I’m still sifting stuff for What’s Next, so here’s another little something that I think is interesting but didn’t quite make the final cut.
Cement is responsible for around 5% of carbon dioxide emissions globally. So why not create a cement that actually soaks up CO2 as it hardens. Bingo – carbon neutral cement. This is exactly what a start-up firm called Novacem is doing.
I’m working on the next issue of my What’s Next report (nowandnext.com), so I don’t have time to post anything long. Here, then, is something that I read the Nikkei Weekly (Japan) this morning. NEC Corp in Japan is working on ways in which screens can wirelessly detach from the main parent device. For example, a display could be created that wraps around a user’s wrist to function as a watch. It could then be removed and unrolled to create a flat screen that becomes a phone, an iPad-type device or an in-car navigation system. Meanwhile, a laboratory in Japan has developed software to run as an app on Apples’s iPhone that can give real-time oral translation in six different languages. The technology also allows text translation in a further 15 languages. Douglas Adams, if only you were here to see this.*
* The Babel fish was a small creature in the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which, when placed in your ear, would translate any language.
This is brilliant. There are now 32 CCTV cameras within 200 yards of the building in which George Orwell wrote “1984.” * But even if we remove these fixed cameras there’s still the fact that 4 billion people are roaming the planet with mobile phones, most of them equipped with cameras. In other words, while Orwell got the constant surveillance part right, he missed the fact that it would be the individuals themselves that ended up being the cameras. Enter the brave new world of crowdsensing…
* Source: Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM.
“Facebook is amazing because it feels like you are doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway” – Sam Crocker, American Student, quoted in the New York Times.
“ I daresay it manages to connect with a large number of people, but I strongly resent the time it takes up. In the little time that I have ‘spare’, I don’t want to sit tapping at a keyboard and staring at a screen, I want to read and think”. – Author Philip Pullman quoted in Prospect magazine
What would happen if the internet disappeared tomorrow? Would we really care? They’d be panic initially, of course. But would anything of real substance disappear? People would initially argue that they couldn’t “do anything.” Commerce, democracy and liberty itself would then be said to be under threat.
Personally, I think that life would eventually go on much as it did before. The internet is a wonderful thing, but most of its power comes from a mixture of convenience and efficiency and the downside is that human relationships are being fragmented and demeaned.
There’s also the argument, eloquently outlined by Jaron Lanier, that Web 2.0 is really nothing more than endlessly reheated and rehashed content and that friendships found online are “fake”. They are “bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers.”
As for the wisdom of crowds, forget it. Yes, a network can solve local ‘weak tie’ problems, such as where to find a good dry cleaner. Large numbers of people are also good at solving simple problems or filtering ideas, but most Web 2.0 content is vapid, mawkish, puerile and of no enduring significance. And yes, that includes this blog.
“Ghost of the Future”, he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”
– A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Trend #10 – No Trend
My final trend for 2011 is that there is no trend. There are certain uncertainties,
but beyond this it’s impossible to see what lies ahead. Is the Euro finished? Will Portugal go the same way as Ireland and Greece? Is China heading for a fall? Who can say?
One thing I would say is that is we appear to have entered a phase where technology is acting as an accelerant to a number of trends. For example, cascading failure can be a feature of highly complex systems. Many things are now so finely engineered that there are no tolerances. Moreover, connectivity means that if one element fails (or is attacked) whole parts of the system can come crashing down. Hopefully, the view ahead will clear sometime in 2011, but until then all one can say with any degree of certainty is the future is a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma.
#9 Digital disenchantment
Are you sinking in a sea of scurrilous spam? How about drowning in deluge of digital dross? The internet, and Web 2.0 in particular, are wonderful things, but there are digital downsides, notably the fact that people are suffering from too much distraction.
The result is computerized confusion on a grand scale. Our attention spans are dwindling (books are now seen by many younger generations as “too long”) and we seem unable to retain important information, such as home phone numbers, ATM PIN numbers, family birthdays and security codes. As for work, all some people seem to do is answer endless mails, only to be faced with yet more once they have dealt with the first batch.
Of course, you could use technology to solve most of these problems. Use RSS feeds or Google alerts to filter the amount of incoming information or simply switch off your email or mobile phone. But filtering seems to create even more information and switching off isn’t really an option when everyone else is still switched on and still expects an instant response.
Implications
People are seeking harmony with regard to their digital/analogue balance much in the same way that they are seeking work/life balance. One way to achieve this is to set clear boundaries about when you do certain things or when you use certain technologies. This will work up to a point but at some stage you will have to be more brutal. Switch your mobile off after 7.30pm. Don’t become “friends” with people you’ve never met and unblock your digital drain from time to time by disconnecting from unread or unused information.
BTW, I know I said something similar would happen last year and nothing much happened, but maybe I was 12-months early?
#8 “Long land”
According to the World Bank, agricultural production must increase by 70% by the year 2050. Why? The primary reason is demographic – there will be more people in the future and they will want something to eat.
The second reason is consumption habits – more people with more money means switching to meat-based diets, especially in Asia (see Food inflation, trend #7). The third reason is bio-fuels. Energy companies are interested in land not because of way lies beneath but because of what can be grown on top. The result? People taking a ‘long’ position on fertile land, especially land in foreign lands, with the expectation that the value of the land (and the food grown on it) will increase over the years ahead.
For example, according to the World Bank, purchases of land in developing regions increased tenfold in 2009 to 45 million hectares. This trend is set to make the value of good land soar, especially well-watered hinterlands in Africa and Latin America. But buyers beware. Land isn’t just another commodity. Land is tied up with notions of nationalism and is semi-sacred in many regions so also expect counter-trends around colonial cultivation and sovereign soil.
Implications
Expect a global land grab by wealthy foreign investors (especially Chinese and Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth funds) to increase substantially over the coming years – but also expect protectionist backlashes over the purchase, or attempted purchase, of land by foreign investors. Also expect the issue of water access to rise to the surface.
#7. Food inflation
Food has been cheap in many countries for a long time and people now view ingredients that were once considered luxuries as necessities. But this situation is about to change. The primary problem is population. There are simply more mouths to feed. However, the real issue is not so much demand per se but changing consumption habits. Put simply, more people – especially people in developing markets – are changing eating habits in line with rapidly rising incomes. Hence people that used to live on subsistence diets of rice or vegetables are now demanding meat or fish. Call it calorie inflation if you like but whatever you call it the consequence is rapidly rising prices for basic staples.
According to Nomura, the investment bank, “the surge in commodity prices in 2003-8 was the largest, longest and most broad-based of any commodity boom since 1980.” Nomura goes on” “The prices of energy and metals surged the most but it was the agricultural market that saw the most fundamental change.”
Implications
Higher food prices and price spikes are one consequence, but also look out for changing eating habits. In Western markets there will be new interest in cheaper cuts of meat and in new species of fish. More people will be cooking at home to save money too. On the nasty side, watch-out for a return of food riots. In some countries this could boil over into something very nasty indeed (i.e. watch China and Russia but also places like Mozambique). In terms of opportunities, fish farming and fish ranching in open waters look like winners over the longer term.