Chapter 8: Back to the Future

The Future is Available for Viewing on Re-runs of Star Trek

Growing up, I watched Star Trek but I never considered myself a “Trekkie.” Recently, I have to the conclusion that I should have been paying closer attention to the show. For example, look at the photo of Captain Piccard. Doesn’t the device he’s holding look like an iPad? Interestingly, the show was produced in 1987.

Earlier program’s (the one’s with William Shattner staring as Captain Kirk) were just as prophetic. Watch this interesting video, which I have also posted below, comparing Star Trek’s voice translator with the equipment that is available today. Or consider the USS Enterprise’s all-knowing computer--the one that could answer almost any question--and contrast it with IBM’s “Watson” computer.

The real take-a-way is this: Star Trek was supposed to take place in the 22nd century. It is only 2010. What does this tell us? The future will arrive sooner than any of us expect.

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The Future of Warfare

On this day in 1942, the Soviet Union beat back the German’s in the largest tank battle in history. It is now no secret that the U.S. is deploying untold numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles and robots in warfare. What is more interesting to think about is how these tools will be used in warfare and what are the implications of robot vs. robot warfare. Will they make war more or less likely and how will these tools change the thinking of decision-makers as to whether or not to engage in war.

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Experiential Leadership Seminar: Into the Unknown with Lewis & Clark

I am pleased to announced that, in partnership with Jeff Appelquist of BlueKnight History Seminars, we have produced a new three-day experiential leadership seminar based on my best-selling book Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition.

For organizations and corporations looking to take advantage of tomorrow’s unknowable environment and who are interesting in not only discovering their future—but creating it—this is the perfect leadership and training seminar. Below is a short 5-minute video outlining the program:

For more information either contact me at jack@nanoveritas.com or Jeff Appelquist at BlueKnight History Seminars.

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Experiential Leadership Training: Using History to Navigate into the Future

As a professional futurist it has always struck many people as odd that I have also written a book on the leadership lessons of Lewis & Clark. The reason I did so is because I am a strong proponent of metaphorical learning experiences as well as using history as a guide for the future.

In partnership with Jeff Appelquist of BlueKnight History Seminars, I recently put together a three-day experiential leadership seminar using Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and the Corps of Discovery’s historic journey “into the unknown” as a learning platform.

Below is four-minute video documenting the course which took place in Montana and included visits to Great Falls, the Gates of the Mountains, Three Forks and the Continental Divide.

If you and your company are interested in a similar experience, please contact me at 612.267.1212.

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Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark

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Into the Unknown with Lewis & Clark

I will be in Montana for the next few days leading a corporate group “into the unknown” using my 2004 book (Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition) as a guide. We’ll be visiting Great Falls, The Gates of the Mountains, Three Forks and the Continental Divide. It is amazing how relevant the leadership skills the two captains displayed during their 863-day, 8000-mile journey still are to this day.

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Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark

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Want to Understand the Future? Study History!

In his famous speech at Rice University where he declared that it was America’s intention to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, President Kennedy said “the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds,” adding that “the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.”

Kennedy went on to offer a historical perspective for the magnitude of change society had experienced over the short course of human history. He asked his audience to condense the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history into the span of fifty years. Under this scenario, Kennedy noted that not much happened for the first forty years. Ten years ago, man emerged from his cave, and only five years ago did he learned to write. Christianity appeared two years ago, the printing press this year, and just two months ago the steam engine appeared. Last month electric lights, telephones, automobiles, and airplanes became available, and only last week did we develop penicillin, television, and nuclear weapons. To reach “the stars before midnight tonight,” Kennedy then poignantly added that Americans would have to “dispel old [and] new ignorance.”

Since achieving Kennedy’s goal in 1969, progress has continued exponentially. In the last proverbial “day” computers, biotechnology, the Internet, and the sequencing of the human genome have all appeared on the scene.

What Kennedy’s analogy reminds us it that will need to continue to ‘dispel old ignorance”—or continuously unlearn if you will—only on a faster scale because the future is about to change in the “blink of an eye.”.

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The Future is on the Back Pages

I am re-reading Dan Pink’s excellent book, A Whole New Mind, and was just reminded that the creation of written language (invented by the Greeks around 5500 BC) helped reinforce the dominance of the brain’s left hemisphere--which is more analytical and sequential in nature.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but I believe it does speak to our need to break out of our regular habits (and patterns of learning about the world) from time to time. For example, a while back I encouraged my viewers to read the newspaper backwards occasionally because it was my experience that, often, the most important stories (from a long-term perspective) were those buried deep on the back pages of the paper.

Of course, I don’t believe newspapers or magazines are the only or best source of information these days but I can’t encourage you enough to break away from your regular sources and methods of gathering news. This is especially true if you wish to better understand the future. I invite you to watch this interesting TED talk by Kirk Citron of the Long Now Foundation discussing the idea of what stories from today will really be important in 100 years. Not surprising, Citron reaches the same conclusion I did and that is that the most important stories are not those which are being covered on the front pages; leading the nightly newscasts; or generating the most Internet traffic.

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Erasing into the Future

“Only the hand that erases can write the truth”. So wrote the German theologian, philosopher and mystic Meister Eckardt more than 800 years ago.

They are still good words to live by.

In the middle of the 19th century, blackboards were all the rage. In fact, some universities, seeking to gain a competitive advantage, even advertised that they were the only college within “a 100 miles” to sport the new technology.

This historical analogy is worth keeping in mind as university’s today tout that they offer every student a laptop or, perhaps, house the only high-tech lab “within a 100 miles.” The technology is no doubt sophisticated and it does offer a real advantage but it is important to remember that it will eventually be replaced by something else.

