By Dick Stark

“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word: Plastics.”

–Career advice given to Dustin Hoffman in the movie, “The Graduate”

If Ben Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) were to graduate in 2013 instead of 1967, that one word would be security.  Well, maybe two words, cyber-security. At least that’s the message from Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen in their new book, The New Digital Age, which was recently released. Eric Schmidt is Google’s executive chairman (and former chief executive) and Jared Cohen is director of Google Ideas, and a foreign-relations expert.

The book is meant to explore the ways in which technology and diplomacy will intersect. It covers international law, censorship, terrorism, especially cyber-terrorism, and war. To be fair, the book is not all about foreign policy and politics.  It does provide a glimpse of the future, and the authors allow you to draw your own conclusions. Here are a few takeaways.

Future wars will be fought with Drones and Robots. By now, everyone has heard of the role Drones have played in the taking down of Osama bin Laden.  Drones will only get faster, smaller, and more efficient, and soon both sides will be using them.  It is likely that local law enforcement will use Drones for surveillance and monitoring of traffic offenses. Although a recent Internet hoax offered tacos via Drone delivery, it won’t be much longer before that hoax becomes reality. War-grade robots have already been placed into service by the Army in Iraq, and a robot was placed into service recently to look under the cover of a boat to capture the Boston Marathon bomber.

Cars that drive themselves are only years from becoming reality. Four states: Florida, Nevada, California, and Texas have already passed driverless car legislation. So far, Google has driven more than 300,000 autonomous driving miles with no incidents. Imagine the impact this could have on truck and bus drivers in the not too distant future.

Google Glass is a wearable video camera that uses voice commands to connect to the internet for features such as directions and social networking. Google is targeting a late 2013 release date.

Crowd-Sourcing/Analytics/Big Data. The Boston Marathon bombing illustrated how technology works to scan through millions of pictures to identify and track the “needle in a haystack” bombers. Thanks to advances in technology, the bombers were captured and identified in less than a week.

So how, does this “new digital age,” benefit Service Management?  Knowledge Management is getting better and more accurate. Crowd sourcing, or perhaps the use of social networking such as LinkedIn, or BMC Communities may become the best source of problem or incident management fixes. MyIT, or similar apps may be common on all smart phones and tablets. Of course, companies may create their own communities/social network with the goal to involve the service desk team. The end result will be faster incident and problem management.