Recently in Future of humanity Category
Below is a brief interview I did when I spoke at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam recently. Some of the points I cover:
TheNextWeb produced a good quality video of my keynote at TheNextWeb Conference 2012, shown below. It doesn’t show all of my full motion graphics presentation, though it frequently cuts to show segments of the visuals through my keynote. I will create and share a full video of my motion graphics presentation along with the audio
Continue reading Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds
This morning I appeared on Channel 7′s The Morning Show talking about the world 10 years from now. A few of the things I mentioned in the interview include:
I’m a big fan of Tim Stock‘s work, which weaves together a deep network perspective with a rich view of how culture is changing informed by semiotic analysis. I earlier shared one of his presentations in a post on how the culture of luxury is changing. The slides to his presentation at SXSW today on
Continue reading Using network perspectives to visualize changing culture and meaning
It strikes me that in these these confused and confusing times we should lay down clear thoughts about what we believe in. I am mustering my thoughts across a number domains to express what I think is important. However one of the questions is what to call these statements. On the face of it ‘Manifesto’
Pew Internet & American Life Project’s latest study on the future of the internet examines how young people will be affected by technology. The study selected 1,021 “experts” and asked them to choose between one of the following statements, with no other choices, with these results:
I have just seen the video of Peter Weyland’s speech at TED 2023, shown below. It is a superb piece, bringing together ideas, performance, and production to create a powerful impression in a few minutes. I had to do some research to find what the speech is actually promoting. At the end of the movie
Continue reading A vision writ large: The future, personality, and hubris
We released our Map of the ExaTrends of the Decade a while ago now. However the decade is still young, and all of these ExaTrends (which is a MegaTrend cubed) have a long way yet to play out. We have created a set of slides to make the 14 ExaTrends easier to read and understand.
A while back we released our Map of the ExaTrends of the Decade. We are now releasing a series of short videos delving into the ExaTrends, starting with Reputation Economy. Some of the issues covered in the video include: * The amount of data we have now is enabling the measurement of reputation * Influence
Continue reading VIDEO – ExaTrends of the Decade: Reputation Economy
Our online magazine FutureofSex.net explores this fascinating aspect of the intersection of technology and society. The rise of our connected world has implications that reach into almost every aspect of our lives. I did many Valentine’s Day interviews back in 2003 and 2004, talking about proximity dating, one way in which technology is changing how
Continue reading Remote Sex: the perfect Valentine’s Day present
For any student of potential disruptive technological advances, life extension inevitably looms as one that could completely change the condition of humanity. While there is heated debate about whether the current proposed approaches to life extension being proposed have any merit, there is no question that major advances are possible in the field.
This morning I appeared on the Australian national breakfast TV program Sunrise in their ‘Ask an Expert’ segment, talking about the year ahead. Here is the 4 minute clip. In the brief segment I draw on a number of the 12 Themes for 2012 I recently released. The key topics we discussed were:
We recently launched our 12 Themes for 2012, shown below, in which the third of the 12 themes is ‘Privacy vanishes’. 2012: 12 Themes View more presentations from rossdawson One of the drivers of privacy vanishing is the rise of facial recognition. As the 2012 themes document notes, while Facebook has prominently launched its facial
Continue reading Will your privacy completely vanish? It depends how we use facial recognition
Towards the end of each year I share some thoughts on what awaits in the year ahead. It is actually a lot easier to look years into the future than just a single year, as while we can readily discern broad trends, the major events in a year are usually unforeseeable, though they may express
Continue reading 12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead
In Chapter 1 of my 2002 book Living Networks I wrote: When did you last say or hear someone say “what a small world”? People have an unquenchable fascination with how richly we are connected, never ceasing to be amazed by the seeming coincidences of how one friend knows another through a completely different route.
