The arrogance of the academy…and the death of the university

“You have been recognised as an expert in your field.” Compliments like that are always welcome. But I’m always slightly suspicious of what follows, particularly when the email comes from a university. Sure enough, when someone wrote that to me this week, what followed was a request for me to contribute to their research without any form of remuneration.If this was a PhD candidate asking for input to their paper, that would be one thing. In fact, I have contributed to just such a project in the last week. But this was a university doing research to inform its own strategy. And when I asked about being paid for the hours of work they had requested? Well, so far, silence.This was not my first negative encounter with a university. I have worked successfully alongside clients like the Alliance Business School at the University of Manchester (teaching foresight tools to people working for Audi), and happily guest lectured here and there. I was absolutely delighted to receive the Alumni Award for outstanding achievement from my alma mater, Lancaster University last year. But frankly, the majority of my interactions over the last decade have been deeply negative. Some examples:

• The business school that took six weeks to respond to a new business enquiry about partnering on a project for a FTSE100 construction company. The person who eventually (and half-heartedly) emailed back told me that they wouldn’t consider less than £10,000 per day for one of their academics. For comparison, at the time the consulting fee for a director-level person in a big four consultancy was £1200-2000/day.

• The department head that invited me in to talk about partnering on some research, only for me to find that all they really wanted was for me to speak, unpaid, to prospective corporate partners, and that they were offering no academic engagement at all.

• The business school that after four or five meetings, offered me a meaningless job title in return for unpaid guest lecturing, rather than the research collaboration originally discussed.

• The very famous business school that asked me to run two full-day workshops on its (very expensive) MBA programme, at the other end of the country, in return for the ‘prestige’.

• The university that attended an event about innovation and engaging with the business community, boasting about the hundreds of post-grads and phDs on its computer science courses, yet I had never seen a single student or academic participate in the city’s thriving start-up community

I could go on. And on. About how even when you do work with them, they are awful at paying you and have no mechanism to just pay an invoice for your time but instead force you through convoluted expenses processes. You’d think I would have learned sooner. But honestly, right now I think I am done with universities. Certainly ones that don’t value my time or that of people outside the academy. Or ones that have the arrogance to believe that association with their name alone somehow justifies the investment of my time.

A pattern?

This latest email got me thinking, not just cross. Maybe I am over-extrapolating from my own negative experiences. But it certainly feels like there is a pattern here. Because I’m not the only person in business that I know has had experiences like these. You have to ask, why do they place so little value on the time of people beyond the walls of the institution?The desire to engage with the business community is a constant refrain from many inside universities. But what it really seems to mean is ‘can we extract cash from big companies to fund projects’. There’s rarely any sense that there might be other valuable exchanges. Of ideas for example. No, those are the province of the academy.It feels bad to be knocking universities right now in the middle of strikes (which I wholeheartedly support) and the ongoing debate about freedom of speech on campus (a whole separate and highly polarised debate). But I’m concerned because I am an enthusiast for the idea of the university. 

The value of an education

It may not feel like it, in the middle of a cost of living crisis, but in general we are getting more comfortable as a species. Less of our time is spent just surviving and more of our time is spent on fun and self-improvement. There will likely be some disruptions to this trend, as a result of climate, economic, and population change across the rest of this century. Maybe war and further pandemics too (sorry). But as I’ve always said, I’m a long term optimist, short term pessimist. Ultimately, human beings are climbing Abraham Maslow’s pyramid, and will be spending more of our time at the top, studying and self-actualising (whatever that is). Temples to the acquisition of knowledge without any necessary commercial driver should be thriving institutions in the future. But they have to survive that long first. And right now, it all feels a bit precarious.There are major questions about the economic value of an undergraduate education in the workforce. Yes, right now, a degree remains a requirement for many roles and gives a boost to your earning potential. But I hear two things from large employers constantly. First, that they are disappointed in the work-readiness of graduates. And second, that they are relaxing their previous entry requirements to increase the diversity of their workforce.A degree isn’t just about making you ready for the workforce. But when getting one might put you tens of thousands of pounds in debt, it’s hard to decouple study from your future earning potential. What happens when it becomes clear that a degree is no longer the obvious route to career success?This wouldn’t be such an issue if we had a more rounded culture of life-long study. We could be undergraduates at thirty, forty or seventy. But that will take time to develop.

Research opportunities

It’s not just in teaching that universities are under threat. We have to ask whether they are the right place for research now as well. Academic publishing has been a scandal for years. It’s increasingly clear that the quality of scientific papers is not what it was thought to be. And with wages under pressure and the reduced availability of grant funding, smart people have hard choices to make about where to conduct their research.This has been true in STEM subjects for some time. Why struggle along at a university when you can raise venture capital or inhabit the well-equipped lab of a major corporation? I met a woman a few years ago who had left behind an incredible academic career at one of the UK’s most prestigious universities because she got tired of filling out grant applications when her - clearly commercially valuable research - could be completed so much more quickly in the private sector. At the same time, the open source movement has created a vehicle for the collaborative creations and dissemination of a whole range of technologies that might historically only have sprung from the febrile atmosphere - and funded time and equipment - of a university campus. In the humanities, researchers are also finding new ways to fund their passions. Publishing, podcasts, Substack, Patreon, YouTube, online courses, live events series. These are all things that an individual can do with a laptop now to generate an income from their ideas. From history to feminist theory, there are people in the wild now, acting like academics but existing beyond the academy.

The university society

Here’s the optimistic picture: it’s not that the university is dying but that it is being subsumed into society. That our increasing wealth is already driving us up Maslow's hierarchy to the point where we are consuming knowledge out of preference, beyond the old formal strictures. This carries risks, the universities might argue. Flawed as they may be, the modern academy has functions for quality control. Routes to fund research that is important, even if it is not popular or profitable. But can we really not do these things outside of a university? It seems there’s a profitable niche in just about everything, in a global digital marketplace. And the open source community is (generally) pretty good at quality control. I don’t want to see the end of universities. Though looking at the collapse of some departments, like modern languages, it feels like some are already well on their way. As well as being a wonderful place to soft-launch yourself into adult life, the very concept of a university, a space devoted to higher learning, is something a society should be proud of. But it feels like the academy’s sense of itself, of its own value, is out of sync with reality. Without that recognition, it is at real risk. And not just of continuing to piss off people like me with its arrogance.

The future of healthcare is deep

I'm on my way to give a blood sample. It's not something I enjoy. At all. After a nasty experience with the removal of a cannula as a child, I've tried to avoid needles wherever possible. Though I grin and bear it and do my best to look brave for all my jabs in front of the kids.Just writing about it, I'm getting squeamish. I have a physical reaction where I don't even like the sensation of my fingers touching each other. I have to splay them out for a few seconds until it subsides. I'm doing this in between typing sentences.So if i hate it so much, why am I getting an entirely voluntary blood test?

Our Future Health

It's for a programme called Our Future Health. This is a private initiative running the UK's largest ever health research programme. The goal is to better understand some of the key diseases that blight our health - cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc - by screening huge numbers of people down to a genetic level. Its goal is to reach five million volunteers, and it has already crossed the 100,000 threshold.Right now some people are screaming at the screen. "Why are you giving your personal health data to a private company?" "What about privacy?" etc. These are all valid concerns and ones that I have weighed up, alongside my squeamishness, before I decided to volunteer. So why did I do it?Because I believe that our current models of healthcare are unsustainable. We need to radically reinvent the way we manage lifelong health if we are not to regress. What we need, is Deep Healthcare.

A Growing Problem

Most healthcare interventions today start with a symptom. That might lead us into an acute care pathway (if the symptom is that you just lopped your finger off with a chainsaw) or a chronic care pathway (if the symptom leads to tests and a bad diagnosis). Or a different type of pathway altogether - for example, prenatal care. The largest expenditure today in terms of treated conditions is mental health, including dementia.Exactly what we spend on health and care is somewhat hard to calculate. Each country breaks things down differently, and has different systems. Totting up all the chunks of central and local government spending along with private spending across sports, medicines, care and treatment is time consuming. People can debate what should (a packet of painkillers?) and should not (gym membership?) be included. What we can say is that government spending is typically over 10% of GDP and in some cases closer to 20%. Add in private spending and it's a very large number indeed.Not only is that number large, it's growing. In spite of - in fact, because of - many advances, we now live longer lives. Things that would have cut our lives short in the past can now be treated or at least their symptoms can be ameliorated. In developed economies, our populations are ageing and population growth is slowing. In the second half of the century, it will decline. This will undermine the economics of many healthcare systems and leave us with critical issues around staffing, unless we can find a new way to deal with disease. An approach that extends everyone's healthy, happy lives at a cost that we can afford to bear.

Deep Healthcare

The idea that prevention is better than cure is not new. The debate about shifting investment towards preventative measures has been raging for a long time, with much debate about whether it would actually save money, or whether we ought to do it anyway for other reasons (life improvement). For example, one preventative measure is screening: catch an illness early and its treatment can be both more effective and much cheaper. But screening can be expensive - potentially costing more than the savings from the early treatment. So is it right to direct a limited health budget towards screening when there are always other demands? This is where we get into utilitarian arguments about the value of life and units like 'qualys' - quality-adjusted life years.Deep Healthcare is what happens when these arguments intersect with one great pressure and an incoming trend.The pressure comes from our ageing population, as mentioned above. Not a new phenomenon globally but one that is going to become increasingly acute for a growing percentage of countries over the rest of this century.The trend is technological. In the next few years, our ability to screen for health issues, and create targeted programmes of treatment, will increase dramatically. It will be driven by multiple scientific and technological advances:

• The application of our growing understanding of genetics
• Low-cost, high resolution, connected sensors
• Rapid processing of vast data sets
• Machine learning systems that can extract and present answers
• Rich, personalised digital communications

Deep Healthcare is a lifelong approach to maintaining your good health. It will be based on your unique genetics and your environment, and be tailored throughout your life based on physiological monitoring. It should mean fewer trips to the doctors. It should mean fewer hospital visits and less chronic illness. It should mean people can be healthy and active later into their lives. And that those lives should be extended.

Signs To Look For

What signals might we see that Deep Healthcare is coming?One to watch for is increasing investment in public health campaigns. As government concern about ageing and persistent issues like obesity, you will see more information campaigns and more nudge measures like taxes to try to change population behaviour. Alcohol will be a likely target.You will see more rich sensing technology aimed at consumers. I've been talking about smart sensing toilets for years now, and sure enough, one of the biggest names in consumer health electronics launched something along those lines at CES this year. There will be more to come.And you'll see more experimental screening programmes like the one I'm taking part in, enriching our understanding at a population level and helping to finesse the maths of where screening money will be best spent.

Problems With Deep Healthcare

The challenge to Deep Healthcare programmes come from issues of privacy and liberty. In the US particularly, you're likely to see very negative reactions to a system that seeks to monitor you, and to government attempts to change our behaviour. There will be lots of problems around insurance. And difficult questions about where the data goes and who owns the value in it, if private companies are involved - as they are with Our Future Health.Nonetheless, I think this is the obvious direction of travel. There will be problems along the way. But we need a new approach, and I'm willing to support the experiment.

