A Maasai warrior with a spear inone hand and a smartphone in the other.

That's the visual shorthand that futurist Daniel Burrus uses whendescribing how rapidly the world is adopting cloud and mobiletechnology.

I heard Burrus speak last week at the annual NetVU conference of Vertafore users. Assomeone who has been following the insurance industry's techevolution for decades, Burrus believes that colorful image–of theancient juxtaposed with the bleeding edge– personifies howtechnology is changing our world.

Burrus is known for accurately predicting technology trends. In1985, based on a projection of what he was already seeing in thetech world, he prognosticated networking, dematerialization (makingthings smaller), virtualization, product intelligence,interactivity, mobility, convergence and globalization.

Now he's saying that the insurance industry is on the thresholdof a technological—and cultural—revolution that would havebeen impossible only a few years ago. He calls it an “inflectionpoint,” the perfect convergence where cloud and mobile technologyare coming together at the right price point and capability totransform the way we do business.

The only thing standing in our way is our mindset: “Legacysystems aren't the problem; legacy thinking is.”

In the old business model, the company CEO developedstrategy, then handed the plan down to IT for implementation. Thenew business model is for the IT people, who understand what'spossible with technology, are doing the strategizing, he said.

Technology allows independent agents and brokers to do whatthey do best: cultivate relationships with clients and take it toan unprecedented personalized level, in a way that will render thelong-standing competition with direct writers obsolete, Burrussaid.

“We weren't ready 5 years ago,” he said, “but now we're ready todo something profound in this seemingly stodgy industry.”

For customers, technology gives new meaning to the old “have ityour way” fast-food mantra. It's less about “customization” andmore about “personalization,” Burris said, because whilerelationships are important, they can happen in many ways. Forexample, people who'd rather read a book than listen to one aremore likely to prefer email to voice mail, so you shouldcommunicate with them that way. “It doesn't matter what you'recomfortable with, it's what the customer wants that's important,”Burrus said.

Technology also makes it possible to have a high-definition,digital relationship with people you'll never meet in person. Sincemany people are already using Skype, it's another way producerscould be communicating with their customers—especially since it'sfree and can be done on mobile devices as well as in theoffice.

And in the very near future, there will be more, and cheaper,ways to communicate. Interactive and 3D TV is around the corner,smart phones are getting smarter, and microchips are coming thatcan project an image from the smart phone to the wall.

With 3D capabilities, agency websites can be as interactive as avideo game, and will revolutionize risk evaluation with the abilityto move through a building to be insured to determine exactly howit's laid out, Burrus said.

And speaking of video games: The upcoming generation ofinsurance employees—kids now still in grammar school—are learning alot more than just how to kill zombies. The Xbox 360 experience is“fully immersive, better than any PC for simulations,” Burrus said.Gamers spend hours studying how to use virtual tools, collaboratewith virtual, international teams, converse via global videoconferencing—and then head off to a 20^th century schoolor workplace that's like taking a time machine backward, Burrussaid.

These young people will bring invaluable skills to the insuranceworld, but that world must adapt to accommodate them.Unfortunately, there's now a war in the workplace between young andold, a war that must end with collaboration before we can moveforward, Burrus said.

Your future success hinges on being something of aprognosticator yourself. Successfully anticipating trends meansknowing how to differentiate between “soft” and “hard” trends,Burrus said. Soft trends are things that might happen given what'shappening now; hard trends are things that will happen forsure.

For example, 10 years after Elvis Presley died, the number ofElvis impersonators was growing exponentially. If a futurist wouldhave made a prediction based on this “soft” trend, today 1 in 3Americans would be Elvis impersonators, Burrus said. Polaroidand Kodak treated the growth of digital like a soft trend—a movethat has rendered them all but obsolete. And the U.S.trillion-dollar budget surplus in the 1990s was treated like a hardtrend, which is part of our economic problem today.

“Economists look at cycles all the time, which is why they'reusually wrong,” Burrus said. “Real change happens linearally, notcyclically. Once the Chinese park their bikes and get cars, they'renot going back.”

The potential for insurance growth in China and other developingcountries is a hard trend—and a huge opportunity. Insurers willneed to establish agencies and sales teams to serve this huge,emerging market, both on site and virtually.

Another hard trend you can (and should) take to the bank isthe aging global baby boomer generation, which controls mostof the U.S. wealth—a fact that, if recognized and served, couldgenerate new businesses and jumpstart the economy, he said.

Burrus predicts that in 5 years, the insurance industry willexperience a transformation in selling, marketing, communicating,collaborating, educating and innovating—“then add mobile to this,”he said. “Transform and use tech-driven transformation to youradvantage.”