The real question, of course, is how soon. Far too many teachers, professors and schools continue to rely on blackboards not because they are the best tool (although they still do have a role to play) but because their hands can’t erase their old habits and behaviors.

We are racing into the future but for those organizations unwilling to unlearn and change all they are really doing is erasing their students future.

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Is the Future of College $99 a Month?

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There’s a Flip-side to Everything

As long time readers of this blog know, I am fond of the map to the right and have used it on previous occasions to emphasize the idea that in order to unlearn we must often view the world from a different perspective.

I was pleased to see that Derek Sivers incorporated it into the end of his two-minute TED talk entitled “There’s a Flip-side to Everything.” (The entire video is posted below).

I especially liked Siver’s example of how in certain Chinese communities citizens pay doctors for each month they stay healthy!

And, although Sivers didn’t this example, as a professional futurist who frequently uses history to illuminate the future, I have always liked the story of the Peruvian Indian tribe whose members gesture with their hands in a forward motion when describing the past. (From their perspective, because you can “see” the past, the past is in front of them. The future, on the other hand, can’t be seen so it is behind them.

It may sound weird but, as Sivers say in his talk, “The opposite may also be true.”

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The Future of Relationships

My favorite commercial during yesterday’s Super Bowl was Google’s (which I have posted below). The reason I liked it is because it is a powerful reminder that technology doesn’t just light our future, it can also fundamentally change how—and with whom—we interact in personal relationships.

For a little historical perspective, consider this: Before the invention of the automobile your future spouse/partner was likely to come from within a 5-mile radius of where you lived; after the automobile was popularized the radius increased to roughly 100 miles. The invention of the airplane further increased the average distance; and the Internet, as Google’s commercial demonstrates, is, yet again, extending the distance.

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The Exponential Banker

I have two young children. As a way of imparting financial wisdom on them at an early age, I asked both of them after they lost their first tooth which they would rather receive from the tooth fairy: $1 per tooth or a penny for their first tooth and then double the amount for each successive tooth. After I informed that all children have 20 baby teeth, they both readily opted for the $20 option.

It was a costly mistake because their twentieth tooth would have been worth $5242.88! Such is the power of exponential growth.

The lesson, which is a familiar one to many in the banking industry, is more relevant than ever because society is poised to enter what I call the “exponential economy.” There are a number of technological forces, including computer semiconductors, Internet bandwidth, data storage capacity, genomics and advances in nanotechnology, which are doubling anywhere from every 6 to 12 months. Moreover, they are expected to continue doubling for at least the next decade.

Another interesting fact about exponential growth is that anything that doubles just ten times is a thousand times bigger than it was at the beginning.

This recognition requires today’s banking executives to become what I call “Exponential Executives.” That is leaders who understand that as impressive as past technological advances have been—the ATM, online banking and mobile banking, etc—they are just the beginning.

Banking interactions will continue to evolve as customers’ physical and virtual worlds become intertwined, and social networks and mobile platforms will transform customers’ banking experiences and expectations. Still other advances will create an environment where a premium is placed on unconventional thinking and risk-taking.

As we enter the exponential economy there are five skills which will help the Exponential Banking Executive navigate through these turbulent and uncharted waters.

#1 Partnering: The first doubling in exponential growth is always from 1 to 2. The same principal is at work for the Exponential Executive as they head out into a future that seems almost unknowable. Yet if one thinks about this idea of “going out into the unknown” it is not much different than what the famed American explorers Lewis and Clark experienced 200 years as they began their exploration of the American West.

Think about it for a moment. How do you prepare for a journey in which you have no idea of what you might encounter; how long you will be gone; or even what skills you will need?

Not surprisingly, the first decision Meriwether Lewis made was to invite William Clark to become his co-leader.

Tomorrow’s banking environment is going to be equally complex and to survive it may be essential to bring on a co-equal who has skills and expertise in areas where you are less strong. This model of co-leadership is one CO-CEO’s John Addison and Rich Williams have applied at Primerica Financial Services for years.

#2 Jump the Curve: In 1996, Reed Hastings wanted to start a new business that sent movie videos through the mail. At the time, his business model didn’t work because VHS cassettes were prone to breaking and too heavy to send through the mail at an economical cost. Hastings, however, understood something his peers didn’t. He knew data storage was doubling every six months and that by 1999 the movie industry was likely to convert all movie rentals to a DVD format. In essence, Hastings looked at where the curve of technology was headed and began planning his move years in advance.

If one applies this same insight to many of today’s accelerating technologies, such as biotechnology, genomics, stem cell research and nanotechnology, it is clear that most demographers’ life expectancy predictions will be well off the mark. Barring a major disaster, I fully expect life expectancies will soon reach 80 and shortly thereafter 90—and, perhaps, even higher. The Exponential Banking Executive’ should be “jumping the curve” and preparing for this contingency today by developing products, services and tools that will serve this growing population.

#3 Embrace Ambiguity. There is the old saying that if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck.  The picture below is a duck, correct? Look again. When viewed from a different perspective it is also a rabbit.

The future must be viewed through the same lens of ambiguity. There is no question that the banking industry is in the midst of a severe crisis. But just as the Chinese character for the word “crisis” is comprised of the symbols for “danger” and “opportunity” so too is this present crisis also an opportunity.

The Exponential Executive faces the same reality as his or her peers, the difference is that he or she uses the situation to revisit old assumptions and fundamentally rethink how to do business in order to best serve their customers.

