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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.

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.

BusinessWeek Online: Tech's next 1 billion customers
The Big Picture
The Learning Society
Exponential Growth of Know-Why (decision making capacity), Constant Growth of Know-Who and Negative Growth of Know-What. Picture taken during the Riel Miller presentation at the European Futurists conference in Lucerne. This is really an excellent graph!
Scenario Thinking in Practice
Scenarios of students since 1996
The Globalist
Dedicated to Global Understanding

June 2005, some interesting numbers:

Korea's ATM penetration is 43 times China's and 131 times India's.
Indonesia's household borrowings as a percentage of GDP is 12%, compared to Singapore at 83%.
The number of Chinese households earning more than $10,000 per year increased more than 54% since 1999.
The number of credit card holders in Thailand increased by more than 28% in 2004, the highest of all countries surveyed.

July 2005, Understanding the present, envisioning the future:

Books and Articles about Change

The Future Survey "Top 30" in 2007
Selected by Michael Marien (FS editor)
The Change Handbook
This book is about effective change. It describes methods for changing "whole systems," that is, change based on two powerful foundation assumptions: high involvement and a systemic approach to improvement.
The Change Codes
The Change Resisters

May 2006, Perspective of the World

Paul Theroux, writer-traveller: "When you are young you assume, overall, there is a steady progress upwards. Today, with wi-fi in China and call centres in India, the world is immeasurably deluded in the belief that progress is somehow bound up with technological advances - rather than with food, shelter, environment. I believe we are on an irreversible course towards an environmental catastrophe, which is not being addressed, because it is not in the interest of business to deal with it."
"The inevitable rise of ocean levels, global warming, the Artic refuge sacrificed to the need for more oil, nuclear proliferation beyond Iran, uniquely low birth rates in Europe and population expansion in India and China. I don't know the answers to these questions but I don't feel optimistic, because you have self-interested governments. The fact that some countries are well-fed doesn't impress me, because most of the world I have seen is poor, most of the world doesn't have a chance." Paul Theroux, interviewed by Parvathi Nayar, Singapore, The Business Times, May 6-7 2006.
Global Issues

January 2006: Excerpt from The McKinsey Quarterly

Macroeconomic Trends

Today, Asia (excluding Japan) accounts for 13 percent of world GDP, while Western Europe accounts for more than 30 percent. Within the next 20 years the two will nearly converge. Some industries and functions-manufacturing and IT services, for example-will shift even more dramatically. The United States will still account for the largest share of absolute economic growth in the next two decades.
Without clear productivity gains, the pension and health care burden will drive taxes to stifling proportions.
Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade as economic growth in emerging markets pushes them beyond the threshold level of $5,000 in annual household income-a point when people generally begin to spend on discretionary goods.
By 2015 the Hispanic population in the United States will have spending power equivalent to that of 60 percent of all Chinese consumers.

Social and Environmental Trends

More than two billion people now use cell phones. We send nine trillion e-mails a year. We do a billion Google searches a day, more than half in languages other than English. For perhaps the first time in history, geography is not the primary constraint on the limits of social and economic organization.
Oil demand is projected to grow by 50 percent in the next two decades, and without large new discoveries or radical innovations supply is unlikely to keep up. We are seeing similar surges in demand across a broad range of commodities. In China, for example, demand for copper, steel, and aluminum has nearly tripled in the past decade.

Business and Industry Trends

New global industry structures are emerging. In response to changing market regulation and the advent of new technologies, nontraditional business models are flourishing, often coexisting in the same market and sector space.
Management will go from art to science. Bigger, more complex companies demand new tools to run and manage them. Indeed, improved technology and statistical-control tools have given rise to new management approaches that make even mega-institutions viable. Long gone is the day of the "gut instinct" management style. Today's business leaders are adopting algorithmic decision-making techniques and using highly sophisticated software to run their organizations. Scientific management is moving from a skill that creates competitive advantage to an ante that gives companies the right to play the game.
Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge. ccess to knowledge has become almost universal. Yet the transformation is much more profound than simply broad access. New models of knowledge production, access, distribution, and ownership are emerging. We are seeing the rise of open-source approaches to knowledge development as communities, not individuals, become responsible for innovations. Knowledge production itself is growing: worldwide patent applications, for example, rose from 1990 to 2004 at a rate of 20 percent annually. Companies will need to learn how to leverage this new knowledge universe-or risk drowning in a flood of too much information.
The McKinsey Quarterly: The Online Journal of McKinsey & Co.
Making a Market in Knowledge

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

FlexibleLove
FlexibleLove experimental furniture are made from recycled paper and wood products.
Sprout Design
Industrial designers sproutdesign have designed a chair made of recycled playstations (to cope with the WEEE directive)
Manufacturing for innovating users

