Industries: Energy

Futurist Jack Uldrich on Regional Economic Development

Luncheon 2010 - Jack Uldrich from Katie Dye on Vimeo.

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The Future in One Picture

I love this picture. It is a wonderful example of how the future has a way of getting better, faster, smaller and cheaper.

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Helping Businesses Unlearn

As a leader you must nurture an organization that can rapidly adapt. Unlearning can help.

Unlearning can also help you innovate. In fact, unlearning can even assure you and your organization survive.

After years of work, I am pleased to report that I have now developed both a half and a full-day seminar designed to help organizations unlearn—and thus adapt, innovate and survive.

Below is a short 9-minute video overview of the program. If you are interested in how “unlearning” can help your organization, please contact me at jack@unlearning101.com or 612.267.1212.

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Why Businesses Must Unlearn

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Futurist Jack Uldrich Keynotes Conference

In the past year, I have given dozens of keynote presentations to a variety of clients. Below is a short 10-minute speaking demo. If you are looking for an engaging, entertaining and informative keynote speaker for your conference or event, please contact either Mimi Hair or Ryan Foltz at Leading Authorities.

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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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A Million, a Billion, and a Trillion Reasons to Care About the Future

If something doubles just ten times it is one thousand (1024 times to precise) larger. This is an important concept to grasp if you want to better contemplate the future.

Why? Because no fewer than nine technological trends—semiconductors, data storage, bandwidth, genomics, gene sequencing, robotics, nanotechnology, brain scanning and scientific knowledge—are doubling anywhere from every 6 to 18 months.

To put this in some perspective, consider the following examples.

If the military is currently deploying 1000 robots in Afghanistan but the number is doubling every year by 2020 that means there will be one million robots deployed in the country. This will change warfare as we know it.

If Wal-Mart is currently deploying 1 million RFID (radio frequency identification) tags but that number is doubling every year this suggests by 2020 that there will be 1 billion RFID tags deployed. This will fundamentally transform the global supply chain management system.

And if gene sequencing equipment can today translate one billion sequences every few hours (at an estimated cost of $20,000) but the technology is doubling year year, this implies we will be able to translate one trillion genes an hour by 2020. If this comes to pass, sequencing your genome will not only take minutes it will cost pennies on the dollar. Such a change could radically transform how we treat disease and will have profound implications for both the health care and the pharmaceutical industries.

A million, a billion and a trillion might not seem that different (perhaps because they rhyme) but here’s one way to think of the change coming our way:

One million seconds was 12 days ago;
One billion seconds was 32 years ago;
One trillion seconds takes us back to the year 30,000 B.C.

My advice? Buckle up because your future is about to expand in a million, a billion and a trillion different directions.

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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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The Internet is Making Smarter … and Dumber

Two of my favorite writers and thinkers have recently released books. Clay Shirky has written a book entitled Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age in which he persuasively argues, among other things, that the Internet is making us smarter because it is allowing society to produce such knowledge accelerators as Wikipedia at virtually no cost.

On the other hand, Nicholas Carr has just released his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, in which he outlines his thesis for why the Internet is making us dumber. (In a nutshell, Carr convincingly argues that the Internet distracts us and makes prolonged thought more difficult. In the process, the Internet is literally rewiring our brain.)

Over the weekend, the two men outlined their respective arguments in the Wall Street Journal. (Shirky’s argument can be read here and Carr’s here.)

So who is right? Many people will be swayed by various arguments and place themselves firmly on one side of the debate or the other. In my humble opinion, however, both men are right. The world isn’t black or white, it is black and white as well as various shades of gray—all at the same time.

This can be a difficult concept to grasp but as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “The test of a first rate mind is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

If you don’t believe this is true, just look at the optical illusion to the right. Does it say “true” or “false” or does it say both at the same time? Once you learn to embrace ambiuity, you will be one step closer to embracing the future.

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Futurist Jack Uldrich to Keynote the MoneyShow

From August 19-21, 2010 I’ll be joining Steve Forbes at the 2010 MoneyShow in San Francisco to discuss how exponential trends in technology will impact your investment portfolio. If you’re in the area, please consider joining us. For more information, click here.

