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
I really must stop doing this, but it’s difficult to resist. I see from the New York Times today that the UK will tax banker bonuses. Page 128 of Future Files (Page 117 UK edition) says: “Big banks, in particular, will come under increasing scrutiny about their lending practices, and there will be calls for salary and profit caps in some extreme instances.”
I wrote this in late 2006.
21 Things that are being killed off by digitalisation
1. Memory
2. Privacy
3. Experts
4. Concentration
5. Listening to a whole album
6. Punctuality
7. Telephone directories
8. Cheap watches
9. Letter writing
10. Spelling
11. Printing photographs
12. Copyright
13. Personal re-invention
14. Plagiarism
15. Reflection
16. Paper money
17. Paper statements
18. Airline tickets
19. Concert tickets
20. Landline telephones
21. Intimacy
:and 7 things that aren’t
1. Public libraries
2. Vinyl record shops
3. Newspapers (look at the data globally)
4. Physical banks
5. Meetings
6. Paper
7. Church
Inspired by Inspired by 50 Things that are being killed by the internet
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/matthew-moore/
This is worth a read:a report on 2010 Trends that was written in 1996 and then revised in late 1997. Mostly geopolitics and security related. Interesting to see what they get right and what they get wrong.
http://www.dni.gov/nic/special_globaltrends2010.html
(I have no idea why the link doesn’t click so just cut and paste).
Something just in…
“You may recall that we met briefly at a seminar in the UK earlier this year and I promised to let you know of our experience of senna demand after 6 months.
The top line is that it looks as though you were right and laxative demand can be grouped with chocolate and lipstick as something that increases during recession.
Our production has been higher than last year and our main customer has been working flat out. In addition I am told that there is currently a national shortage of senna tablets so taken together this seems strong evidence to support your contention.”
Good article in the AFR about economic trends. Citigroup’s global credit strategist (Matt King) says that the next bubble is likely to come from emerging Asian markets. I couldn’t agree more. In the short-term (next 3-5 years) King thinks that debt won’t be a problem because there is a huge amount of stimulus flowing around the system. But talk of long-term stability is illusory because we haven’t properly dealt with the key causal factors. We have simply thrown money at the problem to make it go away for a while, building up a new bubble somewhere else.
If you look at recent history these bubbles are getting bigger and they are also getting closer together. In my view there will be another bubble (probably carbon or green technology related) and this will cause another crash. Only this will happen sooner than many people expect (I’d say within the next 5-10 years) and will be far bigger than anything we have so far experienced. Buckle up folks its going to be a bumpy ride.
Here’s a good one. I’ve just been asked if I “know of any training courses for jobs that don’t necessarily exist yet.” You what? My answer is “no”, although here’s my list of jobs that don’t quite exist yet.
Email archivist
Animal rights attorney
Space elevator operative
Virtual identity consultant
Brain-machine interface developer
Hydrogen fuel station attendant
Robot mechanic
Virtual location scout
Space travel agent*
Employee gene screener
Personal brand consultant*
Cyber-librarian
Telemedicine consultant
Centenarian surgeon
Internet addiction specialist
Islamic financial planner
Generational conflict resolution consultant
Personal risk analyst
Accelerated school learning consultant
Whole life experience planner
Green building inspector*
Medical tourism planner*
Space travel agent*
3-D printer repair operative
Nano-technician
Sustainable death advisor/undertaker
Anxiety coach
Virtual world tour guide*
Medical data theft consultant
Water trader
Cyber-pet vet
* These probably do exist already.
Had a good chat with Tim Riches at Futurebrand in Singapore. He’d just come back from a Davos extension summit and he mentioned that the consensus there was that as soon as the global financial crisis was fixed the issue of the environment (and climate change in particular) would come back harder and faster than before. I couldn’t agree more.
I was asked by a TV show to make 5 predictions for the future. They gave me 10 minutes, which presumably says something about the acceleration of something or other.
1 Coins will die out, then notes, eventually there will be a single global (digital) currency. Maybe around 2050. People won’t like this but they will eventually get used to it.
2 We will eventually wear computers. Computers will also be embedded in the majority of everyday objects. We will also have the ability to turn any wall or flat surface into a computer screen using various mobile devices (phones, watches, wearable protectors).
3 The next world war will happen in space.
4 All newborn babies will eventually be ‘tagged’ with some kind of transmitter so that parents can track them and so that vital medical records etc can be held within their bodies for fast access. This will start off as a ‘premium’ NHS service but will soon spread. This will also enable the construction of geo-fences and the development of various location-based services.
5 There will eventually be a second Luddite rebellion. People will seek to constrain the influence of machines. There will be areas where only humans are allowed and areas reversed for machines only.
“The moment something has been declared dead, it emerges from the grave like at the end of ‘Carrie’, only more powerful and bigger than ever.” – Douglas Coupland.
So what is currently returning, unexpectedly, from the grave?