FUTURE TRENDS
Our proprietary Curious Clues are facts about the future. We believe in the Williams Gibson (he coined the term “cyber-space”) premise: the future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed. Thus, our Curious Clues convey ideas, themes, and concepts that already exist in the world but are several years away from commercial reality. They feed our minds and help us conceive your own future.
trends and explorations
INNOVATION WE ARE FOLLOWING NOW
Mind Quest
We have brains and we have minds. Your brain is this physical structure, essentially your hard drive and your engine. Your mind is a larger field of energy that is simultaneously emitting and receiving, interpreting and explaining, emotions and content, meaning and purpose. In the future, energy will be devoted to understanding the depths of how our minds work, beyond our brains. In the coming years, we’ll see new paths for this exploration that helps us interact with the world in a more holistic manner. We will see large organizations continue to embrace mindfulness as a core skill. The more we understand and embrace the elegant coupling of artificial intelligence with human intelligence - Ai + Hi — the more intellectually and creatively enlightened we will become. We will be in a constant search to expand our understanding of our minds, to improve our well being, make our lives more seamless, and solve societal challenges. What can you and your organization do to optimize the performance of individual and collective mind-fields?
Blurreality
There are two dimensions to Blurreality. First, we’re in a mode appreciating the full human experience in connection to both concocted and natural environments. Our definition of “what is real” has now morphed due to the emergence of new visual and brain experiences. Our ability to use our minds to explore our minds, and apply what we learn will continue to be enhanced by new forms of reality. We can escape completely or partially, we can shift our moods and move from depression to elation without drugs - or with. VR is a remedy for anxiety, depression, loneliness and other maladies of the mind. The clumsiness of VR and those ridiculous headsets which are the equivalent of brick phones, will fade away in the next five years and find new forms of reality much more agile and seamless. So, having mastered the delivery vehicles for VR, we will find ourselves questioning which virtual narratives are helpful for society and which are detrimental. Secondly, the current political landscape and the way that social media companies have allowed content pollution to happen makes truth telling a sport. As NY Times writer Maureen Dowd once said, “we have crossed into a surreal dimension, where we are limited only by our imaginations. The American identity and values are fungible. The guardrails are off." Net, if innovation is the ability to perceive alternative reality and the courage to move toward those visions, then advancements in perceiving new forms of reality will both help us innovate and present new opportunities to re-calibrate what reality means.
Ubiquity
The democratization of understanding our minds and improving our capacity to learn will open up new opportunities for professional success and personal growth. We are entering an era where everything is becoming available to everyone all the time - eventually. There will still be hierarchy of access, and an inequality gap to close. But, the barriers to access will diminish. Voice control of everything will continue to thrive, enabling a broader spectrum of people to learn and participate more fully in society. As Kara Swisher said a few months ago, “we are raising a generation of people who are comfortable having conversations with objects”. Plus, ordering pizza for pick up in your car with automatic payment will be easier, your car becoming a smart phone with wheels, anticipating your pizza craving, enabling your smart phone object as we know it — to disappear. Blockchain is also providing new access to people and can potentially drive ubiquity in land ownership for farmers and producer around the world.
Dispersion
The decline in trust of large organizations will continue force people to flee, driving new forms in the gig economy, nomadic working groups, comprehensive crowd sourcing and access to income for millions who were previously off the professional grid. By 2023, more than 50% of all corporate workers will not be employees. Not surprising since other research indicates that 70% of employees are disengaged with their jobs. Crowdsourcing organizations will likely grow, being able to run multi-million dollar, crowd-sourced consulting projects, getting the best talent by aggregating other crowd sourcing platforms while providing relatively high-paying jobs for people who would not otherwise have access to income. People will be carrying multiple business cards, enjoying a portfolio of professions. True talent beyond the resume is being discovered in unlikely places. In addition, there are dozens of nomadic working experiences brewing such Wifi tribe and Thread Caravan that move groups of people around the world.