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The Future is Everywhere

Watch this clever video entitled iPad + Velcro. It is a spoof of course but I also believe it offers a hint of what the future will look like. The truth is that people would love to attach their iPad to their wall, dashboard and ceiling. This isn’t practical—yet. However, as flexible electronics become more inexpensive and come to be embedded almost everywhere, I believe people will soon be able to turn their dashboards, walls and ceilings into computer screens.

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

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Someone else’s Wrong Doesn’t Make You Right

I am preparing to speak to a major public power association early next week on the impact of disruptive technologies. Among other things, I will be discussing breakthroughs in solar, wind, biofuels, wave power, energy demand managment, and fuel cell technology. I will also being mentioning possible breakthroughs in the field of “cold fusion.”

The field has been held in very low regard since 1989 when other scientists could not reproduce the results of Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons. Humiliated by the scientific establishment, Fleishmann and Pons were forced to close their labs, flee the country and, basically, drop out of sight.

This was unfortunate because it highlights a behavior many of us must unlearn: Proving another person wrong does not prove us right. To wit, just because Fleishmann and Pons were not successful in achieving nuclear fusion at room temperature does not mean that it can’t or won’t be done sometime in the future.

Today, scores of researchers have now picked up the mantle of Fleishmann and Pons and are working on cold fusion. I don’t know enough about the field to say with any certainty if they will be successful but I’d remind skeptics that someone else’s wrong doesn’t necessarily make you right.

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Tic-Tac-Toe: The Future is Unknowable

Take a look at the familiar tic-tac-toe grid to the right. In how many different ways could you make the journey? It is not common for people to guess 27, 81 or even 243. The answer, however, is 362,800. This is because 9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1=362,800. (The actual number of winning or draw games is 255,168. For a more complete explanation click here.) My point is that either number is significantly larger than most people expect.

The same is true when thinking of the future. It is comforting to believe we can predict future with great certainty but as a professionalist futurist--and you may find this ironic, counter-intuitive, paradoxical or even disturbing--I make no claim to be able to predict the future.

Here’s why.

Consider almost any issue. What factors are involved? In my work as a professional futurist and forecaster, I regularly speak about 1) technology; 2) competitors; 3) customers; 4) employees; 5) money; 6) demographic characteristics; 7) politics; 8) regulatory issues; and 9) human behavior.

In many ways these characteristics are analogous to the X’s and O’s in a tic-tac-toe game and they can play out in hundreds or thousands of ways. In fact, the real number is so astronomical as to be incalcuable because there isn’t just one technology, one competitor or one employee to be concerned with in each circumstance. There are many and each one adds exponentially to the number of new possible outcomes.

All of this is not to say that forecasting isn’t valuable and worthwhile. It is. (I wouldn’t be a professional futurist if I didn’t believe this.) Rather, I merely want you to unlearn the idea that the future can be predicted with great clarity. It can’t.

Counter-intuitively, though, you can gain a better feel for the range of future possibilities but only if you first think and long about all of the variables which can affect your future.

P.S. But, as the post below suggests, don’t forget about Black Swans.

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A Future of Black Swans ... or Unlearning the Future
The Practical Futurist vs The Impractical Futurist

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The World is Changing

The following quote is from Hugh MacLeod’s new book Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. This is Rule 17: The World is Changing:

“Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I’d recomend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter. Just my two cents.”

Great advice. It’s exactly what I meant when I wrote The World is Changing: Unlearn. It is also an excellent reason for hiring a futurist.

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The Practical vs The Impractical Futurist

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New Keynote Presentation: The Future Demands Unlearning

As long-time readers know, I have been focused on the concept of “unlearning” for some time now. I dedicated an entire chapter to the idea in my book, Jump the Curve and, in addition to this website, later this year I will also be releasing the first in a series of books on the topic of unlearning.

To this end, I am pleased to announce that I have developed a corresponding keynote presentation on the topic. It is a perfect motivational speech for any business, organization or institution that knows it must drive change in order to survive but is running into resistance from those “leaders,” managers, employees or customers who refuse to unlearn the old ways of doing business. Below is a brief description:

The pace of technological change is accelerating. Today’s organizations are living in a world where “constant change is the only constant.” New advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology are bringing forth exciting and unexpected discoveries every day, while the expansive and growing power of the Internet, social networking and the open-source movement are fueling the fires which threaten to consume much of today’s existing business landscape.

Life-long learning will obviously be more essential than ever in this chaotic and churning environment; but often lost in this new emerging reality of exponential change is the fact that before an organization can seize tomorrow’s opportunities it must first unlearn old, obsolete knowledge as well as unlearn the old ways of doing business.

