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Innovation Timeline 1900 – 2050: what we might invent in the next few decades

Ross Dawson, March 2, 2007 3:20 PM US PT

Following the big success of the Trend Blend 2007+ trend map, Future Exploration Network partner organization Nowandnext.com has followed up with an Innovation Timeline 1900-2050. It represents visually (and as usual somewhat tongue in cheek) the development of innovation from 1900, starting with the tape recorder, safety razor, tabloid newspaper, aeroplane and cornflakes, and flowing up to 2050, before when we may see such fun, delightful, and useful things as baby exchanges, compulsory biometric ID, sleep surrogates, VR enhancing drugs, face recognition doors, robotic pest control, prison countries, 3D fax, gravity tube, self-repairing roads, reputation trading, individual pollution credits, digital mirrors, stress control clothing, and far, far more. Have a look and play with the ideas. It will be interesting to see whether this gets as much traction as the Trend Blend 2007+ trend map.

Click here to download the full Innovation Timeline 1900 - 2050 (pdf).

Also see Richard Watson's blog post on this.

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.