#4 Unlearn: Among the many trends that are doubling perhaps none is quite as astounding as the fact that scientific and technical knowledge is doubling every seven years. In other words, as impressive as everything we know today is, this knowledge will only equal half of what we will know in seven years—and just 25% of what we will know in 14 years!

From this perspective, it makes sense to think of today’s knowledge as the tip of the iceberg. Future knowledge is the equivalent of that portion of the iceberg that is presently underwater. As this new knowledge emerges over the coming years, one of the more difficult realities to accept is that it will make some existing knowledge obsolete. To prosper in the future then the Exponential Banking Executive must understand that unlearning will be just as critical as learning.

For example, as new wireless and virtual realities technologies become more prevalent how many branch offices will really be needed?  And, if people are living significantly longer, are 15 and 30 year mortgages the most appropriate terms? Change is never easy but if one embraces “unlearning” the rationale for change becomes easier to accept.

#5 Believe in Doing the Impossible: Just over one hundred years ago the idea of human flight was dismissed as the pipedream of a small group of fringe scientists and hobbyists. Fifty years the idea of a “test-tube baby” was similarly deemed impossible. And just ten years ago the idea that people working for free could design and write an encyclopedia which was as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica but be twice the size (and doubling every year) and available in a 140 different languages would have been dismissed as implausible. Wikipedia, of course, is a reality today.

If the future teaches us anything it is that the impossible has a way of becoming possible. The Exponential Banking Executive understands this reality and by partnering, jumping the curve, embracing ambiguity and unlearning, they are willing to accept that the path into the future will always be murky; but they also know they possess the tools and flexibility to help shape and create their own future.

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Not Unmindful of the Future

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of addressing members of the Federal Executive Institute at the Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. The subject of my presentation was “Leading in an Era of Exponential Change: The Example of General George C. Marshall.” As readers know, I believe Marshall is the epitome of an “exponential executive,” and it is why I wrote an entire book on his extraordinary leadership skills: Soldier, Statesman, Peacemaker: The Leadership Lessons of General George C. Marshall.

After my presentation, I had the pleasure of tagging along with the class as it received a tour of the Washington & Lee Chapel where Robert E. Lee is buried. As I listened to the lecture, I learned that the Lee family (and now the Washington & Lee University) coat of arms bears the Latin motto: Non In Cautus Futuri. It translates to: “Not Unmindful of the Future.”

It is a wonderful phrase and it is a principle I strive everyday, as a professional futurist, to abide by.

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Automobiles’ QWERT-Like Future?

The common “QWERTY” keyboard is the de facto keyboard across the English-speaking world. The QWERTY keyboard is not, though, the most efficient keyboard. That distinction belongs to the Dvorak keyboard upon which a properly-trained typist can reportedly type 20-30% more words per minute.

This fact has been known for decades but, still, few people use the Dvorak system. (Shamefully, even I’m typing this post on a Qwerty keyboard.)

Why? The short answer is because unless a technology can deliver an over-riding reason for change most people won’t change.

I ask you to keep this little fact in mind when other futurists predict the quick demise of the internal combustion engine. Now, I’m no fan of the combustion engine and I understand how advances in battery technology could lead a transition to all-electric cars. But I’m also aware that advances in synthetic biology may create a cleaner, cheaper and more environmentally-friendly biofuel. To this end, even if battery technology is 20-30% better it may not be accepted by the public for the same reason the Qwerty keyboard is still the most used keyboard: People resist change and if they can still “fill-er up” with fuel they are likely to do so.

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To Prepare for the Future: Study at an Anti-Library

“There is a huge difference between what people actually know and how much they think they know.”—Nassim Taleb

Question: Which of these animals is more likely to kill you: A shark or a deer?

If you said a shark you are not alone. The right answer, however, is the deer. Even if you answered the question correctly the odds of being killed by a deer instead of a shark may surprise you. You are 300-times more likely to be killed at the hands—or the “hoof” if you will—of a deer.

The reason the vast majority of people incorrectly answer this question is because shark attacks, although quite rare, are both vividly recalled and easy to imagine. It is not uncommon for television news stories to report shark attacks even when those attacks occur thousands of miles away; and, if you are over the age of 40, you will likely recall the movie “Jaws.” The former leaves the impression shark attacks are more common than they really are, while the latter ensures those rare attacks are “felt” at a deep, visceral level.

Instances of drivers striking deer on remote country roads and dying in the resulting collision, on the other hand, are much more common. They are so common, in fact, that they rarely warrant even a passing mention on the local news.

The discrepancy between the relative danger of sharks and deer is a poignant reminder of that old adage: What we don’t know is more important than what we do know. Or as Henry David Thoreau more elegantly framed the issue: ”How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?”

One of the better ways to remind of ourselves of our ignorance—and to remain open to the concept of unlearning—is to keep our ignorance top-of-mind. One of the more effective tools to do this is to create an anti-library. As Nassim Taleb recounts in his provocative and insightful book, The Black Swan, an anti-library is a collection of books that one hasn’t read.

Unlike a shelf or bookcase filled with previously read books, an anti-library houses unread books that contain valuable information but which you haven’t had a chance to access. With an estimated 3,000 new books being published daily and the rate of scientific knowledge purported to be doubling every seven years, it is safe to assume that there is a growing body of knowledge which is relevant to you and your business.

Unfortunately, you won’t often know what this missing knowledge is! The best you can do in such a deplorable situation is to stay intellectually humble by reminding yourself of your growing ignorance and the need to remain open to unlearning.

You are free to ignore this advice but remember this: What you don’t know can kill you—almost as easily as a deer.

