Jump The Curve Archives: 11/2009

The Future is in Your Head—Really.

The future is in your head—really. According to this informative article, researchers at Intel are working on a “brain sensing” chip that could allow an individual to control a TV, computer or robot simply by thinking about it.

Now, the article does say that the technology is 10-15 years away, but I’d encourage people to think long and hard about the prospects for this technology. To advocates, I would caution that legal, regulatory and political considerations may slow the adoption of the technology. But opponents of the technology should not, however, take comfort.

From my perspective, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is inevitable and I think it could arrive—albeit in a limited form—in sooner than 10 years. As the world grows older, many seniors will be faced with the prospect of losing their independence and moving into assisted-living facilities. If BCI allows them the ability to maintain their independence, I believe that seniors—and not young, techno-enthusiasts—will lead the “brain chip” revolution.

As an analogy, recall that 50 years ago pace-makers seemed unnatural and were dismissed by most people. Today, two million people have the medical devices installed every year. And 30 years ago, in-vitro fertilization—or “test tube” babies—was similarly dismissed as “fringe” science. Today, millions of people have been born using the technology.

My point: What sounds odd today often has a way of becoming quite natural tomorrow. To this end, this is why I believe the future really is in your head.

Related Posts

Convergence: BCI & Robotics
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To Better Understand the Future, Add Some Sci-Fi to Your Reading Diet

As I stated in my 2008 book, Jump the Curve, one effective way to jump the curve is to add some science fiction to your reading diet—it can be a great source of inspiration and creativity. To this end, the Wall Street Journal yesterday ran this article, Technology is Stranger Than Fiction. I particularly enjoyed this quote: “In a time of great change, fiction can sometimes provide better understanding than facts alone.” Along these same lines, PC Pro recently published this article entitled ”The sci-fi legends who shaped today’s tech.” My favorite quote: “Sci-fi can consciously or unconsciously help [you] think outside the box.”

So there you have it—further proof that adding some sci-fi to your reading diet is good for your long-term health.

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Speaker Ray Kurzweil vs Jack Uldrich: Leading Futurists

In my business as a professional futurist and keynote speaker, my message is often compared to that of Ray Kurzweil’s—the noted inventor, author and futurist. And, to be honest, much of my thinking about the future has been influenced by Kurzweil. Nevertheless, in terms of style, how we deliver our respective messages about the accelerating pace of change are fundamentally different.

I have posted video samples of both of our work below but the difference can best be summed up by the idea that while Kurzweil focuses almost exclusively on technological trends, I focus more on how to help businesses and organizations think differently about the future.

To do this, I rely heavily on analogies and stories. I also spend more time outlining the skills—such as unlearning, becoming aware of “Black Swans,” ”Thinking Like a Child,” and ”Doing the Impossible”—which organizations will need in order to navigate tomorrow’s accelerating future.

Therefore, depending upon which type of futurist and keynote speaker your organization is looking for, you can either contact Ray’s speaker bureau or mine.

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The Future is Cloudy

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Supercomputers Super Future

Marshall McCluhan once famously said, “First, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” As a professional futurist, I have been trying to explain how some of our tools are getting exponentially more powerful. In turn, these tools are accelerating the advances that will soon shape our future. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of supercomputers.

According to this ComputerWorld article, supercomputers with 100 million cores and capable of one quintillion calculations per second—or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 for those of you counting at home—will arrive around 2018. This growing processing power is important because it will help innovative researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs design next-generation materials, drugs, bio-fuels, batteries and much, much more.

To better understand supercomputers amazing power, I invite you to watch this two-minute video I put together last year. Although be forewarned, one quadrillion is already rather quaint:

Interested in other supercomputer-related madness by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:

Supercomputers; Solving Problems Big and Small
Future Flash with Jack Uldrich: SuperComputers

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The Future Needs More “Zero Gravity” Thinkers

In the New York Times a while back there was an interesting commentary entitled ”Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike.” It is hardly a revolutionary idea but the author makes a good case that any number of businesses can benefit from an outsider’s perspective.

I would take this argument a step further and argue that businesses should also actively seek out cross-disciplinary thinkers—generalists who are well-versed in a variety of different fields. I say this because history has proven that innovation only rarely comes from those experts who know “more and more about less and less.”

More often, the really big breakthroughs come from those thinkers who are able to make connections between different discoveries. As James Burke reminds us in his excellent book, Connections, Alexander Graham Bell was not an expert in either electricity or magnetism, but he knew enough to combine the work of Leon Scott, Michael Faraday and H.C. Oersted to invent the telephone.

In this same way, I don’t believe that the next great breakthroughs will result from straight scientific discoveries in nanotechnology, material science, computers, robotics or brain-scanning technology. Instead, they will come from the convergence of these different forces by individuals who are able to make unique connections. Therefore, in order to “jump the curve” and stay ahead of these breakthroughs (or, better yet, have your company make the breakthroughs) it will help to bring in not just “zero-gravity” thinkers but some cross-disciplinary thinkers as well.

