Thomas Frey's Blog, page 38

12 Emerging Trends that Everyone Missed at CES

Every year that I attend CES in Las Vegas I reach a point of sensory overload. It’s not just from all the people, lights, noise, and smells, but an overload of product strategies and emerging trends for the coming year.

With everything from R2D2 showing up outside the convention center, to meeting celebrities on the showroom floor, or coming face-to-face with a Paul Bunyan-sized electronic game-playing running shoe by Sketchers, or walking into a booth full of the coolest Chinese technologies ever made but not being able to talk to anyone because they don’t speak English, it’s not possible to describe all the sensations a person will experience at an event like this.

Everyone will experience CES in their own unique way, and the impressions they walk away with will help define their understanding of the world to come. Big time decisions are being made by the impressions made here.

As events go, it’s one of the largest in the world, attracting a record 170,000 people, including 45,000 from other countries. Out of 3,600 exhibitors, 375 of them were startups, with special attention being paid to them in an exhibit area called Eureka Park.

In so many ways, CES sets the tone for the global economy, with tens of thousands of private meetings being conducted in the background forcing more deals to be cut in a shorter period of time than virtually any other event on the planet.

Walking across the exhibit floors is quite a mind-expanding experience. Since I tend to use a radically different set of lenses to experience this show, I walked away with some rather unusual perspectives.

For this reason I’d like to mention twelve of the trends that everyone seemed to have missed at CES.

CES in 1967

History of CES

The first CES was held in June 1967 in New York City. It was a spinoff from the Chicago Music Show, which until then had served as the main event for exhibiting consumer electronics. The event had 17,500 attendees and over 100 exhibitors; the kickoff speaker was Motorola chairman Bob Galvin.

Competing for a while with CES was and event known as COMDEX, a computer expo held at various locations in the Las Vegas Valley, each November from 1979 to 2003. In 2001, the show was sold to Key3Media, a spin-off of Ziff Davis. Reeling from the 2000 economic downturn, Key3Media went into a Chapter 11 in February 2003 making that years show the final chapter in COMDEX history.

As a result, the Consumer Electronics Show has consolidated both COMDEX audiences with their own to make it the standard bearer for new product launches in consumer technology.

12 Emerging Trends that Everyone Missed

It’s easy to report on all the new technology that made its debut at CES. However, the more interesting stories, at least in my mind, are the less obvious shifts in business that can be derived from reading between the lines.

After spending a few days digesting everything, here are a few key observations about the world ahead.

 

Empty casinos at CES

1.) Traditional Gambling Usurped by Video Games – Even though the gambling industry is trying to tell the world it’s fine, the numbers simply don’t add up. In its 2013 State of the States report, the American Gaming Association reported that 39% of people age 21-35 spent time in casinos, with 90% saying they planned to return. Around the same time, a survey of 3,000 young adults in 16 markets in the Northeast found that only 18% of those under 35 had visited a casino in the past year.

At CES, I walked through dozens of major casinos along the strip and never once did I see a casino operating at more than 15% capacity. The biggest event of all in Vegas and the number of empty seats could fill several giant football stadiums.

However there could be a light at the end of this tunnel of gloom. Since young people would much rather play fast-action rapidly-advancing video games, and gambling laws for slot machines and roulette tables haven’t changed much since the 1950s, the best option may be to build large video game tournament centers and allow people to bet on the action, similar to betting on college basketball.

If casino owners in Vegas were to pick up on this idea, and you heard it first here, major hotels throughout the city could be retrofitted into a video game tournament centers, where every major title from Call of Duty, to Middle Earth, Bayonetta, Wolfenstein, and Destiny would have annual competitions. Las Vegas could once again reclaim it’s position, only this time with a new kind of gambling that appeals in a huge way to today’s young people.

2.) Formation of the Underground Economy for Flying Drones – Flying drones are hot! With over 100 exhibitors at CES showing off the latest in drone tech and the FAA saying the whole industry needs to hold tight until sometime in 2017, the only direction this industry can possibly go is underground. 

Yeah, theres something very ironic about a highly visible industry involving flying objects creating an underground economy, but since the FAA doesn’t have an enforcement division, and since the operators will soon be miles away from where the machines are flying, it becomes a low risk crime.

That, coupled with a drone industry that is progressing at an exponential rate, while the FAA is still operating with a linear progression mindset, means that we’ll be seeing the equivalent of policemen blowing whistles running down the street trying to stop hyper jet drones flying at 2,000 mph in less than two years. 

3.) First Generation Mood-Casters – The Internet of Things had a huge presence at CES as well as vendors offering every kind of Smart Home tech imaginable. The one thing both of these emerging industries has in common is their quest to make life more manageable for everyone. 

But here’s the problem. Everyone is different.

So while giving people have access to 10,000 options for controlling the lights in their house or giving them streaming access to a million new songs, video games, or TV shows may sound appealing, all these decision points adds more stress to a person’s day, not less.

There is, however, a solution – Mood-Casting.

If every smart device were able to tap into the mood of people it came into contact with, it could easily make the decisions for them. The good news is that much of today’s wearable technology is giving off the signals necessary for these devices to instantly fine tune their decision-making processes.

For example, if a person walked into a room and the lighting was too harsh, sensors could read common stress indicators and keep making changes to the brightness, color, and intensity until it reached an optimal level.

Mood-Casters could be used to play the perfect music while working out, driving, or trying to relax. Every fire in a fireplace could be altered in both color and brilliance to match the desires of those nearby. Restaurants could adjust the smells in their dining rooms until they were optimized for guests on a moment by moment basis. (i.e. people may prefer a different smell while eating appetizers as opposed to eating dessert.)

Health tech everywhere at CES 

4.) The Rise of the Healthcare Circumventionist – Healthcare is a hierarchical industry with doctors firmly entrenched on the top rung. It is also one of the world’s most lucrative industries. The entrepreneurial community knows this and has been plotting for years to find ways to tap into these revenue streams.

Doctors, in general, are not a big fan of the hundreds of medical devices coming out of the woodwork that are designed to circumvent their authority.

They’re even less of a fan of the big data analysts, who have never once studied medicine, that are telling them what to do. 

In just a few years, many people will be switching from going in for a “medical checkup” to having a “health analytics screening.”

With hundreds of new entries into the emerging wearable tech industry coming out of the woodwork, in just a few years, most people will be able to make their own diagnosis before ever setting foot in the doctors office. The piece that entrepreneurs will have the greatest difficulty prying away from doctors is their ability to write prescriptions. But that too is destined to be undermined with technology work-arounds.

Have you met your virtual self? 

5.) Becoming One with My Virtual Self – Every time I look at the Internet through the rectangular screen on my desk I wonder what it would be like to have a screen 10 times bigger. Better yet, what would it be like to eliminate the screen altogether.

In many ways, CES has been this ongoing competition to see which big industry player can cram the most TVs into their exhibit space in the most interesting fashion. Seeing more than a thousand 4K TVs integrated into one massive 40’ high video wall is impressive to say the least.

The days of “observer based” television is on the verge of being replaced with immersive VR, and eliminating the limitations of the viewing screen is only the first of 10,000 steps towards having the observer integrated into the entertainment experience.

Recent studies have shown that VR users can feel like they’re part of what’s happening just by being able to view they’re own hands. Viewable hands will lead to other viewable body parts, as well as friends, pets, and other non-real characters.

Just as 3D television is now loosing its annoying glasses, over time, virtual reality will loose the goggles and be blended into our real life experiences, with an entirely new genre’s of entertainment entering the fold.

 

6.) Smart Things Vs Smarter Things – In much the same way toy companies began giving a voice to every fuzzy and plastic creature in play land, companies are finding it increasingly easy to make intelligence the differentiator in virtually every new product.

With everything from connected toothbrushes, to smart heated insoles for your shoes, belts that automatically readjust themselves, and helmets that autocorrect their venting system to keep a person’s head cool, the Internet of Things is providing wireless intelligence and connectivity to everything we interact with.

At the heart of the Internet of Things is a micro sensor industry where every new kind of sensor will create an entire new industry, and the sensors themself are becoming exponentially cheaper, smaller, and more ubiquitous.

Projections show the world breaking the trillion sensor barrier in less than 10 years, and the 100 trillion sensor milestone around 20 years from now.

Sensors are meaningless if not connected to other parts of the “anatomy,” and that’s where MEMS (microelectronic mechanical systems), very small machines, come into play. MEMS are the devices that power everyday things like the Pebble Watch, smart light bulbs, and real-time blood-sugar monitors.

Even though the amount of “intelligence” being added to devices today is still primitive, the trend is towards a universe where devices become aware of changes made by other devices and respond accordingly.

Technologies like Intel’s button-sized Curie device is a step toward integrating far more processing power into wearable tech and its field of sensors.

All this integration is setting the stage for the emerging operating system battlefield.

The OS battles have already begun

7.) The Emerging Operating System Battlefield – In general terms, an operating system is the software operating in the background that manages hardware and software resources and provides a set of common services to make everything run better.

Today’s most common operating systems include Android, iOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. Each one has its own feature set that makes applications easier to build and more uniform. 

The need for new types of operating systems became apparent when smartphones started entering the picture a decade ago.

As smart technology begins to enter nearly every field, the need for new operating systems has never been greater, and companies are racing to fill the void.

To give you some examples, the operating system for driverless cars will be distinct and different than the operating system for flying drones. At the same time we are seeing a need for separate operating systems for smart homes, the Internet of Things, wearable technology, health tech, learning tech, and robots.

Every unique operating system will have its own unique privacy and security issues, industry standards, language biases, and feature sets.

Those who control the rules of the game will have a huge advantage over everyone else. The OS wars are still in their infancy, and most of the winners will be decided over the next five years.

 

8.) Molecular-Level Scanners to Drive Tomorrow’s 3D Printing Industry – The 3D printing world is gaining lots of attention, but often lost in the shadows is a rapidly developing scanning industries with capabilities few ever imagined.

Not only will future scanning technologies be able to scan shapes with nano-scale precision, they will be able to parse exacting details of materials used in every molecule-thick layer of the object being scanned.

This means that someone will eventually be able to scan a smartphone, and with a multi-material 3D printer, reproduce the entire device in exacting detail.

For bio-printing, this means a person that has their finger cut off can have a replacement one printed and surgically connected in a way that few, if any, will know the difference.

IntelliPillow

9.) Shapeshifting Smart Products – When I first saw the IntelliPillow, a shapeshifting sensor-driven pillow that automatically knows when you’re sleeping on your side or back and adjusts itself accordingly, it reminded me of the columns I wrote on smart shoes and smart car seats over a decade ago.

The three things that the human body interacts with the most in life are the chairs we sit in, the shoes we walk in, and the beds we sleep in. People will pay dearly for any technology that can optimize any of these three friction points. 

Using sensors to monitor layers of pressure, and either expanding gels or air systems to compensate for the changing conditions, shapeshifting products are destined to be all the rage in the coming years.

 Bang & Olufsen ‘BeoSound Moment’ 

10.) Touch-Responsive Surfaces – As I came across the Bang & Olufsen ‘BeoSound Moment’ device, I realized I was looking at the world’s first touch-sensitive wood interface.

Extending far beyond glass touch screens of the past, touchable wood opens the door for any number of other touch sensitive surfaces like rock, stone, tile, or even concrete.

But who says we need to confine our thinking to hard surfaces. Will we be creating touch-sensitive carpets, leather, clothing, and upholstery? The answer will soon be an unequivocal yes.

