Trains, pubs and banks

 

As regular readers may know, I’ve been largely unable to write for the past few weeks. I’ve tried everything, but nothing has worked. Don’t get me wrong, I have been writing, but only in the sense of putting one word in front of another. The result has been somewhere between rather poor and totally embarrassing. I’ve also been snow-blinded by the amount of material I’ve been attempting to read.

So why are things starting to flow again? I think it’s a mixture of sun and a distant view. I spent yesterday morning attending a conference on the future of pubs, which sparked some thoughts, especially because I wasn’t actually presenting for a change. (Fun backwards look here at the future of ordering)

Then I headed north towards Edinburgh on the train. The sun was out and the view out of the window was terrific. I’ve also managed to avoid television, radio, newspapers and the internet for 48-hours. As a result, I’ve managed to polish off 3 new issues of brainmail (up soon) and I’m now getting stuck into some thinking about retail trends, especially the future of retail banking, which brings me to today’s statistic.

In most countries around the world the number of retail banks has risen, not fallen, in recent years. In North America, for example, there are 22% more bank branches now than there were back in 2000. This seems counter-intuitive in an age of digital transactions, PayPal, Square, Ready For Zero, Save Up and Zopa. Perhaps it’s a classic case of psychology over technology. In short, people want to see where their money is and see that it’s safe, especially in an era of rampant volatility and uncertainty.

But are we not in danger here of a classic case of extrapolation? Just because credit cards, ATMs and phone banking didn’t turn retail banking on its head isn’t to say that the internet won’t second time around. Most of the technology impacting retail banking is still in its late infancy and there are strong reasons to suppose that disruptive technologies and upstart start-ups will indeed transform at least the basic low-margin transactional side of retail banking very soon. The death of the branch is still a very long way off, but given a decade I’d expect branches to not only look very different, but be used in very different ways too.

Books & Writing

Been in Austria. Reading (properly this time) Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. This was written in 1985 so it’s now rather interesting in the context of the internet and mobile devices rather than TV. Also reading 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Times by Michael Brooks.

BTW, nice quote…

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.” –Ray Bradbury,

Idea of the week – poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A jukebox that plays poems…

This idea doesn’t actually exist yet*, so in the meantime here’s a poetry app created by Maurice Saatchi as a tribute to his late wife, Josephine Hart, which allows you to listen to great actors reading great poetry (free).

The poetry app.

And if you really like poetry try this too – the poetry cafe

* The idea belongs to (or appears in) The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.

The World in 2020 (further sources)

 

 

 

 

Further to my post yesterday showing my table of trends and technologies for the world in 2020, here are some links to some further material on 2020 trends and scenarios if anyone is interested.

Bain Consulting – growth trends to 2020

Economist Intelligence Unit/Cisco report on 2020

World Changing Blog (summary of CIA 2020 Scenarios from 2005)
BTW, the report is hard to find but I have a PDF if anyone wants one.

Frost & Sullivan (research report)

The Guardian – World in 2020 (series of short essays)

The Independent – World in 2020 (article)

Centre for European Reform – The World in 2020 (article)

Telefonica (5 minute video)

Corning (5 minute video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIighTR1zPo

World Tourism Organization (facts & forecasts)

Bloomberg/Business Week (forecasts and predictions out to 2020)

Wired magazine (article)

Trends & Technologies for the World in 2020

Here’s something to start a few arguments, which is the whole point of the exercise, of course. Briefly, it’s a table of key trends and technologies that are likely to shape the world out to 2020. I’ve used the periodic table, not because the trends are weighted in any way, but by following the basic structure of the table (i.e. the number of categories and boxes) this has forced me to edit what would otherwise be an almost endless list.

The categories themselves broadly follow S.T.E.E.P, which is widely used in scenario planning, but I’ve extended and added to this with the result that we have S.T.E.E.E.P.P.I (Society, Technology, Energy, Environment, Economy, Employment, Population, Politics and Identity). There are also two lines devoted to global risks, both high and low probability.

 

 

 

 

And, as usual, there are a few jokes so that people don’t take this too seriously. Lol, Omg. The link here is to a high resolution PDF suitable for printing.  World .in 2020_

Can’t write

I don’t know if it’s the cold office, the dark office, the office that moves up and down (the boat in London) or something else, but I can’t seem to write anything interesting at the moment. For some reason this brings me on to George Orwell’s Six Rules for Writing. Personally, I’d add that if you are blocked go out and see something (someone?) different. Generally do something else until the urge returns. Or visit your muse. The six rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Dark Solar

I seem to remember making up something called ‘Night Solar’ in one of my recent books.Turns out he idea isn’t quite as mad as it was intended to be. The cover of New Scientist (26 January) is all about Dark Solar, which appears to be much the same thing.