computer in the iPhone 6 has
gone from being worth five trillion
dollars to six hundred and forty nine
dollars we are living on the cusp of
exponential growth in computing and the
internet if you think back to 50 years
ago the world was a very different place
but it was in the 1960s that Gordon
Moore Intel’s co-founder began to notice
that the performance of computer chips
was doubling on average every 18 months
so every 18 months a computer chip was
twice as smart as it was in the 18
months beforehand this became known as
Moore’s law and today it’s still very
much in place however after many years
of our computer chips doubling in speed
and efficiency we’re really now
beginning to see the impact of this and
it’s going to change our lives did you
know for example that today for $1000
you can buy the computing power of a
mouse brain so that’s the number of
instructions per second that a mouse
brain can process famed futurist Ray
Kurzweil forecasts that by 2023 you’ll
be able to buy for $1000 the computing
power of a human brain and that by 2049
for $1000
you’ll be able to buy the computing
power of all of the human brains on the
planet combined Wow
right I’m 28 years old and I can’t
remember a time when I wasn’t able to
access the internet via some kind of
connected device but it’s in the last
five years that my consumption has
really shifted up a gear to show you
what I mean I’m about to take you
through a very scientific very
historical case study called the history
of connectivity in the context of Mel’s
life let me take you back to 1994 the
first Lion King movie had just come out
the PlayStation had just been invented
and we met Ross and Rachel and the first
ever episode of Friends I’m five years
old and dad is following me around the
house with a video camera whilst I try
to shove my baby brother into my brand
new school bag mum has just announced
that she’s bought something called a car
phone and meanwhile somewhere in
Switzerland a smart we check of the same
age and with the same last name as my
father as inventing the World Wide Web
flash-forward to 1999 Bill Clinton is
the US president and everybody is
prepping for the millennium by now I’m 8
years old and I am stoked on life
because mums ditched the car phone she’s
bought a computer and we have dial-up
internet yeah every Saturday morning for
two hours I’m allowed to take over the
phone line I’m allowed to launch
Netscape Navigator and I’m allowed to
play near appearance for those of you
who have never experienced the glory of
Neopets it is a virtual world that still
exists that allows you to create shops
to earn neo coins and then use your neo
Queens to buy virtual critters called
neo pits but with great earning comes
great responsibility and it’s the in
your job to keep your Neopets alive
by using your neo coins to feed bathe
shelter and protect him a job that must
be done regularly at least more than
once on a Saturday morning it was a
brutal reality waiting the ten minutes
for the dial-up to connect only to find
out that last week’s Neopets were long
did a product of starvation and exposure
but Dad needed the phone line for work
after school so what was I to do after
many weeks of relentlessly killing off
my new opiates I got bored and decided
to explore the website a little further
this is where I stumbled across
something called the Neopets message
forums and that was the moment that I
realized that there were real live
people on the other end of the computer
and that I could talk to them the age of
the new opiate lasted for two years
until mum realized I was just chatting
to strangers on the Internet and I got
grounded that was where my name opiates
adventure ended in 2001 the very same
year that the world was introduced to
Shrek and Donkey and the first Harry
Potter movie was released I started
intermediate I was 12 years old
a tweenager and with that came a whole
new world of virtual experiences
including MSN Messenger my best friend
bestowed me with my very first hotmail
email address miss funky chick 89 at
hotmail comm and I launched headfirst
into group chats with my school friends
I would come home from school every day
sneak into dad’s office fire up the
modem and spend the afternoon sending
gifts to cute boys from other classrooms
until dad would come roaring in because
he needed the phone and I’d be seemed
tough to complete my homework I was way
too cool for new opiates I’d learned
that chat rooms were creepy and also I
had other priorities like a cute boy
called Ryan from room 14 aka hot boy
riot at hotmail.com
eventually we got a second phone line
and I got my first boyfriend I spent
most of 2003 writing a list of reasons
for my mum as to why I totally needed a
mobile phone because mum everyone else
has got one because what if I get lost
walking home from school because Steph’s
parents let her have one what if I
promise to plug it in every night before
I go to sleep in the kitchen please and
on my 14th birthday I became the proud
