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Jump The Curve Archives: 01/2008
Make More Connections to the Future
I recently finished reading James Burke’s excellent book, ”Connections," in which he explains how a myriad of seemingly unrelated advances in technology help to create new technologies and how these technologies, in turn, often lead to changes in societal behavior. For anyone interested in the future, I highly recommend reading the book because if it teaches us anything it is that the future will unfold in unexpected ways.
At the risk of sounding like a nitpicker, I would like to take objection with just one of Burke’s main points and that is his idea that the only way to look at the future is through the past. To this point, I’d like to offer two quotes from the book. The first is: ”Anyways, there is nowhere else to look for the future but in the past” and the second is: ”Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.”
In a general way, I agree with the sentiment and that is why I dedicated an entire chapter ("Back to the Future") in my new book to this idea. (In fact, I am now contemplating writing an entire book on this theme). Nevertheless, I don’t agree that the past is the only way to study and understand the future. I also tend to believe that science fiction offers an alternative way to think about the future. I say this because among the best thinkers of how new technologies will transform societal behavior are science fiction writers. This is because they are not merely obsessed with technology for technology’s sake, they seek to understand how it will also influence and change people’s thinking and behavior.
And it is for this reason, as I say in Jump the Curve , that if you are truly interested in understanding the future you must not only study history, you must also add a healthy staple of science fiction reading to your literary diet.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Bone Up on Your Materials Science
There is an informative article in today’s Technology Review on the topic of advance materials. To many, the subject undoubtedly sounds boring but I’d like to suggest otherwise and express the opionion that unless you keep with advances in the field you could soon find yourself out of business.
Without going into great detail, the gist of the article is that due to near exponential advances in scientists’ ability to program the self-assembly of nanoparticles, researchers are now poised to assemble new materials with novel optical, elctronic and magnetic properties. More importantly, as savvy businesspeople begin to figure out how to exploit these properties they could soon be developing some very cool—as well as very efficient and effective—new products.
For example, I have written before about solar power’s potential. Due to advances in self-assembly, however, it is quite possible that photovoltaics could soon capture a broader range of the solar spectrum. And this, in turn, could mean that new solar cells will be efficient enough to work even in cloudy environments.
Another example is occurring in the field of fuel cell technology. This recent article discussing the possibility of cheap hydrogen is a perfect case-in-point. Researchers have now shown that by tweaking the atomic structure of titania they can more efficiently produce hydrogen. If hydrogen becomes easier and cheaper to produce this means that not only might fuel cell vehicles arrive sooner than expected, it is also possible that hydrogen can be used as a means to store solar energy (which would be generated during the day) and then used (in the form of hydrogen) in the evening.
Scores of other opportunities also await. I have written before about how new materials are already effecting both the semiconductor industry and the oil and gas industry; and new materials will also transform the building and manufacturing industries.
The bottom-line is this: If your business has anything to do with materials—and this is most businesses—it would behoove you to begin paying attention to the advances in the world of material science and nanotechnology.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Association Meetings
In my business as a futurist and a public speaker, I have addressed hundreds of business association meetings. They are great networking opportunities, but it is not uncommon at these events to see a great many people stick to the safety of their pre-existing social circles. There is nothing inherently wrong with this but most people would probably agree with the suggestion that in so doing these people are missing out on a great opportunity to form new connections as well as gain insight from other people whom they haven’t—and might never—meet.
Well, there is a new technology brewing on the horizon which could radically alter the dynamics of future meetings and enhance the productivity of these meetings. The technology I am speaking of is known as ”smart badges” and while they have been around in a limited form for the past few years, the technology is now getting better and they are poised to have a big impact on how future meetings are conducted.
For instance, if you look at the picture above it is easy to see who is talking to who. Armed with this information, it might be easier for people to make common connections. For example, if you don’t know Bob but you see that you’re friend Sarah does, it might be easier for you to introduce yourself to Bob). Similarly, the technology can be used to bring together people who share common interests, hobbies or who might have even read the same book recently. It is also feasible to draw in people who would otherwise prefer to stay on the fringe and this could be important because these people might have something really valuable to add to the conversation.
MIT’s Media Lab and such spin-off companies as nTag are producing a variety of innovative new technologies that could revolution the field of sociometrics. When one couples this progress with advances being made in the fields of mobile communication, RFID technology and software programs and algorithms, it boggles the mind to think how much more enjoyable, informative and entertaining future business meetings might be.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Goodbye Global Warming?
As I write this post, it is now minus five below in my hometown of Minneapolis; yet the topic of today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with such normal fluctuations in temperature. Let me further add that I do believe global climate change is a real issue and I am of the opinion that mankind is a serious contributor to the problem.
Why then do I believe that the public might soon be saying “goodbye” to the topic of global climate change? In a word: technology. I have written before about the huge potential for solar energy to become a larger part of the world’s overall energy equation, but I’d now like to introduce you to two new technologies that could fundamentally alter how we think about carbon dioxide emissions in the future.
The first is a relatively new “air extraction” technology being developed by Global Research Technologies that has been demonstrated to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. Intriguingly, it has been speculated that a system measuring 10 meters by 10 meters could extract 1,000 tons of CO2 every year.
To be sure, it would take millions of these devices to maintain a concentration of CO2 at pre-industrial levels, but if we can rationally talk about solar farms, is it not possible that we will soon also be able to talk about CO2-capture farms? If you “jump the curve” and follow the progression of technological development, I don’t see why not.
Secondly, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are seeking to build a novel reactor that can chemically “reenergize” CO2. If successful, the technology would allow for CO2 to be reconverted into a range of different fuels, including hydrogen, methanol and gasoline.
This technology is still a few years away from commercial development, but my broader point is that, in spite of what the pessismists say, technology can and will play a big role in addressing the issue of global climate change. And when I look out to the future I see the issue going away—much as the issue of over-population (and concern over the depletion of food resources) has been rendered obsolete by advances in biotechnology and smarter agricultural practices.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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It’s All in the Tongue
One of the things I like to do when speaking about the future is challenge conventional wisdom and get people to rethink some of their basic assumptions about what tomorrow might look like. Today’s new technology definitely falls into this category—it is the idea that in the future some robots will be controlled by the action of a person’s tongue. That’s right, tongue control.
Before you dismiss the idea, first watch this short video:
Now, consider how a soldier in a stressful combat situation (where he or she is using both arms to carry a weapon) might also want to steer a robot around a corner in order to see if any bad guys are lurking there. One way to do this would be by manuevering the robot with a tongue-control device.
Stroke victims or parapalegics might also benefit from the technology. As robots continue to get better, it is not unreasonable to think that some people will want use robots to perform some household functions. To do so, however, they will need to be controlled—and that’s where the tongue-control technology could come into play.
Now, I’m not saying this vision will definitely come to fruition but I wouldn’t dismiss the idea either.
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Planes, Trains, Automobiles ... and Robots
Robots Jump the Curve and leap Straight into the Gutter
Jack Uldrich still prefers the more innocent violence of his generation’s Rock’ em, Sock’ em robots to, say, this generation’s Grand Theft Auto. He is also a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. Jack is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Build It and They Will Come
As readers of my new book, Jump the Curve, and this blog know; I’m a big fan of thinking counter-intuitively and that’s why I’d like to introduce you to NotchUp.com. The new website is centered around the counter-intuitive notion of paying people for the right to interview them for a new job. We all know that many of the best people for a job aren’t on the job market, so why not pay for the right to interview qualified people? If the new site is successful, it could mean that professional job recruiters will face a new form of competition—and, as we all know, competition is a good thing.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
In today’s technology section of the Wall Street Journal there is a lengthy article entitled “Thinking About Tomorrow.” Normally, I’m a big fan of the WSJ, but this article is a piece of trash. Of course, I recommend that you read it for yourself but here are just a couple of my criticisms.
