Yesterday, I had a wide-ranging interaction with my dear friend, Mark Goldstein. I am not sure how to describe a Zoom call when it is just between friends. It is clearly not a meeting, but perhaps a virtual get-together? I have been checking in online with friends all over the world during these difficult times. We recently moved to Genoa, so all my good friends are remote. I stay in touch via Zoom.
Back in 2005, ten thought leaders who had been previously interviewed by Fast Company Magazine, including me, were asked to forecast the biggest changes that would affect business in the coming ten years. Later in this post, you will find the list of those interviewed, people like Malcolm Gladwell, and their key points. I had ChatGPT rate the accuracy of their predictions. Five, including me, got five stars, three got four, and two got three stars. Pretty impressive, I would say.
My prediction was “the end of space and time.” The point I was making was that it would no longer matter where you were or what time it was. I will explain more later, but I am very glad that my prediction proved to be correct, even though it took more than ten years to happen. Now, more than a third of the time of knowledge workers is spent in virtual meetings. Many have become remote workers. I am also sure that more and more families and friends are using video services such as Zoom, Teams, and Meet to interact. For me, 98% of my business meetings are virtual, as well as my communications with friends and family. As someone who is actively working in the field of longevity science, I know that social interaction plays a crucial role, and I believe that maintaining relationships with family and friends over great distances will be very important.
When I first moved far from my parents in 1965, a long-distance call was $12 for a three-minute call—about $100 adjusted for inflation. I had figured out how to hack the telephone system, so I was able to call my parents whenever I wanted. Now, my wife calls her mom almost every day and speaks for half an hour.
Mark and I have known each other for about 30 years. He is an entrepreneur who loves creating and marketing products, while I am a former corporate executive, business strategist, and author who is slowly morphing into some combination of a philosopher and an angry old man.
Mark’s latest startup is surprisingly a toothbrush company, Great Gums, with a revolutionary technology. Frankly, as someone who is very interested in the longevity, I applaud his effort. There is a strong link between oral hygiene and inflammation and dementia.
Mark is about 20 years younger, and our age difference allows us to share different perspectives about life and work. He told me that one of the benefits of working in early-stage companies is his access to younger people who challenge his thinking and expose him to new ideas. He now interacts with people young enough to be his children, while I interact with people young enough to be my grandchildren. I think this interaction is beneficial to both sides because, with age, comes wisdom (at least for some).
We had a wide-ranging conversation about what it is like to get old, the world political situation, M’s newest venture, and how the workplace is changing. It was that part of the discussion that brought back memories of the interview I did with Fast Company Magazine 20 years ago.
In that interview, I predicted a lot of the changes we are now seeing taking place within the workforce. Of course, it all happened slower than I predicted. That seems to always be the case because everything that happens follows an S-curve, but I, like most people, see it as a straight line.
There were a couple of points that my friend made that I did not anticipate. They related to women in the workforce.
Twenty years ago, when I was being interviewed, I was not really aware or sensitive to the issue of women in the workforce. M pointed out that women continue to have limited success in the corporate world because it remains largely a man’s world. M discussed the impact of Fractional Work, which spans from Uber drivers to corporate CEOs, and how this affects life/work balance by providing flexibility. My friend further said that there are many talented women who will never take a full-time job even if they work full-time because when you work fractionally, you are actually working for your own company and have more control.
While I did forecast the advent of fractional work in my interview twenty years ago, I did not think of it in the context that M was describing. Mark k kalso pointed out that women are now dominating marketing because they have higher emotional intelligence than men. That is for sure!
I take pride in my role in shaping the end of time and space. The ability for the best minds to collaborate without the constraints of geography, time, or language has already transformed business and will continue to have profound implications.
While I understood its impact on breaking free from industrial-age structures in the workplace, I hadn’t considered how these capabilities would shape our social lives—and, ultimately, our longevity.
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More about the Fast Company Interview
*THE CORNERSTONE FOR THIS MILLENNIUM is the end of time and space. Most organizations today are run the same way as early-20th-century businesses. Everyone goes to his car, drives to work, has certain hours, has a certain job. It’s all built on the factory model. Moving forward, it really isn’t going to be important where you are in order to do your job.Ideas are being worked on 24 hours a day. Nobody seems surprised anymore if I wake up in the middle of the night and start IM-ing someone in Europe, because the fact is, they don’t even know where I am. And it doesn’t matter.
Corporations don’t provide security and provide fewer and fewer benefits. People may find new ways to sell their skills.
Fewer and fewer people will want to be employees of corporations, because corporations don’t have anything to offer.