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Future Headline: Teenager Controls Mars Rover from Home

Yesterday, on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, there was this article: Flying deep into the Middle East, from a cockpit in Fargo. The piece, which documented how Air Force personnel are controlling drones over Iraq and Afghanistan, was likely met with a collective yawn by most of the reading public. However, if you stop and think about it for a moment, the idea would probably have been dismissed as preposterous as recently as a few years ago. I mean think about it: Kids in North Dakota using their computer to control flying robots half a world away.

Alas, such is the nature of technological progress. To get your creative futuristic juices flowing let me offer another possible headline from the future: Teenager Controls Mars Rover from Home. As NASA gets more serious about using robots to explore space, I think the agency may some day have a glut of robotic devices on the “Red Planet” and it won’t know what to do with them all. In an effort to tap into the “open-source” ethos as well as get kids excited about science, technology and space exploration, NASA will then allow students (thorough a secure satellite connection) to conduct their own exploration using older robots.

Impossible? No. Unlikely? Perhaps, but then again how many people would have dismissed the idea of North Dakota teenagers using a video game-like joy stick to control and drop and bombs in Afghanistan as recently as a decade ago?

Interested in other headlines from the future? Check out this old post:

Worldwide Solar Farm Construction Forces Coal Plants to Shutter

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Future Headline: Worldwide Solar Farm Construction Forces Older Coal Plants to Shutter

Blockbuster recently announced that it intends to close 40% of its stores over the next two years. As professional futurist and someone who has been warning of this inevitability for the past few years, the news came as no great surprise. (I suspect it didn’t to a number of other forward-looking individuals as well.) All a person needed to do was track the trends in data storage, manufacturing, Internet Bandwidth and consumer behavior to understand Blockbuster’s future plight.

The first and second factors (data storage and manufacturing advances) helped drop the cost of DVD production and made it more feasible for companies such as Redbox to offer DVD’s for $1 at any number of retail outlets. The third trend (increasing bandwidth) is driving NetFlix’s ability to offer more movies over the Internet, and the fourth trend (consumer behavior) continues to show that younger people are more interested in gaming—and less so in videos.

My point here is not to gloat or engage in “hindcasting,” rather I want to use the Blockbuster story as a warning to another industry—the utility industry. For years, industry experts have held fast in their belief that coal will remain the leading source of electricity production for the next 20 to 30 years.

I disagree. Coal will undoubtedly remain the predominant source for electricity for some time (perhaps 10 years) but a number of trends are pointing to a much different future. For example, just today, Technology Review has an informative article on Nanosolar—the company claims it is now capable of producing electricity for 5-6 cents per kilowatt hour. This is already price competitive with coal!

Second and third, the efficiency of solar cells is increasing and manufacturing cost is decreasing. These trends suggest solar will eventually be cheaper than coal.

Finally, consumer and political behavior toward coal is changing quickly. Concerns over climate change are legitimate and these concerns will likely manifest themselves in some sort of carbon pricing scheme on coal. Moreover, consumers, if given the choice of choosing between solar or coal, will likely demand solar from their local utility providers.

All of these trends point to a fate similar to that of Blockbuster. In the year 2019, I predict a headline will read: “Worldwide Construction of New Solar Farms Outpaces Coal.” The subtitle will be: “Older Coal Plants are Shuttering at an Accelerating Rate.”

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The Future is Getting Cheaper

Last year I had post entitled The Future is Cheap in which I explained how technological advances are converging to drive down the price of a number of products and services. Today, yet another example has been brought to my attention. The price of In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is currently about $12,000 in the U.S. In Africa, however, a team of researchers now hopes to do it for $300.

Regardless of what one thinks about the wisdom or ethics of providing IVF to thousands of women in Africa, my point is that it won’t be long before the price in the U.S. and other places begins to drop rapidly.

If you want to jump the curve, one effective strategy is to seriously contemplate how your product or service might similarly be “disrupted” and provided for only “pennies” tomorrow.

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The Future of the Utility Industry

Over the past year, I have addressed a great many organizations involved in the utility industry. Part of my message has focused on how technology is transforming many aspects of their business. Another part of my message focuses on how advances in solar, wind, clean coal, fuel cell technology, geothermal, marine power and demand-management technologies—which I covered in my latest book, Green Investing -- will change their business.

The biggest part of my message, however, centers on how industry leaders need to “jump the curve” and begin thinking much differently about the future.

To this end, there is a wonderful article in this month’s Fast Company entitled ”Beyond the Grid.” From my perspective, the operative quote is this one, ”Distributed energy is happening.”

Let me repeated that: ”Distributed energy is happening.” It is a message everyone involved in the utility business should take to heart—immediately. Due to politics, the regulatory environment, as well as the inertia of human behavior, distributed energy and the micro-grid won’t arrive tomorrow but innovative utilities need to begin planning now—not in 5 or 10 years—for this new future.

Many utilities will argue that due to economies of scale that they can continue to produce and transmit electricity better and cheaper. And this is true—today.

As long-time readers know, I am a huge fan of history and years ago executives in the railroad industry laughed off competition from the airline industry because their consultants argued that rail would always be cheaper than flight. These consultants failed to recognize that customers would value time and convenience more than price. In much the same way, the microgrid will yield benefits beyond price.

In much the same way, executives at Ma Bell also laughed off the idea that their exulted status could be challenged. Today, as we know, things are much different in the telecommunications arena. Could the same happen in the utility industry? Sure. Wind and solar power are not price-competitive with coal and nuclear power today, but they are improving quickly and grid-parity is on the horizon.

If one studies the trends and the technologies affecting the utility industry as I do, it is easy to imagine a much different future for the utility industry than the one that exists today.