owner of my very first Nokia 2280 mobile
phone the kind of mobile phone that you
could for off a building and it would
survive this was also around the same
time that myspace became popular so of
course I had to say about for an iPod
Classic so I could listen to all the
cool punk rock music and also for a
digital camera so that I could take
photos at all the cool punk rock gigs
and upload them to my myspace profile
this was my very first public social
media profile I was of course connected
with all my friends a couple of people I
didn’t know and another guy called Tom
who I’m fairly certain was a
prerequisite in 2005 the very same year
that we began to understand that Shrek
and Donkey were a thing of the past the
Harry Potter ador movie had already been
released and by now we were trying to
cope with the breakup of Brad Pitt and
Jennifer Aniston lost had premiered on
TV and YouTube was born by this time I
was 15 and I could text with my eyes
closed
I traded in my Nokia 2280 for a flip
phone with a camera but the camera was
blurry and effective so for five years I
carried around my ipod classic my
digital camera and my mobile phone is
separate entities in 2007 it’s 17 I
joined Facebook and I opened the very
same Facebook account that I have today
for 11 years I’ve had my Facebook
account over a decade and people say
that social media is a phase somehow I
survived high school
and I took off to university I had
upgraded to a hot pink Motorola RAZR
with color screen and roaming I didn’t
really know what roaming was all I knew
was that it allowed me to access mobile
Internet but every time I did I used a
whole tin dollar boost prepaid mobile
voucher so I didn’t do it very often so
I took off to university with my
technology collection and tow consisting
of my hot pink Motorola RAZR for texting
my iPod Classic for listening to music
my digital camera for taking photos at
all the cool uni parties something
called a scientific calculator I wasn’t
really sure how to use that don’t know
that if you turn it upside down you can
write boobies on the screen and I also
had a white Apple Mac laptop a present
from my parents on my very first laptop
computer it was at this point that my
consumption shifted up a gear and I got
my first iPhone over the next three
years so I ditched the iPod Classic and
I ditched the digital camera but I also
learnt to use 3G so I could check my
facebook on-the-go in 2014 when I was 24
years old I started my digital marketing
agency so I learned to start them in my
day with my emails I also bought a
Fitbit to remind myself to actually move
every couple of hours and I bought an
iPad for the times when I just needed my
laptop to be a little bit smaller or for
my iPhone to be a little bit bigger you
know in 2016 I was on my fourth iPhone
and four years I was also spending my
evenings to catching monsters in my
bedroom using Pokemon go now in 2017 I
traveled to Wellington every second
Tuesday to catch up with a couple of
clients and I’ve got to say that I get a
bit sweetie and anxious that the thought
of my phone being on airplane mode for
the whole one hour flight
each way you know what if somebody needs
to call me and they can’t get through
what if somebody does a great Instagram
post and I just really need to see it
God what if I get bored
it would seem that I have a short
attention span you see but is that a bad
thing when I live in a generation
whereby speed is the new success vector
in 2017 the lifecycle of a product is
six minutes six minutes what excites me
the most about this is that the greatest
inventions of the next thirty years
haven’t even been invented yet isn’t
that cool
let me show you what I mean so right now
the web as we know it is built on a
series of hyperlinks right the hyperlink
is the thing that you click on that
takes you through to the next web page
basically the web is anything that you
can google but Google is not just a
search engine in fact Google has
absolutely zero interest in continuing
to provide web search for free it’s not
going to get them very far what Google
is actually doing is building a database
of artificial intelligence and search is
how we are teaching it so every time you
conduct a Google search every time you
check on a result every time you create
a link you’re contributing to the Google
database of artificial intelligence
let’s just call it the Google AI so when
you search for an image of Donald Trump
you’re teaching the Google AI what
Donald Trump looks like now times that
by the three billion search queries that
Google receives every single day so
imagine then what will begin to happen
when we start to see this kind of
artificial intelligence
combined with the objects that we use
every day we’re going to see tiny little
computer chips installed in devices that
we’re using collecting information and
feeding it back to the starter base of
intelligence we’re already beginning to
see this type of smart technology in
products like the Amazon elixir the