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Set Discontinuous Goals
Don’t Incrementalize Yourself Into the Future
Dangerous Curves Ahead
Exponential Evolution
A Useful Analogy for Thinking About the Future
Think 10X, Not 10%
Einstein, Intel and All the Rice in China
Embracing Change

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Detroit’s Driver-less Future?

This past week I had an opportunity to address the Detroit Economic Forum on the topic of “Leading in an Era of Exponential Change.” As a professional futurist, one of my responsibilities is to help people envision future scenarios which may be fundamentally at odds with their current thinking. (As I wrote in this piece, however, my job is not to predict the future. Rather, I lay out a range of future scenarios.)

To this end, I encouraged my audience to give serious consideration to the idea that within a decade’s time driver-less cars could be a fast growing niche within the automotive sector.

Here are just a few reasons why such a scenario is possible. First, younger people are growing increasingly dependent on being connected. To the extent that the car of the future becomes a hyper-connected, wireless platform (and I believe it will), younger people may more easily relinquish control of the steering wheel to a robotic-driven car because they will prefer to stay connected with their friends and social networks rather than concentrate on the road.

Secondly, the fastest growing segment of the population within a decade’s time will be people 85 years and older. To the degree that these seniors want to maintain their independence but are unable to drive (due to poor eyesight, early-stage dementia, etc.), they may be forced to rely on driver-less vehicles.

Third, the U.S. Military has made it clear that it would prefer to rely on driver-less vehicles for many of the dangerous transportation jobs our soldiers must currently undertake in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of this mandate, the military may expedite advances in driver-less vehicles which could eventually find their way into the commercial marketplace. Finally, I also think it possible that farmers who are faced with growing labor shortages may come to rely more on driver-less tractors, and these advances could similarly translate into the broader automotive commercial marketplace.

Now, I understand all the legal, regulatory and political roadblocks to driver-less cars but I also foresee a number of major trends pushing society in this direction. My only point with this post is to encourage you not to dismiss the idea simply because it falls outside of today’s norms. The future has a funny way of changing on us.

Related Posts

Self-Driving Cars? Unlikely, But Possible
Elderly-Friendly Cars? Sweet!
General Motors Jumps the Curve with Smart Materials
Dude, Where’s My Flying Car?

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The Seven Deadly Habits of Ineffective Teachers

”Habits are useful but they can also be deadly. They are useful when the conditions in which they work are predictable and stable. But what happens if and when the bottom falls out of the stable social world in and for which we learn? Is it possible that learning itself—learning as we have come to enact it habitually—may no longer be particularly useful? Could it be that the very habits that have served us so well in stable times might actually become impediments to social success, even to social survival?”

The above quote was taken from this outstanding article, ”Unlearning Pedagogy,” which appeared in the Journal of Learning Design and was written by Erica McWilliam.

As a professional futurist, I have said repeatedly that “unlearning” will be one of the most critical skills for successfully navigating the future. In fact, I have become so enamored with the idea of unlearning that I have a website, www.unlearning101.com, dedicated exclusively to the topic.

If you don’t have time to read the McWilliam’s entire article, below are a list of the seven deadly habits teachers (and society) may want to unlearn:

1. The more learning the better
2. Teachers should know more than students
3. Teachers lead, students follow
4. Teachers assess, students are assessed
5. Curriculum must be set in advance
6. The more we know our students, the better
7. Our disciplines can save the world

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The Future Requires Situational Unawareness Training
How Can Businesses (and People) Unlearn?
Unlearning Prediction
Unlearning Cable TV
The World is Changing, Unlearn
Take a Course in Unlearning
Learning to Unlearn

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Around the World in 80 Minutes

A new company is claiming that by 2012 it will be taking guests up to outer space for a three-day excursion. The cost is a mere $4.4 million. From my perspective, the timeline seems overly aggressive but space tourism is definitely on the horizon—and, like so many other things, the price will drop.

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To Succeed in the Future: Think Like a Child, Now

Success Magazine recently published an article entitled ”Think Like a Child” in which I was quoted extensively. I encourage you to read it because, in addition to my insights (which I naturally think are insightful), it cites a number of other experts and practioners of “thinking like a child.” Here are a few highlights:

1. Children are naturally curious and open-minded;
2. Children aren’t conscious of what other people think;
3. Children don’t easily take “no” for an answer;
4. Children understand that recess can be the most important part of the day;
5. Children engage their imagination and aren’t afraid to try on new roles;
6. Children draw their inspiration from other children; and
7. Children don’t view setbacks as failures. 

For some other child-like thoughts, I invite you to review these past writings:

The Power of Play
Stop Acting Your Age
Take a Mandatory Recess
The Power of Creative Play
Cultivate a Beginner’s Mind

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The Future Requires Engaging in Situational Unawareness Training

”Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”—Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

Question: What two colors are the yield sign?