What to expect in 2023

If you're reading this, maybe you've already seen my on Sunday Brunch, or heard me on Pienaar's Predictions talking about the year ahead. In preparation for those things, I wrote down my thoughts about what might be coming and I thought I would share them here.But before I get to predictions for the year ahead, what did I get right or wrong about 2022?

2022 Review

Self-employment

I really thought we'd see a return to the upward rise in the solo self-employed in 2022, continuing the decades long trend. But a range of factors seem to have prevented it.COVID caused a lot of people to batten down the hatches. Some changed the way they record their income to access government support. Some were too sick to work. Some decided to retire early. And some jumped into full-time work as a safety net.Brexit reduced the number of self-employed European workers, particularly in the construction trade. And the general state of the economy/world was not exactly conducive to new ventures. And a lot of small ventures probably went under.In my defence, it looks like I wasn't the only person surprised by this.

Food

I had two food predictions: that wealthier people will increasingly be focused on fresh and nutritious cuisines like Pacific Rim and Nordic styles. And that we would see the beginnings of a backlash against the wave of ultra-processed plant-based foods.I think both of these predictions have been borne out, to an extent. While sales of plant-based products across the board continue to grow, two numbers point to a level of scepticism about the ultra-processed categories, and our continuing desire for old-school proteins like meat.First, after initial enthusiasm, sales of plant-based meat alternatives have dropped off sharply in the US, leading Deloitte to express scepticism about the overall market size.Second, figures show that in the UK, our meat consumption isn't falling in line with the increase in sales of plant-based alternatives. As one of my relations pointed out at Christmas, nut roast is fine on its own, but it's even better as an accompaniment to turkey.Meanwhile we've seen a boom in Filipino restaurants around London, and Poké is now everywhere.

AR

I predicted that we would see lots of new AR headsets launch in 2022 but none would go mainstream. 'Lots' might have been an overstatement. Depending on what you count as a launch, we saw a variety of devices at least get close to market (Vuzix Shield, Tilt Five, Lynx - probably about ten more available only on AliExpress).None went mainstream though. The hardware is still either chunky (Lynx) or lacks capability (Shield).More importantly, the software isn't there. No-one has released a good design language for mixed reality yet, one that seamlessly blends physical and digital. Until they do, the best hardware in the world won't make AR a success.

EVs

I predicted EV sales would continue to boom, and they have, though not quite at the same growth rate as before. Again, the big macro factors have likely slowed things - chip shortages, cost of living. In November, Battery Electric Vehicles hit 20.6% of total car sales rather than the 30% I put as an upper expectation.Still though, the direction of travel is clear.

Hybrid Work

I expected a continuing debate about what Hybrid Work means for both employers and workers in 2022, and yeah, that debate is raging on. It will be a few years before we have a really settled set of expectations and the systems and processes to make it work smoothly - and fairly - for everyone. Though a few smaller companies will undoubtedly get it nailed sooner.

2023 Predictions

So, a mixed set of results for 2022. All correct in direction I would say, but it a bit out on the specifics. As I always say, 'what' is easier than 'when', when it comes to making predictions. And the same could be said about 'how much'.On to 2023 then, what to expect? A few things to consider - mostly focused on tech because that's what I'm being asked about.

Technology: Robo-Dickens

Though I'm sceptical about the adoption of large language model technologies like ChatGPT in your average enterprise (lack of ability & barriers more than lack of desire), I don't want to downplay their impact. We'll be seeing a lot of them in the year ahead, particularly in the creation of popular culture. How many student plays at the Edinburgh Festival next year will have been written by ML? Will Dave Gorman do a collaborative performance with one?

Science: Applied Genetics

We've been waiting a long time for the fruits of genetic sequencing. Now they're starting to appear. The first genetically-targeted cancer treatments are showing real promise. We're ramping up trials of mass genetic screening for rare conditions in kids. There will be lots more news about this in 2023, though mass availability will take time. Right now, this is time-consuming and expensive work and 'productionising' it is a challenge of both technology and process: watch this space for a little thing I've written about 'deep healthcare'.In other science, don't expect a (useful) fusion reactor any time soon. Still many years away.

Metaverse: One More Small Step

I don't think we'll see the big metaverse breakthrough in 2023. It's too early for the hardware, looking at the latest designs. And I've still not seen a compelling generic user interface for mixed reality. Plus, the economic environment isn't great for big new launches. Suspect Apple etc might wait for a little more optimism, even if they had some tech close to ready, rather than rushing it out.But we will see more experimentation, more new launches, more Kickstarters, more standards, all building out the ecosystem.

Flying Cars: Commercial Service?

2023 was the year when lots of companies said they would be launching commercial flying car services. OK, you have to stretch the definition of 'flying car' to include 'scaled up toy drones', which some would argue is more like a helicopter. Nonetheless, we should have been able to ride in one of these devices in the next 12 months. I certainly expected we would. At least for a short distance, somewhere in the world (probably the Middle East). But check the newsrooms of the likes of Volocopter and Joby Aviation and it's all suspiciously quiet.At the same time, it feels like the infrastructure and the regulatory environment is being readied. Property companies are planning to incorporate eVTOL landing pads around city centres. Governments are sinking money into pilots and bringing together stakeholders.2023 might have been too ambitious, but these things are coming.  

Will ChatGPT change the world? Lessons from previous waves of automation software

Will ChatGPT change the world? To answer that we need to look at the adoption of previous generations of automation technology. How fast have they been adopted? And by whom?

Getting Paid

I've had trouble with late payers recently. More than usual. Sadly, after 17 years running my own businesses, I've come to expect a few invoices to be overdue here and there. But this was a lot of invoices, very overdue. It was stressful. For both me, and my clients.The people I work with in client organisations rarely have much control over what gets paid and when. Even if they are senior leadership. They can chivvy and chase, but they can't make it happen. It's embarrassing for them.By way of explanation or apology, clients have sometimes let me in on the internal machinations preventing me from getting paid. These stories are no longer shocking, but the interminable bureaucracy of large organisations* is always disappointing.The conversations bounce between time zones and departments. Finance, IT, operations, marketing, procurement, HR. Many people are involved. Ultimately, the problem is usually simple. Two digits are transposed in my bank details and somehow IT have to get involved to deal with a change request. Someone just missed an email, or was dealing with a backlog of work and holding up everyone else.There are no good excuses for late payment. But occasionally I have a little empathy. How much must these failures cost the business? How many hours of time? Across how many people? How much lost hair and how many sleepless nights?

Bug or feature?

You won't always see it as a supplier, but most companies now have some sort of process automation wrapped around their procurement. In fact, around most of their processes. The idea of these systems is to streamline things, make them more efficient, and avoid errors. Or is it?The evidence would suggest they're not very good at getting suppliers paid on time. Judging by the feedback from Twitter followers when I whine about late payments, my experience is pretty universal. And failures seem to create enormous inefficiency at the client end, costing them time and money.So what are these systems really for? And why do companies keep using them?One reason is to control spending. Leaders naturally want to know where their company's money is going and who is spending it. Another reason is fraud prevention - or at least ensuring that there is a good paper trail to prosecute those who do commit it. But couldn't they do these things and make things more efficient? Certainly, that would have been the promise of whoever sold them the system.

Humans failing the technology

The answer is that of course the system could be more efficient, as well as creating the appropriate controls and paper trail. But it's not (usually) the system that prevents that from happening. It's the people.Who benefits if the system is more streamlined? Headcount can go down. Fewer people are needed in finance and IT. The business might benefit but those people don't.Bosses would have more time on their hands. But they would manage fewer people. Have a smaller budget. They would lose prestige. They don't feel like they would benefit.This isn't to say that people are consciously sabotaging the system. They're not. They're doing their job. The same job they did yesterday, and the day before. Things that feel right, good and rewarding. They are making sure the processes are followed. Making sure no bad transactions get through. That's what they're there for, right?What they are rarely incentivised to do is fix the broken bits of the process and do themselves out of a job. And so, they don't.In fact, even when a new system comes in, they tend to keep doing what they did before. They bend the system to their old behaviours. Without enormous and often disruptive interventions in changing behaviours - and sometimes people - as well as technology, things largely stay the same, just with new software.

Is ChatGPT any different?

While all this late payment shenanigans was going on, my timeline was filling up with examples of the latest iteration of OpenAI's work, ChatGPT. A machine learning system trained on a sea of data to create new things based on simple text instructions. It can write a story, a press release, code or even a multiple-choice adventure game.At first glance it looks like some kind of doomsday device that will destroy employment in a variety of sectors. But analysed in the context of my experiences trying to get paid, I'm not so sure.Process automation technologies like the ones that should have seen me paid on time with the minimum of fuss are not new. And yet years - decades - after their introduction, human beings are still stopping them from delivering on their promise**. Out of self-interest, lack of interest, lack of incentive or support, we've stymied much of the promise of efficiency.Why should ChatGPT be any different? In many corporate contexts, I suspect it won't.

Beyond the corporation

Outside the walls of the corporation or other large bodies though, the situation looks very different. ChatGPT and its brethren are weapons of wicked efficiency for the lean - and the potentially unscrupulous.Twenty-something years ago I was working on the marketing efforts of a large US software firm. Let's just say they were involved in video, for fear of upsetting any old clients. The company's revenues always seemed slightly out of kilter with the small number of case studies we were ever able to offer. A few high profile sports leagues and a couple of broadcasters didn't seem like a significant enough customer base to justify the numbers they were doing. The reason, we all knew, was that the biggest chunk of revenue came from the adult industry. And no-one wanted to talk about that.Who was the earliest to latch on to the potential for streaming media? It was the adult content providers***. The same group were very early to the potential for the tablet. I heard an anecdote from someone in the adult industry that the day the iPad launched, the wholesalers (yes, pornography has wholesalers) were ready with all their content refactored to the appropriate screen sizes.Translate this behaviour to the here and now. Who will be the companies making the most out of ChatGPT?

High volume, tight personalisation, low quality

ChatGPT doesn't turn out amazing quality writing. Yes, it's better than a lot of first drafts I've seen from many writers. But it's not going to win a Pulitzer, or even get past any decent newspaper editor. If you have high standards for quality control, you're not going to be using it. Or at the very least, you will be doing a lot of editing before you publish.But there are a lot of places where quality is much less important than volume, and tailoring. Anywhere you want a lot of words about a particular niche, ChatGPT will be useful. As will equivalent platforms: while OpenAI might have content moderation, other platforms do not.Two industries spring to mind. The adult industry first of all, just like in the old days of streaming media. Sure enough, there is apparently a thriving community of people using large language models (the generic term for tech like this) to write niche erotic fiction. Whatever your particular peccadillo, you can now get an endless supply of tailored fiction to meet your needs. The web will be awash with it soon enough, as it will with its image, video, or interactive equivalent. Combine an AI-written script with deepfake tech and you have generative pornography.Then there is the search engine optimisation industry, and the web content industry more broadly. Tech-savvy people who are trying to maximise the return on investment of their time. Want to create a website that looks like the authority on any particular topic? ChatGPT could be your answer. Of course, Google's algorithm could be tweaked to spot AI-generated content (read enough and it has a noticeably idiosyncratic style). But that's just the latest round in an ongoing battle between those building websites and the businesses trying to help us navigate them.

