This will be published tomorrow on 1 January. Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for reading. P.S. There’s a new issue of What’s Next just gone up at www.nowandnext.com
List of Trends for 2010
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Monthly Archives: December 2009
2010 Trends – A Roadmap for the Future
It’s finally done. My new trends and technology timeline for 2010 is now up. Please post any comments, criticisms or suggestions and I will incorporate these in the very final printed version. Please also note that it’s really a waste of time looking at this on a small screen or printing it out at less than A3 size because it’s hugely complicated. If you want giant printed colour copies just contact me.
The map has 16 lines representing everything from society & culture to news & media. There are also 5 time zones representing 2010-2050, so everything that falls outside the central zone (zone 1) is obviously a prediction.The map is published under a Creative Commons Share-A-Like Licence so you can do anything you like with it, including selling it, just so long as you say where it came from.
I have a feeling this map with get forwarded around cyberspace at great speed:.
The key mega trends on the map are:
– Ageing
– Power shift Eastwards
– Globalisation
– Localisation
– Digitalisation
– Personalisation
– Volatility
– Individualism
– Environmental change
– Sustainability
– Debt
– Urbanisation
Some of the predictions include:
– All televised sport becomes short-format
– Epidemic of new disorders caused by uncensored use of digital devices
– Turkey, Iran and Mexico become key powers
– Online communities gather offline to start physical communities
– The robot population surpasses the human population
– Brain holidays
– Communications free resorts
– People attending online funerals
– The appearance of laboratory grown meat in supermarkets
Some of the partial ruins (things that are partly destroyed) include:
– Intimacy
– Privacy
– Modesty
– Paper statements and bills
– Humility
– Optimism about the future
The link…see comments below for a click-thru version.
http://nowandnext.com/PDF/trends_and_technology_timeline_2010.pdf
Book of the Month
I’m still ploughing my way through Delete: The Power of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Mayer-Schonberger, but this little morsel has also caught my eye and may well end up in my Christmas stocking. Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson seems like a good read. The argument, I think, is that if economic growth cannot be separated from environmental damage, then growth as an economic measure needs to be abandoned. It certainly sounds appealing. A life lived more locally and more simply is something I certainly aspire too. One problem though. It sounds like Jackson is a technological pessimist. Personally I’m a believer in the Smart Planet scenario. This is where science and technology solve most of our problems and we achieve economic prosperity without environmental degradation.
The Iranian Wildcard
Is Israel about to start a war with Iran? Tensions between the US and Israel seem to be growing, but so too is antagonism between Israel and Iran. Of course, starting a war is one thing, winning one is something else altogether, as we’ve currently observing with Afghanistan.
Clearly a strike by Israel against Iran would set off a hornet’s nest in the region. But I think this is actually very unlikely. If Israel wanted to strike Iran they would have done so by now. And they’d keep very quiet about their intentions in advance too. So, by a process of elimination, I guess Israel’s strategy is one of just noise and pressure. Let’s hope that Iran doesn’t wrongly interpret this.
Newspaper Strategy
Here are my 5 top tips for struggling newspapers in 2010.
1. Vision.
Stop trying to do everything. Have a clear idea of what you are, what you are for and where you are going. Focus on just one thing and aim to do it extraordinarily well. Keep debt to a minimum and avoid acquisitions. Trust is vital. So too is editing in the sense of helping people navigate a world containing too much information. Build a brand people can believe in.
2. Editorial strategy
Remove all mention of celebrity culture. Focus instead on real people. Celebrate the ordinary. Write articles about people that aren’t famous, powerful or rich. Write about ordinary people doing wonderful things that make the reader feel different, feel better or feel human. Also write about ideas. Avoid plugging things. Move away from anything that contains the word ‘lifestyle’. Become more visual. Use more photography and cartoons to tell stories.
3. Distribution
If the people won’t come to the paper take the paper to the people. Develop proprietary channels, especially innovative channels involving trains, buses, coffee shops, sandwich bars, hotels, shopping centres, pubs and vending.
4. Price
If you are intent on using digital channels make the online paper free but build in a cost for personalisation and functionality. With hard copies use price to build loyalty.
5. The internet
This is not your central issue. Focus instead on content. Embrace the internet but do not become obsessed with it. Do not try to compete with online head on. You have already lost the online war in terms of news moving online and to mobile devices. Shift your focus away from reporting breaking ‘news’ towards reflective analysis and commentary. If you are seeking to reduce costs consider moving editions online during the week but keep things on paper at weekends.
Quote of the Day
“The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling.”
-Lawrence M.Krauss, Foundation Professor and Director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University.
A Volatile Future
I’ve been reading something from Forbes magazine (US) about Ten Trends for 2010. Nothing very new (cloud computing, decentralization of medicine, decentralization of education, sensors everywhere, the smart web, mobile internet etc). But one thing did catch my eye — some potential implications of a highly networked world (my global connectivity point).
The piece references a book called Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business by Tom Hayes. Well, never mind business, this hyper-connectivity will have profound implications on just about everything.
In 2011 there will be 3 billion people connected to the internet*. As a result, the creation and spread of information (some trustworthy, some not) will accelerate and volatility will move into warp drive. Consequences? Anxiety will rise and new ideas will seemingly come out of nowhere (a good example of this is Google: $ 0-20 billion revenue in less than 400 weeks**). Titans like GM (or Google) could vanish from the landscape but there’s potentially something else buried in this connectivity too.
The people that will be connected to the internet will tend to be young and these people will tend to reside in Asia (where ageing is less of an issue). Implications? Ideas tend to come from younger people (look at Google again) so the flow of new insights, discoveries and inventions could very well shift from the US and Europe into the emerging CHIME and BRIC economies.
Cue giant analogue and pyramidal corporations and hierarchical government bureaucracies struggling to adapt to a digital, mobile and highly volatile world.
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* There are currently 4 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide and somewhere between 1 and 2 billion PCs.
** New Yorker, 12 October 2009, ‘Searching for Trouble’ by Ken Auletta
Spot the Difference
Well I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery:.
London in 2010
A big thank you to Matthew Davies for this. Some clever person has kept (and photographed) a copy of the Observer magazine from 1989, which looked at what London might look like in the year 2010. Great stuff. As Will Wiles says: ” why are blimps so seductive to futurologists?
The original article is here
http://willwiles.blogspot.com/2009/12/london-in-2010.html
And the pictures are here
2010 Trend Map
It’s getting very close indeed – 2 weeks of polishing still to do….