7/6/26
Laird Stewart
7/6/26
Let's play a game: read the following quotes and fill in the blanks. Guess the date and source of each quote.
What happened over the last [few] years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the ██████ era, when hundreds of ████████ of dollars were invested in putting ██████████████████████ around the world, ███████████████, all those things.' ... When all of these things suddenly came together around ████, added Nilkani, they 'created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be ███████████████████████.
'In ████, some 25,000 U.S. tax returns were done ████████. In ████, the number was 100,000. In ████, it is expected to be 400,000. In ████████, you will assume that your accountant has ██████████ the basic preparation of your tax returns - if not more".
"Dear Tom, I am speaking at a Hopkins continuing education medical meeting for radiologists (I used to be a radiologist) ... I came upon a very fascinating situation that I thought might interest you. I have just learned that in many ██████████████████████████ hospitals in the US, radiologists are outsourcing reading of CAT scans to ██████████████████████████████!!!
"What you're telling me, I said to Rao, is that no matter what your profession - doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant - if you are ███████████, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be ██████████. Rao answered, "Everyone has to focus on exactly what is their value-add'"
Which years did you guess? 2022 for radiology? 2025 for the "touchy-feely" quote? 2026 for the tax returns? Did you fill the blanks with "AI", "data-centers" and "automated"? I pulled these quotes from Thomas Friedman's 2005 book on globalization The World is Flat. The missing phrases are "India", "call centers" and "outsourced" and the years 2003 and 2004. Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun. Here's one more redacted quote, fill in the blanks with AI and this may well be an article we'll see by the end of the decade.
██████ units of Cisco Systems, Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments, and GE have already filed 1,000 patent applications with the U.S. Patent Office. Texas Instruments alone has had 225 U.S. patents awarded to its ██████ operation. 'The Intel team ████████████ is developing microprocessor chips for high-speed broadband wireless technology, to be launched in ████,' the ████████████ office said, in a statement issued at the end of ████, and 'at GE's John F. Welch Technology Center ████████████, █████████ are developing new ideas for aircraft engines, transport systems and plastics.'"