David Zach, futurist

Futurist Gets You Thinking article, South Bend Tribune

Nice article in the South Bend Tribune about a recent talk I gave in Elkhart, IN for local business, industry and labor attendees. With an 18.8% unemployment rate there, the future looms a lot closer than it might in other areas of the country. 

Quoting one attendee: "This was the first futurist I've heard that actually talked about a reliance on a tradition or the past." 

Instead of everyone in these economically depressed areas being recruited into the agency of change, we might just need a few of them to be agents of tradition - helping to safeguard the treasures of the past, be they communities, values or perhaps just even little bits of common sense.  

If we treat the past more like a toolbox instead of an outdated anchor, we might build better futures. 

Modern Times Poem by David Zach, Futurist

I keep getting request for this poem that comes near the end of my talk. I did not know it was a poem, but if they're going to call it that, who am I to resist? (Find a handout poster of this here.)

This is about the world that we give to our children. They are not fooled (like we are) and they see the world for what it is. Just as children are often not fooled by magicians, too often we are. The magicians of today are everywhere, constantly distracting us from what we once knew to be vital. 

Why do we treat unhappiness in children as the most frightening of diseases and must be treated with medications?

When everything is possible, is that a sign of a world that is vital, optimistic and hopeful - or is it a sign of a world that is tired and wants to sleep? 

We are modern, we are distracted, we are clever. 

Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

Modern times

  Nothing can wait.

Nothing can satisfy. 

Nothing can last.  

No one can be unhappy.

No one can be judged.

No one can be trusted.

Nothing is hidden.

Nothing is forbidden. 

Nothing is certain.

Everything is a need.

Everything is a choice. 

Everything is possible. 

Pop Up Businesses have Popped Up before

I was looking at my website traffic and someone in Italy was searching on the term pop up business and thereby found my site. 

So, I clicked on that person's search and found 771 hits (most not connected to our idea, of course) but found this one from Lubicom Marketing in 2006 that had me smiling. The author is comparing today's trends with some rather old notions of PUBs. Pushcarts indeed. 

My father once told me that there are very few new ideas out there, just recombinations of existing ideas along with rediscovery of old ones that we might have forgotten. 

Here's a blog called Boomer Matters exploring some of the questions the PUB idea presents: 

Here's one also from 2006 from Springwise (a trend spotting website) with the clever term: Vanchising.

These sorts of things convince me that good ideas are seldom unique to one individual or another. They "pop-up" everywhere. The curious challenge is to try to discern what does it take for those great ideas to actually get manifested? What sorts of technology breakthroughs cause someone to finally recognize that the roadblock that might have held them back is now gone or can now be bypassed? 

Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog - Gigapan Explored

For some marvelous exploration of the Gigapan technology [see previous post], visit Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog. Zoom in and zoom out to get the full potential of the photography. 

This is great stuff. Applying this technology to scientific exploration, (or architectural, or geographic, etc.) holds amazing potential. Pull it together with the likes of Google Earth, GPS, RFID, tagging and the like and you can start to see how everything can be mapped and easily accessed, either virtually or in person. I'm cautious and yet can't help but marvel at it all. He suggests Google Earth include a Geology layer and like many innovation, such features are often developed by users themselves who lead innovation from its best source, the imagination. 

Gigapan Photography: We Are All Public Now

Under the category of Paranoid? Who Told You I Was Paranoid? check out Gigapan.

The pictures are taken with a Canon digital camera mounted on a robotic base developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Lab and NASA Ames Research, to result in a 1,474 megapixel image. [ed. note: this was corrected per comment posted below.] Double click on an area of the picture to view a detailed area shot or individual. Click and drag the cursor to scan over the picture.

Where once it as possible to be anonymous in a crowd, that will no longer be. You can be spotted and watched, followed. In the hands of the good guys, we can easily track the bad guys. Unless the bad guys get ahold of the same technology, then the bad guys can track the good guys. 

Who watches the watchers, indeed. 

Additional note: I do think this is marvelous technology and we've only just scratched the surface of where this stuff can take us. I keep being reminded of the line from Milton Friedman, The power to do good is also the power to do harm. The technology is not the problem, the problem lies within the hands of those with the technology and how they view their ability extended by this technology. Few people ever believe their actions will result in evil. Most evil is done by people with the best of intentions. Naiveté seems more popular than ever before. 

