Couple of trend pieces from the Financial Times and McKinsey & Company. Nothing that new about the trends, but some nice visialisation.
Trends ahoy!
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Diary of an accidental futurist – observations on current & future trends
Couple of trend pieces from the Financial Times and McKinsey & Company. Nothing that new about the trends, but some nice visialisation.
Hi!
I’m wondering about your thoughts regarding technological future trends, keeping in mind we globally recycle less than 20% of e-waste, precious metal resources are finite and peak production of most metals is around ±2035, while we break yearly records in the production of electronic consumer products.
What are your thoughts about sustaining our throw-away culture and planned obsolescence. How long can we sustain this and what does this mean for the future? Will this work itself out, or are we headed towards a future where electronic products will be so expensive we must head another way?
I would love to hear your view on this!
Love all your work,
With kind regards,
Shams Hazim
Hi Shams, Whatever happened to green IT? I don’t know. Our response4s around cliamte and ressources are so tokenistic. Flying bad, concrete, airconditiong, textiles somehow OK. Innovation is almost by definition unsustainable. A branch of consumerism concerned with, among other things, persuading people that they need an iPhioe 11 Pro or whatever (my 8 still works fine). My gut feel is that we will leave it to the last minute, panic, and then sort it out. And remember that every threat is an opportunity. Claening up urban air, dealing with peak landfill et al are all opportunities.
I would truly love to end or more likely restrain our consumer/throw away culture, but more realistically perhaps we just reign it in a bit. I’m old enough to remember getting 5 new pence or whatever from my old empty Tizer bottles so why can;t Apple give me £50 off an iPhone 12 if i trade my iPhone 8? And there should be huge taxes on the use of virgin resources. I think the answer may rest in pricing and taxation, but also customer attitudes.
Hi!
Yes, green IT seems to be non-existent. I think the major flaw is people not getting educated on this topic at all, consumers and producers of electrical and electronic devices alike (Me myself being an industrial design student). I kind of think the same about leaving it to the last minute, for me there seems to be no way that we can unite and tackle this problem on such a short notice. There need to be shifts in the whole consumer and producer realm just as you said, make it a closed loop. I guess it will happen eventually, sooner or later. But a question that has been bugging me is how will this issue affect innovation? To me it sometimes seems that a full-on technological future is impossible, are there enough resources even if we didn’t waste 80% of them? The internet of things for me seems like a volatile destination, it seems like there is just no way we can Smart-everything in everyone’s house, nor do we need to. But everywhere around me people seem to be heading in that direction. Yes, what will the future look like?
I really liked the comment that every threat is an opportunity. It gives me some hope that we will somehow turn this around. We just need to act fast.
With kind regards,
Shams Hazim