Many niches

These aren't the only applications where ChatGPT will be successful. There are likely many more niches where cost and tailoring are more important than outright quality. But I think they are representative. And in every niche, this generative technology presents the same problem: navigation.We are already struggling to navigate the digital world. There's too much of it. Too much content. we struggle to choose the best use of our time, facing constant FOMO. What happens when there is a 10x, 100x, 10000000x increase in the volume of content out there? Without a meaningfully better way to filter and navigate, we will be lost, swamped by it.Technologies like ChatGPT will not just swamp us in content, they will drive us into ever smaller niches. Arguably the reason that so much investment goes into franchises like Marvel and Star Wars these days is that they are some of the few brands that can still attract a mass audience. With so much choice in front of us, it will be easier and easier to sink into a niche of one. That might sound appealing but it's not always healthy. We need content that connects us and creates a shared conversation. And I'm not sure a robot is going to deliver that any time soon.##*A journalist on Twitter asked for a good book about 'business' the other day. I pointed out that there's often very little difference between the internal workings of large organisations and the state organisations with which he is more familiar. This is more true than many in the 'dynamic, efficient' private sector would like to admit.** Note, it's not just humans. Some of the software is just crap.*** They weren't the only ones obviously, but they were operating at enormous scale very early. See also, online gambling.

What would you do if you could clone yourself? Meet my personal AI.

Imagine you could clone yourself. What could you achieve?What if there was a digital you, that knew what you knew. Knew everything you said or wrote. That was intimately familiar with your style. And that could respond to questions on your behalf. Or even help you to crystallise your own thoughts.I’ve been lucky to be one of the first people to get such a machine. Meet tom.personal.ai. Or tom for short.tom is a virtual me, primed with hundreds of thousands of words of my writing, from my books, my blog, and my social media. It’s learning more about me every day, feeding on my creative output from the last ten years. It’s beginning to absorb my podcasts, my presentations, and more.Now you can ask tom questions, just like my clients do.As an applied futurist I work with some of the largest companies in the world – brands like Pepsi, Mars, Google, Meta, Ford and BMW. They commission me to explore the future or to teach them to do it for themselves. But I only have so much time.With tom, I can open up my work to a huge new audience, not as static blogposts or ageing presentations, but as dynamic content. tom can be a virtual collaborator for a new range of clients, offering insight and inspiration on the topics that are relevant to them.What would you want to ask a futurist?This is just the beginning for personal AIs. It is a huge privilege to be part of the first wave of these robots hitting the internet, because it is a concept I have been talking about for over five years.I strongly believe that in the age of the metaverse we will need a machine that knows us. One that can help us to navigate the complexity of a world where the boundaries between physical and digital have fallen. And one that can help us to maximise our own cognitive capabilities – and our time.The company, Personal AI, that has built tom, is starting us down a road to where AI technologies can be really useful. Not for big companies but for us as individuals, releasing us to do more, create more, and have more fun.You can interact with tom now, over at metaverse.personal.ai. It’s early days so it’s still learning. Ask it some questions and see what it says. Share the answers!

Future food industry – will we be making food in space?

In our #AskAFuturist series, Rich McEachran asks, “How feasible is it that we’ll be cultivating plants in space on a large scale by 2100? The science is there but the logistics isn’t… yet.” We also look at the idea of a ‘Bar of the Future’ in space.

Future food inventions

Once upon a time, an enquiry dropped into my inbox from our website. Would I be interested in contributing some thoughts about future bars in space to a marketing campaign for Ballantine’s whisky?There are some obvious examples from fiction that it is hard to get away from: Mos Eisley from Star Wars, and more recently the bar on Knowhere from Guardians of the Galaxy. But thinking practically I can see two very different visions of a future bar in space:

• The Miner’s Arms: a bar for asteroid miners who need a little R&R after a long day.
• The Spaceport Lounge: similar to an airport lounge for travellers going between mines.

Whether or not these bars will serve food remains to be seen. But will there be enough food in the future? Or do we need to consider the alternatives of growing food in space?

Will there be enough food in the future?

When we consider the prospect of growing food in space, Rich is right. We can grow plants in space, albeit it’s not necessarily the best environment to do so without some modification to those plants.While sunlight is plentiful, space is cold and dry. You’re more likely to be bathed in radiation than water. And there’s no gravity. Plants, like us, did not evolve to live and thrive in these conditions. But we can overcome them. Research is ongoing about how we best grow plants in this artificial environment, just as it is on Earth. But the principle is well proven.

Future food industry: feeding the population

With climate disruption threatening agriculture around the world, it’s worth asking the question of whether we could grow food in space to feed Earth’s population. Sadly, the answer is a fairly quick ‘no’.While the logistical problems that Rich refers to are easier going from space to Earth than vice versa, the particular challenges of growing in space mean that it’s probably not a viable location for growing food to feed the planet. Quite apart from anything else there is the issue of water.Plants need water to grow, in one form or another. We can bring water up from Earth but it is heavy and dense, and right now the cost per kilogram of payload is around £2200. That’s gonna be some expensive lettuce.We can mine ice from asteroids or from the Moon to water our plants, but even this is far from cheap when compared to water literally falling from the sky onto your crops. It might be viable to support a few astronauts. It’s not viable for feeding the general population.

What’s next for the future of food industry?

While the notion of bars in space seems entirely possible, the concept of growing plants in space simply isn’t sustainable, yet. For now. we should focus on planet Earth – and look forward to kicking back in the Spaceport Lounge as and when.

What’s in the future for food technology?

In my talk at Bucks New Uni on the future kitchen, I highlighted three trends: kitchens of the future will be adaptable, productive and smart.When I analyse the future of any given market, I use my Intersections process, which looks for connections between five macro-trends that are primarily driven by technology, and pressure points in any given market.

The future of kitchen appliances

Tomorrow’s kitchen needs to be a place that can be re-skinned and reconfigured for different people’s needs over its lifespan. If technology can deliver an advantage then someone will deploy it, because the barriers to doing so are falling all the time, just as the competitive drivers rise. Digitally re-skinnable units? Super-hard new-material surfaces? There are many options.Sat in my own kitchen right now, I’m close to a voice assistant (Amazon Echo), a Wi-Fi connected speaker (Jam Audio Symphony), a robot vacuum cleaner (Vorwerk Kobold VR200), programmable, touch-screen driven ovens, as well as various other bits of tech. This isn’t me showing off, this is increasingly the reality of the modern, middle-class kitchen: automation, and internet connected devices.Some of this existing technology has the potential to ameliorate the impact of the ageing body and mind on the ability of people to care for themselves. Voice-driven reminders and recipes, automation of challenging tasks (floor cleaning), self-programming smart ovens, smart induction hobs — much safer than gas, and probably more cost-effective in the long run.And it’s clear a lot can be improved just with better design: putting things at the right height, with sufficient light, for example.

How will design influence future food tech?

In my original research on the future kitchen, it was clear that there is a huge and growing care challenge, and a problem with housing for younger adults. Getting on the property ladder as a couple is difficult now, let alone solo. We’re seeing more people cohabiting with friends and family later in life. Many people have put one and one together to solve both problems.The problem is that the lives of the young and the ageing may be inherently incompatible. At least when trying to cohabit in existing housing stock. We keep different hours, have different expectations for behaviour. Living in close proximity 24/7 could be incredibly challenge with a lot of compromise.We also have a lot in common, of course. Food, for example.Perhaps the real design challenge is to create homes that support socialisation, support and collaboration around common areas — like the kitchen — but allow much greater separation in other areas.The productive kitchen is about making it a place where we grow food as well as prepare and consume it.Back to the Future (as usual) got there early with the ceiling fruit garden, but given the incredible groundswell of grass-roots development around this idea, I think it will be reality fairly soon.As I’ve written about before, the idea of a new appliance in your kitchen, the size of a dishwasher (or maybe even part of the fridge) that grows food rather than stores it is increasingly practical. LED grow lights are cheap, microcontrollers and internet connections ubiquitous, and appliances already contain all the pumps and valves that a hydroponics system might need.

Community in kitchen design

With more properties now private rentals, growing multiple occupancy, and a much more diverse range of social and cultural influences, people are going to want a lot of different things from limited space.Whether it’s a new tenant every three years, or multiple tenants in the same property, over the course of its lifetime the kitchen — a major investment expected to last a decade or so — is going to have to adapt.That means reconfigurable layouts, modular units, and perhaps smart surfaces that can be digitally reconfigured. Think coloured e-ink reflective surfaces (cheap, low energy) rather than the OLEDs as you have on your phone screen (too bright, too expensive to run).

A microcosm of modern Britain

Tomorrow’s kitchen is a fascinating microcosm in which to explore many of the macro forces transforming our world. As we look at trends like smart kitchens, productivity and adaptability, we see the social benefits they bring and the role future food tech has within them.

What will we eat in the future?

My goal is to answer other people’s questions on this blog. Questions like, “Will we really eat insects in the future?” and, “How realistic is it that fake meat will take over real meat consumption in the next 50 years? Check out the questions I have been asked already on this #AskAFuturist thread and add your own if you’re curious.Followers on my social media may know that last year, I was asked to design the ‘future pizza’. It was for the launch of the Big Bang Fair, a science, technology and engineering event for kids and young people at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.We came up with some ideas and then we got together at a pizzeria in London and had them make our future pizza for a panel of kids to try.

Future ingredients: what will we eat in the future?

So, what’s so different about the future pizza? It has three main ingredients that make it different to your normal margherita. I chose all of them because they represent a possible solution to future challenges, where pressures like climate change intersect with trends in technology and taste.That’s not to say that these will be the answer for everyone or everything. But they are a great way to highlight some of the challenges we face, and the choices.

Cricket flour

The most controversial choice in our future pizza was the introduction of insects. Why put ground up crickets into a pizza dough?The first is about climate change. Some argue that insects are a much more efficient means of creating protein for human consumption than, for example, cows or even chickens.The second issue is about health. Insect powder is an incredibly rich form of protein, with 8mg of protein for every 10mg of insect powder.

Vertically farmed tomatoes

The second ingredient to note is vertically farmed tomatoes. These represent one possible answer to the multiple issues of land use, water consumption, pesticides, climate change, and food miles.Vertical farming means growing food in stacked trays inside a warehouse with a very carefully controlled environment. Rather than being grown in soil, the plants are usually fed nutrients directly through water or vapour.

Vegan cheese

For this experiment we used a vegan cheese made from almond milk. And it tastes like…cheese! This was perhaps the biggest surprise for me as I didn’t have high hopes for a fake cheese. But it grated like cheese, cooked like cheese, and tasted pretty good on our pizza.

The future of the meat industry

So, will the future be vegan, or will we be eating insects? I’d argue that the explosion of choice is a trend far bigger than veganism, but we’re seeing a lot of progress for the future of the meat industry.

Will the future be vegan? Understanding ‘fake meat’

In the last few years there have been two distinct crazes around what might be considered ‘fake meat’. The first is a group of entirely plant-based products designed to come closer to the real thing.The most famous proponents of this approach, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, have started with the ubiquitous burger. Both use a mixture of proteins, binders and natural colours to produce something with a texture and flavour that is at least analogous to the beef original.The second set of products is lab grown meat, produced by the likes of the Eat JUST and Memphis Meats – more US start-ups. This approach takes real meat cells and cultures them – i.e., gets them to replicate – creating ‘real’ meat without the slaughter of animals.