Did you say yellow and black? That answer would have been correct if Marcus Welby, M.D. was still the top-rated TV show; Richard Nixon occupied the White House or NASDAQ had yet to become a leading stock market index. The yield sign, though, has been red and white since 1971. Interestingly, a large number of people—including many born after 1971 - still erroneously believe the yield sign is yellow and black.

This phenomenon demonstrates that once a thing has been learned—even something as common as the color of a sign—it can be very difficult to unlearn.

Compare this situation with the actions of computer industry executives in the 1980s who had learned about computers in the era of mammoth mainframes and were accustomed to producing their own proprietary hardware and software and then having internal sales teams market and sell the expensive products they created.

With the advent of the personal computer the rules suddenly changed and companies began relying on microprocessors and packaged software and using third parties to distribute and sell the product. A handful of computer companies adjusted but many others such as Digital Equipment, Wang and Burroughs did not because either they didn’t unlearn the old rules or were late in adjusting to the new signs.

The same situation occurred more recently in the telecommunications industry. Prior to the creation of the iPhone, providers dominated the telecom industry and dictated to phone manufacturers the terms of agreement. The creation of Apple’s multi-touch, gesture interface and “apps"--laden device flipped the industry on its head. In a matter of months, millions of people switched providers and began using mobile devices to access the Internet (with a user--friendly browser), watch videos, read books and, together with the growing universe of software applications, do everything from locate their parked car at an airport and identifying obscure birds and songs to keeping their child mildly amused with an easy-to-download “fart app.”

In each case, the signs of change were not immediately obvious but they could have been picked up on if industry leaders had engaged in some situational “unawareness” training by stepping outside their industry’s existing paradigm and scanning the environment for subtle changes in technology, consumer behavior or the competitive landscape. For example, in the automotive industry, new advances in nano-materials and battery power could lead to radical new designs; the continued growth of social networking may demand the cars of the future to maintain constant connectivity and improve the driving experience; and advances in robotics and rapid prototyping could transform both the manufacturing process and the supply chain. In each case, automotive professionals will have to unlearn what a car looks like; how it is made; what it is expected to do; and who they will have to partner with in order to build the car of the future.

Homework Assignment: Using Starbucks as a case study, indentify three emerging trends in technology, consumer behavior or the beverage/food industry that may necessitate company officials to unlearn some aspects of its current business model.

Extra Credit: Identify at least two things which have contributed to Starbucks past success but that it should consider stop doing? (Hint: In 2009, the company dropped its name from a store in Seattle and replaced it with a name that more closely resembles a neighborhood corner coffee shop.)

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The Future of Health Care is All About Unlearning

My friends at MedGagdet have been doing a bang up job of covering the recent health care conference at TED. I invite you to review the proceedings from Day 2. The one thing that struck me is how—although unstated—the theme of unlearning underlies so many of the talks.

For example, the first speaker addressed how new virtual reality tools and high-speed digital/Internet connections may soon make “surgical collaboration” the new norm and lead to better surgical outcomes for patients—provided that is today’s surgeons can unlearn their “go-it-alone” style. The second speaker discussed why the current paradigm for diagnosing cancer (i.e. tissue-based diagnosis) may soon give way to more precise molecular diagnosis. Next, Aubrey de Grey talked about why aging should be viewed as a disease and not something that is inevitable. (I’ve written about this topic before and if de Grey is correct it will unleash a wave of unlearning.) Finally, Eric Dishman provided a glimpse of a new home-based health care delivery system.

My point is this: The technological advances which are driving these changes are real and they portend a better health care future for all of us. Unless leading professionals are willing to unlearn their current paradigms, however, many of these benefits will be unnecessarily delayed.

I have said it before and I will say it again—unlearning can be a matter of life or death, literally!

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Change or Die—Unnecessarily
Unlearn or Die
Unlearn or Die Even More Unnecessarily
What If Society has to Unlearn Death?
To Succeed in the Future, Unlearn Information

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The Future of Politics Will be Augmented

It has been said that it’s easy to tell if a politician is lying: all you have to do is see whether his or her lips are moving. I’m not that cynical about politics but when I do hear a politician speaking I would like to know which interest groups have contributed to that individual so I can better understand who they are really “representing.” (This information would be very helpful during the current debate over health care reform.)

Such information is, of course, available through sites such as the Center for Responsive Politics. But in today’s “app-centric” world what I want to see is a downloadable app for my iPhone that allows me to point my phone at a politician (or a picture of that politician) and have the names—and the dollar amounts—of the lobbying organizations that have contributed to that individual appear on the image. To make the app more fun—and, arguably, realistic—perhaps the developer could even dress up the politician in a NASCAR-like racing suit so that their various “sponsors” logos are appended on their suit.

If such an app already exists, I’d love to hear about it. If one doesn’t, my guess is that one will within the next year.

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