In this fascinating, informative, entertaining, interactive and enlightening presentation, noted global futurist and best-selling author, Jack Uldrich--who has been hailed by BusinessWeek as “America’s Chief Unlearning Officer"--will not only explain why unlearning is a critical skill for your company and your organization’s employees, he will also demonstrate how unlearning can help:

-- Successfully navigate a future where the pace of scientific and technological knowledge is doubling every seven years;
-- Prepare for competition that doesn’t yet exist; and
-- Seize opportunities which are, today, only on the periphery of their imagination.

(For more information on this presentation, you may contact any one of the leading professional speakers bureaus which represent me or contact me directly at 612.267.1212.)

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ZigBee’s Growing Future

Unbeknownest to most people the number of ZigBee radio chips shipped has been doubling every year in recent years, hitting 20 million in 2009. In 2010, the number is expected to reach 100 million. Soon, it will be 200 million and then 400 million—and, well, if you know how to jump the curve you’ll understanding how the technology will not only effect consumer electronics and utilities but how it may also change human behavior in unexpected ways.

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Nanotechnology: In 250 Words

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New Keynote Speech: The Future Requires Unlearning

As long-time readers know, I have been focused on the concept of “unlearning” for some time now. I dedicated an entire chapter to the idea in my book, Jump the Curve and have also developed a separate website that is serving as a notebook for my forthcoming books on the topic—the first of which will be released later this year.

To this end, I am happy to announce that I have developed a corresponding keynote presentation on the topic and will be partnering with one of America’s top speakers bureaus, Leading Authorities, to bring the talk to the public. It is a perfect motivational or keynote speech for any business, organization or institution that knows it must drive change in order to survive ... but is running into resistance from those “leaders,” managers, employees or customers who refuse to unlearn the old ways of doing business.

Below is a brief description:

The pace of technological change is accelerating. Today’s organizations are living in a world where “constant change is the only constant.” New advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology are bringing forth exciting and unexpected discoveries every day, while the expansive and growing power of the Internet, social networking and the open-source movement are fueling the fires which threaten to consume much of today’s existing business landscape.

-- Successfully navigate a future where the pace of scientific and technological knowledge is doubling every seven years;
-- Prepare for competition that doesn’t yet exist; and
-- Seize opportunities which are, today, only on the periphery of their imagination.

If you are interested in learning more about the presentation, I invite you to contact Leading Authorities directly at 1-800-SPEAKER or 1-202-783-0300.

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A Wave to the Future

I recently released an updated version of my book, Green Investing: A Guide to Making Money from Environmentally-Friendly Stocks. One area I was not bullish on in the short-term (but am long-term) is wave power. To this end, I encourage you to read this article from today’s Technology Review which reports that Scotland is developing a 1.2 gigawatt wave power project. As one industry spokesman says, “This industry is about to grow up.”

If the project is successful—and this is a big ‘if”—wave power could generate as much as 15 to 20% of Scotland’s electrical energy needs. In the U.S. the figure could be as high as 10% if the country were to develop wave power off the coasts of Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts.

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The Future is Black and White

The future won’t be either black or white—it will be black and white. In the field of architecture and design, people are often use to choosing between form or function. In the future, as a result of advances in nanotechnology, this age-old debate will become less relevant. As proof, I submit this article discussing a new technological advance that will allow the roof of the future to be both black or white—depending upon the temperature outside. (On cold days it will be black to absorb sunlight and on hot days it will turn white to reflect sunlight and keep the building cooler.)

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Powering Your Own Future

"Your home effectively becomes its own power station and gas station,” says Dan Nocera, an MIT chemist and co-founder of Sun Catalytix, in this short and informative video which describes his company’s innovative “direct solar fuels” or “electrofuels.”

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10 Jobs of the Future

Inventor: Until 1950, “inventor” was listed as an official occupation on the U.S. Census form.  The job title will soon return as a new industrial revolution—fueled by advances in material science, robotics; 3-D printing; information technology; and nanotechnology—takes root and unleashes a wave of new (and practical) inventions.

Video-Book (Vook) editor: As electronic books and e-readers become more popular, a new generation of editors who are skilled at providing readers with information in multiple forms—text, graphics, video, etc—will be required.