Amazon elixir for those of you who
haven’t heard of
is a smart speaker that allows you to
send emails do your grocery shopping
control devices in your home and make
phone calls all without touching a
button the Amazon elixir isn’t available
yet in New Zealand but Amazon Prime is
coming to Australia next year so it’s
fair to assume that within the next two
to three years we’ll have access to this
kind of technology but if you can’t wait
that long you’ll be thrilled to know
that at Harvey Norman you can buy a
smart bid a smart beard is a bid that
monitors your temperature it monitors
your sleep cycles and it adjusts itself
to make sure that you are getting the
best night’s sleep
soon this bid will be able to change its
sheets make itself and sing you a
lullaby if that’s what you’re into last
month Apple announced the launch of the
Apple iPhone X the first iPhone that has
augmented reality as a standard
operating feature but apple also
announced something called face ID face
ID is a smart technology that works by
projecting 30,000 invisible dots across
your face using the camera to create a
precise map of your facial features this
map can then be used as security against
your iPhone so let’s say you go to the
grocery store you pay for your groceries
using Apple pay so you wave your phone
over the f-plus machine then instead of
entering a PIN number you can just look
into your iPhone camera so your iPhone
knows that it’s you and will release the
funds but wait for it this type of
technology is also enabled by machine
learning so it adapts as you age this is
in the latest iPhone release this is
happening now
famed futurist Kevin Kelly forecasts
that in the next five years every
surface will become a screen so I’ll be
driving to work and my self-driving car
and I’ll be able to screen the newspaper
on the dashboard I’ll also be able to
screen a movie on the ceiling
what I want to do but I’ll also continue
to have a tiny little evolved screen on
my wrist on which I can make phone calls
and I can check emails and that will be
tracking my every move to make sure that
all of my screen time is personalized
when I’m at the gym my clothes we made
of smart technology so they’ll be
tracking data about how my muscles are
activating and feeding that data back to
my virtual trainer and I’m not just
talking about a Fitbit I’m talking about
a whole workout t-shirt that has is made
of smart technology literally a workout
t-shirt with a mind of its own I feel so
unbelievably sorry for that thing
developments in universal health care
and sorry an AI will mean that universal
health care is far more easily
accessible as accessible as the GPS or
the camera on your smartphone and free
and we’re already beginning to see
advances in technology and robotics
meaning that tasks like surgery they can
now be performed with complete precision
eventually inventions like Elon Musk’s
neural ink will mean that my husband and
I are able to have a conversation
without saying a word out loud mm-hmm
he’ll be able to FaceTime me through a
tiny computer chip installed in his
brain and I’ll be able to see the world
from his point of view I’ll be able to
drive home from work pull up to my house
open the door of my car with my mind
walk up to the front door I’ll be able
to open the front door with my mind to
every door in my house will be fitted
with motor cortex sensors so that they
can receive any thoughts that I transmit
from my brain I’ll walk into the kitchen
and I’ll sit down at the table I’ll
think about having a wine and my fridge
will pour me a pinot gris god i can’t
wait for that day now I know what you’re
thinking good god that sounds absolutely
terrifying
the robots are going to take over the
world now I don’t want my husband to be
able to read my thoughts
and fair enough but rest assured we’ve
been through this kind of exponential
growth before we’ve seen it in the music
industry in 1877 the first microphone
was invented but it took a further 58
years before we were able to invent the
cassette tape then it was another 47
before we invented the CD but then it
only took us 22 years to go from the
first digital sound recording through to
everybody having access to the entire
world music catalog on their phones so
there’s no need to panic you won’t wake
up tomorrow and be able to drive your
car with your mind I’m afraid but I do
think that it is really important that
we have an understanding of how
exponential growth in computing and the
Internet is changing our world and in my
mind it’s for the better I’m excited to
be the girl that gets to go from trying
to keep her in the hope it’s alive on a
Saturday morning through to catching
pokémon in her bedroom through to
paying for her groceries with her face
and pouring wine with her mind thank you
you
iPhone 6 or an iPhone 7 okay hands up
who here would like five trillion
dollars there we go
what if I were to tell you that the
iPhone six or seven in your hand in your
pocket or in your handbag contains a