I can imagine eBay or the equivalent of eBay being in the business of letting people bid on work all day long. Office buildings may turn into housing, or maybe individuals will rent office space as you would rent a hotel room.
And those individuals will compete with people from all over the world. This isn’t globalization, because globalization to me feels big. I think it’s the opposite, it’s villagization-making everything smaller and in some sense more intimate. And that’s very powerful. I’m totally capitalistic, but I don’t like large organizations because they tend to want to control. If this reduces the power of corporations and governments to limit what human beings can do, the thing most exciting to me is the potential for everyone to participate.” – Interview of Avram Miller by Danielle Sacks
Towards the end of 2005, Fast Company Magazine decided to have an article on the most important business idea for the next ten years. It was the tenth anniversary of that magazine. They asked ten people (see list below) they had interviewed over the last ten years that question (presumably because they liked what we said in the passed.
The interview lasted 40 minutes. And you can see here that it turned itself into less than a page. I thought there were a few other things of value in the interview and asked Fast company for a copy of the raw interview which had been recorded and permission to put it up on my blog which they gave me. So you can listen to the whole thing here. There first five minutes is pretty much small talk but the rest may be worth your while if you are interested in the basic concep
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Here are the top ten points I made (please keep in mind this was
1. The End of Time and Space in Work
• Traditional office structures are outdated.
• Technology enables people to work from anywhere, anytime.
• The concept of commuting, fixed hours, and physical office spaces is becoming obsolete.
2. The Globalization of Work
• Companies will hire talent from anywhere in the world rather than relying on local employees.
• Businesses will become less tied to specific countries and more borderless.
3. The Rise of the Personal Information Device
• The PC was the center of technology, but now mobile devices will take over.
• Future personal devices will be voice-controlled and capable of immersive experiences like projecting images onto the retina.
4. The Decline of Large Corporations
• Big businesses will shrink as smaller, more agile companies disrupt industries.
• Large corporations struggle to adapt, while startups and decentralized organizations thrive.
5. The Collapse of the Traditional Employee Model
• People will no longer want to be full-time employees.
• Instead, they will sell their skills independently, much like freelancers on platforms like Guru.com or Upwork.
6. The Transformation of Media and Entertainment
• Consumers will demand on-demand, personalized content rather than scheduled programming.
• Traditional media companies will lose control, and content will become globally accessible.
7. Automated Translation Will Remove Language Barriers
• Future technology will allow real-time automatic translation.
• People will be able to speak their native languages while communicating globally.
8. Governments and Nations Will Lose Power
• Countries and national governments are becoming less relevant.
• Businesses and industries will operate beyond national borders with less reliance on government regulations.
9. The Future of Real Estate
• The demand for office buildings will shrink as remote work grows.
• Cities might decentralize, and real estate will need to adapt to new work patterns.
10. The Rise of Brain Health and Lifelong Learning
• Cognitive abilities and adaptability will matter more than age.
• Those who can master new technology and information will succeed, regardless of traditional experience.
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Fast Company Interview: 10 Key Voices on the Future of Business
1. Malcolm Gladwell-Writer, The New Yorker
Businesses must engage in social policy discussions beyond just tax cuts and deregulation.
2. Barbara Ehrenreich-Writer, Author of “Nickel and Dimed”
Hiring practices favor likability over skills, leading to workplace incompetence.
3. Avram Miller- CEO, The Avram Miller Company
The traditional 9-to-5 office model is outdated, and remote, global work will dominate.
4. Kevin Roberts-Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi
The screen (TV, mobile, digital billboards) will be the dominant medium for business engagement.
5. Donna Dubinsky-Founder & CEO, Numenta Inc.
The future of computing lies in intelligent systems that mimic how the human brain learns and predicts.
6. Esther Dyson-Editor, Release 1.0 (CNet Networks)
The internet will force transparency and make companies more accountable to consumers.
7. Tim Brown-President & CEO, IDEO
Design thinking will expand beyond product design and into business strategy and problem-solving.
8. John Mackey
CEO & Co-founder, Whole Foods Market
Business will be forced to adopt greater transparency and ethical responsibility.
9. Scott Adams-Cartoonist, Creator of “Dilbert”
Automation and outsourcing will eliminate most jobs, leaving only creative and sales roles in the U.S.
10. Alice Waters-Executive Chef & Owner, Chez Panisse
The future of food must prioritize local, sustainable production over industrial-scale businesses.
Here are the Ten Interviews
Starting in 1997, I was interviewed about five times by Fast Company about five times. My best interview with the, in my opinion, was done soon after I left Intel in 1999. You can read that one here.
