Tech revolution has lessons for lawyers.

Steve Jobs. Bill Clinton, Walt Disney, and John Lennon.

The U.S. Constitution. Windows 8 and iOS9.

What do those latter three people have in common with Jobs, the acknowledged genius who as head of Apple Computers introduced one transformative tech gadget after another? Or the pen, ink, and parchment founding document of this country with the electronic bits and bytes of the operating systems that make our computers go?

Ambiguity.

They all thrived on it or were designed to deal with it, according to Brent Schlender, co-author of the best-selling biography Becoming Steve Jobs and for the past 30 years a journalist who chronicled the high-tech revolution and Silicon Valley.

Schlender, the featured speaker at the Judicial Luncheon at the Bar's recent Annual Convention, discussed how technology brings changes at an accelerating pace, disrupting what people are comfortable with but also rewarding those who can use technology to deal with those uncertainties.

"It's an accelerating force; it happens faster and faster; it's perpetually changing; it enriches our lives," said. His talk bridged the emphasis on evolving technology at much of the convention and why it's important for lawyers to keep up with and even benefit from the changes.

He cited his wife's grandfather, who arrived as a child in San Francisco by ship in 1906 to discover a city under a pall of smoke because the great earthquake had hit 36 hours earlier and those on the ship were unaware--because there were no radios. In his 100 years, the grandfather went from writing letters by manual typewriter to finally writing on computer and via email. He saw the arrival of airplanes, telephones, electrical grids, the discovery of penicillin, televisions, microwaves, fax machines, space flight, and computer technology.

Those alive now will see even greater changes in a much shorter period, Schlender said, and that can be disconcerting for those who must continually adjust.

"[I]t will force us to reconcile our usual ways of doing things with the new ways. Technology is changing faster than ever, and, thus, modem life is changing faster than ever. You could almost say with a straight face that technology itself has become a force of nature," he said. "This accelerating trajectory of technological development indicates you're never going to be able to ignore technological change in your home and work life. It's going to be there."

That challenge is also an opportunity, and Schlender said...