There are the people who hope the future will be better, then there are the people who reason the future will be better, Byron is the second variety. Both a futurist and optimist, Byron believes we are approaching a Fourth Age for humanity that promises to be infinitely better than anything we have seen before.
Byron’s book, “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity” was released by Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, on April, 24, 2018. He is also the author of the award-winning “Infinite Progress: How Technology and the Internet Will End Ignorance, Disease, Hunger, Poverty, and War.”
In addition, Byron is the CEO and Publisher of Gigaom, one of the world’s leading technology research companies, produces and hosts Gigaom’s podcasts Voices in AI and The AI Minute. and regularly contributes to Gigaom Publisher’s Corner. Byron leads the company in their mission to help business leaders understand the implications of emerging technologies and their impacts on business, media, and society.
Having served across a wide range of senior management roles, from CEO, to VP of Marketing, to Chief Innovation Officer at Demand Media, Byron possesses a diverse body of patented work, and enjoys talking about the intersection of technology, history and the future to both technical and non-technical audiences around the world. Byron brings his experience as a technologist, his passion for history, and his proven business acumen to illuminate how today’s technology can solve many of our biggest global challenges. As a lifelong entrepreneur with multiple IPOs and successful exits under his belt, Byron also frequently speaks to business audiences on how to excel in the world of tomorrow, and how to deploy technology successfully.
He states: “Technology multiplies human ability. That’s its trick. It magnifies us. We can move more bricks with a fork lift than we can on our back. Technological advancement is not to be feared, rather it should be welcomed, for by enhancing human ability, we enhance our productivity and therefore our standard of living. This is the entire reason why we live so much more lavish and prosperous lives than did our great grandparents. An hour of our time is vastly more productive than was an hour of theirs.”
Bloomberg Businessweek credits Byron with having “quietly pioneered a new breed of media company.” The Financial Times of London reported that he “is typical of the new wave of internet entrepreneurs out to turn the economics of the media industry on its head.”
Byron and his work have been featured in hundreds of news outlets, including New York Times, Washington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, NPR, and the LA Times Magazine.
Specialties: Entrepreneurship, executive leadership, product conception and creation, and an optimistic can-do, scrappy, “anything is possible” attitude. As a public speaker, Byron has addressed hundreds of corporations and professional organizations on almost every continent and reports that he is open to traveling to Antarctica to round it all out.
Categories: Big Data, Creative Thinking and Innovation, Educator - Technology and 21st Century Learners, Futurists and Future Trends, Technology and Science, TED Talk, Workforce Issues