How veganism could affect what we will eat in the future

The rise of veganism comes down to three pressure points:

• Climate change: agriculture makes up more than one-fifth of all greenhouse gases
• Cruelty: there is a rising number of people who simply don’t want to eat animals
• Cost: while fake meats are still expensive, real meat continues to be the most expensive item on the plate

Choice: a competitive market for alternatives

The future of the meat industry suggests that we will favour choice in the future – some for health reasons, others for animal welfare.To me it is pretty clear that average meat consumption in the UK is now on a long-term downward trend. This will be driven by a combination of our falling acceptance of meat consumption, the rise of good alternatives, and the compounding factors of health trends and climate awareness.So, what will we eat in the future? Honestly, I doubt insects will become part of everyone’s diet. Let’s remember that there are already large parts of the world where insects are entirely normal part of the diet. This isn’t some issue about whether they are edible or good for us.Likewise, I don’t see meat going away altogether. It will likely become a more expensive choice as volumes decline. And there will be many alternatives, not just fake meat. But in 50 years I’m willing to bet it will still be on the menu. It’s about choice.

What will cities be like in the future?

If we are to address some of the major crises of our time: climate change, the ageing population, economic disruption, then we need more of us to be living in cities, not fewer.This may sound counter-intuitive but you are likely to have a much lower carbon footprint living in Central London than you would living in the middle of the countryside.Why? For a start, your home is likely to be newer and better insulated – not least because there are likely to be other homes above and below it. The infrastructure and the tarmac around you stores heat, keeping temperatures in cities 1-3° warmer than the countryside, further reducing your investment in heating.Cities are also the cheapest place to serve citizens with utilities. The closer together people are, the more cost effective it is to provide water, waste services, electricity and connectivity. This is why many rural parts of the country still run on oil deliveries and septic tanks and have crap broadband.

Future city logistics

When you travel in a city, the amenities are much closer by and you have a much greater chance of being able to travel by public transport. Getting to work, the shops, the pub, or a museum, you will expend a lot less energy.There has been much talk about how self-driving and electric cars might reshape our cities, removing the need for parking, for example — at least in prime areas. They can drop off their passengers and then drive themselves to an out of town garage, or return home, or continue to serve other passengers across the city until they need charging.But there is also a very reasonable challenge that asks whether we should let cars shape our cities again. After all, the last time we allowed a single form of personal transport to shape our cities, it wasn’t all positive. Self-driving, electric cars propose to reduce congestion and pollution, but we already have other ways to do those things.A city shaped by cycling, walking and mass transit is potentially very different to one shaped by smart cars. Even the smartest of cars will present barriers to pedestrians, breaking down streets into two sides. Mass transit implies hubs around which services and people congregate.

Housing for the future

I once had the pleasure of interviewing some of the leading lights in the property sector, both residential and commercial. Some of the results went into a report for Hyperoptic on the future of residential broadband.The CEO of a large developer told me that one of the biggest challenges when building something new is knowing what the user’s needs will be in five, ten, or twenty years. How can you construct something today that will have longevity when technology, culture, and working practices are changing so fast?

The future of planning

The answer comes in three parts: design, engineering, and information. Each is influenced by a principle for better strategy that is being adopted across business and I think has a strong role to play in government as well. This principle is simply that adaptation trumps optimisation as a predictor of sustainable success:

• Developers may be able to employ foresight tools to inform their decisions and enhance their arguments for particular developments.
• We have to consider when we are thinking about the future of planning that the future building may itself be much more adaptable than those in the past.
• What feeds foresight processes is good data, and there is a huge opportunity in the future for developers and local authorities to better inform their decisions with good data.

So, what will cities be like in the future? The design process is informed by rich data that combines geospatial, demographic, economic, and emotional data that assembles a business case and a design brief in a semi-automated fashion. The design itself is created with flexibility in mind, aware of imminent trends but also adaptable to those beyond the range of reasonable foresight.

What’s the future for the construction industry?

Every industry I speak to thinks that they are the laggards. They believe that their industry is the least progressive, the one with the most work to do. This is almost never true, except for the construction industry. What would it look like if they were to modernise?

Future construction trends

Regular readers will know that I believe the shape of tomorrow’s economy is much more of a network than a monolith. Distributed resources assembled and connected to deliver against today’s objectives, then reconfigured to meet tomorrow’s needs.In some ways the construction industry already works like this: each project tends to bring together a different team, and much of the labour and services are contracted. But these relationships tend to be handled in a high-friction, low agility fashion. Information flow is slow, processes are manual, and many mistakes are made.Imagine a different model. One where the interaction between the major parties was entirely digital, built on a shared set of data and more importantly, processes and principles of operation. Imagine if the contracted labour could be sourced through a similarly digital platform – an Uber for trades, or a Deliveroo for builders.You post your skills and labour requirements and the system matches it to the available labour, dynamically managing pricing to secure the required labour and balance it against budget. Each contractor would have a persistent digital CV, tracking experience, ratings, qualifications and perhaps any safety infringements.

The future cityscape

While physical objects are becoming increasingly digital, so too are digital objects becoming increasingly physical. The combination of artificial intelligence with a range of new sensing and display technologies means that digital artefacts and devices increasingly interact with us in physical ways: voice and gesture, observation and inference.Whereas a building management system today might maintain environmental conditions, monitor fire safety, and minimise energy consumption, future systems might be able to wield much greater control and do so in collaboration with other buildings and spaces around them.Imagine a building that largely builds itself, to the specifications in the design DNA that an architect defines. Imagine it can continuously optimise its internal layout to the needs of its users. Imagine it can collaborate with other nearby intelligences to maximise safety, comfort and utility for the people around it.In the future our self-driving cars will be navigating their way around self-managing buildings, themselves an ecosystem of smart devices.

The future of city planning: what will our cities be built from?

We name many of the ages of history based on the most advanced materials with which we understood how to work. There was the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, Iron Age etc. Later, we focused on forms of mechanical and later electronic sophistication: Machine Age, Atomic Age, Space Age. Right now you could argue we’re in the Information Age. So what’s next?Perhaps we might call it the ‘Quantum Age’? In this time we expand our existing comprehension of the world on a sub-atomic scale, and find new applications for this knowledge.

Introducing: borophene

Borophene was only experimentally demonstrated in 2015, which means we have a long way to go before we understand how to produce it at scale and in useful forms. Though what has been learned from the production of graphene will likely help. The same is true of all the other materials and compounds being researched. They will all have a role to play in tomorrow’s world, but only when we learn how to make and use them at scale.From new materials to new practices, the construction industry has to change. It will change, as the current model is clearly unsustainable.

Why smart cities are important

The term ‘smart city’ means different things to different people. There is something close to a standard definition, from the BSI’s PAS180 Smart City Vocabulary document:“‘Smart cities’ is a term denoting the effective integration of physical, digital and human systems in the built environment to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens.”Smart cities have been the subject of aggressive marketing from the major tech companies for some years. Their development has come to be seen by some as a success of technology marketing over citizen need. Something of a corporate takeover.People have issues with the command-and-control format of many smart city programs, with their ‘control centres’ featuring giant screens and dashboards for some mastermind at the middle to monitor the city.We see a similar discomfort with microchips under the skin. There’s the issue of security: this type of short-range wireless chip has been shown to be susceptible to hacking using widely available hardware.But despite concerns, there are huge drivers to smart all our cities.

Smart cities and sustainability

Build smart cities means retrofitting technology, processes and partnerships to an existing, evolved organic environment. One model isn’t going to fit every city. Making it happen will be a process of negotiation, integration, iteration. And there will be lots of different parties involved: political leaders, civil servants, service providers, technology companies, health services, police forces, property owners and most important of all, the citizens themselves.Brokering a framework that keeps all of these people at least relatively happy, while delivering on the promise of smart cities is no small task. It will only come through dialogue. But it’s a conversation we need to have. Because the promise of smarter cities is too great to ignore.In the first instance there is simply lower costs, both financially and to the environment. There are lifestyle benefits: less traffic, quicker parking, more efficient public transport. Taking things a step further, there are advantages to planners: recognising a noise problem in one place might inform a change in planning to a new building nearby, perhaps requiring materials that absorb or deflect sound, or the planting of trees as a screen.

Future city technology: the challenges

Telefonica’s project in Santander has proven there is little money to be made in smart city hardware: the city rolled out 12,000 sensors funded by a relatively small EU1m from the EU. And the sum of the data collected from those sensors, just 5MB per day, similar to a single photo or MP3 file, suggests there is very little to be made in its carriage or storage.The biggest challenges, and hence the biggest potential revenues, come in processing and presenting the data in a useful form. This is where Telefonica has focused its efforts and is looking to commercialise the learning from the Santander experiment. IBM too has recognised that this is where the value lies.

Why are smart cities important?

Despite these setbacks, smart cities have the potential to push forward our sustainability efforts and bring communities together. Ultimately, there is the prospect of properly understanding our cities and the interactions that make them live, so that we can make more informed decisions about their future, in local government, in corporations, and as individuals.

The future of the city: how can communities work together for change?

If you want to save the planet, live in a city. Even better, live in a city centre. Here, all the amenities are on your doorstep. For the places that you can’t walk, public transport is easily accessible. The more densely you live – within reason – the lower your carbon footprint. And the better the chance that we arrest the decline, ensuring that the future high street will be a thriving, vibrant place.Ask people whether they care about climate change and these days and all but the most hardcore science-denier will tell you that they do. But how much do they care? Is it enough to take action? The evidence would suggest not.The Green Party increased its share of the vote in 2019 by a dramatic 60%. But this was a high point in an otherwise largely negative sea of statistics about our environmental behaviour in areas of free choice. Recycling rates? Down. Flights? Up.But by embracing a future of communities, we can make a real difference – almost without thinking about it.

Future of communities

Cities and high streets offer great potential to bring communities together. The future high street is the perfect place for a school. There will be plenty of space to build one as well. In the last 18 months, it has been accepted in the property sector that the loss of some high street retail is structural, not cyclical. Some classes of shops aren’t coming back, and there is no obvious retail replacement.We also hear about loneliness and isolation in later life a lot. This is the group who would perhaps most benefit from a move to the city centre.This group needs a rather different retirement living offer to bring them into the city. This is why I was so pleased to see Legal and General’s planned £2bn investment in city centre developments. The company’s goal is to transform failing retail space into apartments to buy and rent. These will not be for students and young professionals but for those who have retired. Projects like this will have exponentially greater impact than the government’s £675m investment fund for retail redevelopment.These are not care homes. But that’s not what most of this cohort need. They need a place to live where they have the opportunity to support themselves and engage with other people. What these new developments will have is ready access to critical amenities like doctor’s surgeries, some of which they will be building on site.

What will cities of the future look like?

