Introduction

It is human nature to over-estimate what can be achieved within one year and under-estimate what can be achieved within five years.

Predicting short-term changes or shocks is often a fool's errand. But forecasting long-term directional change is possible by identifying trends through an analysis of deep history rather than of the shallow past. Even the Internet took more than 30 years to become an overnight phenomenon.

Prospection

In the psychology literature, they refer to "prospection"
to mean "thinking about the future":

James H. Lee, under the mentorship of Oliver Markley, discussed "virtual time travel". He concludes that "it is quite possible that the subconscious (or super-conscious) mind communicates more easily through symbols than through direct representation." He further notes, and I agree, that "much valuable insight can be lost or filtered out in the pursuit of factual, concrete imagery." Lee also adds that "the importance of symbolic data gathered ...should not be understated."

The Virtual Time Travel Paper, generated a fair bit of controversy, including a fairly pointed rebuttal from Joseph Coates:

There are a couple of interesting things to take from the Lee paper:
* one is the reference to the Honorton and Ferrari paper which did a meta-analysis of 309 forced choice PSI experiments. The ref is: Honorton C, Ferrari DC.
* another is the mention of Dean Radin's name - he wrote a book in the 1990s summarising the evidence for PSI. I can recall seeing a chart of meta-analyses in there which were stronger statistically than some material in an unrelated field that was considered acceptable for the journal Science ;-) The reference is:

Feb 2003

In Europe we will face a rapidly aging population given the extremely low birth rates (1.4 or less... we would need at least 2.1 to keep population constant).
In Switzerland we have 1 retired person for every 3 workers, but in 2050 we will have 4 retired persons every 5 workers resulting in a crisis of the pension funds. To overcome the crisis of the pension schemes, we will work longer, maybe till 75 years of age and to sustain current living standards we will have to increase our productivity (a theoretical 5% per year).  Globalization leads to standardization and requires a common language: the English language will become the "new Latin".

Sept. 2004

During the first 50 years of the info-tech era, about 1 billion people have come to use computers. The vast majority of them in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Today, computer industry sales in the U.S. are expected to increase just 6% per year from now to 2008, according to market researcher IDC. Where are the next 1 billion customers? "The robust growth opportunities are clearly shifting to the developing world," says Paul A. Laudicina, managing director at management consultant A.T. Kearney Inc. Tech companies are scrambling to cash in on what they hope will be the next great growth wave. Led by China, India, Russia, and Brazil, emerging markets are expected to see tech sales surge 11% per year over the next half decade, to $230 billion, according to IDC. What makes these markets so appealing is not just the poor, but also the growing ranks of the middle-class consumers. Already, there are 60 million in China and 200 million in India, and their numbers are growing fast. These newly wealthy consumers are showing a taste for fashionable brands and for products every bit as capable as those available to Americans, Japanese, and Germans.

June 2005, some interesting numbers:

July 2005, Understanding the present, envisioning the future:

Books and Articles about Change

May 2006, Perspective of the World

Game Theory and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada...
 
The Model: if you have several people (or institutions) who are negotiating over an outcome, then each actor gets a "vote" on each possible outcome that is a product of three factors: the *salience* of the issue to them overall, the *influence* they have over the decision, and the *utility* they derive from the outcome. These values must be elicited in some way from people knowledgeable about the situation, or calculated using a proxy variable. The intricacy lies in the way that agents negotiate over time. They decide whether or not to try to influence someone else by estimating the expected change in utility that influence could give them. On the assumption that people get tired of negotiating, over time the increase in utility has to be larger in order to decideto try to influence someone, and so eventually the negotiating round stops. Conceptually it's simple, and it goes beyond the economist's variable of *interest* and *utility* to include explicitly political factors *salience* and *influence*.

January 2006: Excerpt from The McKinsey Quarterly

Macroeconomic Trends

Social and Environmental Trends

Business and Industry Trends

2040: Space Solar Power

February 2008: Capturing Solar Energy in orbit and beaming it down to Earth in a 24 hours a day controlled process, in combination with hydrogen technology, apppears as one of the global, clean and sustainable solutions to replace fossil fuels. The application is expected to be operational in 30 years from now, and technological development is already underway.

Future of Furniture

China and India

February 25th, 2005
Almost two out of every five people on the planet are either Chinese or Indian. China alone has more people than Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa combined.
 
Between 1980 and 2003, China's economy grew at an average rate of 9.5 per cent a year, against 5.7 per cent in India. As Lord Desai of the London School of Economics has noted, "for India, the problem is achieving unity in diversity". China, however, is a "unitary hard state, which can pursue a single goal with determination and mobilise maximal resources in its achievement". China has accepted both growth and social transformation. India welcomes growth but tries to minimise social dislocation. If China and India will join forces...

Major trends

Sustainablity

Over the past two decades interest has grown in developing indicators to measure sustainability. Sustainablity is presently seen as a delicate balance between the economic, environmental and social health of a community, nation and of course the earth. Measures of sustainability at present tend to be an amalgam of economic, environmental and social indicators.

