The Future is Now is a set of signposts to a world gripped by accelerated change. Technological innovation continues to raise the standard of living for billions of people around the world. But it’s not without its social, cultural and political consequences – and we are on the cusp of inevitable change to our businesses, […]
VUCA was originally born from the US military in the 1990s. It is an acronym describing the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity in the world as it appeared to be evolving. An example of volatility is how oil prices reached nearly US$155 in 2008, only to drop as low as $48 later in the year. […]
Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to as ‘AI’ is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. Whilst an increasingly familiar term, its roots lie with Alan Turing. He led the team which famously cracked the ‘Enigma’ code machine used by Nazis during World War 2 to pass secret communications. In 1950, he created what has […]
Before exploring the skills we’ll need in the next 10-20 years, it’s helpful to look at a few jobs that didn’t even exist just a decade ago in 2006. We didn’t have ‘Social Media Managers’ as the major platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – either didn’t exist or hadn’t broken free of a few college […]
The Future of Work is a multi-faceted subject. One that’s ripe for multiple books, not just a few short articles. I’d like to tackle the topic here from just a couple of angles. First, the ways in which people are working. Second, the ways in which automation and robotics will augment and sometimes replace people […]
Since beginning my journey as a Futurist 8 months ago, I’ve become incredibly optimistic about the power of innovation to solve so many of our challenges. In part 1, we looked at the challenges facing food production today. Here, we’ll explore some of the new developments which present solutions to those challenges. Let’s begin with […]
The UN predicts global population is set to rise by 2.5 billion by 2050. Effectively, that’s adding a population the size of China and India combined. It will require us to double our food production output. Throw in the fact that 1 in 9 current inhabitants of our planet are ‘chronically hungry’ right now, and we’ve […]
As the well-worn phrase has it, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. And as an equally well-worn phrase tells us, “history is written by the victors”: those with power mould the ongoing narrative of countries and governments; and decide which groups are characterised in any particular way. For the purposes of this article, […]
There’s a lot of talk in marketing circles about the potential for ‘Augmented Reality’ (AR). Unlike its more totally immersive cousin, Virtual Reality, AR creates new layers of experience over what we already see in the real world. Wikipedia defines AR as ‘a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements […]
For as long as laws have existed, so has crime. Depending on your religious outlook, you could say it began with Cain and Abel. The comprehensive recording of UK crime (and learning its lessons) goes back to 1898 – and as with Robert Peel’s Police force, was a British innovation. For many years, crime and […]