For beginners, it is too timid in its predictions. I understand that nobody wants to look foolish for making outlandish predictions, but all the Journal’s authors do is take existing technological trends and extrapolate outward. This is all fine and well but it is hardly useful.
To this point, the article begins in a snarky, elitest way by saying, “Let’s get this out of the way first--in the next ten years, no one will travel by jet pack or have robots maid that serve dinner.”
Oh really? I think if you watch these two videos—of jet packs and robots—it is possible to imagine that in 10 years at least someone might travel by jet pack or be served by robot by 2018. This first video comes compliments from Thunderbolt Areosystems:
This second video is of a robot in Japan serving someone tea:
I truly hope both technologies improve exponentially in the coming decade and that the Wall Street Journal becomes the latest member of the print media to have egg on its face. (In early December 1903—just two weeks before the Wright Brothers historic flight—the New York Times dismissively wrote that human flight would not be acheiveable for the next “one to ten million years.")
I have a long list of other compliants and problems with the article, but let me just briefly mention a few more:
#1) In the “How We Shop” section, there is no mention of self-service checkout lanes enabled by advances in RFID technology.
#2) In the “How We Play Games” section, there is no mention of how advances in brain-computer interfaces or haptic techology will transform the gaming experience.
#3) In “How We Watch Movies and TV” section, there is not a mention of the possibility that your local video store might simply disappear—the victim of digitally, downloadable, on-demand movies.
#4) In the “How We Make and Keep Friends” section, there is no mention of how technology will allow us to spend more time with our friends. (Note: And this interaction will be in person and not on virtual reality sites).
#5) In the “How We Get Our News” section, there is no mention of the possibility that due to the flood of user-generated content, traditional media might actually increase in influence. (This is because people might actually come to rely more on experts to help them sift through the volumes of digital information that is available.)
I also have two other last points. First, there is no mention of the radical advances coming in health care. This is a particularly egregious oversight given that so much of the U.S. economy is driven by the health care sector. (For more on this idea, I’d recommend this past post.) Secondly, in an accompanying article entitled “Predictions of the Past,” the WSJ staff dismissed a few 1998 predictions simply because they didn’t come to pass within the allotted timeframe. (One such prediction was the idea that voice translation technology would make language training irrelevant.) As I said earlier today, I, too, don’t think that language training will go away. I do, however, believe it will transform a great many businesses in the coming decade. My point is this: Just because a prediction didn’t come true in the past doesn’t mean that it won’t come true some time in the near future.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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What Language Will the Future Speak?
When thinking about the future, it is easy to get trapped into thinking that one technology will “win” to the exclusion of all others. This is rarely the case, but it still doesn’t stop a great many futurists from adopting a myopic view of the future.
This is especially true in the field of language training. To many futurists, the near exponential advances in voice and speech recognition technology will render language training obsolete. After all, why learn Spanish, French or Arabic when a voice translation device will rapidly translate anything you say or hear but without the burden or cost of having to spend countless hours learning a new language (not to mention not having to learn how to congugate your verbs in entirely new ways.)
There is much to be said for this vision and I tend to believe that voice tranlation technology will radically transform how business and tourism is conducted in the years ahead. At the same time, I don’t see language training going away. I do, however, see it taking on a much different form. Specifically, rather than learning a new language from a teacher, a tape or a DVD, I believe more and more people will form social networks around language and seek to learn from each other. In other words, an American wishing to learn Italian will team up over the Internet with an Italian wishing to learn English. This vision is already coming to fruition at such sites as LiveMocha.
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Walk the Escalator with Text Analytics
I have long been an advocate of how advances in algorithms can help businesses. As proof, I’d encourage you to read this article (subscription required) from today’s Wall Street Journal. If you don’t have access, here’s the operative sentence: “… it used to take 67 hours to review 1,500 customer surveys by hand. Clarabridge’s software can do it in 30 minutes.” To me, this a great example of “walking the escalator” because it demonstrates how a technology that exists today can yield an immediate 134-fold improvement in productivity!
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Oil Industry Jumps the Curve with Nanotechnology
In 2003, I wrote the book, The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. Far from being a wide-eyed look at many of the truly futuristic applications of nanotechnology (of which there, in fact, quite a few), the book took a hard-headed, realistic view of how a variety of industries could employ nanotechnology to improve their existing business in the near term. One of the applications I dedicated a good amount of time to in the book was nanosensors.
Well, it has taken the oil and gas industry almost five years to get the message, but earlier this month it was announced that the Advanced Energy Consortium -- which consists of seven prominent oil companies—will be investing $21 million over the next three years to explore how nanosensors can help the industry squeeze more oil from its existing reservoirs. It is money well spent.
At the present time, only about 40% of the oil in reservoirs is actually recovered. If new nanosensors can produce better images of the reservoirs, it is expected that oil companies will be able to increase the amount of fuel that they can extract.
Furthermore, because nanoparticles have unqiue catalytic properties it is expected that much of the oil that currently sticks to the walls in the pores and crevices of reservoirs can also be captured.
It is possible that neither nanosensors or nanoparticles they will deliver real results, but with oil hovering around $100 a barrel even if the technology only increases production by a percentage or two it will more than pay for itself. (And if it doesn’t, I still applaud the industry for “jumping the curve” and exploring how future technologies—enabled by advances in nanotechnology—might benefit their business.)
(Note: In a separate piece of news, it was announced yesterday that J. Craig Venter was one step closer to developing an artificial life form. The implications for the emerging field of synthetic biology -- which is likely to the energy industry—could be enormous.)
Related Posts
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Is the Health Care Industry Prepared to Unlearn?
In my many talks, presentations and speeches on the future of health care, one of the things that I really try to impress upon my audiences is the importance of unlearning—that is letting go of old knowledge or old ways of doing business. This is an incredibly hard thing to do, but if one wants to prosper in the Exponential Economy it is a skill that all of us will need to practice with increasing frequency.
To this end, I’d like to share two recent articles. The first is from NewScientistTech and it discusses how studies have found that surgical residents performed better during simulated surgery after playing on a Wii console. Now, the notion that a video game might help improve a surgeon’s performance might seem a little counter-intuitive, but as ever more surgeries become laproscopic and microscopic in nature, the dexerity of the surgeon is going to become even important than it already is. The challenge that this prsents is that old surgeons (as well as parents who want their children to become surgeon) might have to unlearn their bias against video games. In this case, video-gaming skills might actually make residents better surgeons in the near future.
On a slightly different level, this second report suggests that doctors might be able to detect cancer by the “feel” of the cancer cell. According to a recent study, cancer cells, in some situations, are softer than healthy cells. If true, this might require doctors to unlearn their current and preferred methods for detecting and testing for cancer.
