Pick your fortune

Got to the post office to mail some gifts just before the holidays and even a futurist like me was surprised by the short line. Then it made sense when a piercing alarm went off from the overhead speakers. The cashier at the counter said: “oh no! not again!!” “The siren has been sounding constantly all week!” It seemed nobody was authorized or capable of turning it off and I was second in line so I held my place and covered my ears.

When it was my turn, I was barely able to hear the clerk try to sell me insurance for packages going just a few miles – Maybe I need to recheck my crystal ball to see if the packages will be delivered. Signing my credit receipt the pen she handed me didn’t have any ink so I scratched my signature on the thermal paper. With the alarm sounding at the post office, perhaps it was a mistake to buy all those “Forever” stamps, like a lifetime membership in the gym that won’t be around next year. With so much of our mail going by email, what will happen with fewer visits from our friendly mail carriers?

With so much happening in the east, it seems fitting that we shake some Fortune Sticks 求籤 求簽 to see what unfolds. The cylinder is shaken until one stick falls out. Each stick has a number that corresponds to a prediction but these are no fortune cookies and many omens are NOT good.

Like last year’s “9 Things That Could Happen ”(my inbox is so overloaded from your thank yous, that I can’t respond personally) it’s difficult to know what happened yesterday and predicting the future is anyone’s guess. Here are some long range guesses mostly related to arts and entertainment.

1) Our economy is shifting from an information economy to a creative economy. Jobs and growth will be driven by big creative ideas for new products and services in health care and energy and these will put more people to work.

2) Health care will begin to become more automated. Using devices to examine people remotely is only part of the picture. Getting proper treatment is based on the experience and specialized knowledge of practitioners, however much of this is routine. Databases for diagnostics will help identify the unusual and also use our genetic makeup/age and lifestyle to predict our personal risks – leaving experts to the more difficult cases.

3) The future of books, board games, songs, movies and everything under threat from digitization will survive by providing sensory experiences that are superior to their e-counterpart. Books printed on fine paper, games with wooden pieces, concerts and movies that provide a live experience are the future.

4) This year passive television will get a big push from Youtube, Apple, Google and others who want to give you entertainment on your own schedule. A wider assortment of on-demand entertainment will continue to fracture the audiences providing fewer resources for each program causing overall quality to be reduced and we will have to search a million channels to find Seinfeld and Cheers.

5) Calls for transparency in government and business is opening those closed door sessions and clearing those smoke filled rooms. With social media and blogs giving anonymous freedom of speech a greater reach, some calls for transparency, will lift the veils calling disclosure of real identifies and affiliations.

6) Video games are reaching across demographics and will become more popular than movies and television. As corporate training budgets are reduced while, more specialized skills are required at work, expect to find gaming technologies to be used to teach through simulations for everything from accountants to welders.

7) More regulations in the finance sector will continue to be seen as expensive overhead without adding security, and finance will continue to flow to less regulated and lower cost centers.

Those with the greatest need have the greatest incentive to innovate. Asia with its choking pollution will lead the way with green energy technology.

9) Less frequent mail delivery will put weekly magazines printed on paper on the endangered species list. Decline of the post office will be the biggest boon to e-readers.

Did you get the packages? Do you hear an alarms sounding? What happened to number 8? What do you think will happen next? 13 Comments

made in china

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what happened yesterday and predicting the future is anyone’s guess. Here are some long range guesses mostly related to arts and entertainment.

1)      National styles will disappear and styles with no link to geography will emerge.  Renaissance festivals, reenactments, candle making, South Pacific dance, and Geishas will be preserved in  museum-like settings supported by some passionate individuals and subsidies.  What does it means anymore to be a “French” or “Cuban” style painter?  With global access to ideas (and materials) we no longer learn only from our neighbors. Traditions in food will be the last to fuse.  Common experiences and practices will become more global but also more fractured. You may find more in common with people scattered across the globe who shares the same hobbies and musical tastes, than with the other people at your bus stop.

2)      Aging population in western nations will create more of a demand of entertainment and have more of an influence on what is produced. Today, older people buy more music than teens. The key word is “buy” and the smart marketers will cater to the paying customers.

3)      China will be an emerging force in the entertainment world. As the Chinese gain wealth and leisure time, they will increasingly consume entertainment. Today, much of their entertainment is an import. As a country with a rich history, they have their own stories to tell. Expect the Chinese to start exporting their values by telling their own stories.

4)      E-readers will give traditional newspapers and magazines a run for their money, but paper books will endure and we will continue reading for enjoyment.   However, ebooks offer the opportunity to transform the media. They will begin to be designed with color, interactive features, hyperlinks to footnotes, 3D rotatable diagrams, audio and videos etc.

Books and movies may start to merge allowing the user to pause the action and to read more about a character or a situation. Imagine having the chance to affect a story by choosing a local restaurant where the characters will have their fight scene. While you watch you can check the Zagat rating, look at the menu and order your dinner, or see what else happening down the street, and overhearing what is happening nearby by scrolling to another table. Of course all this takes a lot of effort to create and will have to be paid for somehow. Will you tolerate an ad for soft drinks while in the midst of a page turner? Will the phrase page turner lose it meaning? What will we put on our book cases?

5)      Creating movies will be a new form of literacy. We all know how to watch, but do you know how to make and edit a video? Youtube type of sharing is here to stay, so much of the information we gather is through short sound bites. Making a video is more than pointing a camera and pushing the red button -  refining our ideas to a few words is more important than ever when using a format that can spread. Now anyone who has a computer and can type can make an animation with Extranormal software, but currently all the characters that you can choose have sarcastic sounding voices.

6)  Cloud computing have a chance of storms. Cloud computing allows data and software to reside on remote servers instead of your own pc. It has many benefits but may cause some problems especially related to automatic and unannounced upgrading. Its like every time you go to cut your lawn, you find a different lawnmower in the shed. Sometimes gas, sometimes electric, sometimes self propelled, sometimes your catcher fits, sometimes not.  Dynamic changes to software means you find a different tool each time you logon?  Will it be compatible, will the learning curve constantly throw curves?

7)      The spot light will continue to shrink and so will the message. News organizations don’t have the resources to cover more than the most entertaining newsmakers, increasing competition for attention. How do we get accurate and useful information that’s relevant to us with so many sources? This lifts the elevator speech to a higher floor. The shorter we can refine our message, the more effective it can be – as evident by all the attention paid to those 140 character tweets.

8)      When the economy recovers, sadly not every boat will rise with the tide. Some people will be left behind if they do not develop and maintain the skills to be competitive. Creativity is needed more than ever.

9)     3 Comments What are your predictions?