Given the direction of change there may be many redevelopment opportunities in city centres. A school could replace a department store, or all or part of a shopping centre. With the coming of self-driving cars, it might replace a car park.Schools aren’t the only requirement for more families to live in a city. If they are to live well, then more green spaces, play areas, and safe pedestrianised zones would be required. But these changes all fit with the direction of travel for current city planning. And these changes all work to encourage other groups back into the city centre.Despite what the climate change deniers might say, climate change is not a job and wealth creation conspiracy. But some of the technologies and business behaviours most suited to a zero-carbon future are now well aligned to improved business performance. Renewable energy is cheaper than any other source. Flexible working drives greater productivity. Digital communications drive greater reach.

Suburban capitals

I once took part in a panel about the prospect of suburban capitals. These are satellite city centres around the major hubs that are starting to attract more companies for their HQs.If the conditions prevail and the developments keep on coming, could we re-balance investment across the country? Could we convince people to base big businesses elsewhere and treat London as somewhere to visit rather than live? Perhaps.This leads back to campaigns to improve public transport, in the South East and in the North, and in the Midlands. Living in Manchester, I’m biased and would argue that the potential of a strong Leeds/Manchester/Liverpool axis should take priority.But in general, we need better infrastructure. Speed the connections between cities and suburban capitals and we might be able to distribute the wealth a little more evenly, and tackle the UK’s productivity issues. But it will require a very different approach to government.

Saving the planet and the community

Whether it’s a smart city or a suburban capital, cities have the potential to improve our wellbeing and our impact on the planet. What we need now is investment from the government, plus an educational drive to showcase their benefits.

What to expect in 2022

This time last year I was writing a pretty depressed post, having just made the decision not to see my family at Christmas. With luck, this year will be different, in spite of the omicron variant. We're mostly triple-vaxxed. Some of us have had the virus already. And there's a weary acceptance that most of us will at some point. Just as long as we can get to New Year first, I'll be happy.In last year's post, I made some predictions. Two out of three I think were on the money. The third will be, it'll just take some time.

Time-shifted lives

I highlighted the issue of 'extended adolescence' in last year's post. It's an idea that has resonated with a lot of people, notably at the Student Accommodation Conference I spoke at recently. There, managers in that field told the audience how parents were getting more involved in student's lives. How they were making fewer decisions unaided. We're taking longer to emerge as fully independent adults - at least those of us privileged enough to take those extra years are. COVID has only catalysed this trend.

Robots rise

As predicted, COVID also catalysed the introduction of automation technologies into the workplace. In logistics and healthcare particularly, companies have been looking to minimise the reliance on human beings who might get infected (and who might take action if they are improperly protected).

A nation of freelancers

Last I predicted a further rise in the number of solo self-employed as a result of the COVID and Brexit-driven recession. I still think this will prove to be the case. We will likely get new numbers in January. My expectation is that contrary to the 5% drop in 2020, we will see a return to growth in the solo self-employed. Though it may take a little longer for this trend to play out after the COVID shock drove people towards the safety of employment - or forced their micro businesses to close.

2021 in review

My micro business was not forced to close in 2021. In fact, it has been a record year for me - which is part of the reason there have been so few blog posts recently. I feel slightly awkward about this. A futurist's business is naturally best when the world is at its most uncertain. I didn't really want to be trumpeting my successes when so many people were having such a hard time for the second year in a row. But if you will indulge me, I'll briefly point to a few highlights.

Global brands

When my phone rang this year (or more often when people sent an enquiry through my website), I got an even bigger tingle of excitement than usual because of the scale of the brands who kept calling. This year alone I've worked with Barclaycard, Ford, Canon, Pepsi, Mars, Sony, and many more. These are added to the existing client list of Facebook, Google, Audi, BMW, Barclays, Cisco, HSBC, Nikon, NHS, LG, ITV, Kellogg's, Accenture, Auto Trader, Accor and Bacardi. That's just the names that pop into my head. I feel like I have good traction with the world's most influential companies now, and I'm quite proud of that, sat here in my underground workshop in Manchester.

Virtually international

In spite of not being able to travel, I've done a lot of work overseas in 2021. My consulting services have been in particular demand from research and innovation teams in the US, both inside big brands and in the external agencies they employ. With my first book being released in China I've started to get more enquiries from that direction, alongside my first calls from Japan, Korea and Australia. I suspect I might be putting on some air miles in the year ahead, COVID-permitting, though fortunately for my carbon footprint, much of this work can be done remotely.

Side projects

I've wrestled with my personal brand since starting as a full-time futurist. It will be ten years in 2022 since I started this business. I've already been a full-time futurist longer than I've done anything else in my career.When I started, my media profile was very much as 'Techie Tom', as Penny Haslam (former BBC Business presenter and my friend and speaking coach) called me. I was still doing gadget reviews on BBC Manchester and Radio X (XFM as it was then), and covering apps on Saturday Edition. As well as popping up regularly on Radio 4 and BBC Breakfast to answer questions about the latest tech stories. A few years ago I decided to leave that side of my profile behind, stepping back from my regular slot on 5live (by then with Phil Williams), and focus on the future. When producers call and ask me to comment on some new gadget or social media spat these days, I generally say 'no' unless the story has a strong future dimension.In leaving the gadgets behind, I also decided to hide my more nerdy nature. After all, I was writing about business and strategy, trends and society, much more than technology. But in lockdown that separation started to make less sense. Anyone on a video call with me or watching a remote broadcast spot (on Sunday Brunch, for example) could see my messy maker space and all the robots around me. My DIY EV project captured quite a lot of attention and actually started leading directly to work. So I decided to rethink the separation of these two sides of my business/brand.In the last few weeks I've launched a new website for my projects (projects.tc) and a YouTube channel to go with it. And with one eye on something big I'll be launching in 2023 (watch this space), I'll be doing a bit more consumer-facing future stuff in 2022. And maybe being a little more openly nerdy.

What to expect in 2022

So beyond my own business, what are my predictions for the year ahead? Here are a few things to consider based on what's currently on my mind:

Food

I've done a lot of work on the future of food this year, most recently the report I worked on with CGA Strategy and Bidfood. Here we suggested that the confluence of rising wealth (the average UK adult was £7800 richer after lockdown, even if that number is skewed by the wealthiest) and health consciousness (two thirds of us remain overweight) will drive a focus on foods with strong health promises in 2022. I suspect the plant-based trend will continue, albeit with the beginnings of a backlash as people start to play closer attention to the health and environmental benefits of a diet that is increasingly processed. In place of a purely plant-based diet, people will look to cuisines that are focused on fresh and high quality ingredients: Scandinavian (a halo effect from their success at the super-high end) and Pacific Rim.At the other end of the market, Burmese food offers an interesting twist on the familiar curry formats, particularly for street food where simple pre-prepared dishes like slow cooked stews (making good use of cheaper cuts), can be quickly dressed up with the cuisine's traditional condiments.

AR

2022 will see lots of new Augmented Reality headsets launch, though none will be good enough to go mainstream. This is the continuation of the market building that will ultimately see us swap handset for headset in the next few years. It reminds me of the smartphone market circa 2004. Apple may or may not launch its first foray into the market but I'm not sure how many people it will convert. The big unknown is not about the hardware but the software: can they produce a user interface that is sufficiently slick and intuitive that it will appeal?You will start to see people a few people wearing smart glasses on the street, for the first time since Google Glass. Even if it is only in Silicon Valley or Shoreditch.

EVs

The rapid rate of sales growth for EVs will continue, with new brands coming to market and improved battery tech and charging infrastructure allaying people's fears. 30% of all cars sold could be plug-in vehicles by the end of 2022, based on the recent growth trends. In my little DIY niche, there may be a bit of a battle to make it easier to register cars converted to electric as such: right now the DVLA does not seem to be keen on letting people do this, even though it makes so much sense from an environmental standpoint.

Hybrid Work

2022 will be a year of confusion in hybrid work as companies try to work out what it really means in terms of policy, practice and technology. Expect continuing conflict between workers and bosses, and more importantly between different cohorts of workers, over the right to work remotely and flexibly. What works for the 40-something with a family and a house doesn't necessarily work for the younger people they might be managing. This is not to say that a hybrid approach is not the right one, or the most likely one for the majority of office-based businesses over the long term. Just that there is an awful lot more to be done to make this approach successful than just announcing your intention. And it will require a degree of compromise on all sides.

Happy New Year

You'll notice I'm not saying much about the virus: I'm guessing you're all as bored of that as I am. But I'm hopeful that we will be able to manage it better in the year ahead. That each progressive mutation may make it more virulent but in return, less harmful. And that our vaccination technologies will continue to advance.I for one am looking forward to getting out more. Continuing the return to live events that has started in the last month (albeit interrupted now), and catching up with all those people with whom I had to cancel Christmas drinks in order to protect the family Christmas I've been craving.I hope you all have a happy new year. Here's to a positive 2022.

Entering the Metaverse

What comes after the Internet? This is not so much about replacement as evolution, at least in a Pokémon sense. What is the evolved form of the Internet? The Metaverse. The coming together - or collision - of the physical and digital worlds.I have written about this a lot in various forms over recent years, but I was inspired to address it again after speaking to fellow futurist Cathy Hackl for an episode of my podcast, Talk About Tomorrow. This episode rather accidentally became part of a trilogy of interviews on the subject of the metaverse, bookended by conversations with Steve Sinclair of Mojo Vision, maker of smart contact lenses, and John Keefe, co-founder and director of Draw and Code, one of the world's premier immersive content studios.I return to this topic again and again because I don't think I can stress enough just how important it is that all of us get our heads around the Metaverse concept. So here's a bit of an overview to compliment those three podcast episodes. I strongly recommend having a listen.

Technologies powering the Metaverse

There are multiple definitions of the Metaverse, but it was first laid out in Neal Stephenson's book, Snowcrash. Here, Stephenson described a virtual reality patterned after the real world. Somewhere that your avatar could walk around. Imagine Fortnite or more accurately, Population One - a virtual world projected into your vision through a set of goggles.Today, we talk about the Metaverse as the blending of the physical and digital worlds. What does that mean? Well, multiple technologies are shattering the sheet of glass - your phone or computer screen - that has historically held the two worlds apart. These include:

Voice Assistants

Alexa and Google Home allow us to interact with the internet, ecommerce and other digital sources of data (e.g. music streaming) with our voices rather than our fingers on a keyboard or touchscreen. In doing so, voice assistants have become one of the first and most prominent ways in which the digital world has started to bleed into the physical.

Internet of Things (IoT)

It now costs just a few pence to add intelligence to an every day object: a lightbulb, power socket, wristband etc. The result is that millions of objects are now being equipped with an internet connection and computing power. This allows them to do two things:

• feed information from the physical world back into the digital
• control the physical world from the digital

Again, this leads to the blurring of the lines between physical and digital, when information is common between the two and control can flow from one to the other.

Computer Vision

The rising power of computers combined with the ubiquity of cheap cameras means that machines are getting better and better at interpreting our physical world. They can recognise people, objects, locations and even emotions. The result is that computers and artificial intelligences need less and less explicit input in order to make things happen. For example, autonomous vehicles can 'see' obstructions.