Interested in other posts on the topic of unlearning? Check out these articles:
Learning to Unlearn: Case Study #1
Examples of Unexponential Thinking
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Jump the Curve to a Steroid-Free Level Playing Field
As an avid sports fan, I, like so many others, am troubled by the proliferate use of steroids in professional sports today. That is why I am intrigued by the idea offered by Aaron Zelinsky in this commentary. Essentially, Zelinsky argues that since many steroids and human growth hormones are undetectable using today’s best technology, players’ urine and blood samples should be kept for a period of 30 years and those samples should then be tested in 10-year increments using the best technology available. (For the proposal to work, Zelinsky also notes that players would have have their salaries paid over a 30-year period). His main point is that the threat of future technology may be the only thing that can effectively deter athletes from using those performance-enhancing substances which are, today, undetectable.
I don’t know if this system will work in reality, but it is an excellent example of “jumping the curve,” because Zelinsky well understands that future technology is only going to get better. Somewhat counter-intuitively, however, he has figured out how to use the prospect of future technology improvement in order to improve a situation that is grim today.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Coming Health Care Revolution
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal carried two different articles that were buried deep within the paper. The first reported that Genentech had discovered two genes linked to Lupus, raising the hopes of earlier diagnosis and better targeted treatment. The second article reported that researchers had found a genetic variant—KIF6—that is linked to an increased risk of heart disease.
The significance of these reports is that they offer further evidence of the accelerating pace of discovery in the field of genomics. As one person said of the Lupus discovery, “this takes us one steper closer to personalized medicine.”
I would caution against people getting overly excited about the notion of “personalized medicine” just yet, but it is coming. I say this because yesterday it was also announced that the International Genome Project was launched. In yet another bit of hyperbole, one researchers enthused that “This is a historic turning point in genomics.”
The project’s goal is to sequence the entire genomes of 1,000 people and, if successful, it could have a profound impact on our ability to better understand the risk factors underlying disease.
It will not, however, address all of concerns. This is because human health is terribly complex and a lot more than genetics plays a role in determining people’s health. To this end, a study at the University of Minnesota now suggests that one reason why red meat, fired foods and diet soda might be bad for us is because it tinkers in unknown ways with a person’s metabolism. As I have reported in the past, as result of such projects as the Human Metabolome Project, researchers are now also learning much more about how the multitude of different chemicals interact in our body and thus influence our health.
Together, these two projects—the Human Metabolome Project and the International Genome Project—are sure to take us a few steps further down the path of personalized medicine.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Pennies from Heaven?
I often speak to businesses and associations in the electrical utility industry and in the past few years I have addressed the National Rural Electric Association’s Emerging Technology Conference, as well as organizations in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. When doing so, I am always sure to update industry member on the latest advances in solar, geothermal, wind, biofuels, clean coal, synthetic biology and nuclear power. The one area I have not addressed—only because I was unaware of it until today—was the possibility that in the future rain might be a source of energy.
According to this article, researchers are now learning how to convert the mechanical energy from falling raiddrops into electricity. The technology is years away from being a practical source of large-scale energy, but I’m more interested in one short-term application: the ability to use raindrops to power sensor networks.
It is well-known that Intel and other companies are exploring the wide-scale use of outdoor sensor networks. The problem to date, though, has been figuring out how to keep the devices’ batteries powered over long-term periods of time. If, however, rain could be used to add a little juice to the sensors, it is possible that such sensor networks could become more practical. One of the things these sensors could do is monitor the status of the existing electric grid—and that is something in which everyone in the energy industry is interested.
So while I don’t think that massive rain-power plants are in the long-term forecast, I do think some innovative companies might be able to figure out how to transform those rainsdrops into pennies from heaven by ensuring the grid is operating at peak efficiency.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Visualize the Future of Health Care
Late last week, I outlined in this post how hospitals and health care clinics might exponentially increase the number of online visits and consultations they are conducting with patients. A large part of the success of this strategy rests on being able to offer new services to existing clients. To this end, Barco, a Belgian company, is now offering something called a AVT visualization suite that allows clinicians to see and read studies on the go—and even from the comfort of their own home computer. Better yet, because AVT uses off-the-shelf technology its cost should not be prohibitive.
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The Future of Organ Sales
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Be Still My Virtual Heart
Yesterday, I explained how supercomputers are dramatically reducing the time it takes to perform some complex modeling operations. As further proof of this point, I’d like to submit this article from my friends over at Medgadget.com. According to the piece, researchers in Montreal have used a supercomputer to create a virtual heart that is 1000 times more advanced than previous models -- a thousand times!
The significance of this development is that exponential executives in the health care arena can use this technology to “jump the curve"." They can do this by using the technology to potentially discover new methods for diagnosing heart disease earlier or, perhaps, by testing new treatments in silico. The latter could speed new breakthrough treatments for one of the leading causes of disease in America—heart disease.
Related Posts
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The Future of Health Care
Why the Health Care Sector Should Give a Rat’s Ass
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Hospitals Need to Get Plastered
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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57 Years is Now Just 41 Days
Understanding the power of exponential growth can sometimes be difficult and that is why I often rely on analogies such this one about the tooth fairy or this about the emperor of china and rice to explain its almost magical power.
Nevertheless, I also like real world examples and that’s why I want to share this article about the Department of Energy awarding a record amount of supercomputing power in the coming year—265 million processor hours to be exact. Interestingly, this is three-times the amount that was awarded just last year, and in 2009, DOE plans to quadruple the amount to over 1 billion processing hours.
But if you want to be an exponential executive and jump the curve, I’d encourage you to think of all of this supercomputing power somewhat differently. To wit, if you had to rely on your state-of-the-art duel-processor desktop computer to complete a 1-million hour project, it would take you 57 years to do so. If, on the other-hand, you were awarded a supercomputing grant from DOE you could do that same project in just 41 days. And that my friends is the difference between yeterday’s linear economy and today’s hyper-charged exponential economy—things that use to take 57 years to do or now being done in just 41 days. And, of course, by this time next year things that use to take 41 days will be done in less than 10 days.
Of course, why all of this really matters is because of what we will be learning from these supercomputing projects. For example, scientists will be sequencing more genes and learning more about how proteins fold; airline and automobile companies will be creating new aerodynamic designs; pharmaceutical firms will be designing new and more effective drugs; and researchers might very learn more about how mankind is influencing everything from the condition of our oceans to global climate change.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Keep Your Brain on the Road
Last week, I was interviewed on Jim Blasingame’s radio program, “The Small Business Advocate,” about my recent posting on the “10 Most Significant Breakthroughs of 2007.” (You can listen to the whole interview by clicking on the icon above.)
Of all the breakthroughs, Jim probably had the hardest time comprehending the significance of the advances in the field of brain-computer interface technolgy. To Jim (and many other people I know) the technology sounds a little “creepy.” It isn’t and I’d like to give you a real-world eample of how it could soon improve an activity most of us are very familiar—driving.
In this informative article, researchers at a university in Berlin have demonstrated how a computer in an automobile can monitor a driver’s brain activity and begin shutting off various functions (e.g. music, satellite navigation systems, heads-up visual displays, etc) when a driver begins getting too distracted. According to the study, the researchers were able to get drivers to react 100 milliseconds faster. Now, such a short time won’t eliminate all accidents, but it could reduce a fair number. That’s because if you’re traveling at 55 MPH an extra 100 milliseconds could help reduce your braking distance by 3 meters!
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Yet Another Visual Paradox
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I would like to share yet another visual paradox with you. This one should help remind you that the world is rarely black or white. More often than not, it is both!
Can you see both the image of an older woman as well as a young woman? If not, keep trying until you can. (Hint: The old woman’s eye is the young woman’s ear. The old woman’s wart is the young woman’s nose, and the old woman’s nose is the young woman’s chin.)
