Past views of the future

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why do we continue to get the future so wrong? Personally, I think it’s a mixture of three things. First, it’s very hard not to base future predictions on extrapolations. We project recent experience into the future, with little or no regard as to the impact of unexpected new ideas, innovations or events. Second, we simultaneously underestimate and over-estimate the influence of technology. Classically, we over estimate its importance in the shorter-term and under-estimate it over much longer periods. Third, we focus too much on technology, economics and the environment and forget about human nature and the influence of the past. In other words, psychological factors can be critical.

Enough of all that. Now for some funnies…

Click on a date for a film about the future from history.

1920s,

1930s

1950s

1985

1993

Quote of the week

“While the Left hates Britain’s history, large parts of the Right hate Britain’s future.”
– Tim Montgomerie.

(to which I’d add that the old live in the past while the young live in the future. Actually is that true? Do the young live in the present more than the future?)

Stillness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think this is interesting. iKonoTV is a channel that broadcasts art. That’s it. Just art in two-minutes chunks with no interruptions. The channel has been broadcasting for a year across south Asia, north Africa and the Middle East and has just expanded into mainland Europe (but not the UK).

What’s this about? On the supply side it seems to be about democratising art – making it more accessible and more widely available. On the demand side I suspect it’s about escaping from the cacophony of modern life and enjoying small moments of beauty that touch upon three universal themes: life, love and death.

It is also perhaps about stillness and attention in an age where TV companies are obsessed with the loud rapid-fire delivery of the most information in the shortest amount of time.

http://www.ikono.tv/

The Manchester Scenarios

I’ve been in Manchester again (I’m now on the 18.35 to London Euston and we passed Stoke-on-Trent a while back) and I’ve been running a mini scenarios workshop on the subject of public libraries once again.

We came up against the usual issue of trying to do something worthwhile in a very short space of time, but because the participants had actually found the time to do some background reading, including reading the scenarios report from Public Libraries New South Wales, we did eventually end up somewhere quite interesting.

One of the key drivers we discussed was the extent to which library services might be provided by government vs. the free market and the other was around user need, although how need is defined and what’s driving this need does, I feel, need to be fleshed out. Overall, early days.

More to come…

Museum of Broken Relationships

Just going through three month’s worth of newspapers, magazines, journals and various online sources for the next issue of What’s Next (about 3-feet of material if you stack it up). Anyway, hugely disappointed with the analysis this quarter. Maybe it’s the uncertainty, but where have all the good ideas gone?

Especially disappointed by my subscription to Wired UK (reviews of tents! – why?). On the other hand, hugely impressed with what’s been in New Scientist recently. New Yorker another disappointment, but this is more than offset by the Atlantic and Harper’s. Also in love with the New York Times, Slate and quite liking something new called Arc magazine from New Scientist.

Time for the weekly statistic I think.

On average, 65,000 children in the UK are admitted to A&E Hospitals every year due to the accidental ingestion of medicines. (Journal of Pediatrics).

Actually, since it’s almost the weekend how about something else? If you happen to be in Zagreb, in Croatia, check out the Museum of Broken Relationships. Rather touching.

Gamification

I’m listening to Old Ideas by Leonard Cohen (I love it but the kids really hate it!) trying to work out whether gamification can be justified as one of the ’50 big ideas’ in one of my new books. It’s significant, but I think I should dump it and replace it with synthetic biology.

Here’s the page…

Gamification is the application of online gaming techniques, like gaining points or status, to engage the attention or alter the behaviour of individuals or communities. Wearable devices linked to game-like systems, for instance, could induce overweight people to take more exercise or eat healthy foods.

Gamification works on three principles: First, people can be competitive (with themselves and with others). Second, people will share certain kinds of information. Third, people like to be rewarded. That’s why if you regularly buy a coffee at your local coffee shop you might end up with a nice badge courtesy of a company like Foursquare. And perhaps why, if you drink enough coffee at the same place, you might be crowned the coffee shop king – for a day. Or there’s Chore Wars, where people battle the washing up in return for virtual points or avatar energy boosts.

These are mundane examples, but there are better ones. Life Circle is a mobile app that allows blood banks to keep track of where potential blood donors are in real time. Clever, but the really smart bit is that blood donors can synchronise this with social networks to engage in a bit of competitive activity concerning who’s given the most blood or who’s donated most often. Endomondo is another example whereby users can track their workouts, challenge their friends and analyse their fitness training.

Similar techniques might be employed to get people to fill in tax returns, stop smoking, give up drugs, remember to take their drugs, drink less, walk more, vote, sleep, remain married, use contraception, cycle, recycle or revise for exams. Education, for example, especially in the early years, is all about goals, points, scores and prizes, so why not leverage a few online tricks to improve exam results or to switch students into less popular educational courses or institutions? Farmville running kindergarten services? It’s not impossible.

How could anyone possibly have a problem with this? This is surely fairly harmless activity. Making everything fun and social is simply a way to get people, especially younger people, to do things they don’t really want to do or haven’t really thought about doing. Just a way of tapping into the fact that hundreds of millions of people spend billions of hours playing online games and feel pretty good about themselves both during and after. Why not use this desire for competition, recognition and respect to increase participation in new product trials or boost the loyalty of voters towards your particular brand of government?

The answer to this is that turning the world into a game benefits certain interest groups. For example, if you can get people to do things for you for status or feelings of accomplishment, you may not have to pay other people to do it for you. In other words, your harmless game play is actually adding to the unemployment line.

According to Gartner, a research firm, more than 50% of companies will add gamification techniques to their innovation processes by 2015. But getting users to co-create or co-filter products or services or act as data entry clerks by offering virtual rewards or status also means that companies don’t have to put time and effort into improving inferior products or services themselves. Moreover, it seems infantile to treat all customers and citizens as though they are animated superheros on a secret mission to save the planet. Isn’t a virtual badge – or a real one for that matter – a rather superficial substitute for real-life engagement with other human beings?

On one level, gamification is a smart tool to get people to do what is in their best interest over the longer term. On the other hand, it can be seen as a manipulative way of getting individuals to conform to a subjective set of rules or goals or suit short-term commercial interests.

New Book on Scenario Thinking

Regular readers may know that I am working on two new books, both with the same deadline of March 31st (don’t even ask!). Here’s the contents sequence for the second book, which I’m co-writing with Oliver Freeman.

One word of warning, don’t pre-order this on the basis of the contents as it’s highly liable to change. The name of the book is Four Seeable Futures.

Contents
About this book
Forward- into the unknown

Part 1: Four short stories from the future

Chapter 1 – Story one
Chapter 2 – Story two
Chapter 3 – Story three
Chapter 4 – Story four

Part 2: Gone today; here tomorrow

Chapter 5, Inside out & outside in
The nature of perceiving
What aren’t we seeing?
What can others see?

Chapter 6, The framing question
What’s it all about?
Who should we listen to?
Mapping the issues
How far out do we need to go?

Chapter 7, Scenario thinking
INSPECT the future environment
Trends, critical uncertainties and wild cards
Getting to the scenario matrix
If at first we don’t succeed… Ah ha!
Enriching the matrix
Testing for robustness and logic
Four seeable scenarios as a set
How each world comes to be – timelines for each of the four scenarios

Chapter 8, What should we do today to prepare for our tomorrows?
The idea of strategic domains
Developing the strategic implications
Industry implications for each of the four scenarios
From implications to options
No brainers and keep safes
Scanning and monitoring
The success formula
Staying in the zone

Postscript – Strategic shocks: five game changers for 2040

References & useful sources

Great quote (see last post)

The book arrived and I found that quote.

“In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when , in short, people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death