Just back from Mexico (La Paz) where I’ve been blissfully disconnected from the modern world for a week. I was messing around on a boat, largely looking for whales, and one thing that stood out for me was the fact that we have perhaps lost the art of looking. If you live in a city, which globally 50% of us do, the furthest you generally look is the opposite side of the road. If you work in an office it’s probably down to 18 inches – the distance from the end of your nose to the screen you are reading this on. And we rarely focus on what’s to our sides.

Does this matter? I don’t know. It’s possibly not so much a loss of distance per se, but the fact we are less aware of and connected to our physical environment. I guess this links to two things. First emerging risks and second emerging opportunities.

BTW, if you want to see someone amazing whale images go here.

Got back from San Francisco (San Jose actually) end of last week and now off to Brussels. Then it’s Mexico. No time to think, so here’s a secret password to get you into the premium parts of What’s Next.

Just go to What’s Next and type in vip and ticket (both lower case) as the username and password under Premium Features (left hand side of homepage). This will get you into an issue archive going back to 2004, two trend libraries (by sector) and the search function. The free love will be good for a while.

From Fast Company

Here’s my list of trends for 2014. Detail on each to follow each day starting tomorrow.

1. Real & Raw
2. Big Data
3. Self-Tracking
4. Populism
5. Social Cynicism

Couldn’t resist taking this photo.

Hard to know what to talk about today. It could be the patent Sony has put in for a smart wig (are they on crack or something?). Or one might mention Amazon’s UAVs  (Unmanned Amazon Vehicle?) or delivery drones (great idea, but can you imagine the legal aspects and the practicalities for people living in in dense urban areas? – but I still like it!!!). Or it could it be the rather relaxed lunch I had with Dave Birch talking about Bitcoin, identity and steak. (If you don’t know Dave he’s pretty much the go to guy on digital currencies and emerging payment technologies). BTW, What’s Next is about to get a makeover to make it more mobile friendly and I’m about to do something different, but I have no idea what.

I seem to remember that sometime ago the futurologist Ian Pearson talked about people being able to leave ‘sticky messages’ in very specific locations for other people to pick up when they passed through the same exact location. Here’s an underwater version (unused image from a project that I was recently involved with).

Nice! Image from Dull Hunk I believe.

Like all logical extrapolations, the argument that cash will disappear contains a number of critical assumptions. One is that people will trust digital transactions and exchange as much as – or more than – physical money.

In Greece, where I’ve been for the past week, 95% of transactions were in cash. Last time I was there it was almost all plastic. This was not because people were trying to avoid tax, but because people didn’t trust other forms of payment or credit arrangements.

In other words, any prediction is scenario dependent.

I went to a great event last night in London and met a science-fiction writer called Lavie Tidhar, who asked the question “When does the future start?” His answer was: “When things start to get weird.” Good stuff. Off to buy one of his books…