Brace yourself for a cyber-tsunami – the six biggest waves of change about to hit the world

Related: Robot revolution: rise of'thinking' machines could exacerbate inequality As a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, Alec Ross travelled the world with the remit of cataloguing the best examples of innovation the human race has to offer. His trips took him to Korea, the Congo and Silicon Valley (and far enough overall he has calculated, to take him from the Earth to the moon twice, with a side trip from the US to New Zealand), and left him with a concern that the rate of change could leave many behind. From robots entering the workforce and leading to the very real prospect of redundancy within a decade for the million employees of Taiwan's electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn to genetic engineering unleashing the possibility of designer babies, the power of technology to reshape the world is reaching historic levels. But the people who have the most to lose from those changes are often the ones who get the least warning. That, says Ross, was his motivation for writing The Industries of the Future, which looks at six of the biggest waves of change about to hit the world.