 

11.) 3D Printing Combined with Robots Paves the way for Large Scale 3D Sculpting & Design – When 3D printing goes mobile, it opens the door for an entirely new kind of design and architecture.

If we can imagine a 3D printer that drives over, refills its tank with material, drives back and precisely extrudes the material into place, you’ll begin to understand the potential here.

Now, consider 100 or 1,000 mobile printers, either mounted on ground based or flying drones, working in swarms to build an entire building. That day is not too far off. 

Most large structures of the future will be built this way. This will include everything from cruise ships, to baseball stadiums, hospitals, bridges, skyscrapers, hotels, apartment complexes, and giant sculptures.

Gone are the days of constrained thinking. Tomorrow’s mobile 3D printer technology will unleash a world of creative possibilities unlike anything we’ve ever imagined.

 

12.) The Massive Growing Need for Micro Colleges – Every new technology creates a need for more training. Very often it ends up being niche learning that takes place in-house with existing employees. But we’re also seeing a growing refinement of industries driving the need for huge new talent pools that currently don’t exist.

Whether its virtual reality, specialized 3D scanning, 3D printing, mobile apps, Internet of Things, flying drones, or reputation management, the need for tech-savvy fast-to-adapt talent pools is growing, and growing quickly.

This is also an area where traditional colleges have missed the boat. Their attempt to put everything into a 2-year or 4-year framework has left the largest untapped opportunity ever for short-term full-immersion courses that help workers reboot their career.

The rapid growth in coding schools such as our own DaVinci Coders is only a tiny slice of a much larger Micro College pie that will get created over the coming years.

 

Final Thoughts

In the futurist world, trends are often based on loose signals derived from a few key data points and overlaid on some future timeline.

The trends I’ve described above are a combination of empirical evidence, past observations, industry research, and a fair amount of conjecture on my part.

In many cases, the 1+1=3 formula I use comes from a Situational Futuring technique I’ve been developing over the past few years.

There is great value in this line of thinking because it unlocks possibilities, and more importantly for both individuals and businesses, it can unlock key competitive advantages in a world where differentiation is always a hard fought battle.

As always, I‘d love to hear your thoughts. Please take a moment to weigh in on these and other topics that you find interesting.

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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What Comes after the Nation State? – Fractal Governance

In the beginning life was simple, just land and people. No borders, no restrictions, and no governments breathing down everyone’s neck. 

Over time, cultures formed around a common language and geography determined many aspects of lifestyle. As an example, people who lived next to the sea oriented much of their life around fishing, while those further inland spent more time hunting and farming. 

Traveling from one region to the next was difficult and dangerous. Before the time of Gutenberg’s printing press, the vast majority of people lived and died within 20 miles of where they grew up because they didn’t have access to reliable maps. 

Later, as populations grew, we began to see the need for more sophisticated societies. At the heart of these advancements were cities adding conveniences like streets, water systems, protection from lawless individuals, and justice systems to add a sense of order to all those advancements.

As years progressed, cities banded together with towns and villages nearby to create better systems, form geographical boundaries, and promote common interests. These groupings of cities became countries, and governments sprang up to manage and organize their interests.

Countries were formed around a common geography, common languages, and common systems like currency and transportation. 

The term “nation-state” came into play in 1648 with the treaty of Westphalia. This was an important turning point because countries transitioned from rouge protectorates to cultured political systems that recognized each others borders and were empowered to make deals with other nation-states.

Since 1648, countries, operating as nation-states, have become the most powerful entities on the planet. With large militaries to defend their interests and advanced monetary systems to build infrastructure, countries have become complex organisms with self-adapting properties.

However, when Internet started providing borderless connectivity, we began seeing national systems transition into global systems. As the need for borders became less clear, traditional ways of defining a country began to erode and the value of citizenship, less defined.

While countries struggle to maintain their role in the global community, people, as citizens of these nation states, are becoming far more mobile, wanting to be less confined by systems, rules, and geography.

So what comes next? Are we on the verge of yet another shift in global entities?

Understanding Where We’ve Come From

The nation-state will be 367 years old this year.

Political scientists have spent countless years refining the difference between the terms “nation” and “state.”

Generally speaking, a nation refers only to a socio-cultural entity, a union of people sharing culture and language (or languages).

A state refers to a legal/political entity that is comprised of: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) a government; and d) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. 

Even though most leaders of countries today tend to oppose adding new nation-states to the mix because it disrupts the status quo, new entities pave the way for non-traditional thinking, new approaches to systems and infrastructure, and far more experimentation.

The Psychology of Borders and Reasons for Crossing Them

Borders create an un-natural impediment to the natural flow of human migration. People are both pushed and pulled across borders, and there are literally hundreds of reasons for each. 

Some of the push factors include not enough jobs, poor living conditions, desertification, famine, political persecution, slavery, forced labor, poor medical care, war, loss of wealth, natural disasters, pollution, death threats, or desire for political or religious freedom. 

Pull factors are similar but from a different mindset. They include things like more job opportunities, better living conditions, more political and/or religious freedom, better education and medical care, family connections, and better chances of marrying the right person.

One in five people crossed a national border last year 

Six Ways in which Borders Have Become Less Meaningful

In 1950, 50 million people a year crossed national borders, last year it was 1.4 billion or nearly one out of every five people. 

As numbers continue to climb, most customs and border patrol jobs will be automated out of existence. International rules based on corporate privilege like telecom’s roaming charges, tariffs, and tourism tax will soon lose their standing. Virtually every border-crosser has money, and the more welcome they feel, the more likely they will be to spend it.

Here are six ways that border significance will continue to decline. 

1.) Global Awareness – As our access to the Internet improves, global awareness grows exponentially. Friends and family routinely post travel summaries on social media as they bounce from Kuala Lumpur, to the Tango Islands, to Aruba, and Timbuktu.

On the academic front, researchers who release reports in Moscow, Tokyo, or Singapore are having their finding read by people in Mexico City, Helsinki, and Belgrade ten minutes later.

This level of awareness is unprecedented and ripe with opportunity. 

2.) Transitioning from National Systems to Global Systems – When we look at early systems such as written communications with Phoenician cuneiform, Mayan numerals, or the systems that had to be in place for engineering and building the Egyptian pyramids, it’s easy to see that system thinking has been around a long time. But global systems are a more recent innovation. 

The most obvious advantage to global systems are the efficiencies they create. As an example, when a person who has spent their life hunting and fishing for food is able to walk to a store and purchase food, they suddenly have far more time in their life to do other things.

Similarly, when a company that has struggled to deliver product to the other side of the world can begin working with FedEx who provides painless global delivery, the company suddenly has time to focus on other critical problems.

Global systems now include currency exchange, stock trading, e-commerce, news services, postal delivery, voice and text communication, social media, time zones, measurement systems, GPS, mapping services, and the Internet.

Future global systems will include things like accounting standards for publicly traded companies, global currency (Bitcoin), genealogy systems, patent systems, ownership authorities for personal ownership, and standards for ethics. 

3.) Language – Google Translate is an online service that does a reasonably good job. The system built by Franz Och at Google over the last decade can now support translation between 80 language pairs. In 2013, Google said that Translate served an average of 200 million people every day.

4.) Currency Networks – The 2009 introduction of Bitcoin was the first of many cryptocurrencies, each of which is pushing the transition from national to global currencies. What most don’t realize is that the wealth transferal networks created by cryptocurrencies is far more valuable than the currency itself. These currencies enable instant exchanges between national currencies (i.e. USD to Euro or Yen) with virtually no risk and very little expense. 

5.) Global Transportation – In 2014 there were over 5.5 billion passenger flights around the world, a 4.9% increase over the year before. As air travel becomes more ubiquitous and available, we are seeing an increasingly fluid society 

6.) Telepresence – For those who still find borders to be a painful barrier, telepresence has become the popular workaround. With near-perfect visuals and an in-the-room audio and sensory feel, this technology short circuits the cattle calls at the airport and replicates physical presence in virtually every way except for having a beer at a local pub afterwards. 

“Transparency unimpeded will mean we will

eventually lose our ability to own things.”

Six Ways in which Countries are Becoming Dysfunctional 

Borders may be diminishing in value, but many countries still use them to insulate their people and mask what’s truly happening behind the scenes.

1.) Dysfunctional Laws – With every country adding boatloads of new laws, travelers face literally hundreds of millions of possible laws they can run afoul of.

2.) Technology Exceeds Competence of Government – Failures are showing up daily in areas ranging from identity theft, to corporate hacking, wall street scammers, botnets, banking fraud, pension raiding, and intelligence breakdowns. 

3.) The Complexity of Privacy – As transparency grows, we begin to know everything about everybody including their credit card and bank account numbers. Transparency unimpeded will mean we will eventually lose our ability to own things.

4.) Multi-National Workforce – People who do work for businesses in more than one country face double and sometimes triple taxation. 

5.) Lack of Checks and Balance – Abuses by too-big-to-fail banks, Wall Street quants, and corporate shenanigans that almost took down the entire global economy have yet to be accounted for.

6.) Technological Unemployment and a Declining Middle Class – Jobs are being automated out of existence at a record pace and those working in middle class workers are losing ground very rapidly.

These indicators along with countless more are pointing to massive failures in global governance and the prospects of civil breakdowns on the horizon.

Adding Artificial Intelligence to Government

We live in a human-run world and the idea of having machines replace politicians, taking an automated driving test, or sitting before a robotic judge all sound rather foreign to the way things are done today. But changes like this are right around the corner. 

If we return a library book a few days late and a machine assesses a $2 fine, most people are okay with that. 

Similarly, taking a dog to a robotic vet that does automated testing, diagnoses the problem, and prescribes a cure will come as a welcome relief to many.

But having an automated online policy wonk listen to seven hours of testimony from industry experts and synthesize an entire new referendum feels sinister and creepy. Yet systems like this will remove political favors from the mix, remove campaign contribution bias, and take lobbyists out of the equation.

Paving the Way for Fractal Governance

Using this preamble to set the stage, I will attempt to describe the type of entities that I envision evolving from our current nation-state.

Since technology is exceeding governments ability to manage it, new global systems, or fractals, will emerge to offer a solution. Each fractal will be highly automated, and come with its own management structure. 

I refer to them as fractals because each of them represents a tiny bit of order in an ocean of chaos. As fractals catch on we will begin to see new patterns of governance emerge. 

Fractals represent the intersection of national and global governance.

I’ll begin by describing the Privacy Fractal which will only deal with privacy issues, but it will manage these issues in every member nation it manages to recruit. 

Starting with a “Geneva Convention on Privacy,” the organization will establish global guidelines to deal with legal definitions, establish limits, handle abuses, and develop monitoring tools to signal whenever there is a privacy breach that has occurred.

In much the same way ICANN is the global authority for naming and numbering systems related to the Internet, the Privacy Fractal will establish itself as the global authority on privacy.

Fractal Governance will serve as a checks and balance to national governance, but only in a very limited scope. 

Fractal Governance Defined

A Fractal is a narrow spectrum of global authority managed by an independent organization that operates outside of the control of individual nations. Member nations will assign representatives to the Fractal’s advisory board but the organization will operate outside of the control of any one nation.

Some Fractals will be mandated by large international assemblies such as a G20 Summit while others will originate organically, recruiting member nations on their own. 

Fractals will be funded through nation-based membership dues. 

Once a Fractal reaches critical mass, somewhere in the range of 20 member states, there will be a tendency for it to serve as the default authority in all matters related to its scope of governance.

Types of Fractal Organizations

The full range of possible Fractal Organization is only limited by our imagination, but the earliest ones will be those that address a specific problem for countries today.

