New issue of What’s Next just up

The new issue (issue 26) of my What’s Next report is live. You can find it (free) at www.nowandnext.com.

If you can’t be bothered here two items.

1. Computers getting into our faces

Having upset a few privacy campaigners with Street View, Google looks set to upset some more with its plans for face recognition technology. Police, border control authorities and security services have been using facial recognition technology for some time to spot suspects and to prevent people from breaking the law. Now the technology is becoming so cheap and powerful, it is about to enter mainstream use.

Two Swedish companies have created an application that allows mobile phone users to take a photograph of someone and upload the image (via the phone) to the internet where a software program hunts for similar images. Given there are 4.6 billion mobile phone accounts around the world and 800 million camera-equipped mobile phones were sold last year, this could quickly become a must-have accessory.

On the plus side, this technology allows you to hunt the internet for illegal use of your face or features or download publicly available information about someone you are just about to meet but don’t know. But you could also take a photograph of someone on a crowded holiday beach, identify them, find out where they live, and pass the information to criminal gangs who rob them while they are away, so it could seriously impact people’s privacy and physical security.

Similarly, the technology could help you to identify potential friends (e.g. people with similar interests perhaps) but it could also help you to identify people you might hate and wish to harm. As always, the devil is in the user, not the technology.

2. Financial aftershocks and instability

The financial earthquake of 2007/9 appears to be over and most of the damage has been cleared from view. But no-one really knows what’s going on. Two key trends have emerged from the recent crisis and these are uncertainty and volatility. The perception of markets is that the world has entered a dangerous era of risk. This is partly because national economies are now so tightly connected and partly because there is extra sensitivity to potential triggers. Everyone expects an aftershock, but nobody can say for sure where, or when, it will occur. Hence everyone has the jitters.

It’s possible, of course, that a handful of Eastern and Asian economies will pull the rest of the world out of trouble.  It’s also possible that the US will recover sooner than expected or that developed nations will learn to live with less and adjust to a new age of austerity. Alternatively, soaring debt, tax increases and spending cuts may create a new age of rage.

We could be in for a period of deflation, high unemployment and competitive currency devaluations. This could lead to the Eurozone falling apart (trust me, it will eventually) and higher levels of protection. On the other hand we may be in for a period of inflation, the likes of which we’ve not seen for decades. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Higher inflation would mean falling real wages, which would create more jobs. It would also, critically, reduce household ands government debt. So, to sum up, nobody has the slightest idea what’s going on.

Read some more and nowandnext.com

Digital & electronic v analogue & mechanical

Interesting review of The Shallow by Nicholas Carr in last Saturday’s Guardian (piece by Steven Poole). Couple of things he’s dead right about. First, too many essays are being turned into books and the expansion isn’t always justified.

The whole point of an essay is “pithy provocation.” A book is something different. He’s also on the money with an overlooked thought that (in his words) “All to rarely do defenders of books (and, for that matter, newspapers) ask themselves the uncomfortable question: might it be that people are reading fewer of the products not because people are becoming more stupid but because many of the products are not actually very good.”

He isn’t fond of The Shallows (I liked it, although I’d agree that the original essay covered most of the bases) but he does say good things about another book that I haven’t read yet –  Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Basically it boils down to a digital optimistic versus an analogue pessimist.

Hybrid networks (why we all need to get to know somebody we don’t know)

According to Ronald Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, there are “structural holes” inside organisations. For example, a study by Mr Burt inside Raytheon (a defence company) found that not only did those managers with wider social networks come up with the best ideas but also that people who talked to close colleagues about their ideas tended not to develop their ideas whereas those that went outside work for a discussion tended to get much further. In other words, homogeneity kills creativity at some level whereas serendipity encourages it. This makes perfect sense to me although perhaps someone should tell those individuals frantically widening their social networks on sites such as Facebook and Linked in because Burt’s observation suggests that such networks tend towards more of the same. Sites such as these seem to be predicated upon the belief that the more people you know the better off (in all senses) you will be. But these sites inevitably attract like-minded individuals and information and experience tends to narrow. Mr Burt is not against social networks as far as I can tell but be does seem to be saying that one should pursue hybrid networks that have no apparent social structure.

Sleep

According to a study by the Universities of Washington and California, children aged under-five are sleeping 60 minutes less per night than they were 30 years ago. The study claims that a lack of sleep could contribute to obesity in later life. Could it also impact brain function I wonder?

