I don’t really care what’s popular on Twitter but if you do here are some lists. I especially like God and the Bible (ranked under ‘things’) alongside Starbucks and Wal-Mart (‘business’). Source: Sysomos.com (full link in comments).
I’m not a big fan of the rag trade but Dutch-born Li Edelkoort (one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential people in fashion) can be a bit of an oracle at times. Here are a handful of her insights from last year that seem to resonate way beyond the glitzy and somewhat vapid word of fashion.
1. Togetherness
We increasingly live apart but we want to be together. We want to re-connect, be it through farmers markets, theatre, live music or knitting cafes.
2. Back to basics
Usually when there is a financial crisis we go through a period of utility or back-to-basics. This time around this reaction appears to be rather short lived. Perhaps this is because we feel that it is others than have sinned and need to atone for past excesses.
3. Grey.
We are at a period of indecision so what better way to say nothing than to use a colour sandwiched in between the certainty of black and white. Actually, “Colour of the Year” for 2010 is Pantone 14-0848 Mimosa but I still like the idea of grey.
By the way, I really like what Li had to say about her process; once: “People think I am some mystic or gypsy. But what I really do is pay attention. Then I have the nerve to say what I believe.”
Source: thewrendesign.com
Is Israel about to start a war with Iran? Tensions between the US and Israel seem to be growing, but so too is antagonism between Israel and Iran. Of course, starting a war is one thing, winning one is something else altogether, as we’ve currently observing with Afghanistan.
Clearly a strike by Israel against Iran would set off a hornet’s nest in the region. But I think this is actually very unlikely. If Israel wanted to strike Iran they would have done so by now. And they’d keep very quiet about their intentions in advance too. So, by a process of elimination, I guess Israel’s strategy is one of just noise and pressure. Let’s hope that Iran doesn’t wrongly interpret this.
I’ve been reading something from Forbes magazine (US) about Ten Trends for 2010. Nothing very new (cloud computing, decentralization of medicine, decentralization of education, sensors everywhere, the smart web, mobile internet etc). But one thing did catch my eye — some potential implications of a highly networked world (my global connectivity point).
The piece references a book called Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business by Tom Hayes. Well, never mind business, this hyper-connectivity will have profound implications on just about everything.
In 2011 there will be 3 billion people connected to the internet*. As a result, the creation and spread of information (some trustworthy, some not) will accelerate and volatility will move into warp drive. Consequences? Anxiety will rise and new ideas will seemingly come out of nowhere (a good example of this is Google: $ 0-20 billion revenue in less than 400 weeks**). Titans like GM (or Google) could vanish from the landscape but there’s potentially something else buried in this connectivity too.
The people that will be connected to the internet will tend to be young and these people will tend to reside in Asia (where ageing is less of an issue). Implications? Ideas tend to come from younger people (look at Google again) so the flow of new insights, discoveries and inventions could very well shift from the US and Europe into the emerging CHIME and BRIC economies.
Cue giant analogue and pyramidal corporations and hierarchical government bureaucracies struggling to adapt to a digital, mobile and highly volatile world.
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* There are currently 4 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide and somewhere between 1 and 2 billion PCs.
** New Yorker, 12 October 2009, ‘Searching for Trouble’ by Ken Auletta
Really good list of Top 20 Food Trends posted recently at Restaurant News (www.nrn.com):
1 Locally grown produce
2 Locally sourced meats and seafood
3 Sustainability
4 Bites size/mini desserts
5 Locally produced wine and beer
6 Nutritionally balanced children’s dishes
7 Half portions. Smaller portion for a smaller price
8 Farm/estate-branded ingredients
9 Gluten-free/food allergy conscious foods
10 Sustainable seafood
11 Super-fruits (acai, goji, mangosteen, purslane et al)
12 Organic produce
13 Culinary cocktails (e.g. savory, fresh ingredients)
14 Micro-distilled/artisan liquor
15 Nutrition/health
16 Simplicity/back to basis
17 Regional ethnic cuisines
18 Non-traditional fish (Arctic Char, barramundi etc)
19 New cuts of meat
20 Fruit/vegetable children’s side items
My takeaways:
– Localism is getting big (incl. sustainable)
– Health/well-being is still huge
– Why isn’t convenience/time saving on this list?
Ref: National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot in 2010 Chef Survey (US)
Here’s something that I scribbled on the back of a napkin on the plane from Hong Kong to Sydney. It’s a new set of scenarios for the economy. It’s really for the UK economy but could be adapted to the global economy.
I’m a bit stuck on a name for the last quadrant (bottom right). At the extreme it’s “Middle Class Revolution” but that’s not really it. ‘Personal Fortress’ perhaps?
You don’t know me and I don’t know you so let’s just call it quits shall we?
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/
So it seems that wikipedia has lost its mojo; most postings now seem to be headlined with quality caveats that make it feel like they’ve been overrun by a swarm of lawyers. What I’m sure drove it’s appeal in the early days was that remarkable sense of collective wisdom that built up so fast; now they seem to be struggling to break through another threshold of quality, so powerfully demonstrated by their own disclaimers.
I guess they’ve also become victims of their own success; the Thierry Henry ambushing is pretty funny, but clearly leads to even more of the corporate crackdown behaviour that puts sincere contributors off. Maybe crowd sourcing isn’t a lasting phenomenon after all; undone by the spoilers and corporate killjoys in equal measure.
BTW, talking of things that have lost their mojo is seems that things at Apple are getting a little rotten. Take the new iPhone. It doesn’t work. It’s a great computer but it’s a useless phone. Did Apple realize this and ship the product anyway? As for their customer service the less said the better.
Of course there is a better explanation for all this. I remember some research ages ago saying that when a company made it onto the cover of a magazine it was usually a few months away from disaster. Equally, when a company was written about as “doomed” it was usually moments away from a recovery. Apple is currently sitting in the #1 spot as the “most admired company in America”. You do the math.
PS – Full disclosure. Wayde did the first half of these words. I liked them so much I stole them (with permission).
I like this statistic too…
If current trends hold, China’s urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2023.
Ref: McKinsey Global Institute