Since countries don’t know how to deal with cryptocurrencies, we may see a “Cryptocurrency Fractal” mandated at the next G20 Summit. But that may be too broad of scope and a separate authority may be needed for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and each of the cryptocurrencies gaining traction around the world.

With the concept of ownership being muddied by governments and police claiming authority to seize property, an “Ownership Fractal” may be needed to sort out all of the issues related to ownership around the world. Simply claiming rights based on the “spoils of war theory” needs to go away.

Fractal Governance will cover a wide range of topics from concrete to esoteric. Here are a few to help stimulate your thinking:

Global Accounting Standards
Business Ethics
Time Zones
Nanotech Measurement Standards
Incarceration Fractals
Ocean Pollution
Asteroid Mining
Marijuana Policy
Language Archive
Patent and Intellectual Property
GPS
Cross-Border Taxes
Telepresence Networks
Identity Standards
Wind Rights

Over time, turf battles between nations will be replaced by turf battles over the range and limits of Fractal authority. 

Final Thoughts

There are many benefits to having separate countries around the world. They can preserve cultures, help spawn new industries,

But the biggest benefit is the competition that takes place between countries. This competition is pushing our standard to living to increasingly higher levels.

Done correctly, countries will welcome many aspects of fractal governance because it demonstrates attention to growing problem areas. People will have confidence in these expert-run systems as opposed to the political generalists, with lobbyists in the background, that are making decisions today.

Admittedly, this is a half-baked idea at best. These descriptions are crude and the overall concepts still rough. Does this sound like the direction we’re headed or am I way off base? For this reason, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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Top 10 Most Influential Columns in 2014

Over the past year we’ve delved into a variety of different topics on FuturistSpeaker.com and naturally some have been more popular than others. Sometimes it’s the headlines, other times the graphics, but in the end it’s the subject matter and content that will determine which ones rise to the top.

Overall, we’re still finding a pervasive fear over jobs, privacy, and the economy, and a strong desire to understand what comes next. Our confidence in government has plummeted and the newest evil villain is artificial intelligence gone awry.

On the positive side of the equation, both flying drones and robots are hot, even though both have serious downsides. The Internet of Things is gaining in popularity along with its magical junior categories of enchanted objects and smart homes. The sharing economy is becoming a more defined niche and tiny homes are an emerging category that will soon be replaced with 3D printed disposable houses.

Even though Bitcoin hasn’t been a good investment in 2014, it’s been a banner year for cryptocurrencies in general. No, we still haven’t minted any cryptocurrency billionaires just yet, but as national currencies become increasingly dysfunctional, with security holes affecting nearly everyone, new opportunities are just around the corner.

At the DaVinci Institute, our work on Micro Colleges are paving the way for future generations to reboot their careers quickly to better match the emerging talent needs of business and industry.

With that in mind, here are the 2014 columns that attracted the most attention over the past 12 months.

 

10.) Computing’s Next Big Transformation – Semantic Intelligence 

Semantic Intelligence is a revolutionary new technology being developed by a tiny company called Mindaptiv located in the Innovation Pavilion in the Denver Tech Center, a hub of startup activity in Colorado.

With a core team of true believers on staff that filled the presentation room, the company’s CEO, Ken Granville, and chief technology visionary, Jake Kolb, took our team from the DaVinci Institute through a series of demonstrations and discussions to grasp the potential of what they are on the verge of unleashing.

On a zero to ten scale for rating tectonic shifts on the Richter Scale of computing, Sematic Intelligence is drawing lines on parts of the chart that haven’t ever been written on before. Continue reading.

 

9.) 2050 and the Future of Infrastructure

Much of the world around us has been formed around key pieces of infrastructure. Most see this as a testament to who we are as a society, and part of the cultural moorings we need to guide us into the future.

In general, infrastructure represents a long-term societal investment that will move us along the path of building a more efficient, better functioning, society. And usually it does … for a while.

But infrastructure comes in many forms and as we build our elaborate networks of pipes, wires, roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and waterways, we become very focused on the here and now, with little thought as to whether there might be a better way. Continue reading.

 

8.) Disposal Houses

As houses are printed with non-flammable materials, there will no longer be a need for fire insurance. Once houses can be reprinted for less than the cost of re-roofing them today, we may eliminate the need for house insurance altogether.

Once we are able to remove the transaction costs from housing, our populations become infinitely more fluid. A fluid population is a fickle one, often moving on a whim, rather than the long drawn out process that it is today. 

City populations will expand and contract in dramatic fashion, often reflecting people’s changing attitudes associated with political decisions, local elections, increased criminal activity, changing tax rates, and much more.

So far we’re just scratching the surface. The rest of the disposable housing revolution will follow shortly. Continue reading.

 

7.) Six Radical Trends Redefining the Hotel of the Future

Smart home technology is baby stepping its way into our lives, and at the same time, elevating our expectations for hotels.

In the past, hotels built their business around employing highly attentive people. In the future, they will replace many of their staff with highly attentive buildings.

These six trends will indeed seem radical, upon first glance, to the hoteliers of today. But this kind of technology is coming, and it will happen much sooner than we think. Continue reading.

 

6.) What Industries will produce the First Trillionaires?

Future industries will be able to leverage tomorrow’s technologies far faster than anything today.

They will have the ability to quickly adapt, rapidly influence, and perform nearly instantaneous transactions. For these reasons, it is entirely possible for a breakthrough to occur that launches an entirely new industry, and with highly leveraged processes, start producing trillionaires in less than ten years.

It is entirely possible for a breakthrough to occur that launches an entirely new industry, and with highly leveraged processes, start producing trillionaires in less than ten years.” With this in mind, here are the future industries that rose to the top along with a brief explanation as to why they were chosen. Continue reading.

 

5.) 192 Future Uses for Flying Drones

Flying drones can roll along the ground, stick to the side of a building, float in a river, dive under water, jump onto a building, climb a tree, or attach themselves like parasites to the sides of trains, ships, and airplanes.

One moment they can be hovering in front of you and the next they can fly off at the speed of sound, disappearing into the clouds. Combining all these capabilities, attributes, and special features into one single device will open up a world of possibilities unlike anything before in all history.

Here’s a brief overview of the magical world being unleashed with flying drones. Continue reading.

 

4.) ‘Situational Futuring’ and 44 Mind-Stretching Scenarios to Learn How to Use It

Situational futuring is a micro-futuring process that begins with a single invention, tiny idea, or what-if condition and expands from there.

The process begins with an initial scenario and asking some of the standard who-what-when-where-how-and-why questions. Probing deeper, questions formulated around things like timing, monetary implications, disruptive effects, symbiotic partners, who-wins-who-loses, wild cards, policy changes, and strange bedfellows will help expand your thinking even further.

This works particularly well in a brainstorming environment where thoughts and ideas can be quickly sketched out, described, or clarified so more can be added. Inside these moments of micro-futuring is where the real treasures live. Continue reading.

 

3.) The Laws of Exponential Capabilities

Today, the amount of time it takes to build ships and skyscrapers, create massive data storage centers for all our growing volumes of information, or produce global wireless networks for all our devices has dropped significantly. But along with each of these drops is a parallel increase in our capabilities and our expectations.

For these reasons, I’d like to reframe the discussion by proposing three “Laws of Exponential Capabilities.” Here’s why this is so critically important. Continue reading.

 

2.) Artificial Intelligence will be Crashing the Stock Market in 3, 2, 1…

The invasion of high-frequency trading machines is now forcing capitalism far away from anything either Adam Smith or the founders of the NYSE could possibly find virtuous.

We’re not about to let robots compete in the Olympics, driverless cars race in the Indianapolis 500, or automated machines play sports like football, basketball, or baseball. So why is it we allow them to play a role in the most valuable contest of all, the world wide stock exchange?

With crude forms of AI now entering the quant manipulator’s toolbox, we are now teetering dangerously close to a total collapse of the stock market, one that will leave many corporations and individuals financially destitute. 

Here is why this should be ringing alarm bells all over the world. Continue reading.

 

 

1.) 162 Future Jobs: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Yet Exist

Predicting future jobs is an exercise that involves looking at future industries and speculating on ways in which they will be different than the workforce today. Business management, engineering, accounting, marketing, and sales are all necessary skills for the future, but the work involved will also be different.

At the same time there will be many less-obvious positions that will need to be created. This is about those less-obvious positions.

The following is not an exhaustive list, nor do these job titles all have good explanations. Rather, this column is intended to be a thought-generator, an idea-sparker, to help you draw your own conclusions. Continue reading.

Final Thoughts 

As a professional speaker, my talks have once again taken me all over the world, and over the past year I’ve been to Auckland, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Istanbul, Toronto, Rome, Seoul, Latvia, and far too many places in the U.S. and Canada to list here. I’ve shared the stage with some amazing people at some amazing companies. While I do have some speaking topics listed, every talk is custom tailored to the audience I’m working with. I love working on unusual topics, provided they fall with my main focus of “technology-driven change.”

My newest book is getting close and should be released early in 2015. Considerable effort has already been put into this new manuscript and will have some unusual concepts for all of us to debate.

The overall readership on FuturistSpeaker.com has more than doubled over the past year, setting the stage for some terrific opportunities that I’ll be talking about soon.

Wishing you and your family an abundant 2015.

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By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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My Conversation Last Night with Adolph Hitler

No, it wasn’t exactly what I had planned. 

The year is 2026, and what began as a simple quiet evening at my local library, culminated with me coming face to face with one of the most reviled men in all history. 

As I entered the library, I caught a glimpse of a new room they had just completed with a labeling above the door that read, “Conversations Room.” 

Naturally curious, I asked one of the librarians about it, and she quickly explained how they had just installed a “virtual presence” machine and it would enable anyone to have a “live” conversation with famous people throughout history.

That brief explanation was all it took. In about two seconds I had totally forgotten the reason I came to the library, took my seat, and started tinkering with the controls to figure out how it worked.

No, Hitler wasn’t my first choice, or even my last choice, but after hitting a few wrong clicks, he showed up as an option so I decided to give it a go. 

After a few technical flickers, he suddenly appeared, and I was taken back by how real he looked and how authentic it felt. He came from the back of the room, walking rather stiffly, took a seat, and began fiddling with one of his shoes.

I introduced myself with a short, “Hi, I’m Thomas Frey,” and he immediately sat up and gave me a piercing stare.

“Why are you here?” was his response. It was in English but with a German accent.

I was momentarily stunned with the question and fumbled my words trying to come up with the right response. “I-I-I’ve been doing research on WWII and came here to meet you,” was all I could muster. 

He continued gruffly, “There’s been several attempts on my life and I’m not sure who I can trust. Who do you report to?”

His paranoia was palpable, but it was his authoritative stare and commanding presence that demanded my full attention. I suddenly got a sense of what it was like being one of his commanders and having to answer to this intensely imposing figure.

In retrospect, I was terribly unprepared for this conversation. I had mistakenly assumed I’d be the one asking the questions, but even as a three-dimensional avatar, this was someone who very much needed to be in control.

Seething with Paranoia

It took me about 45 minutes to gain his trust. I didn’t realize it would be this hard. 

At one point I asked a flippant question, “Why are you so worried about who you can trust, you’ve been dead for over 70 years?”

He leaned forward and started screaming, “If I am so dead, how is it that I’m sitting here in front of you answering stupid [expletive] questions about things I don’t give a [expletive] about?

The tone of his voice sent shivers up my spine. After taking a deep breath and watching the trembling veins in his face subside, I decided I never wanted to do that again.

