Services 2020

"The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do, by Dr. Daniel Berleant (388 pages), the first book published by the Lifeboat Foundation, is available free (Kindle version) to KurzweilAI readers on July 8 as a one-day promo. A non-fiction book verging on science fiction, its imaginative future scenarios include colonizing the planet Mercury (it has water at the poles), GPS-enabled clocks replace daylight savings time, mind-reading replaces keyboards, cheap genomes, smart pills, the Asteroid Apocalypse, global warming vs. Big Ice, and live anywhere, work anywhere - an hour's work yields a week's (radically genetically engineered) food. "Mandatory reading for anyone trying to grasp where civilization is heading" - Zoltan Istvan, author, The Transhumanist Wager."

"Watch an exclusive interview with Rafael Ramirez, Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme and Fellow in Strategy at the Saїd Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford University. A world expert on scenario planning and a founder of theories on the aesthetics of business, work and organisation, Rafael Ramirez has worked in over 25 countries, spanning many corporations, governmental and inter-governmental organisations, trade union federations, NGO's and professional associations. As Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme he leads one of the most highly respected programmes on the subject in the world."

"Bertolt Meyer is used to being viewed as not fully human. Born with a stump where his left hand should have been, he spent his childhood wearing a hook connected to an elaborate pulley and harness. "To open the hook and grasp things I had to flex my shoulders like this," he says, striking a he-man pose. "The harness was very uncomfortable. To stop it chafing my skin, I had to wear a shirt underneath it at all times. I was always sweating.""

"The last year I presented TEFMIBO in Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology - PICMET 2012. This research shows a methodology for technology foresight in order to achieve better implementation and to overcome its problems. With Technological Foresight Model for the Identification of Business Opportunities, I intend to provide a tool to support managers and entrepreneurs to improve the decision making process that address the future of their business."

" The steam engine sparked the Industrial Revolution, shifting the world from handcrafting to mass production. The assembly line and mass production transformed industry after industry and gave birth to the middle class. And cheap, standardized shipping in the 20th century catalyzed a truly global and interconnected economy."

"In the last quarter of the century, corollaries were added: "focus tightly on maximizing shareholder value"; "strategy is about coping with competition"; and "lower costs by off-shoring." These principles worked as long as oligopolies dominated the marketplace. Firms could succeed with limited innovation, often by copying what had already been pioneered by others."

"As the world of learning continues to evolve, so will learners. The following personas, most created with Collective Invention, present snapshots of what we believe different learners' experiences, struggles, and aspirations might be."

" On November 11th 2013 researchers, innovators and creators will gather in Amsterdam for the co-working unconference LaFutura. The goal of this meeting is to map the business of trend research and future insights in order to create a framework for this new industry. The theme of this event is 'NOW NEW NEXT Building the future industry'. "

" "Now & Next"- MSLGROUP Publishes Report on the Future of Engagement"

"The sewing machine was the smartphone of the nineteenth century. Just skim through the promotional materials of the leading sewing-machine manufacturers of that distant era and you will notice the many similarities with our own lofty, dizzy discourse. The catalog from Willcox & Gibbs, the Apple of its day, in 1864, includes glowing testimonials from a number of reverends thrilled by the civilizing powers of the new machine. One calls it a "Christian institution"; another celebrates its usefulness in his missionary efforts in Syria; a third, after praising it as an "honest machine," expresses his hope that "every man and woman who owns one will take pattern from it, in principle and duty." The brochure from Singer in 1880-modestly titled "Genius Rewarded: or, the Story of the Sewing Machine"-takes such rhetoric even further, presenting the sewing machine as the ultimate platform for spreading American culture. The machine's appeal is universal and its impact is revolutionary. Even its marketing is pure poetry:"

"Great expectations and a virtual world are among the megatrends changing the role of museums and arts organisations. The megatrends, identified by CSIRO trend analyst Stefan Hajkowicz, are a major shift in the cultural, economic, social, environmental and technological milieu that are expected to radically change the context of everything we do over the next 20 years. Some of the trends go to the very nature of why people come to museums, raising the possibility that museums, galleries and theatres could replace shops as the 'third place' where people congregate. Others will change the processes by which our organisations operate and the subjects on which we focus. Speaking at the Musuems Australia National Conference in Canberra on Shaping the Future of Museums, Dr Hajkowicz said while some changes were 'black swans' - phenomena never seen until a major change of environment - many were more like a 'kangaroo in the headlights', who sees the car coming but remains frozen. He gave the example of Eastman Kodak, which was involved in the development of the digital camera in 1975 but failed to change its business model from dependence on film and filed for bankruptcy in 2011."

"When asked by his interviewer about the "modest title" of his new book, The Future - Six Drivers of Global Change, former Vice President Al Gore replied, "Random House came up with that title." It's not an auspicious beginning to a talk about the perils of the Global Megacrisis, when you more or less say your title was chosen because the marketing team liked it best. Nevertheless, when Al Gore speaks, people listen. And hundreds of people lined up last week for his live South By Southwest (SXSW) interview with Wall Street Journal and All Things D tech reporter Walt Mossberg. It was to a sympathetic crowd that Gore laid out the tenets of his newest book, which was born in 2005 as an off-the-cuff but "adequate" answer during a post-appearance Q&A session. "

"Foresight's Horizon Scanning Centre has built this toolkit: Exploring the future: Tools for strategic thinking for anyone who uses, or would like to use, futures thinking and analysis to make better decisions today. The toolkit is intended for futures analysts, policy-makers, strategists and people managing a futures process. The toolkit draws extensively (but not exclusively) on the approach that Foresight's Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC) takes in its own futures work. "

PDF from the royal academy

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"Memory allows for a kind of mental time travel, a way for us to picture not just the past but also a version of the future, according to a growing body of research. The studies suggest that the purpose of memory is far more extensive than simply helping us store and recall information about what has already happened. Researchers from University College London and Harvard University have made strides charting how memory helps us draw a mental sketch of someone's personality and imagine how that person might behave in a future social situation. They detailed their latest findings in work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex last week."

"Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Four years ago an unknown startup called MakerBot showed up at the South by Southwest Interactive conference here with a prototype of its first desktop 3-D printer, which spit out plastic replicas of small objects. Bre Pettis, the company's co-founder, took the machine around to Austin's watering holes, set it on the bar and showed off its capabilities by printing shot glasses. "They were pretty popular," he said. On Friday, Pettis was back at SXSW, this time as a keynote speaker before a packed hall of 3,000 people, further evidence that 3-D printing is a hot trend in the tech world. Once again, he brought a new prototype with him."

"Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade: 4D printing. At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble."

"Hyper-connectivity - where people are constantly connected to social networks and streams of information - will have a transforming effect on how we see ourselves and others in the next decade, according to a new report published by the UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser Sir John Beddington."