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Saudi Arabia
In my business, I do a fair bit of work with government agencies responsible for developing future economic development plans. It was with some interest then that I read the article in today’s New York Times entitled ”The Construction Site Called Saudi Arabia.” It is a good piece and I give the Saudi Arabia government credit for “jumping the curve” and trying to diversify its economy away from oil within the next 20 years. (This is a prudent policy because I explained in this piece on solar energy, the world’s energy infrastructure could look radically different in a couple of decades.)
I also give the country for thinking big (it intends to invest over $500 billion in order to build six new cities), but I would encourage Saudi Arabia to think even bigger and look for methods to leverage this economic expansion to gain expertise in new emerging fields.
For example, instead of just building six new cities, it should use this construction boom to bolster its expertise in the material sciences. Specifically, it should invest aggressively in nanotechnology and explore how the science might lead to better, stronger, lighter and even smart materials — and these materials, in turn, could lead to new building designs.
Given the region’s solar profile it is a no-brainer that the country should be exploring the immense potential of “building-integrated solar photovoltaic” technology (e.g. incorporating solar panels directly into building materials). And directly related to this idea, Saudi Arabia also has a great opportunity to bootstrap its solar industry. If the country does, indeed, build six new cities, there is no reason why those cities shouldn’t be powered with electricity generated from massive solar farms.
The country, I am sure, is already aggressively pursuing advanced desalination technology in an effort to grow its agricultural business. But instead of simply viewing agriculture as a source of food, Saudi Arabia should also invest in the emerging field of synthetic biology and explore the immense opportunity that awaits when agriculture and synthetic biology are applied to the energy and pharmaceutical sectors.
Finally, as Saudi Arabia builds its six new cities, it is advised to take a very close look at the transportation infrastructure linking the cities. I have written in the past about the role robotics can play in meeting the world’s future transportation needs. Saudi Arabia, because it is essentially building a new system from stratch (unlike most regions which must layer new technologies on top of existing systems), can embrace how new advances in robotics, RFID, wireless technology, and sensor networks could lead to a new paradigm in transportation and this could give the region a huge, long-term economic advantage.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Health Care: Part 2
This past week I had to go to a local hospital and have a laproscopic procedure to repair an inguinal hernia. The operation went well and I was quizzed no fewer than six times about the nature and location of my surgery . (Apparently, they wanted to ease any concern I had about them operating on the wrong organ or the wrong side.)
The only hassle occurred after my surgery when I was detained for over an hour because the doctor failed to sign-off on my prescription medicine. I mention this information because it is symptomatic of the inefficiencies that continue to plague our health care system.
There is, however, hope on the way. In today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune today there is an informative article entitled ”Take two aspirin and e-mail me in the morning.” It discusses the enormous opportunity that exists within the health care system to save time and money if only more doctors (and patients) would agree to electronic consultations.
Now, no one is suggesting that personal doctor-to-patient meetings should be eliminated altogether, but as one doctor is quoted as saying “90% of what we do is not based on physical assessments.” In other words, much of a doctor’s business can be conducted electronically—at a substantially lower cost and in a manner that is more convenient for the patient. As proof, the article cites one innovative clinic in Portland, Oregon which is now treating 40% of its patients by e-mail.
A closer examination will reveal the huge potential. Here in Minnesota three facilities—Park Nicollet, HealthPartners and Fairview—only saw 1600 patients electronically in 2007. As readers of this blog well know, I’m a fan of exponential growth and I’d like to demonstrate the huge opportunity that awaits Minnesota citizens if those hospitals and clinics were to “jump the curve” and commit themselves to an “exponential e-mail/electronic” strategy.
In 2008, the number could grow to 3,200
In 2009—6,400
In 2010—12,800
In 2011—25,600
In 2012—51,200; and
In 2013—102,400
Just imagine the savings if within five years over 100,000 patients were being consulted electronically. It is possible, absolutely. For starters, more and more people—even the elderly—are becoming comfortable with computers. Add to this the continued advances in semiconductor and bandwidth capability and it is clear that electronic communication is only going to get better, faster and cheaper over the next half decade.
Secondly, new emerging technologies such as ”digital plastic” and advanced medical imaging will allow doctors to monitor a growing array of vital signs, including ECG, body temperature, respiration and physical activity. This means more patients can be monitored and consulted electronically for a greater range of health issues.
Third, due to advances such as IBM and Duke Medical are pursuing in the field of online resources, a more digitalized health care information system will allow patients to find test results, send confidential information and even schedule appoitments. It will also allow doctors and nurses access to personal health profiles and clinical content.
Four, new technologies such as IBM’s ”Digital Patient Avatar” will allow doctors and nurses instant access to all of a patient’s medical information, including x-rays and past visits.
Finally, doctors must continue to harnass the growing power of online social networks, such as Imedix is pursuing, to assist patients make better health care decisions.
Combined all of these factors together and there is no reason to think that hospitals can’t generate significant savings over the next five years while, at the same time, providing patients with better and more timely information.
(Note: Part III of this series will look at the emerging role of robotics in the health care sector).
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Train Your Mind to See Two Different Points of Views—At the Same Time!
In the past couple of months the image of the “dancing lady” (to the right) has floated across the Internet in a viral fashion. Its popularity is due to the fact that some people see the image turning counter-clockwise, while others see it moving it a clockwise direction. (The general theory is that those people who see it moving counter-clockwise are more analytical in nature, while creative types see it moving clockwise.) The truth, of course, is that the figure is moving both directions simultaneously.
I like the image because it is a good visual metaphor for learning how to embrace two different ideas at the same time—a trick the Exponential Executive will need to learn if he or she is to successfully jump the curve into the future.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first rate mind is the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in your head at the same time.” If you can’t yet see the dancing figure turning both ways yet, I’d suggest that you stick with it until you can because the skill will serve you well in dealing with tomorrow’s future.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of the Kitchen: Part 1
A few years back, I had the opportunity to give a presentation at the National Kitchen and Bath Association’s annual meeting in Chicago. Ever since that time, I have continued to scan the emerging world of technology looking for new ways RFID technology, sensors, advanced materials, robotics, and nanotechnology will transform our living spaces.
To this end, late last month The Economist ran an insightful article entitled ”Downstairs Upstairs: Women Have Not Escaped the Kitchen; It has Come After Them.” If you are at all interested in the field, I’d encourage you to give it a read because it does an excellent job of explaining how the kitchen has changed over time.
Two aspects of the article, in particular, caught my attention. The first was a quote from an article in a magazine from 1919 in which the author had the audacity to poise this radical question: “Suppose our servants didn’t live us?” It is hard to recall now but in 1919 even many middle class families had household servants. (In fact they made up 25% of the overall workforce in the United States.) Of course, as we now know with the benefit of hindsight, this future came about much quicker than most people would have imagined due to the amazing progress made during that era in the field of household appliances.
Let me now put a new twist on the above scenario. It is possible that in the future robotics will become kitchen appliances? It might sound a little far-fetched but, remember, in 1919 the idea that household servants would soon disappear also sounded far-fetched.
If, however, one tracks the exponential progress in the field of robotics, it is easy to envision how kitchens might soon utilize the devices. Why just earlier today the New York Times reported that hospitals are now using robots to mix up chemotherapy drugs. If we can trust robots to mix our drugs, why can’t we trust them with our cocktails and our cake batter? (Recall that it was only last fall that researchers in Japan demonstrated a robot capable of pouring tea and clearing away the dishes.)