I was pretty sure he didn’t have the ability to order soldiers to come to my home, but I was becoming less certain of that as the conversation proceeded. 

What had started off as something I thought would be a rather lame casual conversation with a historical figure had suddenly become one of the most intense experiences in my entire life. 

Resorting to a few softball questions, I asked him what it was like growing up in Germany.

He added a bit of personal history. “My papa was a farmer and we raised bees. I had two older brothers and an older sister, but they all died as young children. I was the first one to make it past the age of three.”

He continued, “As a child, I wanted to become a artist and attend art school. But my papa insisted I go to Realschule, a technical school where I could become an apprentice and earn a living. I hated him for this. Art was very important to me and I’ve spent countless hours drawing cartoons and creating art throughout my life.”

Eventually I began asking him about Germany’s progress in making nuclear weapons. I had heard they were close, but I thought he could add a bit more detail. 

After fidgeting for a couple seconds, clearly uneasy about revealing too much, he began giving me the names of people and details about some of their top-secret research.

When I asked him about his dislike of the Jews, he became visibly agitated, filling the room with German swearwords. “When my younger brother died of measles, it was a Jewish doctor who failed to cure him. When my mother became ill, it was more Jewish doctors that let her die.”

Now he was on a rant. “They were the ones who causes us to lose WWI. They controlled all the banks, the factories, and the stores. And we lost because they thought the war was costing us too much money.”

His anti-Jew diatribe continued for another 10 minutes.

After the Call 

The entire discussion lasted 90 minutes, far longer than I had anticipated.

After saying goodbye, I began to grasp how stressful the call had been. My shoulders were tense, I was sweating profusely, and I realized I had even been clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth.

I hadn’t been a fan of Hitler before the call and was even less of one now. But in many ways, everything made much more sense. I understood how an imposing figure like this could rise to power and some of the underlying creepiness of why he did the things he did.

Reading historical accounts of his life suddenly seemed so one-dimensional.

Students who prepared for one of these encounters in the future would have far more reasons to do their homework first and be prepared for this kind of confrontation. 

As it turned out, Hitler was one of the early “Conversations Room” prototypes, and a team of programmers, movie directors, gamification experts, and historians had spent countless hours making this character come to life.

Developing technology for a “Conversations Room” is not as far away as some might imagine

An Example of Situational Futuring

The scenario I’ve just taken you through is an example of what I call “situational futuring.” It describes a real life situation taking place with soon-to-be-invented technology, and adds both personal and emotional elements to make it feel genuine.

I could have chosen any number of different historical figures, but Hitler seemed to be the one that would most stand out in a reader’s mind.

In retrospect, it also establishes a valid reason why libraries will still exist in the future. Not only will they exist, they will become a showcase for emerging technology that will enhance both the educational and informational experience for future generations.

Final Thoughts

The path to a better future comes with an enhanced understanding of the past.

In a similar fashion, the path to a better future will come with a deeper understanding of the nuances of future life altering technologies. 

Technology will redefine our cultures, our lifestyle, and our value systems. There will always be unintended consequences, and some of it will be difficult to manage, but new technologies will never stop coming.

The more we focus our attention on the future, the better we can prepare for it. It’s in everyone’s best interest to stop getting blindsided by the future. 

This is just one example of an anticipatory thinking technique to help plan for tomorrow. Over the coming months I plan to featuring several more. 

With this in mind, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the effectiveness of this technique. Was it captivating, realistic, a bit off the mark, or were you simply put off by the selection of Hitler? Please comment below.

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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The Coming Era of Mega Systems, Part 1 – Transportation

Let me begin with a couple questions. 

Question #1: The U.S. has two countries that touch its borders – Canada and Mexico. But what is its third closest neighbor?

While most would probably look at the island nations in the Caribbean, the third closest is actually Russia, a scant 2.4 miles away, the distance between Alaska’s Little Diomede Island and it’s sister Big Diomede Island on the Russian side of the Bering Strait. During the winter an ice bridge usually forms between the two islands and a person can actually walk from the U.S. to Russia. 

Question #2: Is it possible to drive a car from North America to South America?

The answer to this question is “no,” because plans for the highly publicized Pan-American Highway were never completed, leaving a 60 mile gap across a dense jungle region, known as the Darian Gap, between Panama and neighboring Columbia. 

Both the Bering Strait and the Darian Gap will require 50-60 mile tunnels or bridging systems to connect North America with Asia and South America. And both are part of the massive disconnect in our global transportation network, a network that has been growing for centuries. 

Ground transportation, however, is far different than air travel where the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has been working for nearly a century to create a more cohesive global air transportation network. With its ever-improving standards and operational procedures, air transportation has become far safer than anything on the ground. 

That said, ground transportation is on the verge of major transformation.

Emerging technologies ranging from driverless cars and trucks, to ultra high-speed rail, and vacuum tube transportation networks are all creating an urgent need for a global solution.

Without something similar to the ICAO, it’s easy to envision three separate approaches to bridging the Bering Strait and the Darian Gap, one for roads, one for rail, and one for future tube transportation.

Rather than forcing three colossal bridge/tunnel projects to be built across environmentally sensitive areas, a single, all-inclusive approach would be far better. 

For each of these current disconnects, and there are far more than the two that I’ve mentioned, it’s not a matter of “if” they will be built, but “when.” Here’s why.

 

Map of the proposed route for the Bering Strait Project 

History of the Bering Strait Project

Over the years numerous plans have surfaced for building either bridges or tunnels across the Bering Strait. With the Diomede Islands in the middle, it will require two 25-mile long tunnel/bridges to span the distance.

In 1892, Joseph Strauss, who would later design over 400 bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, pieced together the first proposal for a Bering Strait railroad bridge as part of his senior thesis for college. The proposal was eventually presented to the Russian government, but rejected. 

In 2008, Vladimir Putin approved a plan for Russia to build a railroad across the Bering Strait. The plan included a 60-mile tunnel that would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, on the far east side of Russian and Alaska, costing an estimated $66 billion (USD).

In 2014, reports surfaced that China is considering the construction of a “China-Russia-Canada-America” railroad line that would include a 125-mile long underwater tunnel crossing the Bering Strait. Conceived as a tunnel for their bullet trains traveling at speeds of 220 mph, this train would enable passengers to travel from China to the United States in around two days.

So far, neither Russia nor China has started construction.

This proposal envisions a resort hotel as part of the bridge/tunnel system

The Engineering Challenge of the Bering Strait Project 

From an engineering standpoint, the Bering Strait is not as problematic as many might imagine. 

The strait is less than 200 foot deep and tides and currents in the area are not severe. But since it’s near the Arctic Circle, the work will be subject to long dark winters and extreme weather, and construction activity would likely be restricted to 5 months of the year. 

When it comes to railroads though, the Russian track width is 3.5 inches different than track in the U.S., and this will likely pose far more issues for the rail industry than building the bridge/tunnel system.

Map of the Pan-American Highway

History of the Pan-American Highway Project

Plans for the Pan-American Highway first surfaced at the Fifth International Conference of American States in 1923, where it was originally conceived as a single route. In July 1937, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and the U.S. signed the “Convention on the Pan-American Highway,” where they all agreed to begin construction.

Today, the Pan-American Highway exists as a network of roads measuring about 30,000 miles in total length, except for 60 miles through the rainforest area in Panama known as the Darian Gap, which consists of a 50-mile wide swamp and marshland between Panama and Columbia.

Location of the Darian Gap

Many adventurers and extreme sports enthusiasts view the gap as a challenge. People often cross it on bicycle, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and on foot. But for them, dealing with jungles, swamps, insects, and other hazards makes it a treacherous journey.

Darian Gap rain forest

The Engineering Challenges of Crossing the Darian Gap 

The Darian Gap is an environmentally sensitive area. Many people, including indigenous populations and elected officials in neighboring countries are concerned with issues like protecting the rain forest, containing the spread of tropical diseases, protecting the livelihood of local tribes, preventing drug trafficking and its associated violence, and preventing viruses like foot-and-mouth disease from entering North America.

As a result, part of the engineering challenge will be to prove the positives far outweigh the negatives. 

Under water tunneling system

From an engineering standpoint, it would be easy to conceive of an underwater tunnel that would circumvent the Darian Gap completely, and route traffic more efficiently between Panama and Columbia.

Plan for Gibraltar bridge-tunnel system

Other Major Disconnects in Global Ground Transportation

The completion of the English Channel Tunnel has breathed hope into a number of significant engineering projects around the world. Here are eight more examples of major ground transportation projects current being proposed: 

1.) Gibraltar Tunnel – The proposed Gibraltar Tunnel will link Africa and Europe. Due to the depth of the Strait of Gibraltar, 1000–2950 feet, it will be a significant challenge to remove vehicle exhaust from this depth.

2.) Sweden to Finland Tunnel – A tunnel has been proposed between Sweden and Finland. While one section is over 600 feet deep, having many islands in between will make this distance reasonably easy to connect with a series of bridges.

Proposed route for Korea Japan Friendship Tunnel System

3.) Korea to Japan – The “Korea Japan Friendship Tunnel System,” is a proposed tunnel to link the city of Fukuoka, Japan, to the port city of Pusan, Korea via four islands.

4.) Japan to Russia – The proposed Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel will link Hokkaido to the Russian island of Sakhalin. When combined with the proposed Sakhalin Tunnel between Sakhalin and the Russian Mainland and an extension of the Baikal Amur Mainline, this create a much needed rail link between Japan and Russia, as well as the rest of Asia.

5.) Taiwan to China – The Taiwan Strait Tunnel Project is a proposed undersea tunnel to connect Pingtan, China to Hsinchu, a city in northern Taiwan as part of the G3 Beijing–Taipei Expressway.

6.) Italy to Sicily – The Strait of Messina has busy ferry traffic and a 2-mile bridge is planned to eliminate the need for ferries. But due to local economic issues, the construction date has been postponed several times.

7.) Saudi-Egypt Causeway – The Saudi-Egypt Causeway is a proposal for a bridge between the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the northern part of Saudi Arabia.

8.) Transatlantic Tunnel – Perhaps the most far reaching is the transatlantic tunnel, a proposed 3,100-mile mass transit tunnel that would span the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe. The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost estimates of between $175 billion and $12 trillion.

 

Øresund bridge tunnel connecting Sweden to Denmark

The Argument for Going Global 

When systems are left incomplete, it requires more transportation, creating more pollution, segregation, isolation, and cultural barriers, not less. 

The problem is that very few people are viewing our fragmented ground transportation networks as part of a larger global system. Over the coming years, global systems, involving representatives from countries all over the world will spring to life, helping to bridge the cultural barriers currently preventing mega projects like these from moving forward. 

It boils down to the question of whether we are better off being a more cohesive, blended global society, or less of one.

 

Final Thoughts

Several trends are driving our appetite for mega projects in the future.

Emerging technology and automation will make these types of projects more affordable and technically doable. This follows closely with the Laws of Exponential Capabilities in a previous column.

Increasing levels of connectedness are driving our need for efficient travel and shipping around the world.

As technological unemployment grows, countries will be looking for mega projects to reemploy future generations. 

For each of the projects listed above, it’s not a matter of “if” they will be built, but “when,” with the exception of the Transatlantic Tunnel. Even the extreme futurist in me has a hard time grasping the viability of that one.

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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Our Newest Unit of Measure – 1 Human Intelligence Unit – and why it will Never Happen

I’ve been closely watching the debate on artificial intelligence with people like Rodney Brooks saying it’s only a tool, and others like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking giving bone chilling warnings of how it could lead to the destruction of all humanity.