The prudent utility companies should be planning today for how they intend to first survive and, then, how they might even thrive in this new environment.

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The Future is Only Skin-Deep

This past weekend my daughter (age 10) went with her mother to visit the Titantic Exhibit at the Science Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota. When she returned she noted that they had “white powder” on the ship. She explained that the “rich people” used it to mask their skin because they viewed being tan as the “mark” of a common laborer. Today, “rich” people (as well as others) go to great lengths to tan their skin and, in many quarters, being tan is perceived as a mark of affluence.

It is just another reminder that the future is incredibly hard to predict because it is not simply technology which changes (e.g. tanning booths, tanning creams, etc) it is also society’s social and cultural mores.

For example, look at this picture of the future from the 1950’s. The artist depicts women as wearing dresses and performing household chores. My point is that he completely missed the “cultural revolution” and the idea that many women would be working.

If you want to study the future I suggest you reflect long and hard on how different advances might yield unexpected changes in people’s behaviors.

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To Survive the Future, The Publishing Industry Must Unlearn the Past

On August 5, 1949 Wag Dodge and a team of fire-fighters went into the Mann Gulch in Montana to battle a fire. The conditions were hot and dry. As evening approached, the fire changed directions and hot embers flew over the crew cutting off access to the Missouri River. It was soon apparent to everyone that they could not contain the fire.

Dodge and his fellow team members did the most logical thing and sprinted toward the top of the closest ridge. Soon the winds grew faster and the fire began advancing at a rate of 600 feet a minute. The crew dropped their gear and 50-pound packs in an attempt to run even faster.

Feeling the heat now pressing upon his back, it was clear to Dodge that he and his team weren’t going to make it to the ridge. He yelled at his men to stop. Either not hearing Dodge over the din of the roaring fire or thinking he had lost his mind, the men continued running. Dodge then did something even more incredible. He lit a fire.

As expected the dry brush quickly ignited and raced aheadof Dodge. With the larger fire still roaring down upon him, Dodge doused his handkerchief with water from his canteen, stepped into the still smoldering embers of his self-ignited fire, and laid down and began sucking up what little oxygen remained as the larger fire leapfrogged over the small patch of burnt land.

Amazingly, Dodge survived. Unfortunately, thirteen members of his crew did not. They couldn’t outrun the powerful fire.

Out of this disaster was born something positive. On that fateful day, Dodge inadvertently invented the escape fire—a tactic that is today standard operating procedure among forest firefighters—but which was created, literally, “in the heat of the moment.”

The story is relevant to the publishing world because, like a raging forest fire, continued exponential advances from the world of technology are going to continue to wreak havoc on the industry. For example, the first edition of the Amazon Kindle held 250 books. The second version—1500! It’s not going to stop there. Data storage capability is doubling roughly every 6 months. In other words, when Kindle 3.0 comes out, it will store 6,000 books. At this point, it is foolish for K-12 and post-secondary administrators not to use this technology.

Because of continued advances in bandwidth, it is already possible to download an electronic book in a minute. What this implies for textbook publishers is that rather than publishing annual updates, their authors can modify textbooks on the fly as new knowledge becomes available. Of course, this makes eminent sense because scientific and technical knowledge is now doubling every two years.

The changes won’t stop here. Advances in flexible electronics will make e-books easier and more enjoyable to use. The addition of color “digital” ink will make it feasible to include visual animations into books. The net impact is that books can become multi-media in nature. Is there really any reason why the printed word must stay confined to the printed word? No!

Another exciting technological advance I have written about before is Live Ink. The current paradigm for reading the printed word—in straight lines read from left to right (as you are doing right now)—was created because historically paper was a limited commodity. When the written word transfers to an electronic format, however, a new paradigm—such as Live Ink—can emerge.

Wikis, crowd-sourcing and collaboration will also continue to transform the publishing world; as will other unexpected advances in other areas. For a example, consider the following paragraph:

”Dave Striver loved the university--its ivy-covered clock towers, its ancient and sturdy brick, and its sun-splashed verdant greens and eager youth. The university, contrary to popular opinion, is far from free of the stark unforgiving trials of the business world: academia has its own tests, and some are as merciless as any in the marketplace of ideas. A prime example is the dissertation defense: to earn the Ph.D., to become a doctor, one must pass an oral examination on one’s dissertation. This was the test Professor Edward Hart enjoyed giving.”

As a writer, I think it is a fine piece of work and, like most good fiction, it seems to possess an aura of real- world experience. Here’s the problem--especially if you’re in the publishing world or if you are a writer like me—the paragraph was written by a computer program, dubbed StoryBook.

Change is coming to the publishing world and it is unlikely anyone is going to be able to outrun the technological winds fueling the conflagration. Like Wag Dodge, the best strategy is to take a match to your own industry and start thinking of an entirely new strategies for surviving. To do so, it will help if you can first unlearn.

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Want to Understand the Future? Study History.

In his famous speech at Rice University where he declared that it was America’s intention to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, President Kennedy said “the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds,” adding that “the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.”

Kennedy went on to offer a historical perspective for the magnitude of change society had experienced over the short course of human history. He asked his audience to condense the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history into the span of fifty years. Under this scenario, Kennedy noted that not much happened for the first forty years. Ten years ago, man emerged from his cave, and only five years ago did he learned to write. Christianity appeared two years ago, the printing press this year, and just two months ago the steam engine appeared. Last month electric lights, telephones, automobiles, and airplanes became available, and only last week did we develop penicillin, television, and nuclear weapons. To reach “the stars before midnight tonight,” Kennedy then poignantly added that Americans would have to “dispel old [and] new ignorance.”