The second prediction that struck was the idea that the kitchen of the future will soon become more utilitarian due to the fact that more men are now sharing the responsibility to make meals.
I know this trend to be true from first-hand experience, but I’d encourage people to go a little further. I’ve written extensively on aging demographics in the past and one thing we will likely see more of in the future is inter-generational households—that is kids, parent and grandparents living together under the same roof.
If true, the kitchen will need to respond to each occupant’s unique needs. Without wanting to stereotype people too much, men might want more audio-visual equipment in the kitchen; grandparents could want a better sense of where everything is; and kids may want access to a computer to do their homework. What’s the one technology that can tie all of these different needs together? In two words: flexible electronics.
I envision the kitchen of the future looking quite familiar to today’s but behind the facade will be multi-touch flexible electronic screens that can just as easily pull up a recipe as they can record a TV show or access the Internet.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is also the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Cellphone: Portal to the Virtual World
In the recent past I have explained how the phone of the future will be used as a health diagnostic device as well as interact with the Internet. I’d now like to take this latter idea a step further and suggest that in the near future phones will help people navigate through virtual reality settings such as Second Life as well as interact with video advertisements displayed on flexible electronics.
Among the many other things that this means is that it suggests that your cellphone will be one step closer to becoming your own personal assistant. This is because each time you use that phone to interact on the Internet or engage an advertisement, the device will also learn a little more about you—what you like and what you dislike. As this database of information grows, your phone should be able to begin anticipating your likes and your dislikes. For example, it’ll recommend restaurants or it’ll suggest that you consult with your spouse before buying a patricular clothing item.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Hand-to-Robot Combat
Young soldiers—weened on a steady diet of video games—are already controlling drones over Iraq and Afghanistan from the comfort of command-and-control stations 6,000 miles away from actual combat. Therefore, it is too much to think that within a decade’s time the soldiers of tomorrow—weened on a generation of brain-interface gaming technology—might similarly be controlling robots from afar to do our fighting for us?
I don’t believe so. Here’s why. Earlier today, there was a report about a robot in Japan being controlled by the brain activity of a monkey in the United States. Obviously, we can’t have monkeys do our fighting for us; but I have written before the exponential pace of progress in both brain-machine interface technology and robotics. If you put the progress of the two technologies together and “jump the curve,” I don’t see any reason why soldiers in 2015 (when, by the way, the U.S. Army hopes to have one-third of our fighting force consist of robots) won’t be able to control a robot’s action in Iraq for some other location by thought alone. Imagine, for example, if instead of sending a living soldier into a terrorist hideout we could instead send a human-assisted robot to do the job.
Such a scenario is not yet possible, but it soon will.
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Jack Uldrich still prefers the more innocent violence of his generation’s Rock’ em, Sock’ em robots to, say, this generation’s Grand Theft Auto. He is also a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. Jack is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Here Comes RFID and It Will Transform the In-Store Shopping Experience
RFID Update is running an interesting article about the ”world’s largest item-level RFID application launch” in today’s edition. Essentially, it is the story of how the Portugese retailer, Byblos Amoreiras, is deploying RFID tags to track 150,000 books.
Will it work? Time will tell, but the company is already planning on launching four more RFID-enable superstores this year and another five next year. My guess is that the early results are already in and they mirror the experience of Netherlands-based book retailer, BGN, which has reported sales increases in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 percent from its RFID-enabled store.
More significantly, I would encourage both retailers and advertisers to jump the curve and envision where the technology is headed. Yesterday, Technology Review published an informative article about how Microsoft is helping food companies run video ads on grocery carts. The technology that makes this feasible is RFID technology. In the future, look for innovative retailers to combined the two technologies (RFID and video grocery carts) to increase sales by creating something called ”swarm shopping.” Swarm shopping is based on the idea that shoppers are deeply influenced by the actions of past shoppers. Therefore, in the future, when you take your grocery cart down an aisle don’t be surprised to be greeted with a message such as: “Did you know that 67% of all shoppers who strolled down this aisle also purchased XXXX.” And, if that bit of information isn’t enough to entice you to clamor for the object, your electronic cart will be able to offer you an electronic coupon as a further enducement.
Of course, your cart will also be able to read the RFID tags of the other items in your cart and “helpfully” recommend complimentary items. For example, it might recommend some salty snacks to accompany your beer purchase or it might suggest a sauce to accompany your pasta.
It all sounds very manipulative—and to a degree it is—but if also improves the shopping experience and increases store sales and profits and does so in a subtle way, I think we can expect to the roll-out of this future to come to a store near us sooner rather than later.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Why the Health Care Sector Should Give a Rat’s Ass—I Mean—a Rat’s Heart to This Breakthrough
On Sunday, researchers at my hometown university—the University of Minnesota—announced that they had reported success in creating a beating rat heart in a laboratory.
The field of tissue engineering, as I have reported in the past, is growing rapidly and this development opens the door to the idea that any number of organs, including human livers, lungs, kidneys, pancreas and even hearts will someday be grown. And while it will likely be some time—perhaps even a decade or more—before Sunday’s advance is successfully transferred to the field of human tissue engineering, it is a noteworthy achievement and people in a variety of health care sectors are advised to give the breakthrough some serious thought as to what it could mean for their individual sectors in the near future.
For instance, if replacement kidneys can be grown what does this portend for the manufacturers of kidney dialysis machines? If pancreas can be grown, can surgeons take new approaches to the treatment of pancreatic cancer? Also, if hearts can someday be replaced what are the implications for medical device companies such as Medtronic which, today, generate a good portion of their revenue from heart-related medical devices?
In the bigger picture, society will also need to grapple with the issue of who, when and at what cost people are entitled to replacement organs? Beyond that society must also confront the implications for Medicare and Social Security (both of which are already on very shaky ground) if people live longer, healthier lives as a result of this breakthrough—and others like it.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Mayo Clinic Has Got Some “Game”
Late last week, IBM announced it was teaming up with the Mayo Clinic to improve medical imaging by using the Cell chip -- a high-performance computer component which is used primarily inside the PlayStation 3 videogame console—to help doctors and radiologists more effectively track patients’ health and treatment.
At the present time, CT scanners are producing a growing number of medical images. This exponential growth is making it increasingly difficult for doctors and radiologists to accurately interpret the findings. The utility of IBM’s Cell Chip is that it can extract information from the multitude of CT scans and present it in a more useful manner to doctors.
For instance, by rapidly checking old scans against new ones, doctors can quickly detect if there has been change in a tumor for instance. This information, in turn, can help doctors either adjust treatment or, if neccessary, try alterantive ones.
What is significant about the technology is that it can do in minutes what it use to take doctors hours to do. Often, this time difference isn’t that big of a deal; but other times it can be the difference between life and death.
The use of the Cell chips is also a good example of a hospital “walking the escalator”—or using an existing technology in a new, innovative way. (Interested parties are also encouraged to read the article I wrote last year about 3M teaming up with the Mayo Clinic to employ RFID technology to better monitor biopsies.)
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Media & Advertising Lays in Convergence
Earlier this week, I drafted up a detailed outline for a potential client regarding the future of media and advertising. In the outline, I briefly discussed both the accelerating pace of change in the industry and emphsized the need for industry members to understand how a variety of emerging technologies will converge in unique ways to transform the landscape of their collective industries.
