I’ve seen the future…and it works.

I’m in South Korea for 36-hours talking with Samsung and the Chosunilbo Daily. I’ve seen TV screens that are not much thicker than a few sheets of paper and there are giant screens everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

I think that William Gibson could have been thinking of Seoul when he famously said: “The Future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

My head it all over the place. I’m writing something set 40 years into the future, but I’m also thinking about what I need to do next week. Some plum wine over lunch and the two worlds are starting to merge…

BTW, please keep your thoughts on where and when you do your best thinking coming in (See previous post). The comments are really useful.

I’ve rather forgotten to mention that my book ‘Future Files’ got launched in America last week, having been launched in the UK two months earlier. If you didn’t know already the whole of the first chapter is available as a free download at futuretrendsbook.com.

The other news is that last week I got the go-ahead to write another book. Yipee.

In the meantime there is also a secret publishing thing that I’m involved with starting on January 1 but, like I say, it’s secret! (clue: it’s not a book).
🙂

Something I’ve just written for readers in Korea but I think parts of it are universal…

Korea is a country that interests me. Unfortunately I have never been but I am a follower of the country, particularly due to Korea’s love affair with technology. I am also an avid reader of Oh My News, which is referenced in the media chapter. Indeed, the quote by William Gibson that “the future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed” is almost an advertisement for Korea.

There are things happening in Korea right now that are happening almost nowhere else and it will take years for other countries to catch up. Most of these things are good, others less so, but that’s just something we’ll all have to get used to in the future.

One of the mistakes people commonly make when thinking about the future is to assume that there is a single future. This isn’t true. There will be multiple futures, co-existing simultaneously, and people will travel between each of these futures. Another mistake is to assume that the future is completely unwritten. It isn’t.

We can invent the future and I firmly believe that now, more than ever, it is our duty to select a preferred future and to work as hard and as fast as we can to ensure that a world that we want to live in is firmly on the horizon.

Hopefully, readers in Korea will be as fascinated by what’s to come as readers have been in other countries. There is more that unites us than separates us and the things that really matter to people — things like love, recognition and respect — are universal irrespective of age, income, career or location.

A final point is that predicting the future is quite easy. All you need to do is walk around with your mind wide open. What’s really difficult is trying to figure out what’s going on right now. This book is about the future but it is also about now.

At the time of writing this preface the global economy is doing exactly what I predicted that it would in the chapter of money. I am not saying this to be clever. I am simply stating that things have changed and that the future is in some ways much more uncertain than it was a year ago. Having said this I still believe that the fundamentals remain unchanged. We are not witnessing the end of an era, merely the start of a new direction.

I can’t resist sticking this up. It’s from Publishers’ Weekly in the US. They have got my book ‘Future Files’ as their Pick of the month for October. God bless America.

” Cheaper than a crystal ball and twice as fun, this book by futurist and web creator Watson examines what “someday” could be like, based on the five key trends of ageing; power shift to the East; global connectivity; the “GRIN” technologies of Genetics, Robotics, Internet, and Nanotechnology; environmental concerns, and 50 less general but equally influential developments that will radically alter human life by the year 2050. Watson gently scoffs at Jetsons-like wishful-thinking technology and flying cars; instead he predicts the fanciful (mindwipes, stress-control clothing, napcaps that induce sleep) and the useful (devices to harness the sea to generate energy; self-repairing car paint; retail technology that helps us shop, based on past buying habits; hospital plasters that monitor vital signs). In between the fun and frivolity, he prognosticates the frightening: the “extinction” of individual ugliness and free public spaces; the creation of hybrid humans; a society made of people who are incapable of the tiniest tasks; and insects that carry wireless cameras to monitor our lives. Part Jules Verne, part Malcolm Gladwell, Watson has a puckish sense of humor and his book is a thought-provoking, laughter-inducing delight. (Oct)”

This is the last post for my book “Future Files” for 2007 because it’s now grown up and gone out into the big wide world by itself. We now have publishing deals in the UK (April ’08 launch most probably), the US (a bit later in ’08), Canada, India, China and a bunch of other places too.