Since achieving Kennedy’s goal in 1969, progress has continued exponentially. (Ironically, perhaps, with the exception of space exploration which, as Monday’s 40th aniversary of the moon landing reminds us, has not made much progress.) Taking his historical analogy a little further, however, in the last proverbial “day” computers, biotechnology, the Internet, and the sequencing of the human genome have all appeared on the scene.

What Kennedy’s analogy reminds us it that will need to continue to ‘dispel old ignorance”—or continuously unlearn if you will—only on a faster scale because the future is about to change in the “blink of an eye.”.

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The Future of Gaming

I can still recall the joy I experienced when I first played my brother in the game of Pong back in the mid-1970’s. (We played on an old black-and-white TV console in our basement.) It would have been difficult for me to imagine back then that sometime in the distant future, Pong and its video-gaming successors would ultimately be a bigger industry than all of Hollywood. Yet that is exactly what occurred in 2005 when revenues from video gaming surpassed the revenues of all the Hollywood blockbusters—combined.

I would now like to introduce you to a new “mind-control” game which will be out this fall from Mattel. I invite you to watch the six-minute CNET video below, but don’t concentrate on how crude the game’s underlying technology is today, rather imagine how much more advanced it and other “mind-control” games will become in the future.

My prediction is that just as Pong’s crude technology predicted the future success of video games; Mattel’s mind-control technology offers a similar glimpse into the future of next generation of gaming.

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Into the Unknown: A Historical Lesson from Lewis & Clark

In 2004, I wrote the book Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition. One of my favorite stories—because it has so much relevance for today’s business leaders who are looking to jump the curve—occurred during the early part of June 1805.

On June 2, 1805, Lewis and Clark approached a fork in the Missouri River. During their consultations with the Indians the previous winter nothing had been mentioned of this second river. It was, however, critical that the Corps of Discovery follow the true Missouri River. If they didn’t, they were unlikely to reach and successfully pass over the Rocky Mountains before winter. This setback would have jeopardized the entire mission.

Lewis and Clark split their team up and sent one group up the north river and a second group down the south river. After three days, both teams returned and were still unsure as to which river was the true Missouri.

Lewis and Clark being the good leaders that they were then split up. Meriwether Lewis traveled north and William Clark went south. After a few days the two men returned and they still weren’t sure.

While they were away something very interesting occurred. All 30 members of the team determined that the north river was the true Missouri. They reached this decision the following way: For the past year, the Corps of Discovery had been traveling up the Missouri River and the water was “warm, slow, muddy and brown.” The water of the north river was also “warm, slow, muddy and brown,” therefore they reasoned it was the true Missouri. It is the equivalent of saying that “Tomorrow is going to be pretty much like yesterday.”

Lewis and Clark conferred among themselves and reached a far different conclusion. In the face of complete opposition, they announced the south river was the true Missouri. They reasoned as follows: At some point the snow from the mountains needed to melt and when it did it would create a river that was cold, fast and clear.” Those characteristics matched the south river and, as history demonstrated, the two captains made the correct decision.

My point is this: Many, if not most, people think that “tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday.” From my perch as a professional futurist, I see the trends in biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, RFID, social networking and robotics (to name but a few) are accelerating and I know that tomorrow is going to be radically different then either yesterday or today—and we need more leaders with the courage to head out into the unknown.

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Unlearning Science

In relative terms, the field of plate tectonics is still fairly new—becoming widely accepted only in the mid-1960’s. The idea that massive continents could have drifted apart over millions of years was, however, first expounded on by an amateur American geologist, Frank Bursley, in 1908. Bursley was struck by how the shape between the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America looked as though they could fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and suggested the movement of the continents might also explain the formation of mountain ranges. Bursley provided little evidence and his idea was soon—and easily—dismissed by the scientific establishment who had little time for the “strange” theories from amateurs.

A few years later Bursley’s idea was picked up by a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who was disturbed by the many animal and fossil anomalies which didn’t fit conveniently into the day’s existing theory of how the earth was formed. Again, it was dismissed. This time because the idea came from an outsider—a meteorologist.

And what precisely was the leading theory used by geologists to explain how the exact same fossils of animals and plants could have existed on the opposite sides of different oceans? The answer was “land bridges”—mysterious strips of land, for which no evidence existed, but miraculously allowed animals to peacefully and successfully meander thousands of miles across vast expanses of the world’s oceans.

For example, when an ancient horse named Hipparion was found to have lived in both Florida and France, geologists drew a land bridge across the Atlantic Ocean to explain away this disturbing discrepancy. Soon, a variety of other land bridges begun to spring up and populate the world of geological science in order to explain everything from how tapirs existed in both Southeast Asia and South America at the same time to how snails could turn up in both Scandinavia and New England.

Surprisingly, and in the face of a complete and utter lack of evidence, land bridges remained the geological orthodoxy for the next 50 years. In 1944, a British geologist, Arthur Holmes, wrote a book entitled Principles of Physical Geology elaborating on Wegner’s theory but it was dismissed by one reviewer who even had the temerity to warn that Holmes presented his arguments so coherently that they might actually be believed by students! In 1955, no less a figure than the esteemed Albert Einstein wrote a ringing endorsement for a book which all but ridiculed the ideas of Wegener and Holmes.

And in 1964, in the face of mounting evidence, a Canadian geologist by the name of Lawrence Morley wrote a paper explaining how magnetic studies of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean were spreading in the exact motion prescribed by the theory of “continental drift.” Morley’s paper was abruptly and rudely dismissed by the editor of the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research with this now infamous note: “Such speculations make interesting talk at cocktail, but it is not the sort of thing that ought to be published under serious scientific aegis.”