Data analyst: The flood of new data which the world will soon experience due to the continued growth of sensors; RFID tags and video will create growing demand for individuals who can not only interpret and decipher this data but who can also display it in new and more meaningful visual formats.

Video game designer: As immersive video becomes more common in schools and businesses due to the continued growth of haptics; augmented reality; and virtual reality, a growing number of video game designers trained in these areas will be required.

Virtual nurse: Continued advances in video; real-time monitoring tools; and expanded bandwidth will make it possible to safely and effectively monitor patients from afar. As a result of increasing health care costs and an aging population, more healthcare providers will turn to “virtual nurses” to monitor patients until the services of an “on-location” healthcare professional are required.

Robot Technicians: As robots become ever more popular and people come to rely on them for everything from cleaning to companionship, they will increasingly become seen as part of the family. Therefore, unlike many consumer products, robots won’t simply be abandoned when a new model arrives. Instead, people will demand their existing robots be upgraded. This will require the services of trained technicians who can upgrade robots with the latest software and hardware.

Custom manufacturer: In the hands of creative individuals, continued advances in software; computer aided design (CAD) and rapid prototype manufacturing will lead to more individuals drawing their livelihood from designing and building custom-made products. Among the areas most impacted will be health care and the arts. Specially, bioengineers will soon learn how to design and build new organs (e.g. hearts, livers, kidneys); while artists will use the tools to create new products and new forms of jewelry and art.

Marine biologist: The incredible diversity of ocean is nowhere near being understood or appreciated. A new generation of marine biologists trained in everything from biomimicry to genomics will remedy this situation and apply many of the lessons of the ocean to problems back on land.

Fish farmer: The world’s growing population will continue to put pressure on fish supplies. In response, companies will turn to fish farms as a sustainable method for meeting this growing demand.

Change management consultant: As the pace of technology accelerates and knowledge becomes obsolete more quickly, the ability to unlearn will be just as critical as the ability to learn. In increasing numbers, organizations will call upon the services of professionals trained in helping people adjust to the notion of “continuing change.”

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A Shorter Road to Our Energy Future

Michael Totty of The Wall Street Journal has a thoughtful piece in today’s paper entitled The Long Road to an Alternative-Energy Future. For the most part, the article does a good job of explaining the many obstacles that will confront this country’s transition to biofuels, nuclear, wind, and solar power. There is one key point which Totty mentions but completely overlooks and that is the fact that solar power is doubling every couple of years.

From Totty’s perspective just because solar only generates 0.1% of our electricity today it will never be more than a small, niche player in America’s energy equation. As I have done on numerous occasions, let me show you how fast solar energy could grow if it is doubling every two years:

2010—0.1%
2012—0.2%
2014—0.4%
2016—0.8%
2018—1.6%
2020—3.2%
2022—6.4%
2024—12.8%
2026—25.6%
2028—51.2%
2030—100%

Now, I don’t expect solar to meet 100% of America’s electricity needs by 2030 but it is entirely feasible that solar could meet well more than 25 percent—you just have to understand how to “jump the curve.”

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The Future is Gold

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the World Gold Council, in partnership with the fine folks at Cientifica, have released a new report entitled ”Gold for Gold: Gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation” suggesting that gold may soon replace diamonds as “a girl’s best friend.”

OK. That’s not really what the report said but here are a few of the highlights about how gold nanoparticles may impact your future:

1. Gold’s inherent bio-compatibility properties make it an ideal candidate for targeting tumors;
2. Gold nanoparticles are being developed to enter inside other diseased cells (The nanoparticles are then heated with infrared light and this “cooks” the cell from the inside out);
3. Soon, gold nanoparticles may create needleless vaccines;
4. Gold-based nanoarrays might also help detect everything from whether a woman is pregnant to dangerous food borne pathogens;
5. Gold-based nanocatalysts are being created to prevent the release of mercury into the atmosphere as well as neutralize other deadly compounds such as carbon monoxide; and
6. Such nanocatalysts might also help purify water by removing arsenic or other common pollutants.

The report also covers other opportunities in fuel cells, coatings, dyes and pigment, solar cells, conductive inks, electronics and high density data storage. All told, its a solid report and offers further evidence that nanotechnology is moving into the commercial mainstream.