AI

As ever, I use this term in its broadest rather than its most specific sense, to mean software that is configured to take on cognitive loads that would formerly have been shouldered by humans. AI is a critical part of the metaverse because it gives objects and virtual entities the smarts to usefully interact with us, either in the physical or digital realm. Information drawn from voice assistants, computer vision, or any number of sensors can be interpreted into action. And that action can be wrapped in an interface, be it a digital avatar or a change in the environment, that is meaningful to us.Some of this can be done by much simpler code than can be usefully called 'AI'. But the added power means that each interaction doesn't need to be coded manually. The system can learn, interpret, experiment and adapt.

VR

Virtual Reality allows us to experience digital content as if it were a physical environment. Even in the state of the art, it is a long way from perfect. For example, moving around an environment beyond ducks and lunges has to be done with a joystick rather than your legs. But it is nonetheless compelling. Games engage. Virtual cinemas allow us to escape the four walls in which we've been cooped up. And as John Keefe pointed out, people are even (finally) turning to VR as a collaboration tool.

AR

Augmented Reality, or Mixed Reality, is our primary interface with the Metaverse because it too blends the physical and digital worlds. If you have ever used a filter on Snapchat or Facebook Messenger, or played Pokémon Go, then you have experienced rudimentary AR. But it can be so much more. Some time in the next decade, probably in the next five years, we will begin the transition from handsets to headsets, giving us the opportunity to overlay digital items on to the physical world at any time. Virtual people, creatures, aliens, displays, interfaces and objects. There is a huge amount of design work to be done in order to create an experience that is natural, engaging and desirable. In many ways, this design challenge is much greater than the complexities of condensing the hardware. But I believe we will overcome it.

Impacts of the Metaverse

The Metaverse will be all pervasive. It will be our primary interface to just about every form of transaction and probably much more:

Society

Today, we worry about the amount of time people spend behind a screen, lost in a digital world. I suspect that within a few years, most people will spend ten hours a day in mixed reality. This will amplify today's difficulties but also help to resolve them. With the Metaverse you never leave the physical world, but you can twist it. You can repaint the world to meet your preferences, changing your surroundings and even the people who inhabit them.

Shopping

You will never have to ask "How much is that?" Your integral AI will know what you are looking at and seek out the answer. The shop may beam a virtual assistant into your field of view, so that everyone gets a personal shopper. Maybe it will negotiate behind the scenes with your own AI for discounts based on your loyalty.

Banks

Imagine a sixth sense for your spending and credit limit. A subtle colour overlay on products telling you what you can afford, or which is the best use of your limited funds. Imagine your credit score represented in three dimensions, a monument you need to rebuild.

Government services

A personal advisor for everyone, powered by AI? No more language barriers and hard to navigate websites, just conversations. The trade-off being that they might know so much more about you.

Property

Virtual tours available instantly, captured by the agent's glasses and streamed to yours. High definition capture of any issues in the home. Three dimensional guides to any DIY job, from assembling furniture to fixing a leaking tap.

Dating

Who is that? Are the available? Are they a match? This one is fraught with risk.

Ubiquitous technology

I could go on and on because the Metaverse will touch every aspect of life. It might be the lens through which we work and study. It will be so ubiquitous that we will rapidly start to assume that everyone can access it, as we have with the smartphone.The location of the access hardware is important here. Because it is on your head, interactions can be much more subtle. A headset can see what you see, hear what you hear, and answer the questions that those sensory inputs throw up before you even verbalise them. The AI that sits behind your AR experience, personalising your environment and picking up on you needs, will become very much a co-pilot. The shift to the Metaverse will mean the cognitive augmentation of every human who engages with it. That has implications for inequality, but also for health: imagine the help it could be to those suffering with dementia.In summary, whatever your field you should be contemplating what this shift will do to your sector. Because I am more certain than ever that it is coming. And more than ever that it will touch just about everything. 

Further and higher education: The dividing line

I wrote in a recent blog post about one of the diving lines in Britain being between the 50ish percent of the population who now go on to higher education, and those who don't. I wondered how it must feel to see a rising proportion of your peers go on to academic study and all that entails. And considered the impact this has on our political outlook, as highlighted in Maria Sobolewska and Rob Ford's new book, Brexitland. In short, the big split now is broadly between urban, degree educated voters (Remain) and those in rural and less affluent areas without higher education (Leave).

FE Collapse

What I didn't realise when writing my previous post was just how stark the collapse in further education has been in the last few years since the rise in higher education student numbers. The total number of people studying in further education has fallen by more than two thirds in the last fifteen years. The result is that the total number of people continuing in education beyond school years has not increased, as is widely believed, but fallen by a third.

Data sources: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/ and https://gov.uk

This makes the dividing line between those with and without degrees even more stark. It is no wonder that people feel animosity towards the wealthy centre and cities, populated by those who have benefited most from our national educational infrastructure.

The skills gap

This is a situation that cannot sustain for so many reasons. For a start, the skills that FE colleges equip people with are incredibly important to our economy. And as you can see from the chart above, apprenticeships are not filling the gap. As the economy starts to pick up, employers are complaining about skills shortages in IT and technology, hospitality and events. The construction workforce is ageing fast. According to the 2011 census, more than 30% of those in the key trades were over 50. And we are estimated to have less than half the workforce we need to meet government house-building targets. Brexit is unlikely to improve this situation.These industries don't just need people, they need skilled, trained people. And people are not getting the training they need on the job, according to the CIPD.

Reading the rewards

As well as the macro, there is a more personal impact of the decline of further education. Education is one of the best predictors of overall life outcomes. It is the foundation of both a more secure career and a more secure sense of self.Quite beyond the career value, learning new skills is one of the most rewarding things we can do. It's why I prize hobbies so highly: they are your opportunity to stretch your mind in new and unexpected directions.

Skills for Jobs

I confess that the 'Skills for Jobs' white paper released in January 2021 rather passed me by. I'm not sure if this is a sign of the limited attention I have paid to the FE sector, or whether there was relatively little noise made about the paper outside of the sector itself. But though the paper makes some of the right noises, what investment it does promise has to be put into context: funding per pupil for further education has fallen 12% since 2010, and funding for adult education has halved, according to the IFS.

Education for life

We have an enormous distance to travel to make up for the long term decline of further education, particularly for adults. Imagine if we had a further education sector that was world class, like our universities. Imagine local colleges as community resources where people of all ages could go to learn skills, to advance their career or for pure self-development. Imagine them as a venue for sports and shared hobbies. Imagine high quality teachers sharing their knowledge with learners face to face, and with the world through digital platforms. FE colleges could be the perfect venue to incubate new businesses, and share community resources, like maker spaces.We need more community institutions like this, not just to tackle the economic challenges we face but to address issues of cohesion, loneliness, and mental decline in our ageing population. Delivering on anything like this will require long term investment - much more than has been committed. Not just to finance the resources themselves but to build a true culture of life long learning, to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to use these resources.That will require a lot of investment, but also a vision that goes well beyond skills for jobs.

The Future Home: A Smart, Green, Machine for Living In

I've been working with Hive on a project looking at the future of the smart home with particular regard to sustainability. This post forms part of that (paid) project. Almost 100 years ago, Le Corbusier wrote about the house as a “machine for living in”. It sounds a little cold compared to the cosy visions we have of home. But his ideas of form separated from function continue to shape modern architecture. I wonder whether he would approve of the modern smart home? After all, here we are adding function to a long-established form. We are improving the machine for living in, in many ways.

Every home is getting smarter

The smart home concept has been around a long time. By adding sensors, switches, and computing power, we can make the home more efficient, luxurious, secure, and comfortable. It is only in the last decade though that the smart home has become truly accessible to most people. Before then, it was what I call ‘footballer tech’: only available to those with the disposable income to buy the hardware and pay an expert to do the installation. Today your plumber or electrician can install systems, and many items you can simply pick up and plug in. If you can use a smartphone, you can create a smart home.The result is that adoption has rocketed. Hive alone has hardware in more than 1.9 million homes across the UK, whether that's a smart thermostat, smart lights, alarm, or a collection of those devices all controlled by the same app. Over 70% of our survey respondents said they already have some form of smart home tech, and are controlling their homes remotely to give themselves warmth, light and security when they need them, and to ensure they’re not wasting energy when they don’t. But where do we go from here?

Smaller, cheaper, more accessible

My seven predictions for the future smart home are predicated on two simple ideas. First, that digital technology will continue to get smaller, cheaper, and more accessible. This is a safe bet since this pattern has been consistent for the last 60 years Even if we reach the limits of physics in improving our current range of technologies – and we are hitting the limits for silicon chips – there are other technologies on the horizon. As long as manufacturing can keep up with demand, prices will continue to fall.Every time we make our computers more powerful, we tend to use a good chunk of that power to make them easier to use. Just look at how we communicate with computers today versus sixty years ago. We’ve gone from punched tape, to graphical interfaces, to touchscreens, and now voice control. What next? I suspect we will add even more intelligence into our homes to help them work on our behalf. Why use a voice command when your home just knows what you want?

Removing friction

The second principle behind my predictions is that we as humans love anything that strips the friction from our lives. Rewind three million years and our distant ancestors were already making tools, sharpening stones to make food preparation easier. Throughout human history we have defined each era by its technology - Stone Age, Bronze Age, Steam Age – because technology is so important to us. Because it makes our lives easier.We will adopt more smart home technology if and when it makes life easier. That it also helps us fulfil our goals for more sustainable living is a huge bonus, and that is something 88% of us are striving for . But that alone is probably not enough. We want easier living so that we can focus our time, energy, and critically, money, on the people and things that are most important to us.

Communes and robots

The way we live, and work is changing, so any smart home must work in that context. We tend to be single until later in life now, sharing homes with friends or family, or increasingly living on build-to-rent campuses. These modern blocks offer smaller apartments with shared facilities for everything you might need: gym, cinema room, café, gardens, workspace. They’re one of the fastest growing types of home in the UK and around the world . And they are all built with integrated smart home technologies.More and more of us are working remotely, or for ourselves, so workspace is becoming increasingly important. Either some space carved out in our home or shared and sustainable office space nearby. How do we carve out space in homes that are shrinking? The average living room has shrunk by a third since the 70s, so we’re not exactly spoiled for space. One idea is transformers: robotic furniture that can change function at the touch of a button. Kitchen tables become standing desks, shelves swing out into dividers, sofas roll away to free up floor space.Robotic furniture will also take on more of the chores. We still spend over an hour a day washing and cleaning. Wardrobes that iron and fold are on the fringes right now, but I’m certainly ready for them to go mainstream and I don’t think I’m alone. We might see robots helping with the food too. Maybe not a robot chef just yet, but perhaps an automated hydroponics system to keep you in fresh salad veg.