Later that year at a conference of the Royal Society the tide finally began to turn but it wasn’t until 1968 when the same publication, which had rejected Morley’s paper only four years earlier, published the article which gave the science of plate tectonics its name.

The story serves as a wonderful reminder to those scientists who are quick to dismiss ideas from amateurs, outsiders, and unconventional thinkers. To this end, I invite you to watch this 60 Minutes segment on “Cold Fusion” and pay special attention to the outright dismissal of the idea by some of today’s leading experts. Could they be wrong? I don’t purport to know the answer but history suggests that these scientific experts should at least entertain the notion that they might be wrong.

The same is true of the theories of Aubrey de Grey, an outsider from the field of computer science, who is strongly challenging today’s conventional wisdom on the “science of aging.”

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Jump the Curve: May 1, 2009

In today’s video I explore the connection between chocolate candy bars and your personal genome:

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Future Flash with Jack Uldrich: 100 Years

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Let’s Party Like Its 1997

One of the best ways to understand the future is to study history. I’m also a fan of using humor wherever possible, so if you didn’t catch the Colbert Show last night, I invite you to watch the three-minute video below. There is a 30-second commercial first, but the pay-off is when Colbert goes back to the Internet circa 1997. It’s hilarious but it’ll help remind you of how far we have come in the past 12 years and, perhaps, suggest just how much farther we’ll advance in the next 12:

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A Brief History Lesson in the “Dangers” of New Technologies

Lady Greenfield, an eminent British professor, has warned that new social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook risk “infantizing” the minds of its younger generations of users.

Her reaction reminds me of that of Aristole, who when asked about the value of books, warned that the then-new technology risked causing future generations to lose the “art of memory” and, thus, the art of story-telling.

My point is that so-called experts—even as brilliant as Aristole and Lady Greenfield—should be careful when making predictions about new technologies. Just because they are new doesn’t necessarily make them bad.

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Jump the Curve: February 13, 2009

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On Darwin & Lincoln: The Next Great Debate?

In one of those wonderful historical anomalies, February 12, 2009 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Lincoln is recognized as one of the greatest American presidents for helping end slavery. Darwin, of course, is the father of evolutionary biology.

It might appear these two historical giants have little else in common except the same birthday, but Darwin’s theory of evolution will soon call forth a new political debate which could, if not peacefully resolved, rip this country apart as surely as slavery did.

In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article describing how advances in genetic technology are ushering in a new era of “designer babies” and how some parents are pre-selecting embryos based on cosmetic characteristics such as eye and hair color.

As the genomics revolution progresses, though, eager parents may soon be able to select their offspring using even more distinguished genetic characteristics. For example, a combination of genes may soon be found to enhance athletic ability or intelligence. From this perspective, advances in genomics can be seen as co-mingling with and accelerating evolution.

Alas, the race won’t stop with our genes. In today’s New York Times there is an article of a woman controlling a robotic prosthetic arm with the aid of a computer chip in her brain. Soon, it may be possible for otherwise healthy people to augment their intelligence by virtue of brain-neural technology.

Regardless of one’s moral perspective on the wisdom of pursuing these technologies, it is naive to assume either genomics or brain-computer interface technology won’t continue to improve.

And as they do, a huge schism will form between those who believe that humans were meant to evolve in a technologically-enhanced fashion and those, who for religious, moral or ethical reasons, view such acts as either an affront to their God or their conception of what it means to be human.

This issue will make current political debates over abortion and gay rights seem like child’s play—and as big as those debates over slavery 150 years ago where society was discussing who was human. (Recall, at one time, it was deemed politically acceptable in this country to view a black man as equal to only three-fifths of a white man.)

Only through a long and hard-fought campaign (which, unfortunately, still isn’t over in the minds of a few), society has now come to agree that all races are human.

The issue of genetically-enhanced and machine-merged humans may not, however, be so easily resolved. Why? Because, at its heart, the debate it is not about who is human, but rather what constitutes a human being.

For example, is a child, who was genetically-enhanced for intelligence and augmented with brain-neural prosthetics, really the same as a child who was provided with neither advantage?

This then begs the following questions: Is it fair for one class of society—mostly likely the wealthy—to have access to such enhancements which will provide them with an inherent advantage over non-enhanced people? Alternatively, in a free society, does one group have a right to restrict or impose limits on people who wish to exploit such enhancements?

One camp may take a more Darwinian view and embrace genomics and brain-computer interfaces as an inevitable tools—similar to fire or the wheel—which humans are meant to not only use but embrace on our evolutionary path toward a better tomorrow. The other camp may take a more Lincolnian view that all humans are created equal and that a necessary condition of this state is that we must all remain forever equal—even if that requires limiting the actions of some.

I can’t say if one view or the other is correct, but historical fate brought Darwin and Lincoln into this world 200 years ago today and, ironically, the future may see to it that they and the broad philosophies with which they are both associated with remain entwined until the next great debate—over what it means to be human—is resolved.

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The Future has Arrived: Classic Video

Thanks to the fine folks at Techcrunch for bringing this classic 1981 video to my attention. Pay special attention to the rotary phones, the dial-up modems and, at the end of the video, the quote about the two-hour download time and $5 dollar price of “getting your newspaper from a computer:”

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The Future of Publishing?

What is the most popular book being published with an innovative new “print-on-demand” technology? The answer might surprise you. It is the “The Art of Perfume,” an ancient book about how to manufacture perfume from natural herbs. In fact, according the YouTube clip below, many of the most popular books are old manuscripts. I find this absolutely fascinating because it highlights a counter-intuitive aspect of new technology and that is that new technology can often help us recapture old wisdom.