As I was pondering these differing points of view, it occurred to me that we currently don’t have any real way of measuring the potency of AI. How will we ever know there is a real threat of danger if we have no way of measuring it?

For this reason, I’d like to propose the creation of a standard for measuring AI based on “1 Human Intelligence Unit.”

Similar, in some respects, to James Watt’s ingenious way of calculating horsepower as a way of gauging the mechanical muscle behind his ever improving steam engines, I’d like to make a crude attempt at quantifying, in numerical terms, the influence of 1 Human Intelligence Unit (HIU). 

Since horsepower is a rather one dimensional measure of force, and human intelligence is a complex, multidimensional combination of personal attributes that include thinking, reasoning, determination, motivation, emotional values, memories, fears, and frailty, the simple notion of quantifying human brainpower quickly mushroomed into one of those “infinity plus one” questions where the answer has become more of a philosophical debate rather than something we could assign a meaningful integer to. 

Over the past few weeks I found myself immersed in this quandary, looking for a simple but eloquent approach vector for solving the 1 HIU riddle. 

To put this into perspective, imagine a scene 20 years from now where you are walking into your local robot store to compare the latest models before you buy one for your home. The three models you’re most interested in have tags listing their HIUs as 4.6, 12.4, and 24.0 respectively.

Depending on whether you’ll use your robot to simply follow orders or to become a well-rounded sparing partner to debate the issues of the day, the HIU rating will become a hugely valuable tool in determining which one to choose. 

For this reason, I’d like to take you along on my personal journey to solve for “infinity plus one” in the area of human intelligence, and the startling conclusions that are likely to disrupt all your thinking.

History of Horsepower

When James Watt worked on his second-generation steam engines, it occurred to him that he needed a simple method for conveying the power of his devices, and it needed to be something everyone could relate to.

After watching horses turn the giant 24-foot wheel at a local mill, Watt determined that a horse could turn the wheel 144 revolutions in an hour, or 2.4 times a minute. With some quick calculations, he concluded the average horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds, which translates into 33,000 ft-lb per minute, the number behind every unit of horsepower today.

Even though horses couldn’t maintain this level of effort over a very long period of time, the horsepower comparison caught on and became a hugely valuable tool in marketing his engines.

Quantifying Intelligence

Needless to say, the quantification of effort exerted by a horse is far simpler than assigning value to the complex nature of human intellect. 

A simple approach starts with one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments, the Apollo Moon Landing, and dividing it by the number of people it took to accomplish it, and we could say that it took exactly X number of HIUs to complete the mission. But this approach is far too simplistic to have any real value.

What exactly would we be measuring, computational skills? How could a measure like this have any value in comparing say a robot doing laundry, a self-driving car, or Watson playing Jeopardy? 

Last year I wrote a column introducing the concept of “synaptical currency” as a way of quantifying mental effort and creating a better way of valuing a person’s contribution to a project based on a comparison of synapse firings over a given period of time.

According to neuroscientist Astra Bryant, a rough number for neural signal transmissions in the average brain ranges from 86 billion to 17.2 trillion actions per second, with a person in a deep meditative state being on the low end and someone experiencing a full blown, category-five epiphany on the high end. 

Even though having an HIU rating system based on the average number of decisions or calculations a person can make in an hour would have some merit, it represents little more than a horsepower rating for the brain, loosing intangibles like passion, ingenuity, and imagination in the process.

Being Human

Humans are odd creatures. We have exceptions for every rule, we value intangible things based on our emotional connection to them, and our greatest strength is flawed logic. 

Yet in the midst of our love dance with imperfection where we find ourselves grabbing on to clumsy-footed conundrums just to maintain some semblance of poise, we remain the dominant higher order species in the universe.

Certainly some will argue with that assessment, and we know little of what exists beyond our own planet, but here’s the key. 

What we lack as individuals, we make up for as a whole.

One person’s deficiencies are counterbalanced by another person’s over-adequacies. Individually we’re all failures, but together we each represent the pixels on life’s great masterpiece.

Wherever we find insufficiencies, we create dependencies to help fill the gap, and every “need” produces movement. 

Using this line of thinking, the human race does not exist as self-sufficient organisms. We all pride ourselves as being rugged individualists, yet we have little chance of surviving without each other. 

Even though we are constantly fighting to become well-balanced people, the greatest people throughout history, the people most lauded as heroes, were highly unbalanced individuals. They simply capitalized on their strengths and downplayed their weaknesses.

If humans were wheels, we would all be rolling around with lumpy flat sides and eccentric weight distribution. But if 1,000 of these defective wheels were placed side-by-side on the same axil, the entire set would roll smoothly.

This becomes a critical piece of a much bigger equation because every AI unit we’re hoping to create is just the opposite, complete and survivable on its own.

Naturally this raises a number of philosophical questions:

How can flawed humans possibly create un-flawed AI?
Is making the so-called “perfect” AI really optimal?
Will AI become the great compensator for human deficiencies?
Does AI eventually replace our need for other people?

The Button Box Theory

One theory often discussed in AI circles is the button box theory. If a computer were to be programmed to “feel rewarded” by having a button pressed every time it completed a task, eventually the computer would search for more efficient ways to receive the reward.

First it would look for ways to circumvent the need for accomplishing tasks and figure out ways to automate the button pushing. Eventually it would look for ways to remove threats to the button, including the programmer who has the power to unplug things altogether. Since computers cannot be reasoned with, it is believed that the machines would eventually rise up to battle humans.

This scenario is key to many dark movie plots where intelligent machines begin to battle against humanity in the future. Yet it is filled with assumptive flaws that these machines will somehow learn to take initiative, and their interests will instantly blind them to any other interests in the world.

A Few Startling Conclusions

Virtually every advancement in society is focused on the idea of gaining more control.

We all know what it’s like to get blindsided by bad serendipity, and we don’t like it. Our struggle for control is a coping reaction for life’s worst moments. If only we could have more control, nothing bad would ever happen to us.

Artificial intelligence promises to solve this dilemma. We not only create avoidance mechanisms for every danger, but fixes for every problem, and self-sufficiency on a grand scale. 

Eventually we become stand-alone organisms, content in our surroundings, wielding off-the-chart levels of intelligence and capabilities exceeding our wildest imagination.

However, this is where the whole scenario begins to break down.

Self-sufficiency will lead to isolation and our need for each other will begin to vanish. Without needs and dependencies, there is no movement. And without the drive for fixing every insufficiency, our sense of purpose begins to vanish.

Being super intelligent is meaningless if there is nothing to apply the intelligence to. Much like a perpetual motion machine that never gets used, there’s little purpose for its existence.

For this reason, it becomes easy for me to predict that all AI will eventually fail. It will either fail from its imperfection or fail from its perfection, but over time it will always fail. 

However, just because it’s destined to fail doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pursuing these goals. As we journey down this path we will be creating some amazingly useful applications.

Narrow AI applications will thrive in countless ways, and even general AI will create immeasurable benefits over the coming decades. But it is delusional to think that solving all problems will be a good thing.

 

Final Thoughts

Sometimes our best intentions reveal themselves as little more than a mirage to help guide us to an area we never intended to go. 

I started off this column talking about a new unit of measure – one human intelligence unit (1 HIU). But along the way, it has become clear that human intelligence and artificial intelligence exist on different planes. 

Without dependencies there can be no human intelligence. Something else perhaps, but it won’t be human.

There’s something oddly perfect about being imperfect.

When it comes to measuring the potential danger of AI, leveraging it for good can be as dangerous as leveraging it for evil.

In the end, I’ve failed to uncover the magical unit of measure by which all AI can be measured. Perhaps it’s just my way of waging a personal protest against perfection, but like a train that has yet to leave the station, this is a movement still decades away.

As I close out this discussion, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are the doubts and fears that cloud my assessment as real as I imagine them to be, or simply delusional thinking on my part?

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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Introducing the Maslow Self-Actualization House

For the past several months I’ve become enamored with the idea of creating a self sufficient, connectionless home. Not only is the home off-grid, creating it’s own power, heat, and air-conditioning, but also it’s own water supply, compost, and sewage system in a smart home environment.

I’ve even imagined how a house like this could be constructed with a form of 3D printing called contour crafting. The entire house could be designed and built one drop at a time, with everything from windows, wiring, and plumbing meticulously “printed” into place.

Going even further, every surface could have sensors, solar cells, and smart devices with unusual capabilities and functionality embedded into the wall, floors, and ceilings. Micro LEDs, audio systems, and air handlers could even anticipate your mood and adjust themselves according to your changing whims. 

In fact, this ultimate off-grid smart home would be so intelligent that it would circumvent every paid service plan to provide all these services. That’s right, everything would be totally free.

Free power, free water, free security systems, free heating and air-conditioning. I had become so captivated by the disruptive notion of “free,” that I was missing the bigger picture.

Only in the past couple days have I come to realize that I was thinking about this all wrong. 

Each of us has formed an adversarial relationship with our homes. Our homes are not operating in our best interests. They’re “dumb” structures, needing cleaning and repair, unable to think on their own, and every feature we wish to add costs us more money. 

Over the years, we’ve all become complacent in our thinking, resigned to accept “that’s just the way it is.” None of us has imagined that there could actually be a better option, but there truly is.

The Maslow Self Actualization home is one that forms a symbiotic relationship with each of its residents, and over time, begins to climb the famed pyramid to imbue the power of self-actualization onto those who inhabit it. 

Here’s how I see the stages of this higher order living begin to unfold.

Adding intelligence to every home 

The Advent of Artificial Intelligence in the Home 

Even though most people have little to no understanding of what a “smart home” actually is, companies have been actively creating a wide range of smart home technologies ranging from smart thermostats, to smart security systems, to smart pet doors, to smart entertainment systems. 

The Internet of Things is alive and well and already taking up residence in our homes. 

These devices not only communicate with the residents of the homes, they also communicate with each other. As these smart devices grow in sensory capability as well as in their ability to respond to each new condition, an entirely new kind of home begins to emerge. 

The journey from Stage 1 to Stage 8 will be filled with anticipation

Eight Stages Approaching the Maslow Self-Actualization House

Many people are enamored with the idea of creating an off-grid living space, erroneously thinking that if we remove the power lines and grow a few plants, that we will somehow have instant utopia.

To set the record straight, we will never reach the point of creating a complete utopia. As flawed humans, what we think we want is always different than what we need, and all humans need to struggle.

At the same time, if we struggle far less with our homes, it frees us up to dedicate time and energy to struggle with problems far more deserving of our time and energy.

With that in mind, here is a crude sketch of the eight stages, both where we’ve come from and where we’re likely to go with the increasingly intimate relationship we form with our homes. 

Stage 1 – Shelter

In the beginning, every home was a shelter and little more. It protected people from wind and rain, but not much else.

Stage 2 – Safety and Shelter 

Most of us today have a stage 2 home that provides both safety and shelter. Not only are we protected from the elements, but we also feel safe from intruders and any other dangers that lurk in the night.

Homes today are a lot of work. We still need to do our own cleaning and repair, insuring it against disaster, and pay for every service we wish to add.

Stage 3 – Smart Home 

With all of the buzz surrounding smart homes and smart home technology, it’s amazing that so few people actually know what it is.

In much the same way doors at our local grocery stores automatically open as we approach, today’s smart homes are designed to grow one feature at a time, using sensors to detect people, pets, and weather conditions, each connected to devices that automatically adjust to the situation. 