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

Nature:
- Global warming
- Scarcity of drinkable water
Technology:
- Digital Communication
- Broadband and Convergence
- Nanotechnology
- Biotechnology
- Genetic Engineering
- Wireless
- Fuel Cells
Society:
- Globalization
- Immigration / Integration
Economy
- Globalization
- Glocalization
- Corporate Sustainability
US Power and its influence on the Monopolar World Order:
+ Military & Technology, biggest budgets, alliances (Nato, UK etc...).
+ Monetary & Industrial, the US dollar is still the most important currency worldwide.
+ Transnational Corporations, global rulemakers (Microsoft), capable of penetrating the world market in a short time (Starbucks coffee = global corporation in less than 20 years).
= One possible thesis would be that the US Superpower has started decreasing due to overexpansion; in the meantime China keeps growing...

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.

Sustainability indicators are often an amalgam of economic, social and environmental indicators, but show signs of maturing into better measures of sustainability.
Such indicators however are limiting measures reflecting unsustainability and survival rather than sustainability. Their main value is in indicating direction of change rather than a desirable state.
Indicators are the map not the territory (the finger pointing at the moon). The hard work of achieving sustainability lies elsewhere.
The most successful initiatives to measure sustainability are those initiated and controlled by autonomous public groups, where the process is more important than the indicators.

Tech Trends

Device Explosion
Abundant Computing Power and Communication
Broadband Connectivity Everywhere
Open Source

How does computation affect our environment?

Moore's Law
In 1964, Gordon Moore of Intel noted that CMOS transistor density doubles reliably every 18-24 months. In 1999, Ray Kurzweil noted this doubling trend has held for at least 110 years. What new products and services will this enable in 2015? 2025?
Dickerson's Law
In 1977, Richard Dickerson, a professor of chemistry at Caltech, noted that solved protein crystal structures had risen from one in 1961 to 23. He published a simple exponential formula which predicted that by March 2001 scientists would have solved 3-D structures for more than 12000 proteins. He was only 57 short of the actual number. How many physical processes are so computation-dependent?
Smith's Law
Alvy Ray Smith, Microsoft graphics guru and co-founder of Pixar has said, "Reality begins at 80 million polygons per second." Joi Ito notes Toy Story had 5-6 million polygons per frame. Toy Story 2 had twice that. Our best digital faces today have 100 motion control points. The actual Reality Transition may be 800 million polygons/frame and thousands of control points. We are rapidly approaching this threshold. What then?
Contribution Economy
Roberto Vitalini
Online Virtual Worlds and Geo-Spatial Web
Jerry Paffendorf

Technology Enabled Social Revolution

Continuos Computing
Mobile Devices + Wireless Everywhere + Web 2.0 = Social Revolution

Enterprise agilities (Steve Ballmer)

Velocity
Flexibility
Empowerment
Info and Action on the Front Line
Mobile Real-Time Collaboration

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.

Jan 2005: Red Hat's Michael Tiemann blasts software patents as relics of the 1700s. If it were up to him, the world would have free access to all software. Red Hat does not sell software. It makes money from support ranging from training down to system maintenance, deployment and integration with other applications. Red Hat reported a 55 percent jump in revenues of USD 50.9 million for the quarter ending in November 2004.
OpenSUSE.org
We work together to create and distribute the world's most usable Linux.
OpenOFFICE.org
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite.
mozilla Firefox
Rediscover the web.

New media

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

Upcoming Hierarchical models

Jazz Combo or Targeted Improvization as alternative to Perfection by Direction.
Syntegrity, Flux

Facts

Europe, year 2030, 70% of car drivers will be over 50
Today, June 2005, any car driver in a metropolitan area, has an average speed of 12 Km/h, transports on average 100Kg (himself + laptop, bike etc...) over a distance of max. 5 Kilometers. Well, this is the performance of a MULE! If we would be riding a mule or a Ferrari there would be no difference in the performance.
Contrast: A 480 horsepower car can transport 2 persons and a horse-drawn wagon can transport 9 persons.

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.

The Network is the Economy
The Network is the Market
Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems

Affordable computers

Encore's Simputer
The Simputer is a low-cost Personal Computer with multiple connectivity options. It is designed to be modular and extensible, and based entirely on free software from the Open Source Initiative. Its primary input is a touch-sensitive overlay on the LCD display panel. The Simputer, is based on GNU/Linux software technology that is open and modular. The Linux Kernel version 2.4 has been ported to the Simputer.
Emachines
EMachines annually sells about 400,000 computers at $399 each

Ultra-personal computer

Oqo
Full-power, full-feature Windows XP PC that can be carried in the pocket as easily as a cellular phone.

