Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Trends

"Trends are clearly observable changes happening today and expected to continue into the future" - Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future.

This is a very interesting podcast Ray Kurzweil discussing artificial intelligence and the Singularity--it's surprising to hear what he thinks is possible by 2020.

  1. Technology is becoming cheaper, smaller,faster, and more integrated
  2. Communication devices are converging
  3. Digital interaction (digital pens, singularity)
  4. Robotics like kokoro, robots that look like people, and actoroids
  5. Sustainability - Green
  6. Blurred boundaries between work, leisure, communication and information
  7. 24/7 service/access is expected
  8. Alternative work schedules - not Monday-Friday, 8-5--Telecommuting
  9. Vigorous, longer life spans
  10. Everyone is a content creator
  11. Fabbing - creating individually on the fly
  12. Personal Coaches
  13. Customization for the individual

Are we making the right decisions given these trends?

We should keep looking for ways to personalize and customize our services. For instance, we could try to package information for people with great CDs, websites, DVDs, books, articles on various topics of interest. Everything available on one page - delivered digitally.

All of us should be observing the mall and what we read to see how technology is being used. Then we should think about what opportunities we might have to use these technologies as well. We should probablydevelop our own Think Tank -- a team that is charged with watching for new trends and technologies and bringing 2-3 innovations to try each year.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

Cool stuff. The robots were awesome. It is amazing to think how far we have come in just the last century or even a few decades. I am sure it will be amazing to see where we go in the next few decades.