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

An interesting website about this book Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge the founder of the design firm IDEO. Lots of good notions of how we interact with designed things. The interviews are interesting. We take so much for granted regarding the depth and complexity of design in everyday things

Business Week: The Future of Innovation

Well, it would seem that this whole futurist thingie is taking off and even Business Week is asking futurists for their opinions. The writer Damian Joseph asked what sorts of innovations and inventions will come about because of the recession. I read somewhere along the line an article suggesting that the USA will get through this economic mess faster and better than other economies because we've got so many people who know how to start over and reinvent themselves. They're not as held back by legacy concepts. I'm certain that people here can reinvent themselves but today with so few connections to the past and any sense of enduring principles, I wonder if they can still reinvent themselves with any endurance. It's one thing not to be bound by history. It's quite another to dismiss it. If someone reinvents themselves are they basing the invention upon something specific or upon whatever has caught their attention most recently? 

Lily Tomlin once said that, When I was growing up I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific. 

Pop-up Businesses is one idea (so named by Damian Joseph) that I'm having fun with - as are a few reporters knocking on my email door wanting to know more. The basic idea is that because of improvements with logistics, technology, systems management and a strong sense amongst youth to constantly change what they pay attention to - that we may see in the future businesses that identify a need (or want) in the marketplace, gather together people and resources to fulfill that need and then just as quickly disband and move on to something else. How will that all work? I haven't the faintest idea, but I'm willing to bet that there are people out there who will know how to do it. 

I first started playing with this idea after working with the Self-Storage industry. Temporary space usage for more than just storage may be ideal for this sort of business model. Take a look at storage facilities and you'll now find a lot more than just sheds with garage doors. 

For each objection that someone can identify that would prevent the Pop-up Business notion from being successful, find alternatives around each roadblock. The sort of problem solving that designers are taught is the key here. Don't think of how it can't work, think of what will be necessary so that it can work. What are the upsides? What are the downsides? 

Microsoft: the Future of Computing

And, for what it's worth, computing in this future is also a description of life in the future because in this scenario the two are inseparable. Resistance is more or less futile, but we're going to love it so I guess it's OK. 

As I have been a devoted companion to my new Amazon Kindle 2, and find myself carrying around three sleek devices (Kindle, iPhone and MacBook Air - four if you count my iPod Shuffle) my mind has now been effectively trained to be immediately dissatisfied with whatever I have right now because I just know that the next version is going to be soooo much better. As cool as I think the Kindle is, I can't help but imagine what it's going to be like as a Kindle 3. And what about color, larger touch screen, a better (a much better) keyboard.

Microsoft imagines what this future of upgraded devices will be like. Watch the video on this page here: 

CNET: Microsoft's glimpse of the future

One of my big concerns is that we wrongly keep thinking that the Age of Information is about more information. It is not. It is about less information, as in taking all that information, processing it, filtering it and refining it so that it passes into either knowledge or wisdom. Most of the information needs to go behind the scenes, bypassing humans and just be machine to machine. If it makes it out of that loop it need to be run through the mill of elegance and eloquence. By the time it gets to me, I should be able to say "Ah!" not "Ugh." Information should not bother me unless it's cool and actually has something to say. It should not steal my attention away, it should barter for it. 

Still the video as they present it is pretty cool. I love the idea of being able to seamlessly pull and push information from device to device, to reach out and touch it and move it around. I just worry that information has clearly addictive qualities. 

As Eric Hoffer said, You can never get enough of what you really don't need.

More Proof my Brother Mike Zach was Adopted

Mike Zach, Professor at UW-Stevens Point is doing some amazing things in nanotechnology. What I like to note about his (humble) sense of his work is that he doesn't claim they are inventing anything new, but rather they're figuring out how does nature do things and then emulating that in the lab. Innovation shouldn't always be about inventing something entirely new, more often it's about discovering something entirely old. 

Failure Magazine

As there seems to be some truth to the notion that those who succeed have also failed — and failure can be a marvelous teacher, check out Failure Magazine.