Desktop operating systems

Lycoris
Lycoris machines are good for light word processing, Web surfing and e-mail, which is 90 percent of what people use computers for.
Lindows
the power, stability and cost-savings of Linux with the ease of windows

Luxury mobile phones

Biometrics

October 2002 :: The worldwide biometrics market will be worth over £ 300m next year, with the bulk of the spending in large enterprises and governments.
A biometric mouse which records images of the veins in a user's hand is the latest tool developed to increase IT security.

The Fujitsu-Siemens device captures an image of the user's veins, which is as individual as a fingerprint but harder to fake.

An infrared light source illuminates the network of blood vessels in the palm as black lines, and a digital camera records the image through an aperture in the top of the mouse.

This new method does not rely on an external fingerprint and, as such, is much harder to fool. The network of blood vessels is unchanging and is not affected by dirt or skin damage, as is the case with fingerprints.
Siemens Biometrics
Byoscript

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.

Miss Digital World
Miss Digital World is the search for a contemporary ideal of beauty, represented through virtual reality.

Ambition Beyond Measure

Nakheel
Nakheel is the premier real estate developer of Dubai, UAE

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."

Sensors Expo & Conference
Sensors Expo & Conference is the leading sensors event in North America featuring a conference program, dedicated to exploring the most up-to-date innovations in sensor technology including physical sensors, sensor networks, biosensors, MEMS/Nanotechnology, Instrumentation & Controls, Intelligent Systems, Machine-to-Machine communication, wireless sensing and IT technology.
Companies that have displayed sensor products at Sensors Expo 2004

Breakthrough for ambulatory medicine

Taking heart article
Measure a patient's heart rate and transmit it securely to a workstation located at a hospital in your community -- or a medical center half-way around the world.
Active Corporation
Visual Training Technologies

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

Red Team Robot Racing

E-gambling

Electronic gambling revenues are forecast to grow tenfold between 2000 and 2006, reaching $14.5 billion by 2000
Global iTV gambling expenditure is forecast to reach $6 billion by 2006, from $29 million in 2000
By 2006, global mobile gambling revenues are forecast to reach $642 million, with 10.2 million users

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.

2020: computer systems being able to feel emotions. "Not everyone agrees, but it's my conclusion that it's possible to make a conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence before 2020. One of the 'primary reasons' for such work would be to give computers emotions."
"If I'm on an aeroplane, I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am, so it does everything to stay in the air until it's supposed to be on the ground."
2050: downloading your mind to a supercomputer. "If you draw the time lines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem. If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT." As an example of the advances being made, Mr Pearson noted that Sony's new PlayStation 3 computer games console is 35 times as powerful as the model it replaced. In terms of processing, it is '1 per cent as powerful as a human brain'.

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

Personalized adverts on TV and Radio
Polymer video screens built into clothes

2006

Nomadic information companies paying no corporation tax

2007

People have some virtual friends but don't know which ones

2008

Electronic Newspaper
VR overlays on real world

2010

Highest earning celebrity is synthetic
25 percent of TV celebrities synthetic
Mood sensitive light bulbs
Video tattoos
Foetal Sex Selection Becomes the Norm
Hackers wipe out networks, causing chaos and mass starvation

2015

Virtual Windows
Nanotechnology Toys

2020

Fuel cells replace internal combustion engines
Anti noise technology in gardens
Computer enhanced dreaming
3D home printers
Smart skin for intelligent clothing and direct human repair
Micromechanical gnomes
Cyberspace covers 75 percent of developed world
Need to book time slots to use some key roads

2025

Thought recognition as everyday input means
More robots than people in developed countries

2030

Nanotechnology war
Humans access net directly, become an integral part of global information system

2033

Brain "add-ons"

2100

Immortality chip - people move into cyberspace

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.

Elettropedia > Retrofuturo

Seeing the Future

Core77
Industrial Design Supersite
Core77 > Timex 2154
Core77 > Memory
Core77 > Personal Security
Technovelgy.com
Devoted to the creative inventions of science fiction authors and movie makers.
Nec Design
Near-Future Ubiquitous Networking Devices Visualized by Designers.
Lite-on Awards
Foreseeing the Future

Hot Trends, Cool Things

Ubercool
Ubercool is a media and entertainment company that provides trendsetters with the latest on all that is "ubercool" – outstanding examples of trend-propelled products and services.
The Future Laboratory
One of Europe's leading trend, brand and futures strategy consultancies.
Trendwatching
Consumer trends and new business ideas.
CScout
Trendblog
nouvo.ch
Swiss TV program - latest tech trends
Agenda Inc.
Pop culture and brand strategy >> Live Feed
Trendimpulse.de
Kreativphase Trendportal
Technorati
Read 19m opinions by category on a daily basis

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".