Stage 4 – Smart Anticipatory Home

As smart home devices become smarter, they will begin to shift from simply responding to a condition, to anticipating what’s next. A smart anticipatory home will not only know what mood you’re in, but will also anticipate what kind of music, lighting, and fire in the fireplace will suit your needs. 

These homes will have the intelligence to know both where you are, and who you are, building complicated anticipatory profiles for everyone who walks in the front door, keeping rooms tidy, picked up, and clean at all times. 

Stage 5 – Self-Sufficient Home

In stage 5 we are finally getting to the point where homes not only create their own power, heat, air-conditioning, and water, but also manage their own trash, sewage, external communications, and more.

Going a few steps further, a self-sufficient home will also have the ability to grow and harvest food, and prepare it for human consumption.

Stage 6 – Morphing House

While this may be difficult for most to imagine, the morphing home will seem alive as it actually changes its size and shape to better accommodate our lifestyle. 

As an example, if you’re hosting a party, some rooms will expand while others contract to form the best possible spaces for the event.

Eventually, even outer walls will have the ability to shift, change color, and expand according to the needs of the inhabitants.

Stage 7 – Symbiotic Relationship Home

Crafted with organic matter, these homes will harbor a companionship type of relationship with their residents, responding to pain and injury by producing healing environments, altering oxygen levels, and producing salves and ointments seemingly from thin air. 

A symbiotic home is also a talking home, conversationally literate, able to communicate through words and actions regardless of age, ethnicity, language, or profession.

Stage 8 – Self-Actualization House

This final stage puts it all together, combining the symbiotic relationship that we form with our home, anticipating our needs, morphing itself in shape and size, creating it’s own power, lights, music, media, and communication with the rest of the world, as our daily living becomes second nature. Our homes become an integral part of who we are, our friend and confidant, an extension of our humanness, attentive to our desires, but knowing when we’ve reached our limits. 

In a form of grid communication system self-actualization houses will have the ability to communicate with neighboring self-actualization houses, detecting changes in surrounding condition, anticipating dangers, tracking lost children and pets, and building resilience into every possible lifestyle.

Moving past the point of sensors, apps, devices, and mechanical hardware, the self-actualization house will become a living, breathing extension of who we are, amplifying our desires, assisting in our accomplishments, and tending to our needs so we can become we can better fulfill our aspirations.

In short, the self-actualization house will make you a better you.

We have little understanding what these houses will look like,

only that we will want one as soon as they are created

Final Thoughts 

On the day we’re born, we begin to form a relationship with the home we live in. As youngsters growing up, our home is our universe, our fortress, our source of food and family, and the place we spend most of our sleeping and waking hours. 

As we get older, the home serves more as a base station, where we periodically check in, but it’s the place where we keep our belongings, our entertainment, and a central gathering place for the rest of our family. 

Those of us without a stable home life know how disconcerting it can be as we form temporary attachments to places that provide shelter and separate attachments to places where we find food, heat, and social connections.

People without a stable base of operation have difficulty forming the foundational underpinnings for themselves to personally climb the Maslow hierarchy of need. 

For this reason, the home should never be considered the soulless commodity that it is today. Rather, the further we can move our homes up the pyramid of need, the closer we get to achieving self-actualization ourselves.

We have great difficulty imagining a future home with these types of capabilities. 

My goal in writing this column has been to help think beyond the incremental accomplishments of advanced living. Admittedly, these brief descriptions are a crude way of describing each of the stages and the steps necessary to move beyond the traditional “home as shelter” thinking.

At the same time, I’d love to hear your thoughts, what’s missing, oversimplified, out of order, or completely wrongheaded. This idea came from a middle of the night epiphany and I rarely grasp the big picture with that kind of initial inspiration.

But keep in mind, my house will know who you are and what you’re really thinking, so keep it clean.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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What Industries will produce the First Trillionaires?

A few weeks ago I got into a discussion with some friends centered around this question. “What, in your mind, will be the most powerful entity in the world 100 years from now?” 

As we look around us today, it’s easy to point to a single nation as being the most powerful. But will that still be true 100 years from now? 

The most powerful entities in the future could be large multi-national corporations, giant associations of people, companies, religious groups, clusters of countries such as NATO, perhaps some new entity that controls technology like ICANN, or something entirely new. 

Adding to the confusion of this question, what actually defines power? Is it money, clout, influence, an ability to control a large military, or some combination of all of these? 

Will the notion of power be defined differently in the future than it is today? 

These are all important questions to ask because powerful entities define who the powerful people are. And it is the underlying systems and technology that will determine status and clout.

But maybe this is the wrong way to think about it. The most powerful entity in the world 100 years from now may very well be a band of trillionaires.

With their level of influence, the trillionaires may very well determine the clout, power, and status of nations as well as the standing of other groups.

So where will these trillionaires come from? Are they simply billionaires in an inflated global economy? Perhaps. But it becomes a rather intriguing question to consider what industries, systems, and business models will have the potential of generating 100X more income that anything in the world today.

Another way of asking this, what are the products or services that are sufficiently scalable, transportable, and in-demand to produce $1 trillion in revenue in a short period of time? 

To put this number in perspective, if 7 billion people on earth each spent $143 on the same item, it would yield $1 trillion. But since gross revenue is a long ways from profit, and profit is generally several multiples of an individual shareholder’s wealth, the money spent per person would likely have to be in the neighborhood of 100X more.

With that backdrop I’d like to explore the question of which future industries have the potential of producing the first trillionaires?

A few notable billionaires, from top left – Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ted Turner,

from bottom left – Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, George Lucas

World’s First Billionaire

No one seems to know who the world’s first millionaire was, but the first time the word ‘millionaire’ was used was in an obituary describing the life of New York tobacco manufacturer Pierre Lorillard II in 1843. Others believe John Jacob Astor or Cornelius Vanderbilt were more likely to have achieved millionaire status first.

John D. Rockefeller was the world’s first billionaire. He broke into the billionaire category in the early 1900s as a result of his investments in Standard Oil. Rockefeller was at the top of his game in 1912 when he earned a loft $900 million in a single year.

According to Forbes Magazine, there are currently 1,645 people who qualified as billionaires in 2014, with Bill Gates leading the pack with a total net worth of $78 billion. 

Thinking Through the Path to becoming a Trillionaire

The most valuable corporations today are Apple $683B (software, hardware, Internet), Exxon Mobile $410B (petroleum), Google $367B (software, Internet), Microsoft $395B (software, hardware, Internet), Berkshire Hathaway $361B (investment services), and Johnson & Johnson $277B (medical equipment and services)

Corporations with the most assets, include ICBC $3.13T (China bank), HSBC $2,67T (British Bank), BNP Paribas $2.48T (French Bank), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial $2.46T, China Construction Bank $2.45T (China bank), JPMorgan Chase $2.44T (U.S. Bank), and Agricultural Bank of China $2.41T.

These companies fall primarily into the tech and banking industries. 

For any industry to produce 100 times more value than today’s corporations, it will need to be:

Rapidly scalable
Global in nature
Products or services with strong demand
Transportable to anywhere in the world
Highly profitable
Extremely influential

Thinking through the path of future industries

Top 18 Future Industries Most Likely to Produce Early Trillionaires

Stepping through these future industries, I will mention a few disclaimers. This is a highly speculative list with several wild-card industries added to the mix to keep things interesting. Many of these are still waiting for the initial breakthrough to occur before the industry can even get started.

At the same time, future industries will be able to leverage tomorrow’s technologies far faster than anything today.

They will have the ability to quickly adapt, rapidly influence, and perform nearly instantaneous transactions. For these reasons, it is entirely possible for a breakthrough to occur that launches an entirely new industry, and with highly leveraged processes, start producing trillionaires in less than ten years.

“…it is entirely possible for a breakthrough to occur that launches an entirely new industry, and with highly leveraged processes, start producing trillionaires in less than ten years.”

With this in mind, here are the future industries that rose to the top along with a brief explanation as to why they were chosen. 

1.) Cryptocurrency – The first global currency will likely be a cryptocurrency. Since they operate outside of the realm of highly regulated, nation-based economies, cryptocurrencies will have the ability to fill the gaping needs left unanswered by today financial systems. To put this into perspective, 2.5 billion adults, just over half of the world’s adult population, do not have bank accounts, nor do they use any formal financial services to save or borrow. The opportunity here is huge. 

2.) Asteroid Mining – When the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft and Philae lander made it to the surface of Comet 67P, there was a sudden renewed interest in going to space. However, the most valuable near-term space industry will likely stem from extracting resources found in near earth asteroids. While proving that both water and oxygen can be manufactured in space will be the first order of business, our growing need for platinum based metals could result in entire asteroids being dragged back to earth, each valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, shortly thereafter. 

3.) Instant Learning – Today’s learning processes occupy entirely too much of the human lifespan. With Nicolas Negroponte’s prediction that ingested learning (eating a pill and knowing French) is right around the corner, and a host of other technologies showing promise, the concept of “instant learning” is only one breakthrough away from becoming a trillion dollar industry.

4.) Internet of Things – On the surface, the Internet of Things, where devices talk to other devices may not seem like a good candidate for becoming a trillion dollar industry, but consider having devices that improve your health, energy, stamina, and thinking ability by 100% or more. Or perhaps having devices that can communicate with plants and animals. How much will those capabilities be worth in future dollars?

5.) Cure for Human Aging – If every person had the option of paying $10 a day to make aging stop and live forever, how many would choose that option? A billion people paying $10 a day would amount to $3.65 trillion a year in revenue. You may want to invest because this may be one of the few industries capable of providing you with the solid income you’ll need for the next 1,000 years, if not longer.

6.) Flying Drone Services – We are currently just scratching the surface of all the services that drones can provide. But consider the notion of having solar power drones that fly at extreme altitudes of 80,000 feet or higher, above weather patterns, and never have to come back down. Well maybe every 5 years for service and repair. Google and Facebook both bought companies like this. Now consider using these drones to provide a better grade of telecom services all over the world.

7.) Controlling the Weather – Is controlled weather a good thing or a bad thing? Well, we know hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and major hailstorms can be very destructive, so there are already major costs associated with our current weather systems. So consider how much it would be worth to farmers to have extra rain, a guarantee of no hail, favorable temperatures and good sunshine? How much is it worth to homeowners to not have to water their lawns, or never have wind or hail that damages their roofs? How about guaranteed wind above 300’ altitude for all wind farms? 

8.) Instant Sleep – Similar in some respects to anti-aging technology when you ask the question, “how many people would be willing to pay $10 to use an ‘instant sleep’ device to add an extra 8 hours of productive time to their day?” $10 may indeed be too cheap for this service, so maybe $100. Would 100 million people a day be willing to pay $100 to avoid sleep? There are many combinations of these numbers that could amount to $3.65 trillion a year in revenue if not more.

9.) Controlling Gravity – It’s hard to imagine a technology that will be more disruptive than gaining control over gravity. At this point though, we still struggle to understand what it is, why it exists, and how it works. So in some respects, it could be the least likely of all on this list. At the same time, as with most of these, we are but one key breakthrough away from this becoming the most valuable of all industries.

10.) Ultra High Speed Transportation – Traveling faster, more efficient, and for less money is normally a recipe for a massively disruptive technology, leading to a less valuable industry. Yet, tube transportation, as proposed by Elon Musk and Daryl Oster would have just the opposite effect. When global transportation becomes easier and cheaper, people will travel more – much more. And with a more efficient system, the margins will be far greater.

11.) Controlling Time – When the topic of controlling time is brought up, most people instantly start thinking about time travel. The next conclusion, naturally, is those who can jump across time will never be around, always choosing to experience some new era. But controlling time could also mean the short-term manipulation of time. Knowing something 10 minutes before the rest of the world could be worth billions, maybe even trillions.

