David Zach, futurist

Breakout Future Career: Molecular Gastronomists

My friend Shawn Kelley of @wallblank forwarded this to me regarding the printing of food. It's a concept from Philips Design for what's going to obviously be a breakout future career molecular gastronomists. There's a nice video explaining the concept here.

The concept (vs. the practice) is simple enough. Figure out the component molecules of a particular food and then place those molecules one by one, row by row into whatever design you happen to think broccoli would look better as, say as a Rubic's Cube, a photograph, or even a carrot. Even better, how about things like ice cream or chocolate taking on architectural qualities.

Never will kids be bored with their food ever again. OK, sorry, that's obviously a fantasy.

Futurist talks about the Future of Farmers

I spoke yesterday at the IL Commodities Conference and had more than a few comments about how the industry has radically transformed itself over the last few decades. More technology, fewer people, and that the typical farmer of the future will spend more time in the office than they will in the barns or the fields. Where once the thing to be measured were natural cycles, now they measure more often linear trends and increasingly farming has less and less to do with what farmers used to do. What we thought was agriculture has slowly been turning into accounting.

Here's an article that appeared in the November 20, 2007 edition of the Bloomington Pantagraph.