The iPhone and the future

I picked up this little iPhone of the Future riff musing on what the iPhone (phone, Blackberry's or PDAs in general) can do or will be able to do soon. With some editing...

1. Phone as a hotel or car key. Your phone can unlock your hotel door. Or car door. A firm known as OpenWays is currently working on the solution, which would allow you to skip the check-in desk and walk directly to your hotel room, having made the reservations in advance. For more see Tnooz.com

2. Advanced social networking. Walk into a restaurant and look at all of your friends who have been there and read the reviews they've written. ReadWriteWeb suggests that a more realistic form of social networking could take place, allowing you to integrate social networks with your life away from the keyboard.

3. Personalized travel guides. Another interesting idea from ReadWriteWeb is the idea of a personalized travel guide. Many people take virtual tours when they go to museums - so why not download an App that offers a virtual tour of Venice? Plug in the headphones and allow the GPS to show your App where you are in Venice, guiding you to the local restaurants and historic sites while offering recommendations for hotels and other tourist-friendly activities.

4. Phone projection for video. If the iPhone came with a projector, all you would need is a screen to carry movies with you.

Twitterstream analysis: a data-mining form of prediction markets

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide is using twitter to predict the near-term future outcomes. This is effectively a 'data-mining' form of prediction markets, something we may expect to see much, much more of in short-term prediction in the years to come.

According to techflash.com (Seattle) the firm last week accurately predicted The Hurt Locker would win Best Picture over Avatar at the 2010 Academy Awards, "based on findings gleaned from its "twendz pro" service, which analyzes conversations and trends on Twitter for patterns of influence and other key indicators.

"Among other things, the pre- Oscar analysis identified film critic Roger Ebert as a key influencer in the discussion, and noted that tweets in favor of Avatar were focused on its budget and sales, while supporters of Hurt Locker focused more on the content and quality of the film. In addition, the analysis found, Hurt Locker supporters averaged twice as many followers as supporters of Avatar did."

Ontario looks to its future (Ontario 2020)

Alway's a good thing when a city or region is prepared to look ahead and manage proactively. The second day of a 2-day Ontario 2020 conference is under way. More at www.ontario2020conference.ca

"This conference is a great opportunity to rise above the latest crises, visualize some of our possible futures, and imagine what we can do today to build the Ontario we want tomorrow," said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union in his opening address.

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, spoke on: "Who killed Canada's education advantage? Thomas Homer-Dixon, Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, discussed "Building resilience and strategies for coping with an uncertain future." Mary Robinson former president of Ireland and current Chair of The Ethical Globalization Initiative, will spoke on "prosperity and compassion."

The two-day conference will build and discuss possible scenarios of the future in four key areas: the economy, community, health care, and education. Ontario 2020 is chaired by noted Canadian journalist Wendy Mesley.

The unreadable stock market, proxy for the whole dimly readable future

I was quite taken with this little analysis of what doesn't work in making money in the stock market by 'The Stock Surfer.' The problem is obviously the same problem as predicting the future in general: technical analysis doesn't work, expert analysis is unreliable... Not to say there is no hope. Just that a lot of what is out there as 'knowledge' is an unsound basis if not downright dangerous to make decisions on. (How to judge foresight quality is a theme of Future Savvy.)

 

See http://thestocksurfer.blogspot.com/2010/03/crash-scenarios-and-questioning.html

Excerpt: "I used to eat (articles) up but I'm now much more skeptical of any analysis, no matter how well reasoned.  The unfortunate reality is that most of the reading I've done has provided me with very little tangible result.  The market seems more and more like an irrational gamble.  I'm not trying to be a downer here, I'm just trying to think clearly about how to manage money responsibly.  Let's review the ways:

"Buy and Hold: Doesn't work.  Based on the myth that markets go up over "long" periods.  The data is skewed by a bubble in the 90s we're still paying for.  The S&P 500 is right where it was in April of 1998, and is down by 1/3, yes 30%, from it's high.  I don't know anyone who has retired thanks to the market.

"Technical Analysis: I've learned a dozen different systems, none of which are very reliable.

"Fundamental Analysis: Doesn't work.  Based on the myth that a stock is a rational representation of a business.  Involves predicting the future based on past results and growth rates.

 

"Expert Analysis: They all disagree at times, and when they agree it's even worse, because they are wrong more often than not.  It seems to me that "market experts" make a living by selling products (financial advice or new investing tools / vehicles) to people.  Why don't they just make a living through trading?  Because they can't do it, unless they use someone else's money to magnify returns or have an inside edge."

The British Pound to collapse, or perhaps not

Billionaire financier Jim Rogers (left, Getty pics) has now denied that he predicted that the British Pound could completely collapse within weeks. The statement in The Daily Bell sent shockwaves throughout the global economy. Still concern over the pound rumbles and 1992 doesn't seem like such a long way away.
In the article Rogers, once a partner of George Soros, says: "Other currencies aren't strong and the Euro has real problems, with cracks much wider than Greece beginning to show. But it's the Pound that's most vulnerable. In real terms, it's already devalued against virtually every currency barring the Zimbabwean dollar and it's especially exposed over the weeks running up to the UK election. In a basket of currencies, the Pound is potentially a basket case. And that will put Britain in an extremely bad position for the shakedown. The last few months have seen a 'false bounce', shorn up by massive short-term injections of government underwriting."

