Futurism
via flickr.com
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What do I mean by #iPhone and #antiPhone?
What do I mean when I tweet about the iPhone and the "antiPhone"?
Al Ries, marketing guru, noted that mature markets tend to be dominated by 2 giants, with miscellaneous smaller players. Think Coke/Pepsi. McDonald's/KFC. Windows/Mac.
The phone market is going to be iPhone/antiPhone. Not that someone's actually going to market a phone under that name. What I mean is that a challenger will emerge, that will be to iPhone in the phone market, what Mac is to Windows, in the consumer computing market. (And it looks like Android's going to be it.)
iPhone, antiPhone, plus miscellaneous others
BlackBerry had a surprisingly good run of the market, but they don't iterate fast enough, in my opinion. It seems like they're trying to out-BlackBerry the iPhone - doing what they've always done, but better. It's just a matter of time, if they don't adapt.
I remember the CEO of RIM mocking the iPhone's onscreen keyboard, saying that BlackBerry would "never" release a phone without a physical keyboard, because it was "proven" that consumers want a physical keyboard. And then, after the iPhone was released, they came out with a BlackBerry - you guessed it - without a physical keyboard.
I doubt that's what BlackBerry users want, anyway. And the fact that form factor was never reiterated would seem to bear out my hunch. But it was significant, in that it seems to indicate that RIM doesn't really know where to go next. "Email anytime, anywhere" is no longer a compelling reason to get a BB - not when others are doing it comparatively well. iPhone owns the mobile internet. Android owns mobile open source. BB used to own mobile email.
It's going to be an interesting near future.
"I call you on the telephone / but you're never home." "So?"
Before the mobile phone existed we were calling a place, now we are calling a person.
via google.com
I occasionally wonder how I will explain Sheena Easton's 1983 song to Seth, someday: "I call you on the telephone / but you're never home."
Seth will probably ask, "Why does she want him to be home when she calls him?"
Already, it's hard to recall the time when phones were furniture, tethered to the wall by their cables, resting on specially reserved spots on desks and side-tables. Phones are now glued to ears.
I disagree with Martin Cooper, though. Phones do *not* need to get simpler - in general. They need to be what they're becoming: multifaceted communications devices that connect you via voice and data and video, over every network.
The need for futurists
Being a futurist sure sounds like a fun job. Observe the world at large, amass predictions and inspire awe at one's visionary talents.
But is there a future in it?
According to the Association of Professional Futurists, prospects are starting to look quite promising. As companies and government agencies grapple with the seemingly scorching rate of technological innovation and change, more are engaging the services of self-described futurists for advice on how to adapt.
"Making future forecasting more of a formal field could be a great step toward moving some of the techniques into public policy," said Howard Rheingold, a futurist and author. "I'm not saying it's possible to predict the future, but grappling with what's happening today and where it's going is an important priority that seems to be ignored on the policy level."
For those wanting to train as futurists in a more conventional setting, academic options are limited. The University of Houston Clear Lake and the University of Hawaii at Manoa run two of the better-known programs offering master's degrees in futures studies and alternative futures, respectively.
In many ways, techniques employed by futurists don't fit into traditional academic disciplines. Futurists, Jarrat says, aren't as dependent on numerical data as other forecasting professionals such as insurance industry actuaries or stock market analysts. Although she incorporates demographics or economic data in her research, Jarrat says her conclusions tend to be "more qualitative than numerical."
In an age of relentless technological progress, such an approach has an advantage. While computers are quite adept at making numerical forecasts, for the foreseeable future it will still take a human to interpret what the numbers mean, said Ian Pearson, futurist at British Telecom.
"Computers are hopeless at handling subjective information," he said.
Fascinating vision of the Internet age from 1990
via video.google.com
This is Hyperland, a BBC2 documentary with Douglas Adams, Tom Baker, Ted Nelson and others, broadcast in 1990 - that's before the World Wide Web, before DVDs, before digital TV, before the Internet as we know it.
What's quite remarkable is the amount that it gets right:
- When we browse the Internet, we don't follow a prescribed narrative path, instead we jump around and switch focus regularly to find out a random fact or branch off into a different topic.
- When watching video footage or listening to an MP3, we can skip to different sections (think DVD chapter menus or podcast position markers). We can click out to related content (think YouTube timelined clickable comments or BBC's interactive TV "red button")
- We can create representations of ourselves in the virtual world as we explore and communicate with others, from social website profiles through to Second Life avatars
- We are just beginning to be able to use technology such as Layar or Pocket Universe to augment reality with additional useful information
- The nature of the documentary itself, skipping as it does between items of interest, is an interesting portent of today's short-attention-span, focus-shifting approach to consuming information.
- It correctly predicts that one of the biggest challenges is the need for a language for "hypertext" (remember this is before HTML was invented).
All in all, well worth 50 minutes of your time if you are interested in changes in technology and media and their effect on society.
I found this today on Russell Davies' blog.
How to be a futurist - Holy Kaw!
1. Address a specific question.2. Scan the world for "drivers."3. Map the possibilities.4. Ask questions about the possibilities.5. Think things through from the present to the future.
This is a great guide for thinking of the future. You should read the entire article. Click here to do so.