This past week has provided ample proof of both trends. Just yesterday, I read a fascinating article on how the rock band, Nine Inch Nails is using ”alternative reality games” to circumvent conventional advertising and, in the process, forge a stronger connection with its fans. In many ways, I believe this offers a hint of the future of advertising.
Of course, the technology that such innovators have to play with isn’t going to stay static. A variety of technologies, including virtual reality, haptic technology, mobile projection, GPS technology, and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) are all going continue to improve—as will ”Smart TV’s,” Web Video and Internet radio.
To jump the curve, media producers and advertisers a like need to begin contemplating not only how these technologies are already changing their world, but how they can use these new emerging technologies to do everything from employ virtual reality sites to offer their customers real-world coupons; and use haptic technology to creating interactive advertising to thinking of mobile phones as devices that can project media on new surfaces and connect customers with new buying opportunities.
It is an exciting future, but to profit from it; it is essential to understand how these seemingly different parts will converge and work together to create new opportunities.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Theatre … Is Bright
Earlier today, I received a call from my local theatre—the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis—asking if my family and I would be signing up again for the 2008-9 season. Because the theatre is fantastic and my children love it, it was an easy decision to renew. (The fact that my mother-in-law is the director of Pueblo, Colorado Sangre de Cristo Arts Center and my sister and brother-in-law are actors in Chicago also provides a strong familial reason to continue to support the arts). (In another shameless plug, my sister, Catherine Glynn, will be starring in the performance of 10 Virgins at the Chicago Dramatists this spring, and my brother-in-law, Jeremy Van Meter will, I think, again be performing at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival this summer.)
Near the end of the conversation, the representative asked me if there was anything else I’d like to see from the theatre in the year ahead. After a moment of thought (usually I just want to get off of such calls), I said “yes.” I told her I would like to see the theatre continue to take risks and experiment with new technologies.
The person kindly jotted this down and the conversation ended. Truthfully, I don’t have any grand ideas for the future of theatre, but since I gave a very short presentation to the Theatre Communication Group last summer I have been intrigued by the opportunities theatres have to explore many of the new emerging technologies which I regularly write about in this blog. I also believe theatre is one of the few forums where people can safely, reasonably and responsibility discuss many of the societal, moral, and ethical issues which these new technologies are likely to raise in the coming years.
First, let me scale it back a little and say that I don’t think that all theatres are the appropriate forum to try risky new things. In the Children Theatre’s case, for instance, I think they are very successful and I wouldn’t advise they do anything too risky that might unnecessarily alienate their loyal customers.
What the theatre—and others like it—can do, though, is new employ technologies to market themselves to a wider audience. For instance, new social network tools offer a wonderful opportunity for local theatres to reach out to new people and audiences. They could also social networking as a way to recruit new members.
New algorithms and software programs can also be employed to scrub databases and find new connections between demographic groups that might be interested in certain performances. For instance, High School Musical (which is not a personal favorite of mine, but my young daughter loves it) might have been even more successfully marketed to teenage boys for whom the sporting aspect of the performance was appealing.)
Social networking tools can also help playwrights and directors scan the environment for ideas, topics and themes which may better appeal to their existing customers or, possibility, new ones.
New technologies can also be used to engage customers in deeper and more meaningful ways. Virtual reality sites such as Second Life are growing in popularity and it is possible for theatres to use the technology to provide interested audience members richer detail about the context of the story or, perhaps, to explore the personality of certain characters in more depth. (In this way, the audience might come to have an even stronger emotional response to the performance—and thus the theatre in general.)
High-speed, broadband Internet access can also be harnessed in a similar way. For example, while I understand why it is preferable to bring students to the theatre so that they can experience the rich emotional context of the theatre first-hand, I also know that in this age of educational budget cutbacks that that might not always be possible. Therefore, why shouldn’t theatres reach out to schools through the Internet and instead try to bring the theatre to them?
Another innovative example would be for theatres to use technology comparable to the ”Magic Mirror” to engage people in the lobby of the theatre before the performance. It could also be used to sell them tickets to future performances or even advertise promotional products.
Technology can also be used to better serve patrons. For example, mobile communication technology could alert show-goers of restaurant/bar availability in the proximity of the theatre on the night of the show and even offer them electronic coupons. Counter-intuitively, the same technology could be used to entice people in neighborhood restaurants and bars (who weren’t planning to attend the theatre) to go see a show. (For example, if a 7:00 p.m. show is only half-filled why not send out an electronic coupon offering tickets for a 15% discount?)
These, of course, are just a few ideas. I am equally excited about the potential for more avant garde theatres to explore and incorporate innovative technologies directly into their productions. To this end, a theatre in Florida last year made use of ”virtual actors.” (Note: The actors were real—they were just performing in venues thousands of miles apart.) Others could experiment with the idea of incorporating more scents into their productions or still other might want to get creative with new warerobes -- such as these.
Beyond that, though, I am of the opinion that theatres must begin addressing many of the uncomfortable questions which future technology portends for society. I have written before about the possibility of living to 1000 and human-robot relationships, and I recognize that these are sticky issues which are not easily discussed in everyday conversation. Still society can’t bury its head in the sand over these things (although many will try), and the theatre is the perfect venue in which to explore the complexity of these issues.
For this reason alone—as well as others I cited—I believe the future of theatre is bright.
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of the Grocery Store
With technology it is sometimes easy to get ahead of reality. For instance, regarding the future of grocery stores, it is entirely possible to imagine how the confluence of wireless technology, RFID, robotics and virtual reality technologies could lead to a future scenario whereby people will browse a “virtual” store aisle from the comfort of their home computer and their selections will be wirelessly transmitted to a robot in a large warehouse which fetches each individual item (using RFID) and those goods will then be delivered to the person’s home.
The above scenario is feasible, but it isn’t yet practical. What is practical are new technologies such as ”intelligent foam”—which gives surfaces sensing abilities. For a grocery store, this would mean that it could know whenever a certain item had run out of stock. According to this article, researchers in Europe are already deploying “intelligent foam” in at least one store and, unlike RFID technology which is still relatively expensive, this “intelligent foam” costs about one dollar per square yard to install.
Beyond that, such a technology could also be used to sense foot traffic in a store (by embedding it in the floor) and this information could, in turn, be used to determine if more employees need to be deployed at checkout lines. (Although, just as self-service has become the norm at gas stations, I think more and more grocery stores will also be going to a self-service model ... so perhaps this isn’t the best example.)
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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A Grand Plan for Solar is More Than Just a Reasonable Idea
In the January edition of Scientific American there is a wonderful article entitled ”A Solar Grand Plan.” I strongly encourage you to read it because the authors do a good job of “jumping the curve” and envisioning a radically different—and much cleaner and more sustainable—energy future for the world.
A couple of things from the article struck me. Did you know, for instance, that the world’s annual energy needs could theortically be met with the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth in just 40 minutes.
Undoubtedly, you are saying that the world would need an awful lot of solar panels and solar farms to capture that much energy. You would, of course, be right; but as the authors point out it is feasible to do this and it could be done using less land than is now being used to produce coal (from which the world presently meets 50% of its electrical needs).
One other thing struck about the authors’ 40-year plan—the authors don’t assume any technological advances in the field of solar energy occuring in the next 40 years. They do this to be conservative in their projections, but as this recent article suggests we may soon have solar cells that are 60% efficient!
If true, this means that the authors plan—which they estimate will cost $420 billion over the next 40 years—could be much less expensive than they project!