12.) Instant Disassembling of Matter – When it comes to working with raw materials, we are very limited in the number of tools we can use to extract the actual substance we want. Digging, crushing, grinding, pulverizing, and blowing things up are all on the material science short list for getting to the core material inside. But consider a process where large boulders can be instantly disassembled into a pile of molecules, simply by breaking all the molecular bonds. How much would that be worth?

13.) Human Cloning or 3D Printed Bodies – Our bodies wear out. If we could somehow transfer who we are into a younger, stronger, better looking version of ourselves, how many people would jump at that opportunity? For this to enter into the “business of trillionaires,” the process for growing or 3D printing replacement bodies would need to rapidly scale up to the range of producing a million replacement bodies a day. Is that even possible?

14.) Personal Swarms of Swarmbots – Even though fully functional gnat-sized flying bots are still a few generations from providing value, the versatility and utility of having a personal swarm of swarmbots will some day be off the charts cool. The same swarm that dries us after a shower, applies makeup, and fixes our hair, will assemble themselves as our clothing, our body armor, and function as our personal tech. Not only will this exoskeleton formed from particle-sized drones amplify our strength, the swarm will also enable us to fly from place to place.

15.) Robotic Services – Robots are coming. They may not look like “Rosie” on the Jetsons or C3PO from Star Wars, but robots are destined to remove the “routine” from routine living. The race to find the killer app for robots and robotic services, something equivalent to social media for the Internet, is destined to become the ultimate quest of bot startups everywhere in the very near future.

16.) 3D Telepresence Avatars – How many times have you heard someone say they need to clone themselves? 3D telepresence avatars are the digital equivalent of cloning where life-size representations of ourselves can interact with others in the same fashion as being there in person. These avatars could attend meetings, file reports, engage in water cooler chitchat, attend little league games, and even keep your boss busy, all the while, extending your overall capabilities and earning potential several fold.

17.) Artificial Intelligence – Even though AI has quickly emerged as the poster child of future technology gone wrong, artificial intelligence is destined to become a game-changer on almost every level. It’s difficult to imagine any industry that couldn’t somehow be improved, and improved exponentially, with the addition of narrow AI applications.

18.) Energy Storage – We gotten to the point of being relatively good at generating power, but when it comes to storing power from one day to the next, we find ourselves still in the Neanderthal stages of development. Anyone who finds a super efficient way of storing power will quickly become the master of the energy universe. 

Existing Industries that Could Become Trillion Dollar Industries

Yes, it may indeed be possible for existing industries to climb to the lofty heights of producing trillionaires, but less likely. Most of today’s industries are already parsed into competitive segments, and that in itself limits scalability on many levels.

Some of today’s wealthiest industries that could conceivably find ways to ramp up to the trillionaire-maker level include insurance, banking, investing, mining, oil and gas, Internet, software, and data storage.

However, for any of these to scale past the trillion-dollar threshold, they will either need to find or create highly profitable new products or services, open up new untapped markets, develop accelerated business processes including transaction speeds, and leverage future tech in a big way in the process.

Final Thoughts

After considering all the possibilities, the first trillionaire will likely have his or her money in multiple industries. I cringe as I say that, because that’s far less interesting than considering which industry will emerge as the maker of future kings.

The intent of creating this list has been to help open people’s thinking about the vast possibilities that lie ahead.

My one disclaimer is that earning money is at best a poor way of keeping score when it comes to assessing the true worth of an individual. However, if the wealth is derived from unleashing an entire new industry with innumerable benefits to humankind, it can indeed be a win-win arrangement.

Again, this is not an exhaustive list and I’d love to hear your thoughts about either the validity or erroneousness of these assumptions as well as some insight into the ones that I’ve missed.

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By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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Modern Day Grandstanding and the Future of Getting Noticed

 

On a recent trip to Amsterdam, I had a conversation with Axel Rüger, Director of the renowned Van Gogh Museum about what it was that made Van Gogh so famous. Was it his talent, the fact that he cut off his own ear, or a combination of both?

As we continued the discussion, perhaps an even bigger question that we debated was whether Van Gogh and his artwork would be more famous or less famous 100 years from now?

Naturally, this line of thinking raises many other questions. Is there any kind of formula that can guarantee fame? Does grandstanding, plus talent, equal fame?

If a talented artist today engaged in a similar form of grandstanding by cutting off their ear, or some other part of their body, would it have the same effect today?

Probably not, because it has already been done before, and we rarely remember those who come in second.

As a professional speaker, I find this line of questioning very intriguing because I find myself rubbing elbows with some of the most recognizable personalities in the world.

So what kind of grandstanding has worked in the past, and how will it change in the future?

Radio stars of the 1920s were very different than TV and movie stars of the 1980s. And those celebrities took a far different route to fame than many of our well-known personalities today.

After Justin Bieber used a few homemade YouTube videos to carve a path to superstardom, thousands of other talented young kids began posting similar videos with hopes that lightening would strike again.

Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg and his team of rule-breaking Harvard-dropouts inspired thousands of other young startup pioneers to jump on the fast track to becoming the next Internet billionaire. 

Is there a limit to the number of famous people the world can have at any given time? Does a famous person have to die to make room for someone new? Will everyone have their 15 minutes of fame like Andy Warhol famously suggested?

Here’s why all these question are so important and how the path to fame will continue to change in the future. 

Scott and Julie Brusaw and their Solar Roadways Technology

Positioning Yourself for the Lightening Bolt of Fame 

In April 2014, Scott and Julie Brusaw launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise money for their groundbreaking Solar Roadways technology. In May they added a very clever video titled, “Solar Freakin’ Roadways,” which instantly went viral and has been seen by over 18 million people around the world.

As a result, the crowdfunding campaign raised $2.2 million, making it Indiegogo’s most popular campaign ever in terms of backers. Part of the initial success was attributed to a tweet made by George Takei, who played Sulu on Star Trek, to his more than 8 million Twitter followers.

It was also the first energy-related video ever to go viral on this scale.

This is an example of a well-executed grandstanding effort – cutting edge technology tied to an ingenious video and a George Takei tweet.

Naturally this raises many questions. Can campaigns like this be duplicated? Are there common elements that will increase the probability for success? And are there some fields where superstardom is easier to achieve than others?

To better understand the last question, can the average person on the street name more artists, movie stars, writers, musicians, inventors, celebrity CEOs, scientists, poets, scientists, chefs, cartoonists, athletes, film producers, political leaders, or mass murderers?

As you can imagine, celebrities in the energy industry are quite rare, but far more common in sports and entertainment. But stardom in other sectors is growing.

For this reason, I’d like to focus on the driving forces and shifting trends in the self-promotion world of “king-makers.”

Banksy graffiti art

Eleven Examples of Modern Day Grandstanding

The following is a diverse list of celebrities who have gained both national and international notoriety through unusual methods.

1. Banksy – Everyone loves a mystery and the fact that no one has been able to discover his or her identity keeps people paying close attention to the brilliant graffiti art showing up randomly on the sides of buildings. Banksy’s work grew out of the underground scene in Bristol, England and is now more popular than ever.

2. Dale Chihuly – An American glass sculptor, Chihuly has garnered worldwide attention with his large-scale glass installations in botanical gardens. The contrast between glass and nature is nothing short of breathtaking.

3. Psy (Park Jae-sang) – As a South Korean singer-songwriter and record producer, Psy has become an international celebrity because of his hit single “Gangnam Style” which was the first YouTube video ever to be downloaded over 1 billion times.

4. Simon Sinek – Authors have found that being a good speaker also sells books. Attracting over 20 million views as a TED speaker, Sinek is the author of the best-selling books, “Start With Why” and “Leaders Eat Last.”

5. Edward Snowden – As a former CIA intelligence officer, Snowden gained worldwide attention after leaking classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). What Snowden unleashed will have ripple effects for decades to come. As a result, Snowden has become a much sought after speaker, through live video webcasts from his current home in Russia.

6. PewDiePie (Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg) – A Swedish video game commentator, Felix is now the highest earning YouTube celebrity.

7. Katy Perry – This young pop singer has more Twitter followers (over 60 million) than anyone else including Justin Bieber.

8. Pete Cashmore – As CEO and founder of the world famous blog Mashable, Cashmore is one of the youngest and richest bloggers in the world.

9. Jane McGonigal – Jane is one of the best-known gaming industry evangelists and her TED talks are themed around how the world would be a better place if we all played more games.

10. Michael Arrington – Michael has become known as the “Prophet of Silicon Valley.” His site, TechCrunch, updates its news so often now that you can get minute-to-minute tech news.

11. Malala Yousafzai – 17-year old Nobel Peace Prize winner from Pakistan is the youngest ever to win the prize. Malala grew to prominence as a human rights activist promoting education for women in her native Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. He actions led to an attempt on her life in 2012 where she was shot in the head and narrowly survived.

 

Demonstrating the fine art of getting noticed

Eleven Future Trends in Getting Noticed

During the middle ages there were peasants and royalty and very little in between. Over the past couple centuries, mediums like newspapers, radio, and television were born, giving rise to whole new classes of celebrities.

More recently, over the past two decades, the Internet has spawned countless new media channels, each giving birth to their own brand of celebs. At the same time, there are far more changes afoot than most of us realize. 

1.) Additional Channels for Discovery – Today, the path to fame can take thousands of different routes. As an example, becoming famous on Quirky, Kickstarter, Vine, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pintrest, or Reddit are all options that were never available 20 years ago. 

2.) Far More Categories of Fame – Everything from video game tournaments, to online cooking shows, to crowdfunding campaigns have all spawned new categories of famous people.

3.) Every Level of Fame Comes with Incremental Degrees of Recognition – Gone are the black-n-white days of famous or not famous. As the amount of information we consume increases, so does the space we have in our lives for those we admire. In addition to name recognition, fame can be measured by the number of social media followers, video views, article downloads, online web footprint, books sold, radio appearances, or a multitude of other metrics.

4.) The Multidimensional Nature of Fame – Today we have famous people in every industry, every community of interest, every nationality, every region, and in tons of quirky online niches. Tomorrow there will be even more.

5.) Better Tools to Manage Fan Clubs – It’s rare that people become famous without effort. It typically requires effort, usually sustained effort over a long period of time. Managing a personal fan club is all part of the work that prepares people to climb the ladder to celebrity.

6.) Fewer Gatekeepers – Yes it is still difficult to get an article published in the New York Times or make an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmie Fallon. It even takes some work to get your Kickstarter campaign accepted. But anyone can create a blog, self-publish a book, post a YouTube video, or create a Facebook account.

7.) Risk-Taking is Approaching Free – At the same time that gatekeepers are going away, recording and posting videos, blog postings, tweets, emails, Facebook entries, and a multitude of other tools needed to become famous are becoming less expensive every day.

8.) Raising the Bar on Accomplishments – Running the 4-minute mile has come and gone. Every well-crafted TED talk competes for mindshare with every other form of media. Every significant accomplishment raises the bar, causing our expectations to grow. Our short attention span coupled with our ability to instantly switch channels or webpages has left us with little tolerance for average and mediocre performances.

9.) Our Need for Heroes is Increasing – The Internet is enabling each of us to live hyper-individualized lifestyles, and every social circle, area of interest, and technical profession demands people who are our heroes to help guide our thinking

10.) The Path to Celebrity is Becoming Clearer – The number of “personalities” we will come into contact with throughout our lives will continue to grow. Our increased exposure to celebrity people gives us a better perspective on how to become one.