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The Future of Construction

Tomorrow, I will be giving a presentation on the future of the construction industry to the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota. In spite of the gloomy economy and the general pessimism that the recession will continue for at least the next six months, I’m optimistic about the future. To better understand how new materials, robotics and energy systems can transform construction I invite you to watch this short video. It’s a like futuristic but everything is plausible:

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Zoetrope: Back to the Future

I’m a huge fan of using history to better understand the future. There is now an impressive new tool called Zoetrope that allows users to go back in time on the Internet. The tool has a host of impressive trend-spotting applications. An informative five-minute video can be accessed here.

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Jump the Curve to a $1000 Genome

Back in 1995 Reed Hastings began planning his new business. He wanted to send movies through the mail. At the time, movies were only rented in large, bulky VHS cassettes and his business model wasn’t feasible. Hastings had an advantage over his competitors, he understood that by the late 1990’s exponential advances in data storage would allow movies to be produced in a small, lightweight DVDs and that he would soon be able to execute on his plan to send movies through the mail.

Life science, healthcare and life insurance companies must adopt the same type of thinking in regard to exponential advances in genomics. Today, it is quite expensive to sequence a person’s genome (approximately $60,000). By 2013, however, the price is likely to be less than $1000 and when that happens a whole host of new products and services are going to be possible. The time to start preparing for this future is now.

Interested in reading related articles on genomics by America’s leading healthcare futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:

Personalized Medicine’s Accelerating Future
The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes
A Trillion Reasons to Care about Genomics
The Coming Health Care Revolution

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From Defibrillators to Digestable Pills

For more information (and a higher quality photo of the digestable “Intelligent” pill, I refer you to this article.)

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Future Flash with Jack Uldrich

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Unlearning Disease

With all of the information now pulsing around us, it is easy to forget that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” I constantly try to remind my clients in the health care sector of this simple fact. A case-in-point is the extraordinary strides being made in the field of genomics—which, due to accelerating gene sequencing technologies, are occurring on a daily basis.

One the bigger implications of these cascading discoveries is that they will likely fundamentally alter how we classify disease in the future. As a little historical reference, it is useful to consider that in 1850 there were only 140 categories of disease. In 1993, the last time the World Health Organization undertook the classification of all diseases, there were some 12,000. The next classification isn’t expected to occur until 2015, but it is not hard to imagine that the number of diseases—and how they will be classified—will increase even more.

For a great primer on this possibility, I’d encourage you to read this article, Redefining Disease, Genes and All. I especially liked this quote at the end of the article. One doctor, responding to the fact that as late as 1909 one of the leading causes of death was listed as “visitation of God,” he went on to offer this warning: “Imagine how they are going to to be laughing at us,” he said, “not 100 years from now, but even 50 or 20 years now.”

As a result of accelerating technological change, it is certain that “we don’t know what we don’t know” about a wide variety of diseases. To stay open to the possibility that these diseases might soon be both classified and treated differently , it is helpful to keep in mind the possibility that if you don’t change your views you will likely be widely mocked at some point in the future—and it might even be sooner than you expect.

Interested in viewing related articles on unlearning? Check out these past articles:

Does the Pharmaceutical Industry Need to Unlearn?
Is the Health Care Industry prepared to Unlearn?
Learning to Unlearn: Case Study #1
Examples of Unexponential Thinking

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The Future of Telecommunications in Six Videos

On Tuesday, I am traveling to Florida to give a speech on the future of the telecommunications industry. One of the bigger (and, to be honest, not terribly new) trends in the field is the continued growth of video. In the spirit of this trend, I’d like to offer you six different videos which, each in its own unique way, offers a glimpse into the future of the telecommunications industry. The first three are very cool, and the next three are more technical but still provide some very good information.

The first clip from Nokia offers an idea of what future mobile devices might look like:

The second offers an idea of how holographic information might become more pervasive:

The third video reviews how advances in algorithms and nerotechnology could lead to “voiceless” communication:

The next three clips review how terahertz transmissions, sensors and RFID technology could lead to some cool new applications for future mobile devices:

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Future Technology & the Ability to Absorb It

I spend a great deal of time documenting how exponential advances in semiconductors, data storage, bandwidth, gene sequencing, brain scanning technology, robotics, algorithms and nanotechnology will fundamentally alter the business environment in the next decade. I am, however, aware of the fact that technology is already outpacing society’s ability to adapt to it. As such, I am always careful to temper client’s enthusiam about how quickly many of today’s emerging technologies will be incorporated into the fabric of our lives. (Frequently, I need to temper my own enthusiam as well).

To this end, I would like to offer this short history lesson which I pulled from Pip Coburn’s informative book, The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash:

-- The first mobile phone in the U.S. was available in 1946.
-- The first video game was played in 1961
-- The first personal computer was built in 1964
-- The first e-mail was sent in 1971.

Some of this slowness is a result of people’s and society’s resistance to change, some of it is due to legal and regulatory issues, sometimes it is a result over legitimate business concerns over the cost and the effectiveness of early versions of the technology. (For example, iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner is a great piece of technology, but many of us have a hard time coughing up $300 when a $5 broom still does a pretty good job.)

Bottom-line: Change does happen, but often it occurs a lot slower than most people generally recognize or appreciate.

P.S. Because I am a fan of thinking counter-intuitively, tomorrow I intend to write a piece that argues just the opposite—that technology adoption is actually speeding up.

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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