computer and that in 1984 that computer
would have been worth five trillion
dollars
isn’t that crazy to think that in 33
years the computer in the iPhone 6 has
gone from being worth five trillion
dollars to six hundred and forty nine
dollars we are living on the cusp of
exponential growth in computing and the
internet if you think back to 50 years
ago the world was a very different place
but it was in the 1960s that Gordon
Moore Intel’s co-founder began to notice
that the performance of computer chips
was doubling on average every 18 months
so every 18 months a computer chip was
twice as smart as it was in the 18
months beforehand this became known as
Moore’s law and today it’s still very
much in place however after many years
of our computer chips doubling in speed
and efficiency we’re really now
beginning to see the impact of this and
it’s going to change our lives did you
know for example that today for $1000
you can buy the computing power of a
mouse brain so that’s the number of
instructions per second that a mouse
brain can process famed futurist Ray
Kurzweil forecasts that by 2023 you’ll
be able to buy for $1000 the computing
power of a human brain and that by 2049
for $1000
you’ll be able to buy the computing
power of all of the human brains on the
planet combined Wow
right I’m 28 years old and I can’t
remember a time when I wasn’t able to
access the internet via some kind of
connected device but it’s in the last
five years that my consumption has
really shifted up a gear to show you
what I mean I’m about to take you
through a very scientific very
historical case study called the history
of connectivity in the context of Mel’s
life let me take you back to 1994 the
first Lion King movie had just come out
the PlayStation had just been invented
and we met Ross and Rachel and the first
ever episode of Friends I’m five years
old and dad is following me around the
house with a video camera whilst I try
to shove my baby brother into my brand
new school bag mum has just announced
that she’s bought something called a car
phone and meanwhile somewhere in
Switzerland a smart we check of the same
age and with the same last name as my
father as inventing the World Wide Web
flash-forward to 1999 Bill Clinton is
the US president and everybody is
prepping for the millennium by now I’m 8
years old and I am stoked on life
because mums ditched the car phone she’s
bought a computer and we have dial-up
internet yeah every Saturday morning for
two hours I’m allowed to take over the
phone line I’m allowed to launch
Netscape Navigator and I’m allowed to
play near appearance for those of you
who have never experienced the glory of
Neopets it is a virtual world that still
exists that allows you to create shops
to earn neo coins and then use your neo
Queens to buy virtual critters called
neo pits but with great earning comes
great responsibility and it’s the in
your job to keep your Neopets alive
by using your neo coins to feed bathe
shelter and protect him a job that must
be done regularly at least more than
once on a Saturday morning it was a
brutal reality waiting the ten minutes
for the dial-up to connect only to find
out that last week’s Neopets were long
did a product of starvation and exposure
but Dad needed the phone line for work
after school so what was I to do after
many weeks of relentlessly killing off
my new opiates I got bored and decided
to explore the website a little further
this is where I stumbled across
something called the Neopets message
forums and that was the moment that I
realized that there were real live
people on the other end of the computer
and that I could talk to them the age of
the new opiate lasted for two years
until mum realized I was just chatting
to strangers on the Internet and I got
grounded that was where my name opiates
adventure ended in 2001 the very same
year that the world was introduced to
Shrek and Donkey and the first Harry
Potter movie was released I started
intermediate I was 12 years old
a tweenager and with that came a whole
new world of virtual experiences
including MSN Messenger my best friend
bestowed me with my very first hotmail
email address miss funky chick 89 at
hotmail comm and I launched headfirst
into group chats with my school friends
I would come home from school every day
sneak into dad’s office fire up the
modem and spend the afternoon sending
gifts to cute boys from other classrooms
until dad would come roaring in because
he needed the phone and I’d be seemed
tough to complete my homework I was way
too cool for new opiates I’d learned
that chat rooms were creepy and also I
had other priorities like a cute boy
called Ryan from room 14 aka hot boy
riot at hotmail.com
eventually we got a second phone line
and I got my first boyfriend I spent
most of 2003 writing a list of reasons
for my mum as to why I totally needed a
mobile phone because mum everyone else
has got one because what if I get lost
walking home from school because Steph’s