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The Future Doesn’t Alway Require the “Big Fix”

Big problems such as health care, feeding the world and addressing climate change don’t necessarily require big solutions. In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women by getting doctors to wash their hands prior to assisting in the delivery of a new-born child. (Unfortunately, however, it still required the medical community nearly two decades to unlearn their stubborn and unhealthy habits.)

Alas, in the 21st century, the number of infections in hospitals remains unacceptably high. Why? Many healthcare professionals still aren’t employing good hygiene. If they were better at the simple act of washing their hands, the results would be impressive—on the order of saving thousands of lives annually and preventing billions of dollars in unnecessary costs.

In the field of agriculture, it was the addition of ammonium nitrate—a cheap but effective crop fertilizer—which allowed the world’s farmers to feed billions more people with the same land.

Continued advances in the field of genomics may also continue to increase the yield of corn, wheat and rice by making these crops more efficient in terms of how they utilize water and fertilizer. The result: More people can be fed using the same amount of land but with less impact on the environment.

In the automotive industry, it was the installation of the seat belt that saved the lives of thousands of motorists—even though the device was at first ridiculed as “inconvenient, costly, and just a bunch of damn nonsense” by auto executives. The next life-saving advance could be the introduction of super-strong, super-light nanomaterials.

As strange as it may sound, the problem of hurricanes may also just need a simple fix. As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner outline in their delightful new book, Super Freakonomics, in may be possible to prevent costly hurricanes (which, since 2005, have inflicted an estimated $153 billion in damage to the United States alone) by deploying a few thousand “hydraulic heads” in those areas where hurricanes start. The devices work by bringing cooler water from the bottom of the ocean to the top thus cooling the surface temperature of the ocean water and preventing hurricanes from forming in the first place. The estimated cost: $1 billion.

On the bigger problem of climate change, Levitt and Dubner also outline the logic behind “Budyko’s Blanket”—a super high hose which would spew sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere—which could theoretically cool the planet for a mere $250 million.

Now, to be fair, both the “hydraulic heads” and “Budyko Blanket” may not work and serious questions remain on both ideas. But the broader point is that when faced with big problems there is absolutely no reason why we must first look to “big answers” as the solution. Often, big problems can be solved with small solutions. After all, as a child, how many of your cuts and bruises were solved with a tender kiss from your mother?

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Technology Lights the Future

Today is the 130th anniversary of the installation of the first electric streetlight in Wabash, Indiana. At the time, it cost $100 to install the light. More interestingly, just a month later the city paid to have four more lights installed. The rest, as they say, is history as the electric light then proceeded to grow exponentially—like lily pads on a pond.

Today, a view of America at night looks like this picture to the right. I ask you to keep in mind this analogy of how “technology can light the future” when considering how rapidly advances such as robotics and smart dust may unfold once the technology reaches a commercially scalable level.

On a different level, you might also want to consider how the electric light changed people’s behavior. For one thing, the light allowed merchants and others to stay open later. Ultimately, it lead to such things as sporting events being played in the evening.

My point is this: When considering how technology expands you also need to consider how widespread adoption of technology might change people’s behavior. For example, continued advances in robotics might allow senior citizens to stay in their homes longer and have an adverse impact on the aging services industry. Similarly, the rapid proliferation of “smart dust” could make once unsafe neighborhoods suddenly safe and lead to more people living in certain urban environments.

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America’s Future: In One Word

This past weekend I read a fascinating interview with Peter Thiel—the co-founder of PayPal and the first investor in FaceBook—in Wired. The article was entitled The Utopian Pessimist.

What I liked about the article is that Thiel questions the assumption—trumpeted by many investors and fund managers—that the stock market will continue to post long-term increases in the range of 6-8%.

It is easy to fall into this trap because for the past 100 years an investment in equities has, in fact, yielded such a healthy return. There is no reason why, however, that this must continue to be the case moving forward into the future. As Nassim Taleb explains in his excellent book, The Black Swan, the future has a way of surprising everyone—and those surprises can be both pleasant and unpleasant.

For instance, what if the past 100 years were just a pleasant surprise? That is what if the 20th century was an anomaly and we were just lucky to have gone from horses and buggies to automobiles, rockets, computers and the Internet in a very short time? As Thiel says, “It’s not automatic that that progress continues.”

It isnt’! But if America wishes to maintain and, possibly even grow, its global position what must it do?

In a word: Innovate.