Continue reading Our shrinking degrees of separation: heading down from 6 to 3
A nice video titled On the Brink of a Networked Society, shown below, has just been launched by Ericsson. It includes a series of excellent interviews exploring some of the many implications and directions of a connected world, including health, industry structure, how we socialize, and far more. It’s well worth watching. The single quote
I have recently done a number of interviews on the implications of Apple’s voice assistant Siri. To me, it’s looking very much like Apple has once again brought a technology to market precisely when it is sufficiently mature to impress. Voice control and ‘intelligent assistants’ are far from new, but haven’t been widely used to
Continue reading Siri and the dawn of the era of intelligent agents
I caught up with fellow futurist Kristin Alford last week, yet another first time face-to-face meeting after a long time interacting online. It seems most of the people I meet these days are people I know from Twitter. Kristin pointed me to some of what her company Bridge8 is doing in creating animated videos about
Continue reading Animated excursions into the future: the extraordinary implications of utility fog
The Smithsonian Institute and Pew Research Center recently did a survey of Americans on what they thought would happen by the year 2050. Good created a nice infographic, below, summarizing some of the data. Click on the image for the full size version. Image source: Good The Smithsonian magazine has also created a nice animation
Arthur C. Clarke was certainly one of the most prescient people of the last century, anticipating many developments and in fact inventing the geo-stationary satellite on which much of the early media and communication revolution was based. In this fantastic segment from a BBC broadcast in 1964 he confidently makes two predictions, one absolutely accurate,
I saw Connected: The Film by Tiffany Shlain last night at its Australian premiere, organized by Annalie Killian. The first thing I have to say is that the film is absolutely fantastic. It nails how we as humans live an intensely interdependent world, and how our recognition of and response to that will determine our
Continue reading A story about Connected: The Film and why you must see it
The Imagine Cup is an initiative by Microsoft in which students from around the world to come up with technology solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems. This morning at an event at the Powerhouse Museum it was announced that Sydney will host the global 2012 Imagine Cup. They showed a video, as below, of
Serendipity is for me a deeply meaningful word. The more than dozen posts discussing serendipity on my blog include how we created “enhanced serendipity” at an event I ran in 2003 in New York, more details on the story of the word serendipity and how to enhance it, the importance of the “serendipity dial” and
Continue reading Serendipity is at the heart of today’s emerging society
My company Advanced Human Technologies has recently launched the website Future of Sex (futureofsex.net), which explores the intersection of technology and human sexuality. A few people have been surprised to see us launch this site, as it is a little different from the topics we usually cover. Here is the background and reasons why we’ve
Continue reading Launch of Future of Sex: why we’re doing it
I spoke last night at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, to speak at the last of their GoMA Talks on the 21st century which accompany their current exhibit of 21st century art. The topic was the future of the 21st century, with panellists: – Antony Funnell, presenter of ABC Radio National’s Future Tense
Continue reading Video and notes on the future of the 21st century
In the early 1990s I worked for several years in Japan as a financial and business journalist. The first article I ever wrote beyond the world of business was on an issue that I felt was very important: the dangers of Japan’s nuclear program. I have been searching for the article for the last week,
Continue reading Japan’s nuclear crisis could be foreseen – a view from 19 years ago
I am writing this in the air over the Rockies, flying back from a scenario planning workshop I ran for a client yesterday. Over the last dozen years that I have been running scenario planning projects I have observed that corporate interest in scenario planning is cyclical. The time horizons that executives think in tend
Continue reading 4 reasons why an increased pace of change means greater unpredictability
Almost five years ago now I wrote a post titled Being in two places at the same time which described how Professor Ishiguro, a Japanese roboticist, had created a robot replica of himself so he could give lectures at his university without enduring the commute from his home. The robot, named Geminoid HI-1 to emphasize
Continue reading The latest robots are virtually indistinguishable from people
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: HAVES AND HAVE NOTS Across communities, nations, and the world, there is a keen risk of increasing separation between those who have access to technology, tools, and basic needs, and those who do not. This is not inevitable. However it will require concerted action around the
The internet can be characterized very simply. Billions of people are looking for interesting and useful information, and millions of companies are trying to make money by people finding their content, through search engines and increasingly on social media. This has led to the rise of companies such as Demand Media, which last week listed
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: ENERGY SWITCH The way we use energy will change faster than ever before in human history. Renewable energy sources, electric cars, and strict energy accounting, driven in part by carbon taxes on fossil fuels, will transform transportation and large chunks of the economy, faster than we
Our recently launch Map of the Decade triptych comprised three parts: the Map of the Decade, details on the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist for 2011. I think may have been a mistake to put the Map of the Decade and Zeitgeist themes in the one document, as many
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: DEMOGRAPHIC CRUNCH Many developed nations will start hitting the wall in their ability to support their elderly. The contrast with the rapid growth of developing nations will bring into focus the turn in economic fortunes. The inevitable result is mass migration, licit or illicit. See the
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: CULTURE JAMMING Remix culture will surge, with everybody taking and jamming up slices of everything and anything to express themselves, while intellectual property law fails to keep pace. Every culture on the planet will reach everywhere – the only culture we will know is a global
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE In a world of infinite information and diversity of opinion we will not drown, but harness our dormant potential to be more together than we are individually. Crowdsourcing platforms and aggregators of insight will be part of the planks that create the reality of
Continue reading ExaTrend of the 2010s: Collective Intelligence
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
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.
Books By Ross Dawson (Incl. Free Chapters)
Articles and Reports
Future of Media Report 2008
Future of Media Report 2007
Future of Media Report 2006
Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy
Future of the Media Lifecycle
Future of Media: Strategy Tools
Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Framework
Trend map 2007+
Extinction Timeline
SAP White Paper: Service Delivery Innovation
White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services
CNET/ University of Virginia White Paper: How Technology Purchasing Decisions Are Really Made
PM Network magazine's lead article on virtual teamwork (440KB), featuring Ross Dawson on the cover
Microsoft Strategic White Paper: How To Lock-in Your Clients (1.1MB)
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- Apr 27, 2012 – 20 minutos April 27, 2012
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