11.) Novelty is Limitless – There is no limit to human creativity, and combining ingenuity with emerging technology, existing tools, and a few expansive approaches to unlocking what’s possible, gives anyone who would otherwise be destined to live their lives in obscurity a way out.

Mark Zuckerberg doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Final Thoughts

No one can deny the brilliance behind the enormously successful ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that garnered over 1 billion views on YouTube during it peak two month period of July and August of this year. But what triggered its success?

It all began when Pete Frates and Pat Quinn, both having been diagnosed with ALS came up with something they called the “Cold Water Challenge.”

The challenge first received media attention in the U.S. on June 30, 2014, when the program Morning Drive, aired the first on-air Ice Bucket Challenge on the Golf Channel.

Soon after, Matt Lauer did the Ice Bucket Challenge on The Today Show after being challenged by Greg Norman. This was quickly followed by everyone from Bill Gates, to Elon Musk, George Bush, and millions more getting buckets of ice water dumped on their heads.

However, the Ice Bucket Challenge has come and gone, leaving many of us asking, “what’s next?”

The only predictable path to fame is through success, but success is hard to define and rarely predictable.

As I wrap up this discussion on grandstanding, I will leave you with three parting thoughts:

The future favors the bold
Fame is best leveraged by those who are well prepared
Grandstanding without a follow-up plan is useless

If you’re looking for a new grandstanding approach to promote your business, product, or yourself, there will always be some new way to get discovered.

As famed marketing guru Seth Godin likes to say, “Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.”

It may be helpful to think of grandstanding simply as a global competition for people’s attention. But what you do after you’ve gained it will be a key deciding factor.

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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101 Endangered Jobs by 2030

Business owners today are actively deciding whether their next hire should be a person or a machine. After all, machines can work in the dark and don’t come with decades of HR case law requiring time off for holidays, personal illness, excessive overtime, chronic stress or anxiety.

If you’ve not heard the phrase “technological unemployment,” brace yourself; you’ll be hearing it a lot over the coming years.

Technology is automating jobs out of existence at a record clip, and it’s only getting started.

Yes, my predictions of endangered jobs will likely strike fear into the hearts of countless millions trying to find meaningful work. But while crystal balls everywhere are showing massive changes on the horizon, it’s not all negative news.

For those well attuned to the top three skills needed for the future – adaptability, flexibility, and resourcefulness – there will be more opportunities than they can possibly imagine.

As an example, for people who lived 150 years ago, having never seen a car, the thought of traveling 1,000 miles seemed like an impossible journey. But today, 1,000-mile trips are not only common, they’re trivial.

This is precisely the shift in perspective we’re about to go through as the tools at our disposal begin to increase our capabilities exponentially.

As I describe the following endangered jobs, understand there will be thousands of derivative career paths ready to surface from the shadows.

We live in unbelievably exciting time, and those who master the fine art of controlling their own destiny will rise to the inspiring new lifestyle category of “rogue commanders of the known universe.”

Stained glass driverless car

Cause of Destruction: Driverless Cars

When DARPA launched their first Grand Challenge in 2004, the idea of autonomous driverless vehicles for everyone seemed like a plot for a bad science fiction novel about the far distant future. The results of the first competition even bore that out with few of the entrants even getting past the starting blocks.

The 2005 contest, however, was far different with five teams completing the 132-mile course through the dessert, setting the stage for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. The Urban Challenge proved for all that these vehicles were rapidly coming up the acceptance curve.

Over the past few years, Google’s involvement has made driverless cars a common water cooler topic, causing virtually every transportation company in the world to launch their own driverless research team working on autonomous features.

Between now and 2030, driverless features will pave the way for fully autonomous vehicles and the demand for drivers will begin to plummet. On-demand transportation services, where people can hail a driverless vehicle at any time will become a staple of everyday metro living.

Endangered Jobs

Drivers

1. Taxi Driver

2. Limo driver

3. Bus drivers

4. Rental car personnel 

Delivery Positions

5. Truck drivers

6. Mail carriers

Public Safety

7. Traffic cops

8. Meter maids

9. Traffic court judges

10. Traffic court lawyers

11. Traffic court DAs

12. Traffic court support staff

Misc.

13. Parking lot attendants

14. Valet attendants

15. Car wash workers

Cause of Destruction: Flying Drones

Flying drones will be configured into thousands of different forms, shapes, and sizes. They can be low flying, high flying, tiny or huge, silent or noisy, super-visible or totally invisible, your best friend, or your worst enemy. 

Without the proper protections, drones can be dangerous. The same drones that deliver food and water can also deliver bombs and poison. We may very well have drones watching the workers who watch the drones, and even that may not be enough. 

Even though drones will be eliminating huge numbers of jobs, they will be creating tons of new opportunities for professions that haven’t been invented yet. 

That said, here are a few of the jobs that drones will help disappear. 

Endangered Jobs

Delivery Positions

16. Courier service

17. Food delivery

18. Pizza delivery

19. Postal delivery 

Agriculture

20. Crop monitors/consultants

21. Spraying services

22. Shepherds

23. Wranglers/herders

24. Varmint exterminators

Surveying

25. Land and field surveyors

26. Environmental engineers

27. Geologists

Emergency Rescue

28. Emergency response teams

29. Search and rescue teams

30. Firefighters

News Services

31. Mobile news trucks

Remote Monitoring

32. Construction site monitors

33. Building inspectors

34. Security guards

35. Parole officers

Cause of Destruction: 3D Printers 

3D printing, often described to as additive manufacturing, is a process for making three dimensional parts and objects from a digital model. 3D printing uses “additive processes,” to create an object by adding layer upon layer of material until it’s complete.

Manufacturing in the past relied on subtractive processes where blocks of metal, wood, or other material has material removed with drills, laser cutters, and other machines until the final part was complete. This involved skilled machine operators and material handlers. 

3D printing reduces the need for skilled operators as well as the need for expensive machines. As a result, parts can be manufactured locally for less money than even the cheapest labor in foreign manufacturing plants.

This technology is already being used in many fields: jewelry, footwear, industrial design, architecture, engineering and construction, automotive, aerospace, dental and medical industries, education, geographic information systems, civil engineering, and many others.

Endangered Jobs

Manufacturing

36. Plastic press operators

37. Machinists

38. Shipping & receiving

39. Union representatives

40. Warehouse workers

Cause of Destruction: Contour Crafting

Contour Crafting is a form of 3D printing that uses robotic arms and nozzles to squeeze out layers of concrete or other materials, moving back and forth over a set path in order to fabricate large objects such as houses. It is a construction technology that has great potential for low-cost, customized buildings that are quicker to make, reducing energy and emissions along the way.

A few months ago the WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Company used contour crafting to “print” 10 houses in a single day using a massive printer that was 490 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 20 feet deep.

Last week, an Italian 3D printer company named WASP, demonstrated a giant, three-armed printer filled with mud and fiber to build extremely cheap houses in some of the most remote places on Earth.

This type of technology will have major implications on all construction, building, and home repair jobs.

Endangered Jobs

Home Construction

41. Carpenters

42. Concrete workers

43. Home remodeling

44. City planners

45. Homeowner insurance agents

46. Real estate agents

Cause of Destruction: Big Data & Artificial Intelligence

It’s becoming an ever increasingly blurred line between big data and artificial intelligence.

A few months ago, Stephen Hawking opened the world’s eyes to the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI), warning that it has the potential of outsmarting humans in the financial markets. 

More recently, Elon Musk made headlines when he said artificial intelligence could be “unleashing the demons,” and researchers from some of the top U.S. universities say he’s not wrong.

In spite of growing fears, AI will be entering our lives in many different ways ranging from smart devices, to automated decision-makers, to synthetic designers.

When Kristian Hammond, CTO of Narrative Sciences predicted, “By 2030, 90% of all the news will be written by computers,” he was referring to AI software that is quickly coming up the learning curve.

Endangered Jobs

Writing

47. News reporters

48. Sports reporters

49. Wall street reporters

50. Journalists

51. Authors

Military

52. Military planners

53. Cryptographers

Medical

54. Dietitians

55. Nutritionists

56. Doctors

57. Sonographers

58. Phlebotomists

59. Radiologists

60. Psychotherapists

61. Counselors/psychologists

Financial Services

62. Financial planners/advisors

63. Accountants

64. Tax advisors

65. Auditors

66. Bookkeepers

Legal Services

67. Lawyers

68. Compliance officers/workers

69. Bill collectors

Misc

70. Meeting/event planners

71. Cost estimators

72. Fitness coaches

73. Logisticians

74. Interpreters/translators

75. Customer service reps

76. Teachers

Cause of Destruction: Mass Energy Storage 

Any form of mass energy storage will dramatically improve renewable energy’s role in the marketplace. The first companies to commercialize utility-scale energy storage stand to make a fortune and pioneer some of the most significant advancements to the world’s power generation and distribution system in decades.

While we are not quite there yet, significant technological breakthroughs are on the horizon and major installations will soon become commonplace.

Large-scale methods of storing energy storage include flywheels, compressed air energy storage, hydrogen storage, thermal energy storage, and power to gas. Smaller scale commercial application-specific storage methods include flywheels, capacitors and supercapacitors.

In 5 – 10 years the mass, grid-scale, bulk energy storage industry will likely be a rapidly growing industry much as solar and wind are today. Electricity generated but not consumed is a waste of natural resources and money lost. Energy storage will change all that.

Endangered Jobs

77. Energy planners

78. Environmental designers

79. Energy auditors

80. Power plant operators

81. Miners

82. Oil well drillers, roughnecks,

83. Geologists

84. Meter readers

85. Gas/propane delivery

 

Cause of Destruction: Robots

Robots taking jobs from manufacturing workers has been happening for decades. But rapidly advancing software will spread the threat of job-killing automation to nearly every occupation.

Anything that can be automated will be. A robotic “doc-in-a-box” will help diagnose routine medical problems in many areas, while other machines will perform surgeries and other procedures. 

If the human touch is not essential to the task, it’s fair to assume that it will be automated away.

Over the coming decades, robots will enter the lives of every person on earth on far more levels than we ever dreamed possible.

Endangered Jobs

Retail

86. Retail clerks

87. Checkout clerks

88. Stockers

89. Inventory controllers

90. Sign spinners

Medical

91. Surgeons

92. Home healthcare

93. Pharmacists

94. Veterinarians

Maintenance

95. Painters

96. Janitors

97. Landscapers

98. Pool cleaners

99. Grounds keepers

100. Exterminators

101. Lumberjacks

Final Thoughts

The question remains, will technology become a net-destroyer of jobs or a net-creator?

For each of the endangered jobs listed above, I can easily come up with several logical offshoots that may amount to a net increase in jobs.

As an example, traditional lawyers may transition into super-lawyers handling 10X the caseload of lawyers today. Limo drivers may become fleet operators managing 50-100 cars at a time. Painters may become conductors of paint symphonies with robot painters completing entire houses in less than an hour. 

If it cost a tenth as much to paint your house, you’ll simply do it more often. This same line of thinking applies to washing your car, traveling around the world, and buying designer clothes.

In a recent column I wrote titled, “The Laws of Exponential Capabilities” I explain how every exponential decrease in effort create an equal and opposite exponential increase in capabilities. As today’s significant accomplishments become more common, mega-accomplishments will take their place, and we need to set our sights on far more of tomorrow’s “mega-accomplishments.”

It is simply not possible to run out of work to do in the world. But whether or not there will be a job tied to the work that needs to be done is another matter entirely.

 

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Communicating with the Future” – the book that changes everything

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