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Margaret Weddle

'Future Shock' team issues predictions for next 40 years - USATODAY.com - 0 views

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    USA Today article about the next predictions. Also a few notable fulfillments. Interesitng!
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    The next Future Shock!
Andrew DeWitt

Learning in the Light of Faith - 0 views

  • When I was just out of graduate school, I attended my first meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. A highlight was a special event arranged by the conference organizers: the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov had been invited to speak to us.
  • Hour after hour he wrote down the stories he found in books in the university library about people protesting the invention of things like machines to spin thread and to weave cloth, steam-powered trains, automobiles, airplanes, etc. All of these advances were perceived by the general public either to be physically dangerous or to be a threat to the livelihoods of workers in trades that were about to be destroyed by these advances.
  • when he started to write science fiction, he remembered all of this work he had done. So while his fellow writers were all rhapsodizing about the thrill of rockets and space travel (long before such things were possible), he wrote a story about how the local populace showed up at the launch site with torches and pitchforks in opposition to space travel. Years later, when rockets and travel outside of the earth’s atmosphere became possible, there were protests, and many of Mr. Asimov’s colleagues were astounded that he had predicted so far in advance that this would occur.
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  • “Why,” Mr. Asimov then asked us, “among all of these talented and visionary writers, was I the only one who was able to predict that this resistance to change would occur?” He let us think about the question for an uncomfortably silent minute, then leaned into the microphone and said in an intense voice that I still vividly remember: “It’s because people are stupid!”
  • The lesson I take from my memory of this experience is that the proper attitude to have when confronted with the vast complexity both of the universe and of the ideas and activities of the people who live on this small planet orbiting an ordinary star far away from the center of things in our galaxy is profound humility.
    • Andrew DeWitt
       
      This is how we ought to deal with future shock: "humility"
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    Great Devotional Talk by Ross Spencer.  Includes a great reference to "Future Shock".
Brandon McCloskey

The Internet Services Disruption « Ray Ozzie - 0 views

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    Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie wrote this memo back in 2005 and it it a good prediction of where the computing world was headed.
Mike Lemon

G. Stanley Hall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • There, Hall objected vehemently to the emphasis on teaching traditional subjects, e.g., Latin, mathematics, science and history, in high school, arguing instead that high school should focus more on the education of adolescents than on preparing students for college.
  • Hall believed that humans are by nature non-reasoning and instinct driven, requiring a charismatic leader to manipulate their herd instincts for the well-being of society. He predicted that the American emphasis on individual human right and dignity would lead to a fall that he analogized to the sinking of Atlantis.
  • Hall coined the phrase "storm and stress" with reference to adolescence, taken from the German Sturm und Drang movement. Its three key aspects are conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risky behavior.
Brandon McCloskey

BBC News - Why companies watch your every Facebook, YouTube, Twitter move - 0 views

  • These days one witty Tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video - forwarded to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse - can snowball and kill a product or damage a company's share price.
  • It's a dramatic shift in consumer power. But what if companies could harness this power and turn it to their advantage?
  • At the most basic, these tools measure the volume of social media chatter. Researchers at Hewlett Packard showed that they can accurately predict a Hollywood movie's box office takings by counting how often it is mentioned on Twitter before it opens.
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  • One European clothing company, popular with inner city youth in the United States, admits privately that its social media team is baffled by its customers' ever changing slang, and even the online Urban Dictionary provides little help.
  • Social media is quickly becoming a customer relationship management system, as companies have "for the first time access to people's minds in real-time," says Jorn Lyseggen. The tools on offer provide companies with dashboards that show trends, hot topics, the reach of brands, customer mood and how competitors are doing.
  • Social media may be all the buzz, but in reality "only a few firms get it [and use it], it's of peripheral interest for most", says Tom Austin at technology consultancy Gartner. Few realise that using social media has become much more than customer service and reputation management.
  • many social media tools are poorly integrated into the corporate workflow
  • But there are dangers. Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway warns that the obsession with social networking can make management lose focus.
  • To survive the world of social media, companies have to throw away their old marketing playbook.
  • "don't push... and don't pretend you are hip"
  • "Once companies have worked out that they should do something with social media, they usually don't know how to do it,"
  • "If you want to influence the people who influence your customers, that's a very powerful game, but it's also very dangerous if you get it wrong."
  • it's not about how many friends or followers somebody has, but whether they make an impact.
  • When Virgin America recently launched new routes from California to Toronto, it used Klout to identify a small group of social media "influencers" and gave them free flights. This generated thousands of tweets, triggered press coverage and delivered more immediate impact than traditional advertising.
  • "Consumers are spending their attention on social media," he says, but firms don't know how to repay them properly. "There's no manual for that yet."
  • Social media are dynamic, and today's Twitter may be tomorrow's forgotten website. "Don't assume that what works today will work tomorrow," says Tom Austin at Gartner. "Your model has to be continually adapted."
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