EVs and virtual power plants

Powering all these robots in a sustainable fashion will fall to a combination of solar cells on the roof and battery storage in the basement - or in your car. With the deadline for the end of petrol and diesel sales approaching in 2030, I estimate perhaps a third of us will be driving electric vehicles by the end of the decade. Nearly two thirds of us have space for home charging . When they’re not on the move, EVs make great energy stores, turning your home into a ‘virtual power plant’, part of a new networked energy grid that can share power with the homes around you or with the rest of the nation.Underpinned by this sustainable generation and storage, tomorrow’s smart home becomes a greener place to live. But also, an easier place to live, where the machine takes more of the strain.##My full set of predictions are as follows:1. Smart tech will be the norm: “It’s not that long since smart homes were what I call “footballer tech”, confined to the elite. But in just a small space of time, this has entirely changed. Technology advances at an incredible pace, getting more powerful, cheaper, and most importantly, easier to use. As we continue to innovate, smart home products geared towards sustainability will become the norm in the home. The smart meter rollout continues. Every time people replace their thermostats, lightbulbs, or other home tech, they will find that the obvious options will increasingly be smart ones. By 2030, almost every UK home will have some form of smart tech.”2. Semi-communal living will become increasingly popular: “As we look to prioritise sustainability, and people continue to live in shared accommodation well into their 30s, there will be a rise in semi-communal living: smaller private homes with a lot of shared spaces. With homes shrinking and more of us working remotely, this is a good model for a more sustainable future: modern, well-insulated and sustainably heated homes with access to amenities – including remote working spaces – all within walking distance.* Smart tech will play a key role in helping us to make the most of shared spaces, managing access, setting heat and lighting to our preferences, and ensuring security. As well as people sharing more spaces, we’ll also see a rise in micro grids, especially in new builds, where you can share energy within the community. This means energy can easily be transferred to different homes, instead of wasted.”3. The home will take part in the future energy system: “More homes in the future will generate and store energy and will be rewarded for making their homes part of the energy grid. Around a million homes in the UK have solar photovoltaics today – and that number is growing. Though the percentage of individual households adding small (sub 4kw) solar installations is only increasing at about 3.6% per year, the next class of installation (4-10kw) seems to be growing much faster.** But it’s not just solar power that is set to increase, we’re also likely to see more and more people using other technology and taking part in the future energy system, be it smart water tanks, heat pumps, EV chargers and home batteries.”4. 15-20% of the UK will continue to work from home: “Over 40% of the UK worked remotely in lockdown. This is likely to drop back to around 15-20% as we exit this period, but then start to climb again towards 2030. Our homes are poorly insulated compared to modern offices, so those choosing to remain at home, may look to make savings from commuting on retrofitting their home, better insulation, ventilation, and sound-proofing – all of which have added green benefits. Using one centralised app, such as the Hive app, we’ll see more people linking their devices together in one eco-system to better manage their heating and electricity bills. For example, ensuring lights only turn on when someone is in the room, or linking their smart thermostat such as Hive Active Heating to Hive radiator valves to have greater control over the heating in individual rooms.”***5. Suburban office shares to take the load off the home: “With more of us working remotely, and a lot more freelance workers, suburban office shares will be in demand. Lockdown has seen couples and flatmates arguing over who gets the kitchen table and the biggest share of the broadband. With our smaller homes, people will be seeking out extra space – especially the 20% of the workforce I estimate might be self-employed by 2030. Users of these spaces will be looking for somewhere warm and light, but also somewhere with good sustainable characteristics.”6. The electric vehicle revolution will be driven into force: “As we edge closer to new legislation banning diesel and petrol cars coming into play, the number of electric vehicles on the road is set to grow fast. Based on the typical replacement rate for cars in the UK, and the rapid growth of EV sales, I estimate around a third of all UK cars will be electric by 2030. Electric vehicle prices will continue to fall, and the technology will continue to improve. More brands will open up charging at home as part of a wider eco-system of smart tech, including Hive, adding convenience, and integrating energy storage into your smart home.” ****7. One giant computer: robot furniture and cleaners “Computers are making their way into everything, turning the home into one giant computer – a true ‘machine designed for living’, as Corbusier would have called it. We’ll see more robot furniture that can transform at the touch of a button to make the best use of your living space. Robot wardrobes that press and fold your clothes. And smaller, sleeker, and cheaper robot mops and vacuums. Smart hydroponics systems, to give you a constant supply of salad veg will be more mainstream.”##To hear more about Hive’s eco-system of smart products visit: https://www.hivehome.com/

The Trust Gap

What has happened to trust in authority? And how will it change in coming generations((Zoomers, born late 90s to early 2010s, and Alphas following them))?This was what a client wanted to know on a recent consulting call. I thought it might be worth expanding on this issue here.

Trust in media

On the call with my client, I made an argument about distance. That we struggle to trust things that are distant from us, whether that is in terms of geography, class and wealth, or experience. In the last few years, we have arguably seen the distance between us in these dimensions rising. Just a few days later, I read the transcript of a debate between the journalists Matt Taibbi and Ben Bradlee Jr about the death of mainstream media. In his closing remarks, Taibbi talked about the death of local news across the US. He pointed out that the the journalists lost with local closures were much closer to their readers than the writers on the nationals. These exulted spaces are largely populated by a homogenous bunch: white, upper-class (in US terms), Ivy Leaguers.If these people share few of your experiences and values - religion, politics, culture, education - it's hard to connect with them. It is even harder to trust them. What do they know? They're likely based hundreds of miles from you. Maybe thousands. So you'll never encounter them. And they will never encounter you.

Trust in politicians

It was hard not to think about our own House of Commons when listening to Taibbi's description. Swap Oxbridge for Ivy League and you're pretty much there.The distance between government and the rest of the population can be measured in many dimensions. The first is geographic. Though we've seen moves towards devolution over the last twenty years, these have been offset by the gutting of public services at local level. The result, I would argue, is that power and spending have actually been further concentrated in London. Certainly, I think it feels that way to many.Europe may have been the target of many people's ire in the Brexit vote. But I think that was a proxy for Westminster in many cases. Easier and more appealing to believe your power has been taken away by some nebulous foreign entity than that it has been simply shifted to your own capital.And people's individual power has been taken away. Or rather the power and wealth imbalance has increased. Look at any measure of inequality in the UK and right now we are at or near 40-year highs, with the exception of the peak in the 2008/9 recession.This combination of disenfranchisement and disempowerment is one of the core theses explaining the rise of UKIP and Brexit, and Trumpism in the US, where similar phenomena are visible.

Trust in experts

If this distance in geography, power and wealth explains a lack of trust in media and politicians, what explains our lack of trust in experts? Particularly scientists. Through the pandemic I have been dismayed by the scale of conspiracy belief, anti-mask and anti-vaccination protests. I wonder if this doesn't also come down to some form of distance.This is just a theory, so take with the appropriate care. But it feels to me as if the gap between common understanding and expert knowledge has increased significantly over the last few decades. Take physics, for example. Most of the physics that powered our world until the digital revolution was Newtonian. It all operated within the bounds of things we could see and feel. If you could understand an explosion, you could grasp the basics of a combustion engine, or even a rocket ship. Now most of the physics that makes the headlines is quantum. And as Feynman said in 1965, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."((Note: this may not have been true even at the time. Lots of people understand quantum physics up to the level of our current understanding today. But it remains incredibly difficult for the layperson to grasp - and I say this from experience))Even though more of us than ever go to university - over half of the population - the gap between basic knowledge and expertise feels like it has widened. And perhaps this rise has only reinforced for some their sense of exclusion from knowledge? How must it feel to be in the minority, not going on to higher education?

Trust in each other

This education inequality is just one of many gaps opening up in the population. Culture has changed fast in the last few decades, accelerated by the low friction production and distribution of new media, services and products. Not only is there perhaps now a widening gap between the expectations of parents and their children, there is also the potential for an increasingly large gap between social tribes of any age((Note I'm not saying that either of these gaps are at all time highs. The experience gap between those who fought in the Second World War and their hippy children would have been pretty extreme, for example. But it doesn't matter: wide and widening gaps drive conflict.)). Don't agree? OK Boomer.Nonetheless, there are still things that connect us. Any despair in the state of relations can usually be undercut by a glimpse at the Public Health England data from last summer, showing how many of us cared for our neighbours in lockdown.

The future of trust

So, where do we go from here? I confess, I am not optimistic right now. I see no political, social, or educational changes on the horizon that might increase our levels of trust in authority, or in each other. Though at the same time, there are some trends that suggest we shouldn't be too worried.Despite all the stories of corruption, the current government did very well in local elections this week. You may or may not like them, or agree with them, but trust in politicians clearly hasn't been that damaged by recent events. At least not in relative terms.Likewise, for all the vocal distrust in politicians and scientists over the vaccine, uptake so far is over 95%. Only some of those 5% will have failed to be vaccinated for ideological reasons. Distrust only stretches so far.  

All the world's a stadium and all the men and women merely gamers

The rules of the game of life are changing constantly. It takes strength to define your own rules. But as cultures fracture, we might need to find that strength."All the world is a stadium and all the men and women merely gamers."Sorry Will.With access to the real world restricted, I have spent a lot of time in lockdown playing in virtual worlds. I'm not alone. Spending on gaming leapt £1.6bn in the UK between 2019 and 2020, to £7bn. Game-related internet traffic in the US jumped 75% in just one week in March 2020. Oculus's Quest 2 - a device I have spent a lot of time with - has been a breakout VR success.When we talk about people spending even more time gaming and on screens, it doesn't conjure up the healthiest picture. And yet there is growing evidence that games - yes, even ones on screens - do us good. Games are the new playground for the young, the place they don't just test themselves but interact with others. Games themselves appear to have helped some people deal with lockdown better than their non-gaming counterparts.These though, are the games that we play consciously. One of the many draws on our time of which we now have a surfeit of choice. Though these are a big focus for me right now - a client has me thinking about the future of gaming - I'm also very interested in the games we don't choose to play.

The game of life

"Be a winner at the game of life,get married, have a baby!"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAvwGtRY7RAYou have to be of a particular vintage to remember that little ditty. In MB's defence, at least they showed the young girl getting the job and making the big bucks, and the boy holding the baby. That was seriously progressive for children's toys in the 1980s. Some would argue we've gone backwards since then.The reason this particular advert came to mind was because of some work I'm planning for an FMCG company. They're interested in different life stages and I wheeled out my idea about extended adolescence. If being a winner at the game of life means getting married and having a baby, then it is taking us all longer and longer to be winners, as average ages at marriage and first child continue to rise. What about all the people who don't do those things? Are they losers? And what are people doing throughout their twenties? Just playing?I'm being somewhat facetious: the rules of a 40-year old game aren't really the rules of life. But, it does illustrate how much the metrics by which we judge ourselves and others have shifted in that period. And how much they haven't. While some might be open minded about the time shift that has taken place in the key milestones of adult life, those milestones are still ranked above much else in the eyes of popular culture. What are you unless you have a good job, a home and a partner? And of course, kids. It's not easy to challenge expectations around any one of those, let alone two, three or four of them.Rather than removing these expectations, it seems we have just deferred them. And added in new ones to fill in the gaps. Social media has become the venue where we demonstrate our worth before the big milestones of life. Our holidays, our cocktails (guilty), our thigh gaps (not guilty). What we show and how many people see us do it are now the points we seek to acquire in the game of life.