One thing I have done for the new versions is add a list of the 5 most important trends for the next 50 years upfront and I’ve also added a list of 5 things that won’t change at all over the next 50 years.

Remember you can still download the whole of chapter one for free from futuretrendsbook.com although I am in the process of slightly tweaking chapter one too.

Oh dear. There’s a “writer and reviewer” in New Zealand that seems to be quite upset with me. I think it might be because I was unkind about MySpace and Facebook. Anyway, just to keep things straight, the reason that there’s no index in my book (Future Files) is because I felt it was a slight waste of space and a somewhat old fashioned and one-dimensional idea. Instead all references are indexed as hyperlinks online at the book website at http://www.futuretrendsbook.com.

Secondly, whilst the sources for almost everything do indeed come from “my trend reports”, these are in turn are sourced from various highly credible sources such as the New York Times, New Scientist, The BBC, The Economist and so on.

One thing I do really like about Matt (apart from his observation that hyphenation will be huge in the future – I just love that) is that he says that if you’re going to be audacious enough to make predictions about the future, “you may as well go nuts”. Absolutely. But then don’t on the one hand accuse me of making “vague predictions” and on the other go on to quote me about the human race fracturing into two halves: the natural and the enhanced.

It’s a hard call this. Do you respond every time someone says something that’s inaccurate or out of context or do you just let it all wash over you? In general I think the latter, but sometimes bitterness is the new black and it’s just too tempting not to respond.

Here are a few of the first reviews. BTW, “strange” refers to a few possible future inventions such as ‘mindwipes’ and ‘skyshields’.

“Overall, Watson delivers a sane, crisp and stimulating report from the futures frontier” – Richard Neville in the Australian Literary Review

“I found myself warming to his (Watson’s) intense curiosity about what is going on in the world and I appreciated the absence of academic snobbery”
– Simon Caterson in The Age.

“The book..is fascinating, frightening and strange” – Esther Van Doornum in Bookseller & Publisher.

Goodness me. First the good news. The book is selling really well and was the #2 best seller in the bookshop that I dropped into yesterday. It also seems to be everywhere. Not bad given that it’s only been out just over a week. The publisher has also managed to sell the rights to China and the reviews are pretty good too.

And the bad news? First of all the fact that the book is about the future seems to have brought out some rather ‘interesting’ people out of the woodwork. My email in box is certainly more colourful than it was a few weeks ago. So apparently the answer to life, the universe and everything is in the Star Trek movies if you watch closely enough. Ummm. The other issue is that the book seems to be quite controversial, especially amongst people that clearly haven’t read it. The result is mis-quotes, quotes out of context and, most bizarrely of all, people quoting me about things I’ve never actually said. For example, apparently I’ve said that a “Theory of Everything, uniting quantum theory and relativity, would in some way ‘debunk’ Einstein’s work”. Really? I don’t recall saying anything of the sort. I think what I actually wrote (Robert) was:

“One of the most fascinating questions about the future is whether religion will be a victim or a beneficiary of change. Some people predict that faith will decline because the spread of information will undermine the mindset necessary to support belief. Physics will produce a unified theory of everything and this will destroy old-fashioned superstitions like religion. In other words science will become our new religion. I’m not so sure. If science, technology and complexity become key ingredients of the future this will drive change and uncertainty. And the more this happens the more people will seek out safety, comfort and guidance from religion. This could just lead to an increase in individual spirituality, but I suspect that globalisation, mixed with a general feeling of powerlessness and anxiety, will drive group actions and beliefs. Hence we will witness an increase in tribalism, nationalism and xenophobia.”

Anyway, glad I cleared that up. If you’d like to read this passage in context it appears in Chapter One, which can be downloaded for free at www.futuretrendsbook.com. Back soon with some of the reviews and then it’s back to the normal top trends.

OK, my new book hits the shops on Monday (3 September) so I thought I’d share with you the fact that the book website is now live. If you go to www.futuretrendsbook.com and click on the ‘download’ button you can read the whole of chapter one.

If you click on ‘sources’ and go down towards the bottom of the page there are also some quite good web links, timelines and maps relating to the future as well as a very comprehensive book list. Enjoy!