Recently in The Future of Technology Category

Last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph published an article titled Tech to the future that looks at what’s coming next in consumer and social technologies. Unfortunately it isn’t available online, however here are the sections where I was quoted:

Futurist and author Ross Dawson says the next big shifts will pivot around how we connect to other people and “how we share the content of our lives with others. It’s all about the social use of technology.”

Analysts predict that rather than a new Twitter-styled platform emerging, social networks will move towards being meshed or interconnected. They say private and public data will blur together and an advanced version of the social networks of your choice will be your browser of entry point.

Now that we have as a society discovered sharing the content from our lives, the floodgates are open. Interoperability across social networks is evolving slowly, but is what we are coming to expect. Then later in the article:

A new mobile app called Layar has been launched recently. It will initially only be available for Android, with the intent of getting it onto the iPhone 3G S as a priority. At this point it only functions in the Netherlands, but will be available in Germany, UK and US this year. The video below shows how it could work, giving an example of identifying vacant real estate simply by scanning around.

One of the phone features required for this app to run is the magnetometer (compass). This has been available on many Nokia and some other handsets for a while, and makes its iPhone debut with the 3G S. Magnetometers are actually very inexpensive, but allow a wealth of new mobile applications that depend on knowing which way the camera is oriented.

There is no question that augmented reality will be a key feature of our technological future, and clearly this will be primarily relevant when we are mobile. Annotation of our environment, including detailed information about its features, and particularly user-generated content, will be extremely useful as well as fun. The pervasive nature of the iPhone means this is the platform which is likely to popularize mobile augmented reality. Layar is a player and no doubt there will be more.

Additional commentary from TUAW, IntoMobile, ReadWriteWeb, AndroidGuys, and MacRumors.

Tomorrow morning I am doing the second day opening keynote at ITAC09 – Information Technology in Aged Care conference.

Here is my presentation – as always these are intended to accompany my speech, not as stand-alone slides.

I hope to write some more on this blog on this topic before long, though it depends what I can fit in…

The human toll of unemployment is stark, as is being experienced around the world.

The most recent unemployment statistics for Silicon Valley below illustrate how the region has greater cyclicality in unemployment than almost any other region in the US. In good times unemployment can fall to almost nil, in bad times unemployment rises faster and higher than most regions.

The recent dramatic upturn in unemployment is likely to be far from peak, with for example the mooted IBM - SUN merger potentially leading to 10,000 layoffs, a large proportion of which would likely be in Silicon Valley.

What is bad news for some is great news for others. Bringing ideas to market takes talented people. In good times those people are either not available, or cost too much for start-ups to engage. Today there are once again fantastically talented people who are looking for opportunities, and willing to work for lower - or even no - income in return for a share of what might become big later.

This balances out to a large degree the far more constrained availability of investment capital. The money may not be flowing into start-up companies at a massive pace, but they need less.

So don’t expect innovation in Silicon Valley (or anywhere else) to dry up. The spigot of one of the key enablers of innovation - talent - has just been turned up high. Entrepreneurship is being democratized as more people with ideas and energy are able to execute their vision, rather than being constrained by lack of resources.

This is just one key driver today resulting in the pace of technology innovation going up, up, up…

I love my iPhone. But it has some deep flaws. OK, so cut-and-paste will be available with the 3.0 operating system – that’s good. The lack of a video camera is annoying and strange – rumors are that the next iPhone released in the northern summer will have video capabilities.

But the thing that really gets me is that you cannot use an external keyboard on the iPhone. Unlike the other issues, there is no way you can argue this is a technical problem. Apple has deliberately crippled the Bluetooth functionality so external keyboards can’t be used.

The whole point of a smartphone is that it can be your central hub when you’re on the move, increasingly obviating the need to carry a laptop around. If the iPhone had an external keyboard, I could use it for a large proportion of my needs when I’m on the move or travelling, including email, working on documents, blogging and more. For now I have a choice of carrying a laptop, or taking a Palm and external keyboard with me in addition to the iPhone, just so I can write.

Following our extremely popular Trend Blend 2007 and Trend Blend 2008 trend maps comes…. Trend Blend 2009!

Created by Future Exploration Network’s Chief Futurist Richard Watson, also of NowandNext.com, the 2009 trend map moves on from the subway map theme of the last years to show the multi-tentacled hydra that is the year ahead.