Tech Trends

How does computation affect our environment?

Technology Enabled Social Revolution

Enterprise agilities (Steve Ballmer)

Open Source

Open source software, unlike propietary software, is not owned by any company. Software can be accessed, modified and distributed by anyone without paying any royalties to the code's author. Adovcates of the system say it gives users a much better deal. A captive innovator (company) is not nearly as powerful as a whole community can be when it's given the chance to innovate. Open Source is enabling unexpected amounts of innovation. But instead of the software engineers doing the work, it's the customers. They decide what they want and can get it themselves.

New media

New media are media that result from the convergence of information and communication technology.

Upcoming Hierarchical models

Facts

2005: Hybrid Cars become cool

In 2005, Toyota, Honda and Ford expect to sell a total of 210,000 hybrids in the U.S., more than double last year's 86,203, with Toyota taking almost 70 percent of the market, due to extensive line of hybrids, which includes the Toyota Prius (US$21,515), the Toyota Highlander Hybrid (US$33,595) and Lexus RX-400h (US$49,185).

Networks

Networks are physical infrastructure facilities, but they have the power to enable "virtual relational systems". The network infrastructure affects all aspects of society and business.

Affordable computers

Ultra-personal computer

Desktop operating systems

Luxury mobile phones

Biometrics

Beauty

Every age has its ideal of beauty, and every age produces its visual incarnation of that ideal: the Venus de Milo, an icon of ideal beauty in the Greek world, the Mona Lisa in the Renaissance, mysterious and eternal, the "divine" Greta Garbo, symbol of an ethereal and enigmatic beauty in the 1920s, Marilyn Monroe, the spontaneous and seductive beauty of the 60s.

Ambition Beyond Measure

TiVo

TiVo CEO Michael Ramsay, a Scottish engineer, brought to market a beloved device that has had the greatest impact on the way people use TV since Zenith introduced the Space Command 400 remote control in 1956. Ramsay is going after a very Apple-like strategy: create cool stuff so people will become loyal fans and pay a premium. The TiVo device makes it simple to record TV shows so you can watch them when you want. TiVo, which costs about $100 and a monthly service fee of $12.95, is to the VCR what e-mail is to U.S. Postal Service mail, a much better means to an end. More than any previous invention, TiVo has detached TV shows from TV networks. If you own a TiVo, you don't care what channel a show is on. TiVo scoops up everything you want from all the channels and stores it. TiVo users tend to watch TiVo instead of channel surf. In the upcoming future, a lot of content might still come in over cable-TV lines from traditional broadcasters. But about 20% of television will come in over broadband Internet. DVRs are just beginning to take off. Only about 4% of U.S. homes own a DVR now, but that will shoot to 41% in five years, according to Forrester Research. In the next generation, TiVoToGo wants to detach shows from television itself.

Sensing Technologies

Ray Kurzweil: "The exponential growth of the power of information-based technologies is not limited to the price-performance of computers. Communication bandwidths, the shrinking size of technology, our knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating. Within the next couple of decades, computers with microscopic-sized sensors will be deeply integrated in the environment, our bodies and our brains, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality, and enhanced human intelligence."

Breakthrough for ambulatory medicine

Human-like Skin

Stretchable artificial skins for humans are now commercially available, but they generally lack electrical conductivity. In the near future it will be possible to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks by integrating various sensors (embed various transistor-based electronic circuits on a flexible plastic film) not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain, or ultrasonic. This human-like skin would give robots the sense of touch.

Robot Racing

E-gambling

Forecasting

Accuracy is the goal of prediction, and very little of any utility in the world today can be predicted. Logic, theoretical consistency, and usefulness are the hallmarks of forecasting, which is what we futurists should be hoping to achieve.

Eyebrow-raising predictions by Mr Ian Pearson

"Hey, want to download your mind?" Singapore Straits Times article, May 23, 2005 which contained the latest predictions of Mr Ian Pearson, head of the futurology unit at British telecommunications giant BT.

Technology Timeline

Ian Pearson and Ian Neild of BTexact Technologies in the United Kingdom have produced a tool called the BTexact technology timeline. Ian Pearson as BT's Futurologist, presents his insights into the future of many aspects of our daily lives.
 
Among the predictions:

2005

2006

2007

2008

2010

2015

2020

2025

2030

2033

2100

The Life Cycle of an Invention

Ray Kurzweil identifies seven stages in the evolution of a technology: precursor, invention, development, maturity, false pretenders, obsolescence, and antiquity. An invention will thrive, becoming a successful product, only if the crucial phases (precursor, invention, development, and maturity) are attended. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, described flying machines, but we don't consider him to be the inventor of the airplane. Most modern technologies are interdisciplinary. For example, speech recognition, involves speech science, acoustics, psychoacoustics, signal processing, linguistics, and pattern recognition.