Earlier today, I explained how the rate of paradigm shifts is accelerating. This implies that an unprecedented amount of economic disruption is headed our way; but rather than be a source of only worry and consternation; farsighted entrepreneurs; investors and, hopefully, policy-makers will also recognize that it also represents a wonderful opportunity.

Advances in information technology promise to revolutionize media, publishing and education. Progress in biotechnology, stem cell research and regenerative medicine portend a glorious new age in preventative health care; and advances in nanotechnology and synthetic biology point the way toward a new, cleaner and, ultimately, more sustainable energy paradigm. (For an idea of the decade ahead, I invite you to review my predictions for 2010-2019).

Many of these developments, in turn, will either converge or spin-off in new and unexpected ways. To capture this promise, though, it is essential to develop an educational; entrepreneurial and political culture which encourages and rewards risk and innovation.

The future of tomorrow will move so fast that innovation is less a characteristic to aspire to and, instead, a trait that must be constantly used; honed and improved upon. In my book, Jump the Curve, I lay out 50 strategies for doing this but I’d like to share three here: 1) Think Like a Child; 2) Develop a Future Bias; and 3) Learn to Unlearn.

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The Future of Paradigm Shifts

In his book, The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil states that “the rate of paradigm shifts is accelerating” and, at the current rate, “doubling about every decade.” This is an extraordinary development.

To help put some perspective on the matter, consider the opening paragraph from L. Gordon Crovitz’s article (From the Roman Codex to the iPad) in today’s Wall Street Journal:

How’s this for human progress? It took about 4,000 years from the invention of writing to the Roman-era codex of bound pages replacing scrolls, 1,000 years from the codex to movable type creating printed books, 500 years from the printing press to the Internet--and only 25 years to the launch of the iPad.

What’s next? My personal opinion is that continue advances in flexible electronics will further change both how information is conveyed and how it is consumed.

But the broader point is that almost every other industry, including health care, energy, and manufacturing, will also experience faster changes in the rate of paradigm shifts. The really important question is this: Are you and your industry prepared?

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Medical Devices’ Innovative Future

Earlier today, I discussed why I feel Apple’s new iPad isn’t quite ready for the prime time. This is in spite of the exciting applications I believe it can—and will—bring to the healthcare sector. But in this post, I’d like to turn from external devices and instead look at the amazing opportunities which await internal devices and the medical device industry in general.

Two recent articles shed light on some future possibilities. First,the development of new piezoelectric nanoribbons have lead to the development of power-generating rubber films. One possibility is for these materials to be attached to medical devices thereby eliminating the need for batteries. Imagine, for example, a pacemaker that could harvest the mechanical energy from a beating heart or an expanding lung and translate that into electrical energy to power a pacemaker? At a minimum, the need to perform a surgical operation to replace the battery will be eliminated. On a larger scale, however, such an advance could also open a host of opportunities for medical devices.

Taken a step further the same technology could power an insect-like “microid” which could patrol the human body looking for, reporting on, and, ultimately, eliminating disease-causing agents. Such an idea may sound far-fetched to some but Japanese researchers have already created insect-sized robots that can move about inside the human body.

The bottomline is that the convergence of new nanomaterials; flexible electronics; smaller, faster and more powerful microprocessors; and advanced robotics portend a golden age of innovation within the medical device industry.

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Think About the Future—By Asking Questions Today

As a professional futurist, I think about the future all the time. I realize that most people don’t have this luxury but I also don’t really believe that this trait is a “luxury.” If you want to succeed in the future, you must think about the future today.

I recently watched a wonderful 6-minute video on Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin. The video consists of nothing more than a series of questions but many of them can be used to prompt your thinking about the future.

Here, for reading—and thinking—enjoyment, are some of the more pertinent questions:

1. What will you do when gas is $10 a gallon? (I would add the following question as well: What will you do when it is $1 a gallon?)
2. What will you do when electricity is free?
3. What will you do when computational power is a 1000 times more powerful?
4. Is it likely your organization will have the same products as bestsellers in 10 years?
5. Where will the replacements come from, and when?
6. If we got rid of textbooks, what would be the best way to replace them?
7. If you discovered your biggest competitor was successfully developing a product that reinvents the rules of your industry, what would you do?
8. Could you do the same thing if the competitor wasn’t about to do this?