1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The Laws of Humanics - the Zeroth Law

An interesting article (by Jamihossain.org) on the possibility of a Laws of humanics similar to the three laws of Robotics formulated by Issac Asimov. The article delves into the aspects of human psyche that enables one man to harm another.

Perception-Cognition-Action

It's the ability to synthesize the world in stereotyped actions that allows us to survive and eventually perform complex tasts. Cognition depends on this transition of information from the right to the left hemisphere. Brain hemispheres cannot compete, they have been programmed to work in tandem.

The right hemisphere
> deals with new situations
The left hemisphere ("dominant")
> performs routines
The frontal lobe
> liberates an organism from the slavery of instinct

Cybernetics

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

World Transhumanist Association
For the ethical use of technology to extend human capacities
Department of Cybernetics
University of Reading
Kevin Warwick
Britain's leading prophet of the robot age.
In 1998 he shocked the international scientific community by having a silicon chip transponder surgically implanted in his left arm. A series of further implant experiments have taken place in which Kevin's nervous system was linked to a computer.
Dr. Steve Mann
A computer science engineer in Toronto, Canada, who may be the world's first "cyborg": part man, part machine. Mann has boosted his sensory abilities with special glasses and implanted sensors that enhance his perception of reality and give him constant biofeedback. He's the author of Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer and a pioneer in the field of cybernetics.
Stelarc
human-machine interfaces
Evolutionary Robotics
Prof D. Floreano: Bio-inspired Artifacts, Artificial DNA, Artificial Neural Networks.
Lusted, H.S. and Knapp, R.B. Controlling computers with neural signals. Scientific American, vol. 275, no. 4 (Oct.), pp. 82-87, 1996.

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.

Skittles Pop It! game
As the cartoon kids blow gum bubbles, they begin floating away on your computer screen. With a series of speedy mouseclicks, you must prick the bubbles before the children fly over a rainbow.
This is far from an elaborate Internet computer game. But the so-called advergame -- a cross between a game and marketing -- is clearly effective marketing for Skittles' new bubblegum. Since last summer, more than 840,000 games have been played on Skittles' Web site, all the while introducing -- and reintroducing -- the name of the brand's latest product.
U.S. Army Game

Interesting blog | phlog

Engadget
btang phlog
A photographic blog of the real, surreal, and unreal by Beverly Tang
Minding the Planet
Nova Spivack's journal of unusual news and ideas "straight from the global mind to your brain"

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.

Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans
In the future we will create a new species of post-humans, endowed with desirable characteristics which parents order like optional extras on a car. The essential tool is germ-line choice technology, manipulating the genetic make-up of a person in the early embryo.

Knowledge Visualization

vasp datatecture
Vision + Creation
XPLANE
The Visual Thinking Company
The Work of Edward Tufte
Presenting Data and Information

Search Engines and Microsoft

To profit from search a company needs three elements:

High quality algorithmic search
MSN and Yahoo used to outsource this to companies like Inktomi and Google.
By buying Inktomi and Ouverture, Yahoo has taken control of the two missing elements.
A paid search network, which allows you to display links to paying advertisers alongside the editorial results.
MSN and Yahoo had outsourced this to Overture.
Own distribution. You must own the site where the consumer makes his or her query and the results are displayed.
Until recently this was the only element MSN and Yahoo owned.

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

TED event
800 thought-leaders, movers, shackers, together, during 4 days.

Enterprise, Innovation and Technology Exchange

Global Entrepolis
The GES platform supports Singapore's vision of itself as a global entrepolis, where the three key pillars of enterprise - venture capitalists, technopreneurial startups and large companies leverage upon one another for growth and success. GES 2003 attracted over 10,500 participants with more than 1,000 entrepreneurs from China and 500 from India.

Think Tank about the Future

Club of Amsterdam
It is an independent, international think tank that supports thought leaders and knowledge workers to form opinions, visions and agendas about preferred futures.

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

Coders 4 Rent
Where worldwide software professionals bid to complete all your software projects. Find freelance programmers and coders.
Life Info Technologies
Industries expertise in Finance Automation, healthcare, banking, telecom and biotech.
Induslogic
Software Product Engineering.
Gartner Benchmarking Solutions
IT Outsourcing Contract Benchmarking

Digital magazines

Zinio.com
Same Magazines... Now Digital

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.

Read the full article by David Weinberger: The Palladium Paradox

Image sensor market

September 27, 2002 :: The global image sensor market would grow to $5 billion by 2005 from $1 billion at present. While digital cameras and photo-phones will account for much of that, the long-term future could bring a ballooning of applications, from camera-containing "pills" that look for signs of intestinal disease to car airbags that adjust to the size of a passenger". Sony Corp President Kunitake Ando declared:
"In the broadband future, almost every portable product will have a camera".
Japan dominates the market for charge-coupled devices (CCDs)