parents let her have one what if I
promise to plug it in every night before
I go to sleep in the kitchen please and
on my 14th birthday I became the proud
owner of my very first Nokia 2280 mobile
phone the kind of mobile phone that you
could for off a building and it would
survive this was also around the same
time that myspace became popular so of
course I had to say about for an iPod
Classic so I could listen to all the
cool punk rock music and also for a
digital camera so that I could take
photos at all the cool punk rock gigs
and upload them to my myspace profile
this was my very first public social
media profile I was of course connected
with all my friends a couple of people I
didn’t know and another guy called Tom
who I’m fairly certain was a
prerequisite in 2005 the very same year
that we began to understand that Shrek
and Donkey were a thing of the past the
Harry Potter ador movie had already been
released and by now we were trying to
cope with the breakup of Brad Pitt and
Jennifer Aniston lost had premiered on
TV and YouTube was born by this time I
was 15 and I could text with my eyes
closed
I traded in my Nokia 2280 for a flip
phone with a camera but the camera was
blurry and effective so for five years I
carried around my ipod classic my
digital camera and my mobile phone is
separate entities in 2007 it’s 17 I
joined Facebook and I opened the very
same Facebook account that I have today
for 11 years I’ve had my Facebook
account over a decade and people say
that social media is a phase somehow I
survived high school
and I took off to university I had
upgraded to a hot pink Motorola RAZR
with color screen and roaming I didn’t
really know what roaming was all I knew
was that it allowed me to access mobile
Internet but every time I did I used a
whole tin dollar boost prepaid mobile
voucher so I didn’t do it very often so
I took off to university with my
technology collection and tow consisting
of my hot pink Motorola RAZR for texting
my iPod Classic for listening to music
my digital camera for taking photos at
all the cool uni parties something
called a scientific calculator I wasn’t
really sure how to use that don’t know
that if you turn it upside down you can
write boobies on the screen and I also
had a white Apple Mac laptop a present
from my parents on my very first laptop
computer it was at this point that my
consumption shifted up a gear and I got
my first iPhone over the next three
years so I ditched the iPod Classic and
I ditched the digital camera but I also
learnt to use 3G so I could check my
facebook on-the-go in 2014 when I was 24
years old I started my digital marketing
agency so I learned to start them in my
day with my emails I also bought a
Fitbit to remind myself to actually move
every couple of hours and I bought an
iPad for the times when I just needed my
laptop to be a little bit smaller or for
my iPhone to be a little bit bigger you
know in 2016 I was on my fourth iPhone
and four years I was also spending my
evenings to catching monsters in my
bedroom using Pokemon go now in 2017 I
traveled to Wellington every second
Tuesday to catch up with a couple of
clients and I’ve got to say that I get a
bit sweetie and anxious that the thought
of my phone being on airplane mode for
the whole one hour flight
each way you know what if somebody needs
to call me and they can’t get through
what if somebody does a great Instagram
post and I just really need to see it
God what if I get bored
it would seem that I have a short
attention span you see but is that a bad
thing when I live in a generation
whereby speed is the new success vector
in 2017 the lifecycle of a product is
six minutes six minutes what excites me
the most about this is that the greatest
inventions of the next thirty years
haven’t even been invented yet isn’t
that cool
let me show you what I mean so right now
the web as we know it is built on a
series of hyperlinks right the hyperlink
is the thing that you click on that
takes you through to the next web page
basically the web is anything that you
can google but Google is not just a
search engine in fact Google has
absolutely zero interest in continuing
to provide web search for free it’s not
going to get them very far what Google
is actually doing is building a database
of artificial intelligence and search is
how we are teaching it so every time you
conduct a Google search every time you
check on a result every time you create
a link you’re contributing to the Google
database of artificial intelligence
let’s just call it the Google AI so when
you search for an image of Donald Trump
you’re teaching the Google AI what
Donald Trump looks like now times that
by the three billion search queries that
Google receives every single day so
imagine then what will begin to happen
when we start to see this kind of
artificial intelligence
combined with the objects that we use
every day we’re going to see tiny little
computer chips installed in devices that
we’re using collecting information and