All of this tells me that if people—and especially our political leaders—can just jump the curve we could end our dependence on fossil fuels much sooner than most people dare believe. (This is a point I hammer home in my forthcoming book, Green Investing: How to Make Money Through Environmentally-Friendly Stocks).
As I say in my other new book, Jump the Curve, however, if you understand the exponential advance of emerging technologies you can also understand how we will soon be able to do things that seem impossible today.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Nanotechnology, Mouse Extermination and the Future of Intuitive Computing
BBC has an interesting interview with Bill Gates. In the article, Gates claims that the way people will interact with computers is going to change dramatically in the next five years. Specifically, he predicts the keyboard and mouse will gradually give way to more intuitive and natural technologies. I agree and I have written extensively about how multi-touch computers, electronic paper, and voice recognition technologies will all facilitate this transistion.
There is, however, an even more interesting article on Physorg.org discussing the progress researchers are making in using carbon-nanotubes to manufacture high-speed thin-film transistors. The important aspect of this development is the “high-speed” aspect. What the development suggests is that these transistors will both dramatically lower the cost of electronics and imbue them with new capabilities in the near future. This could lead to some real breakthroughs in the production of high-performance, low-cost electronic paper and RFID chips; which, in turn, will create new ways for people to interact with future electronics.
And when this happens, the field of education will be transformed because flexible computers will allow students to interact with information in more intuitive and meaningful ways. For example, they will be able to experience subjects such as biology and physics in new, different and richer ways (such as manipulating virtual models of molecules) or they will be able to visit the virtual reality locations of historical settings.
The technology will, of course, also transform media and advertising. Infosys has already developed a ”Magic Mirror” which displays information and advertisements on the mirrors in store dressing rooms, but with interactive technology people will be able to browse the mirror for complimentary goods or even interact with the advertisements to get more information about those products they are interested in. People will even be able to instantly visit their friends online and show them their new clothing to see what they think of it before they actually buy it.
As always, the trick with any new technology such as flexible transistors or intuitive computers is not to think of what these new capabilities will add to today’s existing products but , rather, “jump the curve” and consider how these new technologies can be used in new ways that will improve people’s lives tomorrow.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Does Microsoft Have Robots on Its Mind?
This past week the Internet has been abuzz over the patent Microsoft recently filed for a biometric ”frustration-detecting help system.” In some ways, it would be easy to think of this technology as a much more sophisticated version of it’s annoying “dancing paperclip,” but I would encourage readers to consider how this technology might bolster Mr. Softy’s move into the field of robotics.
Given America’s—and the world’s—aging population I see a positive future for the field of personal service robots over the coming in the near future. (See this post on Toyota’s push into the area.) And these robots will need to be able to serve people in some demanding roles. Voice and speech recognition will be helpful, but if these robots really want to serve their masters they will need to pick up on the nuances of individual behavior. For example, they will need to understand when people want their privacy. Also, if these robots are to meet people’s health needs they will need to discern when people are feeling sick, incapitated or otherwise in need of help. (For example, a robot might discern the early onset of a seizure.)
In other words, Microsoft’s biometric patent not soley in terms of what it might mean for our interactions with computers today; instead “jump the curve” and consider what it will mean when combined with advances in new, emerging fields such as robotics.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Bet on It: Jump the Curve Strategy #5
In my new book, Jump the Curve, the fifth strategy I identify for helping companies innovate into the future was something I called “Bet On It.”
Here is what I wrote in the book:
In the summer of 2003, members of the United States Congress went apoplectic when news broke of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) program to help predict terrorist attacks and assassinations by allowing people to bet money on the likelihood of such events. (DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense.) There is, of course, something unseemly about wagering on a tragedy, but what is ironic is that such systems have proven remarkably successful at predicting a variety of outcomes because people’s financial interests are appropriately aligned with accurately assessing the odds of the event occurring. Thus, properly used, the system could help prevent the very thing that Congress wanted to stop from happening.
The program was terminated, but a number of companies, including Google, Pfizer, and Microsoft, now regularly make use of such systems to allow employees to make bets on the outcome of everything from when a product might launch or assessing the prospects that a particular department will meets it quarterly sales goals to determining whether a new TV commercial will be a hit.
What is unique about such systems is that managers receive a different type of information than they might ordinarily receive from their subordinates. For example, a few years ago a Microsoft business manager kept telling her boss that a product was on schedule to launch on time. When the boss inquired why so many of the manager’s own employees were betting that the product wouldn’t launch until the following year, the manager was forced to admit that the program had run into hurdles. As a result, additional resources were committed to the project and, while the project was still late, Microsoft was at least able to get it to the market faster than otherwise would have been the case because of the unique insight that the market-based system afforded company managers.
I mention this because just yesterday the New York Times had an interesting article entitled ”Google’s Lunchtime Betting Game” in which the company’s use of “predictive markets” was described.
What struck me from the article was the finding that workers who work in close proximity with one another tend to vote along the same lines. Surprisingly, Google sees this as good news because it confirms it belief that information moves fastest among people who are closest together. This finding, in turn, was seen as offering confirmation of the company’s “third rule for managing knowledge workers: pack them in.”
I, however, don’t think it is such good news because I don’t believe it is all that healthy for workers—especially at knowledge-based company—to all be thinking alike.
Now, I don’t actually believe that all Google employees do think alike, but I do think there is a real danger from the strategy of “packing them in” if it leads to Groupthink. Due to the accelerating pace of innovation, I am convinced that most change is going to come from outsiders—and people on the fringe. To tap into these innovative ideas, it is important to ensure your company has a means of accessing outside information and ideas. The reason is because even if everyone in your company agrees a certain product or idea is “a sure thing,” “sure things” sometimes have a way of exploding and, in the process, taking the whole company down with it.
The moral of story is that predictive markets can be a useful tool, but only a fool would bet the farm on its predicted outcomes—especially when most of the people doing the betting are like-minded.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Jump the Curve with a Napkin
It is no secret that a great many ideas—as well as business plans—were first conceived on the humble napkin. It is perhaps then no surprise that this simple instrument has now been improved upon by technology. Avery Holleman has developed a new Napkin PC that uses electronic paper and RF technology to allow people to instantly share their ideas—and doodles—with others.
What I like about the technology is that it can be used by groups to collaborate more effectively, as well as brainstorm more efficiently. Not only can people instantly build upon other’s ideas, the technology might also encourage shy people to contribute more—all they have to do is write down their idea and hit the send button in order to send it to the group’s central PC.
Another way to think of the technology is that it might do away with the job of “group facilitator,” not to mention getting rid of all of those huge, white pieces of “brainstorming” paper.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Future of Self-Driving Cars
Tomorrow, Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, is scheduled to give a talk on the future of driverless vehicles. As readers of this blog know, I’m bullish on the long-term potential of self-driving vehicles—mainly due to the exponential advances in robotics, nanotechnology, satellite-based GPS/digital mapping, motion sensors and RFID technology.
Nevertheless, I would encourage people from overly excited about the possibility just yet. Society’s resistance to change, government regulation, liability laws, and privacy issues will all impede the transistion to self-driving cars.
Having said that, however, I would encourage readers to watch for the following benchmarks:
#1: The military introduces self-driving vehicles in conflict situations. (Given the number of soldiers being killed and maimed by IED’s in Iraq, the Army has a strong incentive to employ self-driving vehicles sooner rather than later.) I can imagine this happening as early as 2010.