Seeing the Future

Hot Trends, Cool Things

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"

Asimov, in 1940, in conjunction with science fiction author and editor John W. Campbell, formulated the Laws of Robotics. He subjected all of his fictional robots to these laws by having them incorporated within the architecture of their (fictional) "platinum-iridium positronic brains". The laws first appeared publicly in his fourth robot short story, "Runaround".

The Laws of Humanics - the Zeroth Law

Perception-Cognition-Action

Cybernetics

Cybernetics has been defined as the science of control in machines and animals, and hence it applies to technological, animal and environmental systems.

AdverGaming Market

Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman has estimated the size of the advergaming market -- those games built around a specific product or brand -- at $83.6 million in 2004. But he expects it to exceed $250 million in 2008.

Interesting blog | phlog

GCT: Germinal Choice Technology

Germ-line Engineering: genetically manipulate embryos to develop desired traits -- a more immediate and enticing possibility for most parents than cloning.

Inviting and Informative What-if Scenarios (Maps)

Knowledge Visualization

Search Engines and Microsoft

To profit from search a company needs three elements:

The next windows upgrade (code-named Longhorn) will blend local and Internet search. Given the importance of search and the size of this market (Search will account for $2 billion in advertising in 2003 to nearly $7 billion by 2007, according to U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray), Microsoft might acquire a search engine company.

Convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design

Enterprise, Innovation and Technology Exchange

Think Tank about the Future

Business and Technology weblog

China PC Market Overtaking U.S. by 2010

October 15, 2003

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Intel Corp, the world's biggest computer chip maker, expects the fast-growing China market to surpass the United States as the top consumer of PCs by 2010.
China is expected to sell 13 million PCs this year, eclipsing Japan's 12.7 million units as the world's No. 2 PC market, according to research firm International Data Corp. The U.S. is likely to ship 51 million PCs this year.
Full Article

1.5 billion broadband PCs by 2010

May 15, 2003

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than 1.5 billion computers, or three-fifths of all computers sold, will have high-speed Internet connections by the end of this decade, Intel President Paul Otellini predicted on Thursday.
By 2010, handheld devices that combine computer, phone and video features will run faster than the fastest Pentium chip Intel now produces, and run some one billion transistors spinning at over four billion cycles a second.
Full Article

Contract Manufacturers: Outsourcing Innovation

Asian contract manufacturers and independent design houses have become forces in nearly every tech device, from laptops and high-definition TVs to MP3 music players and digital cameras. The multimedia devices produced from the prototypes of HTC, Flextronics, Cellon will end up on retail shelves under the brands of companies that don't want you to know who designs their products. These and other little-known companies, with names such as Quanta Computer, Premier Imaging, Wipro Technologies (WIT), and Compal Electronics, are fast emerging as hidden powers of the technology industry.

Contract Producers: Taiwan

June 2005: Traditionally contract producers for other global brands, companies like Asustek Computer Inc. (2357.TW) and MiTAC International Corp. (2315.TW) are now cranking out new designs to win their own share of the lucrative consumer pie. Taiwan's top electronics components maker, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (2317.TW), is selling its "Foxconn"-branded motherboards and oven-size casings to consumers in the clone market who want to build their own powerful computers. Hon Hai expects sales of Foxconn parts this year to increase seven-fold from 2004 as the do-it-yourself PC market grows.
 
MiTAC is making PDAs that allow car drivers to navigate with global positioning system (GPS) receivers. Its latest PDA not only offers digital maps but also doubles as an MP3 player. Smaller rival Polstar Technologies Inc. exhibited a similar GPS device with bluetooth functions.
 
MiTAC launched its first GPS PDA in late 2003 and sells about a third of its GPS products under the "Mio" brand now. Ho said PDA sales will grow by "several times" this year from 2004, after selling 500,000 units globally in the first quarter. We have to keep in mind that the life cycle of such PDAs is a bit longer than that of cellphones and it takes longer time to see replacement demand. MiTAC also supplies to electronics distributors like Medion AG (MDNG.DE) and Typhoon Exploration Inc. (Vancouver:TOO.V - news)

Outsourcing Software Projects

Digital magazines

Microsoft Palladium

Palladium will require changes to hardware, software and even the data itself. First, it establishes a secure computing space, which means that as a computer starts up, the software will verify that the hardware components such as hard drives can't be read by unauthenticated programs under any known circumstances. Palladium will also check the computer central processing unit serial number before kicking into operation; both Intel and AMD have already said they're willing to include such identification. Before any program is run, Palladium will make sure it's authenticated via a digital certificate. Stored data will be encrypted and will only be decrypted by authenticated programs.

Palladium isn't a digital rights management (DRM) platform in the traditional sense; it does, however, enable DRM systems to govern content after it has entered a client computer. But Palladium isn't really an enabler. It an enforcer.

Image sensor market


 
NERO wearing the Adidog shirt
 
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