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Jack Uldrich’s 10 Predictions for the Decade of the “Turbulent Teen’s”

”Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” It was the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu who uttered these wise words. As a professional futurist, I always keep this quote in the back of my mind and remind my audiences that I am not in the business of making predictions. Instead, I offer my clients a forecast which includes a broad range of future possibilities.

Nevertheless, I understand the appeal of predictions and do feel they can play a limited role in helping businesses, corporations, NGOs, and governments more realistically think about the future.

Therefore, much as I did last month with my 20 Predictions for 2010, I would now like to offer my humble predictions for how the following decade may unfold—all the time remembering that the future will most likely be shaped by those ”Black Swans” which none of us see coming.

Here then are some of my predictions to get your “future juices” flowing:

2010: The term “augmented reality” will be the year’s big buzzword. Augmented reality apps such as Yelp Monocle and Wikitude World Browser will continue to grow, but the year’s biggest hit will be the yet-to-be-released TAT Augmented ID—which uses face-recognition software to display information about the person being viewed. By the end of the decade, health care professionals will be able to display a patient’s entire medical history on a flexible electronic device which they can fold up and carry with them at all times.

2011: “Vooks”—a combination between an electronic book and a video—will become increasingly popular. By the end of the decade, a number of schools will be using the devices to provide students a deeper, more meaningful learning experience.

2012: College graduates will begin identify a variety of new career possibilities. Some of the more popular future jobs include genetic data counselors; privacy data consultants; 3-D gaming software enginners; rapid prototype manufacturers and climate geoengineers. By the middle of the decade, frustrated by society’s inability and unwillingness to seriously change their behavior in the face of climate change, Al Gore will reverse his position and become an advocate of limited climate geoengineering—the idea of using technology on a grand scale to modify the natural environment.

2013: A truce in the “War on Cancer” will be called as advances in gene therapy and nanomedicine begin addressing cancer at the molecular level. Cancer will still exist but the new paradigm will be premised on treating cancer on an ongoing basis. (In this way, it will be similar to how we now treat diabetes.) By the end of the decade, chemotherapy will be viewed as a crude and blunt instrument.

2014: A combination of radical advances in solar and desalination technology will afford an increasing number of farmers—especially those near coastal areas—access to cheap and reliable amounts of fresh water. By the end of the decade, however, climate scientists will become increasingly concerned that the amount of water being diverted from the world’s ocean is having a harmful effect on a number of ocean creatures. On a different front, advances in the field of synthetic biology will now be regularly supplying airlines with jet fuel produced from biomass.

2015: Due to a plethora of medical advances in gene therapy, biotechnology, nanomedicine, stem cell research and regenerative medicine, life expectancy will continue to grow faster than most demographers has estimated. Congress is finally forced to accept this reality and indexes Social Security and Medicaid benefits to the annual upward adjustments in life expectancy. AARP members complain loudly and use the latest social media tools to bolster their cause but younger more tech-savvy voters use new and even more effective data mining tools to out-organizer the “geezer geeks.”

2016: In the face of the growing environmental costs of producing, processing, shipping, packaging and storing meat, the FDA approves lab-grown pork for the commercial marketplace. PETA applauds the move but Greenpeace vows to fight the growing trend and labels lab-grown meat as “Frankenfood II.” By this time in the decade, a major biological attack will have occurred somewhere in the developed world and a number of democratic governments will have responded by limiting personal freedoms in exchange for greater security. (Advances in predictive algorithms; data mining; and face and voice recognition; cheap camera; and sensor technology will make security technology very effective.)

2017: Time Magazine will be in serious discussions about ending the print version of its magazine and will name “The Robot” as its 2017 “Person of the Year.” Space flight—at least into the outer atmosphere—will become affordable for upper middle class individuals.

2018: Diamonds will no longer be a “girl’s best friend.” The natural diamond market will collapse in the face of the superiority of synthetic diamonds. On a different note, startling progress in the field of tissue regeneration will have eliminated organ shortages and made organ donations as irrelevant as radiation therapy.

2019: The decade will be come to be referred to as “the turbulent teens” due to the growing maturity of such countries as India and Brazil; the wide-spread economic disruption wrought by technological advancement; and a renewed sense of optimism due to the fact that so many things once deemed “impossible” are now coming to fruition.

Jack Uldrich is an author, futurist, keynote 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. He can be contacted at 612.267.1212 or jack@nanoveritas.com.

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