Click on the map to download the pdf (810KB)

To pick out just a few noteworthy elements of the trend map:

CORE THEMES include:
Uncertainy
Ageing
Global Connectivity
Anxiety
Power Shift Eastwards

SUBJECT THEMES include:
SOCIETY: Search for control, enoughism
TECHNOLOGY: Simplicity, Telepresence, Gesture based computing
ECONOMY: De-leveraging, 2-speed economies, Shorter product lifecycles
ENVIRONMENT: Bio fuel backlash, Negawatts, Nuclear power
POLITICS: Virtual protests, Globalisation in retreat, Immigration backlash
BUSINESS: Networked risk, Transparency, Asset price uncertainty
FAMILY: Debt stress, Allowable luxuries, Middle class unrest
MEDIA: Flight to quality, Facebook fatigue, Skimming, Micro boredom

POSSIBLE RED HERRINGS include:
Climate change crisis
Fall of US Empire
Nuclear power
Device convergence

GLOBAL RISKS include:
Major Internet failure
Influenza pandemic
Major earthquake in economic centre
Obesity
Electricity shortages
People taking trend maps too seriously

As usual, this is released on a Creative Commons license, so feel free to play with it, adapt it, and improve it!

Wishing everyone a fabulous 2009 – be sure to take advantage of these upcoming trends!

I’ve done two radio interviews this morning, asking me for forecasts for the year ahead.

The broader issue I am emphasizing in my current interviews and speaking is that 2009 will bring more change than any other year this decade.

Perversely, a slowing economy will accelerate the pace of change. Many companies will take advantage of the downturn to use technology in innovative ways. Technology ranging from mobile applications to online gaming will become an everyday part of our work lives.

Social change tends to be faster in a downturn. Our attitudes to what is acceptable behavior by the government and companies will rapidly evolve. Technology is shaping society, but society is also shaping technology, particularly in how it allows us to express forcible opinions.

In these interviews for non-professional audiences I briefly covered six important forces that will shape business and society in 2009:

1. Constant partial attention. 2009 will see more people consuming 20 hours or more of media a day. And no, it’s not just the insomniacs. It is due to a phenomenon called Constant Partial Attention, or CPA, in which our attention is constantly divided between a massive array of channels now including mobile Internet, video screens on buses, and more. Over two-thirds of people watch TV while reading. To be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.

Last week I dropped in to the Gartner Symposium in Sydney, and managed to catch the session by David Cearley talking about the distributed social web, one of my favorite topics.

Overall it was a very good presentation, swiftly moving from the basics to a quite detailed view of the distributed social web, including pertinent views on the challenges of data portability. The presentation was entirely from a corporate perspective, looking at how companies should be thinking about integrating open social networks into their websites and customer interactions.

This issue is only now getting onto the radars of consumer marketing companies, and it will be a while before we see significant corporate initiatives in the space, with the social networking platforms themselves still working out where the space is going. However the open social web will become an increasingly prominent topic for consumer-oriented companies over the next few years. David’s conclusion - that the biggest risk is to fail to engage - is absolutely correct.

The style of David’s presentation, as for many research vendors, was to throw out a lot of detail, clearly to convince their clients that they can’t work it out for themselves and need consulting assistance. I suppose this is probably quite true in this particular space, where it’s extraordinary difficult for people even at the center of what’s happening to get their arms around it. However I will have a go myself over the next few months, in creating a successor to the Web 2.0 Framework that will look at the layers of social platforms and how to engage with them.

Below are the notes I took during David’s session:

Below is the sidebar I wrote in for BRW's Web 2.0 feature, accompanying our Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list. The reason I was most pleased about getting the list into a mainstream business magazine is that it is a significant step in getting the broader business community to understand the value and transformative power of Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call the participatory web). While the geeks and early online adopters are swimming in this world and engage in continual conversations with each other about what's happening, it is critically important that the messages spread beyond this community. That is central to what I'm trying to do.

Another sidebar in the report written by Technology Editor Foad Fadaghi on Start-up challenges is available online (though that's all - the rest is subscriber only :-( ).

Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.

Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.

Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.

Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.

Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace. They are central to Australia’s integration into the rapidly growing hyper-connected economy.

Adobe has just announced the Open Screen Project, a broad-based initiative to push Flash’s reach across all digital platforms, including mobile and television. Supporters include BBC, Cisco, Motorola, MTV, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and a host of other consumer technology, content, and mobile companies.

When Living Networks was launched in 2002, I wrote about how Macromedia (which has since been acquired by Adobe) used an open strategy to make Flash a standard in rich media on the web:

Whenever you go to a website and are presented with a snazzy animated introduction, you are seeing Macromedia Flash at work. The free Flash Player software that enables people to view these animations is now running on around 97% of PCs that are connected to the Internet. At the outset, Macromedia had a clear-cut challenge. Web surfers would only download Flash Player if there were interesting websites using Flash, while website designers would only use Flash if a sufficient proportion of their target audience had installed the software. Macromedia makes its money by selling the software for developers to create Flash files, but to make it a viable market it had to give away the Flash Player software.