#2: While technical issues and liability concerns will keep self-driving vehicles off the freeway for years to come, there is reason to believe that forklifts operating in more constrained environments will be easier to manage. (There is also less risk of being sued). Therefore, I would look for large companies such as Wal-Mart and FedEx to begin actively employing autonomous forklifts within the next 3 to 5 years.
#3: As the technology continues to improve and the bugs are worked out (which will be facilitated by using the vehicles in real world situations like Iraq), it is feasible that self-driving vehicles will be employed in limited situations on less densely populated stretches of highway or in rural areas. To this end, the U.S. Postal Office, UPS, FedEX, DHL and others might win government approval to employ the devices in limited areas. I can see this happening within 10 years.
As all of these scenarios unfold, not only is the public likely to become comfortable with the idea of self-driving vehicles I can envision a scenario—especially among younger people—where turning over control of the car to a computer becomes the preferred option because it is easier, safer and more convenient.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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NetFlix Jumps the Curve Again … Provides a Glimpse of the Future of Movies
In my new book, Jump the Curve, I cite Reed Hastings -- the CEO of NetFlix—as an individual who was able to “jump the curve” because of his ability to understand in the mid-1990s that eventually advances in data storage technology would allow his company to send movies through the mail (in the form of DVD’s).
More recently, NetFlix jumped the curve by tapping into the power of the open-source movement by offering a $1 million prize to anyone who could increase the company’s recommendation algorithm to increase sales by 10%. The benefit for NetFlix, of course, is that it will sell more movies by better matching recommendations to customer’s preferences.
Well, it now appears that Reed Hastings and NetFlix have again jumped the curve. Earlier this week, the company announced it was teaming up with LG to provide movies on demand directly into people’s homes. In addition to being another knife in the back of your local neighborhood movie rental store, the move is sure to increase NetFlix’s sales for three reasons.
First, it will save people from having to wait for their next movie to arrive via mail—therefore people can watch more movies. Secondly, because the advance takes advantage of the exponetnial advances in bandwidth, it means NetFlix will never be “out” of movies which are in high demand. Third, and perhaps most important, because NetFlix will be delivering these movies over a set-top box system, the company will not only be able to keep a detailed record of every movie you have ever watched, you can expect NetFlix to partner with companies such as Nielsen and Invidi to also track customer’s television usage. And this data, in turn, will help NetFlix further refine its recommendation system.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Death’s Slow Death
I have written before about the topic of radical life extension, but I’d like to briefly revisit the issue because I am more convinced than ever that society is on the verge of huge medical breakthroughs that will bring about much longer lives. As proof, I would submit this article entitled ”How to Live Forever” from this week’s edition of The Economist.
The Economist is not generally known for sensationalist journalism, so when it says “the process of aging ... no longer looks impossible” I believe that sensible people should pay attention. And while I’ll be the first to admit that there are profound societal and ethical issues surrounding this issue; from a practical matter I think it is also imperative that businesses and government “jump the curve” and begin contemplating both the opportunities and the problems that this issue will create in the near future.
At a minimum, society will need to revisit its assumptions about when people should work and retire. For example, if people can live well past 100 perhaps society should restructure itself so that people work less during their child rearing years—so that they can spend more time with their children. The trade-off, of course, may be that these people will have to forego the idea of retiring when they are 65 and instead work until a much older age.
In turn, these dynamics will have profound implications for every industry from education and tourism to retirement planning and health care.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Zero Gravity Brainstorming
Sometimes I wonder why I don’t see certain things sooner. Just the other day I wrote about zero gravity thinkers -- which are roughly defined as outsiders who can come into an entrenched organization and help its members see things in a unique or different ways. And late last month, I discussed how IBM was using Second Life and other virtual reality settings to hold meetings in unique settings. As you may recall, I even mentioned at the time that IBM held some meetings in which participants were allowed to float freely in virtual space.
Perhaps if you want to “jump the curve,” you shouldn’t just think of the term “zero gravity” as a metaphor—maybe, if you are hoping to spark some truly creative ideas—you should consider holding your next brainstorming session in a virtual zero-gravity setting.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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The Most Significant Breakthroughs of 2007
Like so many other publications, I have decided to take a look back at the past year to determine the most significant technological breakthroughs. After a good deal of thought, here are my selections:
#10: Smaller Transistors. In January, both Intel and IBM announced that they would be using new materials to design smaller transistors. What is significant about the breakthrough is how a relatively simple advance in the material sciences can increase the productivity of existing product by 30%. In 2008, businesses should continue to stay abreast of advances in nanotechnology because I believe a host of new materials—many with exciting properties—will emerge. To understand the potential, I’d encourage you to review this post about how General Motors is employing nanotechnology to its competitive advantage.
#9: The Paper Battery. In August, a team at Rensselaer unveiled a small piece of paper that can store and discharge electricity. What is so exciting about this technology is that it could soon be used to construct products that use the heat from the human body to power the device—say goodbye to having to recharge your cellphone! (The technology can also be used to power medical devices inside the body. The advantage of this is that pacemakers and other medical implants won’t have to replaced.)
#8:The Human Microbiome Project. There is still a great deal that doctors and scientists don’t know about the human body. One such area that is only partially understood is the role that microbes play in immune function and nutrition. As a result of the HMP, however, this could soon change and the implications for understanding and treating disease could be huge.
#7: Multi-touch Computers. I have written about Jeff Han’s work with multi-touch computers in the past and in 2007 companies such as Microsoft also got into the act. As this technology continues to drop in price and improve in functionality, look for potential applications to explode. I am especially excited about how the technology will transform the advertising and educational industries.
#6: Brain-Computer Interfaces. The ability of researchers to read neurons and translate brain waves into electrical signals which can then be read by computers is nothing short of revolutionary. While I believe that it will be some time before the technology becomes mainstream, the first commercial products will likely soon be seen in the gaming industry.
# 5: Progress in the Field of Robots. There were a number of noteworthy breakthroughs in robotics this year. In November, a team from Carnegie Mellon constructed a robot-driven vehicle that successfully navigated an unrban environment; in Israel researchers built a robot the size of a dragonfly that could fly into a cave; and just last week, researchers announced that they developed an I-Snake robot that could patrol the human body. All of this tells me that society is just at the dawn of the age of robots.
#4: A Carbon Dioxide Catalyst. Thanks in part to Al Gore—who won an Academy Award and the Nobel Prize this year—the issue of climate change has finally seeped into public consciousness. This is a good thing but, at heart, I’m what some people would call a “techno-optimist” because I believe technology will ultimately solve the issue of carbon dioxide contributing to global climate change. One reason for this optimism is because scientists are already tinkering with the idea of using solar power to convert CO2 into fuel. If successful, the “problem” of CO2 could become an opportunity.
#3: Wireless Energy. This year physicists at MIT demonstrated how to transfer energy wirelessly. It is only a matter of time before this technology becomes a commercial reality, and when it does not only can we kiss goodbye to electrical cords, a host of new product applications will likely emerge.
#2: Genome Transfer. In June, reseachers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced they had successfully transplanted the genome of one species into another. I have written before about the emerging field of synthetic biology and explained how it could revolutionize everything from the pharmaceutical industry to agriculture and energy. This breakthrough suggests that these revolutions may just be a few years away from reality.
#1: Stem Cell Research. In December, researchers in Wisconsin and Japan announced they had successfully demonstrated how to use a virus to reprogam skins cells into stem cells. As I explained in this post,