Thinking skills

The American social commentator and satirist H.L. Mencken once said that nobody has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. This was possibly true at the time but is it still? Surely we’re now living in an era of mass intelligence, an era characterized by the rapid dissemination of information and ideas? An era such as that summed up by Clay Shirky in his new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

For example, not so long ago the Royal Opera House production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in London was sold out to readers of Britain’s top-selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun. (Headline: Well Don, My Sun). Similarly, museum attendance has gone through the roof. In 1999/2000 there were 24 million museum visits in Britain but in 2007/8 this had risen to 40 million visits. This can be partly attributed to the change to free admission but not wholly because the trend is also evident with fee-paying museums and exhibitions too. In Paris more people visit the Louvre than the Eiffel Tower and the LA Times newspaper has suggested that we are living in a golden age for television drama and even sales of difficult books are booming (or people will buy them even if they never read them).

Other evidence of cultural expansion and mass intelligence includes the success of public lectures and debates, such as those held by the Institute of Ideas and Intelligence Squared, Classic FM (a UK classical music station with a weekly audience of 6 million) and The School of Life, which calls itself a ‘one stop shop for the mind’.

But this expansion of culture is not necessarily reflective of a rise in general intelligence. The reason for the growth in cultural products may just reflect economic growth, population increases or better marketing. Moreover, much of this culture is consumed passively. More people listening to classical music is hardly evidence of a flowering of intelligence. It may simply be linked to demographics. There are now more older people and they would prefer to listen to Mozart than Katy Perry.

Overall there seems to be little evidence for a blossoming of originality of thought. Science and technology are doing great things but where is the great art? We’ve had 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan so where’s the new Guerinca? The explanation I like for all this is that we are getting smarter and more stupid at the same time. We are getting better at thinking quickly but worse at thinking things through properly. We are getting better at fast and thin but worse at slow and deep. We are getting better at adaptive works but true originality has flown out of the window.

Why Don’t We Think?

Something else from the cutting room floor…. I know, I just can’t let go.

Perhaps one of the reasons that people avoid deep thinking is that deep thinking opens our eyes to what is going on in the wider world and in some instances this can be quite terrifying. The science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once remarked that one of the most fundamental questions relating to human existence was whether or not there is anyone else out there (in deep space). There are two possible answers to this question, yes or no. Each offers frightening prospects. But both answers also open our eyes to the thought that we should take much greater care of each other while we are alive here on Earth.

Are PCs heading for extinction?

Here’s a good group of statistics from Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley.
In the second quarter of 2007 Apple’s revenues were as follows: 47% Macintosh range of computers, iPods 40% and iTunes 11%. Fast forward to the first quarter of 2010 and the revenue figures looked like this: iPhone 40%, iPod and iTunes combined 24% and Macintosh computers 28%.
One other delicious bit of data. If you look at a graph showing sales of PCs against sales of smartphones globally you will observe that sometime in 2012, smartphones are due to start outselling PCs. So is the PC dead? I don’t think so.

Collective Memory

Swiss researchers have found that different countries may have different collective memories. How could this be? The answer is that there is a gene that encodes memory and this gene comes in two types, one of which is better at the formation of memory than the other. Moreover, the ‘good’ memory gene appears to be more common in some countries than others. So certain countries could, in theory, be better at remembering than others.

The Lost Art of Play

A UK report looking at how parents play with their children has found that 21% of parents have forgotten how to play with their kids. The survey of 2,000 parents and 2,000 children conducted by Prof. Tanya Byron, a psychologist and child therapist, also found that childhood games are under threat from parental overwork and an emerging generation gap.

Almost 1 in 3 parents now play computer games with their kids, but 9 in 10 kids would prefer to play alone. Despite this, 7 out of 10 kids would rather play with their parents outside or engage in traditional games with their family.

One especially worrying finding to my mind is that the ‘experts’ feel that parents now need to be given official advice and direction (from TV celebrities and ‘Childhood Tzars’ I assume) about how to play with their own kids.

Conflict minerals

We’ve had Blood Diamonds , so perhaps next it will be Blood Minerals and Blood Phones. Huh? Simply that many of the mobile devices that we can’t seem to live without nowadays contain minerals, some of which come from countries run by people that are a bit nasty. For example, that new smart phone you’re walking about with might contain tantalum that fuels conflict in the Congo. Tungsten, cobalt and gold could perhaps be added to the list of suspect substances.