Measuring impact

I have become a little too obsessed with online perception of me in recent years. There is a professional lens on this, as I have been chasing profile to win work. But it's hard for me to separate my professional and personal lives online, since I am to a large extent, the product that I sell. My search ranking, social media profile, and newsletter subscribers have been monthly metrics that I've tracked for the last three years. Only recently have I begun to question these metrics.The first note of caution came in January 2021 following my first truly viral tweet:https://twitter.com/bookofthefuture/status/1346916905500639232It wasn't really relevant to my work, but it took off more than anything I had tweeted about the future. It was thrilling watching the likes and retweets rack up. I thought about trying more similar tweets to attract such levels attention. But then I looked at the impact: had it driven more followers? A big uptick in web traffic? No. I looked at the profiles of other peoples with similarly viral tweets. Had they gained thousands of followers? Mostly they were still small accounts.Was the effort of trying to write more such tweets worth it? Probably not for the business.My scepticism increased over the course of the year. This, I'm pleased to say, has been an incredible year from a new business perspective. Both the scale of the projects and the nature of the brands I'm working with has been incredible. As has the total number of enquiries. What's driving it? Surely those metrics I've been tracking must correlate?Nope. All those metrics were pretty steady. I don't have all the data yet but my sense is that this additional work is not coming from social media but from much more old fashioned routes: primarily, word of mouth.

Stepping back

My kids have been complaining for some time that I spend too much time on Twitter. My excuse is always that it's important for work. Suddenly, I couldn't make that argument with any honesty. So last week, I took it off my phone. And what a release that has been.I've regained probably twenty to thirty minutes each day that I had been spending doomscrolling. I've dodged so many comments and opinions that would make me furious.Downsides? I'm less well informed about day to day events: Twitter has become my primary news source. But I am less distracted from deep research on the things that matter.

Social credit

I'm not the first to do this by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, I am very late to the party of people stepping back from being 'very online'. And I'm not saying I won't go back to Twitter on my phone (I still log in periodically on my laptop, but there, for some reason, the doomscroll temptation is less). I'm not immune to concerns about my social profile declining. I have an ego and it needs feeding.I am struck though by our willingness to submit ourselves to the evaluation of others through social media. Especially when in other parts of the world we already have examples of such profiles feeding into a more formal system of social credit.China's social credit system is not, yet, the terrifying digital panopticon of some headlines. But it is headed in that direction. An aggregation of data across social, payment, and governmental systems to benchmark the behaviour of citizens. It's easy to see it expanding out into the physical world, with algorithms processing camera data for small infractions: bad driving, inconsiderate parking, or jaywalking. Where here we enforce behaviours and to an extent, participation, on each other through social pressure and the hunger of our own egos, there both the pressures and the consequences look set to be much worse.

Making up the rules

Coming back to where this post started: games. There are the games we play consciously, and the games of life. The latter are becoming more game-like all the time. As we, as a group, get richer and focus less on survival and more on self-actualisation, so the rewards we seek are less physical (food, shelter) and more ephemeral (success and social approbation). The achievement of these things is increasingly 'gamified' through the application of psychological understanding to 'nudge' us into different behaviours - often using very game-like rewards. This is done by governments and companies alike. But we also do it to ourselves, subscribing to an ever-changing set of rules, created and managed by the shared consciousness of culture and society.Often these rules will change more slowly than our reality. It takes time for change to permeate society. So there will be a lot of tension between the rules and our desire to follow them, and the reality of what is best for us. Making your own rules, and defending them to the world takes a lot of strength. As does challenging the rules imposed by others, whether it's society or the state.I think this is a strength that many of us are going to need, particularly as our cultures fracture and become more diverse. 

If the future is female, then we need to deal with the past

“Ready or not here I come, you can't hide, Gonna love you and make you love me…”This song by The Delfonics came up on a play list the other day. And I realised just how creepy the lyrics were. I posted about it on Twitter and people immediately responded with other songs that were equally dodgy. One pointed to Roy Orbison driving all night to creep into a woman’s room. Another to Extreme emotionally blackmailing a woman into sex in More Than Words. And let’s not talk about the paedophilic overtones of The Knack’s My Sharona.We can dismiss these songs as just inconsequential art. Or as artefacts of the past. But they are a constant feature in our culture. And the lyrics of today’s music are no less troubling. These are earworms that constantly reinforce a set of cultural norms that continue to threaten women. That advocate for men taking what they want.I’m not arguing that we should ‘cancel’ these songs. But rather that we should hear them for what they are. That we should recognise what they are saying. And how resonant their messages are with some of the daily travesties that women face. Because men continue to take what they want from women.

Culture of violence

The story of Sarah Everard may have captured the headlines, but the Femicide Census shows just how common the murders of women by men remain in the UK. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. One in four women in the UK have been sexually assaulted. There is a 1.5% conviction rate for rape, and victims are treated abominably by the criminal justice system, leading many to avoid reporting, as responses to this tweet showshttps://twitter.com/C_Kneer/status/1374856134952108033Outside the criminal domain, women continue to bear the brunt of the labour of care and running the household. Women have been disproportionately disadvantaged by COVID in many different ways. It might seem jarring to place such a banal example next to the shocking crimes above, but one woman’s Twitter thread documenting what happened when she stopped clearing up after the male members of her family just illustrated the daily contempt that men often show women. Even the ones we love.https://twitter.com/MissPotkin/status/1372311382406889474

"Not all men!"

Accompanying the stories of both horror and domestic disputes have been the voices of various men. There have been some noble attempts to get men to think and behave differently. But they have been largely drowned out by the fragile egos chorusing “Not all men!” The whatabouterists complaining that women should also talk about male-on-male violence. And for the most part, silence.I understand that silence. And to some extent, the desire to shout “Not all men!” Because what is the alternative? It is to admit that even if we are “good” men, we benefit from women’s continuing subjugation. I find it difficult even writing that. But it’s nonetheless true. if I look back over both my personal life and career with real honesty, I can see multiple occasions where being a man has been an advantage. An advantage that only existed because of the continuing inequalities between men and women. An advantage offered to me daily in a thousand ways I don’t even see.That advantage may have had nothing to do with violence on my part. But it is intrinsically connected to the violence that others commit. And to the culture that continues to promote men’s right to take what they want from women. We must acknowledge that these things are connected and not discrete phenomena.We can celebrate the progress made on women’s rights. Universal suffrage. The Equal Pay Act. But we shouldn’t be under any illusion about just how far we still have to go. This is a long, slow change process and it remains slow because the status quo advantages half the population – the half that retains the balance of power. And because we reinforce the status quo through our media, unconsciously imbibing every day corrupt ideas about what constitutes a healthy relationship between the sexes.If we want the pace of change to accelerate, we need to challenge it all. At the very least, in our own minds.

When the flame goes out

A bit of a different approach this week. Thought I'd try my hand at a little future fiction. A short story. It's a bit 'on the nose' but I think you'll get the idea.This story was inspired by those questions we all get from our kids about old technology: "What's a record?", "Why is the save button that funny square?" etc. It got me thinking: what abandoned technology might kids be curious about in the near future?##The pop of the cork, then the wail of the smoke alarm. The two sounds followed one another so closely, I felt it must be cause and effect. It took me a few seconds to realise that my wine hadn't triggered the alarm. Nor was dinner burning. I hadn't got past chopping vegetables.Instead, the noise was coming from upstairs. That meant the kids.I dropped the bottle on the surface, and started to turn. Then instinctively turned back when I saw it wobbling in the corner of my eye. Having saved the wine, I raced up the stairs seeking the source of the smoke.What I found was just wisps. Barely visible. And my eldest daughter, standing on the landing, hands clamped over her ears, looking shocked and sheepish. Her younger sister hadn't even opened her door.Satisfied we weren't in imminent danger, I turned my attention to the alarm. "Move out of the way" I shouted over the noise. I grabbed a child-sized chair from the eldest's bedroom, giving me just enough extra height to reach the reset button.The silence brought relief. The adrenaline quickly started to subside. As quiet returned, the 8-year-old removed her hands from her ears."Do you know where the smoke came from?" I asked. She instantly dissolved into tears. "I'm sorry!" she pleaded.I pulled her into a hug and settled her. "It's OK. I just need to know what happened. You're not in trouble." She continued to sob, albeit less energetically."Did one of your farts set your room on fire?""DAAAD!!" she shouted. But she couldn't help herself. She laughed. And the tears stopped.She wiped her face on her sleeve. "Come and see." she said.I followed her into her room.There, on the floor, was a log. More of a small branch really. Two feet long and about the same diameter as her arm, but twisted and gnarled. It was old, bark-less and so dry it was almost white. She had brought it back from a walk a few weeks earlier and insisted on keeping it, lugging it up the stairs and nearly taking a number of pictures down along the way.One of the hollows in the log was dark and sooty. Next to it lay a straight stick, around which was wrapped the string of a plastic kids bow. The sort that fires darts with large suckers on the end. The straight stick was also blackened at one end.I was stunned. I felt anger rising. But I was also curious. And impressed. I knew what she had been doing. I had learned about this trick on a survivalist YouTube channel as a kid. The bow allows you to spin the stick to create friction on the larger piece, starting a fire. I had tried this trick many times and barely got the stick warm before I gave up, arm aching. Without the interruption of the alarm, she would have succeeded where I failed."Were you trying to start a fire?""I just wanted to see what it looked like!"This stunned me again. I was speechless as I tried to turn back through eight years of memories. Surely she had seen fire?Slowly I ticked off the many ways she might have experienced it.No gas hob. That had gone in the early thirties when we refurbished the kitchen. All domestic gas had been phased out a few years earlier and it didn't make much sense to cling to the dead technology.We had a wood burner in the living room. But those had been all but outlawed in the twenties. Actually, the laws banning them didn't come in until the thirties but you risked social censure from the local clean air campaigners if they saw smoke rising from your rooftop. And the stats weren't good on what they did to people inside the house either. So the only light in ours now came from a big string of fairy lights stuffed inside the cast iron casing.But she must have seen fire somewhere, surely?Bonfires? Maybe not. Bonfire night had increasingly been 'fireworks night' until those were banned after a series of accidents, including the high profile injuries to a popular influencer. With drone displays, laser shows and holograms taking over from the fireworks as the main attraction, people just stopped building bonfires either at home or for big displays. The risk - and the insurance - just wasn't worth it. I'm sure we went and saw a real bonfire when she was young. But maybe she was only two? She wouldn't remember now.Candles then. Sure she must have seen birthday candles? But no, I realised. We'd had the same set of LED ones for probably ten years now with their archaic little USB charger.No-one smoked actual cigarettes any more. At least, no-one we knew. And the clean air rules meant no-one burned garden waste. Not here in the city.So no. At eight years old, our daughter had probably never seen a flame. Not that she could recall."Dad?"I snapped out of my reverie."Do you still want to see fire?""Won't the alarm go off again?""Not in here!! Please tell me you will never, ever try to start a fire in here again. There's a reason we have alarms for that. It's incredibly dangerous.""Okay, okay!"She looks like she will cry again."But I think you should see fire. Come outside?""But it's bedtime!""That didn't stop you trying to burn the house down."At this point the younger child pokes her head around the door. A smoke alarm couldn't pull her out of her cosy bed, but the promise of being up after bed time is clearly too good to miss.The three of us head downstairs and put on shoes and coats. I head down into the cellar and find my father's old blowtorch - still miraculously with a little propane in the tank. I'm not messing around with rubbing sticks together.We head out to the back yard and I place the gnarled log on an old paving slab. The girls squeal and recoil as the blowtorch ignites. As they look on, I point the torch at the log. Under this assault it bursts rapidly into flames.The three of us stand there, transfixed and silent, as it is consumed.