The Five Stages of Disconnection

Just had my email down for about a week. Five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Seems OK now.

Meanwhile been working on the final stages of my new megatrends map and there’s a megatrend on it I’ve called Easternisation. Then, this morning, I accidently found an old newspaper cutting that’s a review of a book called Easternisation by Gideon Rachman. It’s about war and peace in the Asian century. Guess that’s my subconscious working again!

Anyway, great quote in the review as follows:

“Railways and gunships are not enough. You need Shakespeare and the common law; you need blue jeans and Mickey Mouse. Without them you are left with the drivers of greed and fear, which will build you a working despotism, but never a civilization.”

Fear and greed…now there’s a couple of enduring megatrends.

New Map

It’s coming along….very long. New mega-map of mega-trends out in a few weeks with luck. Apparently the document now has 14,952 paths that are 194 meters long and there are 181,777 points and 24,RGB objects. I have little or no idea what any of this means, but I do know it’s complex! (and complexity is one of the megatrends).

Map of the Future

So I’ve got seriously stuck on what’s in the middle of my new map of future trends and technologies. It’s been individualism for a while. Then I changed this to individual empowerment, which the National Security Agency (US) uses. This is just too postive or at least unbalanced. Solipsism is really close, but nobody knows what this is I fear. Rise of the individual isn’t bad and gives a direction. But I just can’t get the word or phrase right. Any got any ideas?

BTW, LOL. Got an email on Sunday from the World Future Society about a meeting on Monday about setting up a London chapter. You’d think, being a society about the future, that they might have given more than 24-hours notice.

The Future of Money (and everything else for that matter)

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I’ve been silent for a while. A month in fact, which is almost certainly a record. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m drowning in information and ideas and the only solution seems to be disconnection, which is perhaps a kind of deliberate ignorance.

Anyway, I had a drink with Dave Birch yesterday (blog here) to talk about the future of money. It’s input into my new map of mega-trends. One of the most thought provoking 30 minutes in recent months. We covered everything from the weaponisation if finance (with historical examples) to the rise of disconnection technologies and synthetic staff. I also loved the idea that the money of the future will be much like the Neolithic (I’ll leave readers to figure that one out).

We talked quite a bit about community and the collaborative economy and this map (above) was something he showed me. Link to article about here.

Global Mega-trends Map

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Finally started the new mega-map of global trends & technologies after 2 or more years. I’ve got all the data as a word file, but it now needs to be added to the map and edited on the map and then all physically connected together. Got to love a job where you still get to use kids coloured felt-tip pens aged 50+

If you like mega-trends keep your eye on the blog as I’ll be adding quite a bit of material, including the long list of contenders.

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Don’t take it seriously or as final at this stage. Things will move around and be deleted. The lemon? Weighing the paper down in the wind (Bradley)! I was going to invert the image below, but I think it’s symbolic of a world turned upside down.

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