Atoms are the new bits - nanotechnology manufacturing and industry consequences

Atoms are the New Bits - the New Industrial Revolution, by Chris Anderson, 01 February 2010. (Extract from Wired shared by Jamie Saunders, Futuresedge.)

"...Here's the history of two decades in one sentence: if the past ten years have been about discovering post-institutional social models on the web, then the next ten years will be about applying them to the real world.

"This story is about the next ten years.

"The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door and, once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more. They can become a virtual micro-factory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; products can be assembled and drop-shipped by contractors who serve hundreds of such customers simultaneously.

"...Hardware is becoming much more like software," as MIT professor Eric von Hippel puts it. That's not just because there's so much software in hardware these days, with products becoming little more than intellectual property wrapped in commodity materials, whether it's the code that drives the off-the-shelf chips in gadgets or the 3D design files that drive manufacturing. It's also because of the availability of common platforms, easy-to-use tools, web-based collaboration and internet distribution.

"We've seen this picture before: it's what happens just before monolithic industries fragment in the face of countless small entrants, from the music industry to newspapers. Lower the barriers to entry and the crowd pours in.

"The academic way to put this is that global supply chains have become scale-free, able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Sony. This change is driven by two forces. First, the explosion in cheap and powerful prototyping tools, which have become easier to use by non-engineers. And second, the economic crisis has triggered an extraordinary shift in the business practices of (mostly) Chinese factories, which have become increasingly flexible, web-centric and open to custom work (where the volumes are lower but the margins higher)...

"In short, atoms are the new bits."

Foresight meets Decision Support (i.e. where it should always be)

The Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) recently developed a white paper to present and evaluate Decision Support Planning Methods (DSPMs) to water utilities interested in incorporating climate change into their planning now.  The paper, 'Incorporating Climate Change Uncertainties into Water Planning' is available at http://www.wucaonline.org.

As reported on the Malcolm Pirnie site Ed Means says: "DSPMs consider multiple future conditions to incorporate more and greater uncertainties into the planning process and can be useful not only in planning for climatic uncertainty, but also in planning for uncertainty about regulatory, environmental, economic, social, and other variables affecting water utilities... There are several basic approaches that can be used:

Classic Decision Analysis
Classic decision analysis is a probability-based DSPM that systematically catalogues information and mathematically evaluates and ranks alternatives against multiple, potentially conflicting, decision objectives. Classic decision analysis illustrates the process with a decision tree or influence diagram, and handles uncertainty through the use of probabilities.

Traditional Scenario Planning
Traditional scenario planning is a scenario-based DSPM with the main objective of developing a plan that best prepares the water utility for a plausible range of uncertain circumstances. Scenarios are developed by identifying critical uncertainties and driving forces (e.g., climate, water quantity, water quality, demand, social and regulatory change, technology, economics) to create a range of future conditions that go beyond extrapolation of current trends and represent surprising but plausible conditions.

Robust Decision Making
Robust decision making is a framework that combines features of both classic decision analysis and traditional scenario planning, providing a systematic way of developing a water management strategy to best adapt to a wide range of plausible future conditions. It involves generating multiple future hydrologic/demand scenarios as well as developing multiple water resources strategies and optimizing the strategies using statistical tools.

Real Options
Real options is a method to help water managers identify water supply strategies that adjust over time and balance risks using traditional discounted cash flow approaches. Flexible investment strategies are sought that can be
risk-adjusted with time and deferred into the future. Uncertainties in real options are handled through the use of probabilities. Results are flexible in that they may incorporate delaying and phasing of facility projects.

Portfolio Planning
Portfolio planning is used in the financial world to select a portfolio containing a mix of assets or strategies that minimize financial exposure due to future market scenarios. Uncertainty is handled through the use of probabilities and Monte Carlo simulations, and minimized through hedging. Few applications in the water industry exist for this DSPM.

Gurus forecast future of print media

There's a reason why 'guru forecasting' is known as the worst method in foresight work. It's called 'groupthink' and you can see it for yourself in this CNN Money/ Fortune piece "10 sages read the future of print." The future? The 'tablet' takes over, but nobody knows what the business model is going to be. And I need a guru to tell me that?

The Road to Long Finance

The Long Finance, part of the Long Now Foundation, had an 'Enduring Value' Conference in London recently, including celebrity presenters Brian Eno, Stewart Brand and Alexander Rose. More on the Long Now/ Long Finance here.

One of the speakers and proponents of Long Finance, Professor Michael Mainell has made his book, The Road To Long Finance: A Systems View Of The Credit Scrunch, available for free download.

The future of finance is also the topic of 'Beyond the Financial Crisis' scenarios created by Angela Wilkinson at Oxford University's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society. The scenarios compare a future 'Growth' mode with a future 'Health' mode. They are available for free download.

Nanotechnologies and Food

Futurist and friend Dan Shostak of Strategic Affairs Forecasting (strategicaffairs.net) in Washington DC forwarded me this comprehensive Nanotechnologies and Food report, done by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee. As to be expected, it focuses on the public policy and regulatory angles, a welcome change from the pure technology discussions that pertain in this field, as if there were no adoption issues.

The report is in two volumes, with the second volume dedicated to the statements and presentations made to the committee.

Key take-aways

1. Nanotechnology is already entering the food supply. While many parts of food regulation will easily apply to these developments, nanotechnology also raises unique issues which require deliberation by the public and safety agencies.

2. Nanotechnology will be a series issue in the coming years. Governments and corporations should expect large scale and global campaigns against the use of nanotechnology.