feeding it back to the starter base of
intelligence we’re already beginning to
see this type of smart technology in
products like the Amazon elixir the
Amazon elixir for those of you who
haven’t heard of
is a smart speaker that allows you to
send emails do your grocery shopping
control devices in your home and make
phone calls all without touching a
button the Amazon elixir isn’t available
yet in New Zealand but Amazon Prime is
coming to Australia next year so it’s
fair to assume that within the next two
to three years we’ll have access to this
kind of technology but if you can’t wait
that long you’ll be thrilled to know
that at Harvey Norman you can buy a
smart bid a smart beard is a bid that
monitors your temperature it monitors
your sleep cycles and it adjusts itself
to make sure that you are getting the
best night’s sleep
soon this bid will be able to change its
sheets make itself and sing you a
lullaby if that’s what you’re into last
month Apple announced the launch of the
Apple iPhone X the first iPhone that has
augmented reality as a standard
operating feature but apple also
announced something called face ID face
ID is a smart technology that works by
projecting 30,000 invisible dots across
your face using the camera to create a
precise map of your facial features this
map can then be used as security against
your iPhone so let’s say you go to the
grocery store you pay for your groceries
using Apple pay so you wave your phone
over the f-plus machine then instead of
entering a PIN number you can just look
into your iPhone camera so your iPhone
knows that it’s you and will release the
funds but wait for it this type of
technology is also enabled by machine
learning so it adapts as you age this is
in the latest iPhone release this is
happening now
famed futurist Kevin Kelly forecasts
that in the next five years every
surface will become a screen so I’ll be
driving to work and my self-driving car
and I’ll be able to screen the newspaper
on the dashboard I’ll also be able to
screen a movie on the ceiling
what I want to do but I’ll also continue
to have a tiny little evolved screen on
my wrist on which I can make phone calls
and I can check emails and that will be
tracking my every move to make sure that
all of my screen time is personalized
when I’m at the gym my clothes we made
of smart technology so they’ll be
tracking data about how my muscles are
activating and feeding that data back to
my virtual trainer and I’m not just
talking about a Fitbit I’m talking about
a whole workout t-shirt that has is made
of smart technology literally a workout
t-shirt with a mind of its own I feel so
unbelievably sorry for that thing
developments in universal health care
and sorry an AI will mean that universal
health care is far more easily
accessible as accessible as the GPS or
the camera on your smartphone and free
and we’re already beginning to see
advances in technology and robotics
meaning that tasks like surgery they can
now be performed with complete precision
eventually inventions like Elon Musk’s
neural ink will mean that my husband and
I are able to have a conversation
without saying a word out loud mm-hmm
he’ll be able to FaceTime me through a
tiny computer chip installed in his
brain and I’ll be able to see the world
from his point of view I’ll be able to
drive home from work pull up to my house
open the door of my car with my mind
walk up to the front door I’ll be able
to open the front door with my mind to
every door in my house will be fitted
with motor cortex sensors so that they
can receive any thoughts that I transmit
from my brain I’ll walk into the kitchen
and I’ll sit down at the table I’ll
think about having a wine and my fridge
will pour me a pinot gris god i can’t
wait for that day now I know what you’re
thinking good god that sounds absolutely
terrifying
the robots are going to take over the
world now I don’t want my husband to be
able to read my thoughts
and fair enough but rest assured we’ve
been through this kind of exponential
growth before we’ve seen it in the music
industry in 1877 the first microphone
was invented but it took a further 58
years before we were able to invent the
cassette tape then it was another 47
before we invented the CD but then it
only took us 22 years to go from the
first digital sound recording through to
everybody having access to the entire
world music catalog on their phones so
there’s no need to panic you won’t wake
up tomorrow and be able to drive your
car with your mind I’m afraid but I do
think that it is really important that
we have an understanding of how
exponential growth in computing and the
Internet is changing our world and in my
mind it’s for the better I’m excited to
be the girl that gets to go from trying
to keep her in the hope it’s alive on a
Saturday morning through to catching
pokémon in her bedroom through to
paying for her groceries with her face
and pouring wine with her mind thank you
you
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