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.  

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!

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.

Review: A New History of the Future in 100 Objects

The interplay between science fiction and reality is a constant one. Fiction pushes the boundaries of possibility. It opens the minds of many thinkers who go on to turn some fraction of that dream into reality, through science, policy, or activism. But science also inspires the writer to take a glimpse of the future and flesh it out into a full-blown virtual reality.Adrian Hon’s New History of the Future in 100 Objects plays back and forth constantly along that line between fantasy and reality. The book is exactly as the title describes. 100, sometimes interconnected vignettes of the future, centred around particular objects, memes or movements. Written from the perspective of a museum curator in 2082, it never stretches the bounds of scientific or societal change beyond the plausible. Though in some ways that makes it all the more terrifying.

Projecting our trajectory

The book was originally published in 2013, but this new edition from MIT Press brings it bang up to date, with 20 new or heavily-updated objects and edits to connect the stories to our current times.Unlike a science fiction novel, the stories in this book are not pegged to a single period. Rather they have been gathered by the fictional future curator from our next sixty years. This starts in the current period – brave for any futurist – and unfolds in time order towards the curator’s present day.The topics addressed are broad: food and faith, earth and space, love and crime. But all are anchored in an understanding of both humanity and technology that gives them that scary believability.The stories are anchored too, in the prevailing technologist obsessions of our times. Transhumanism, universal basic income, and planetary terraforming feature strongly. It is presented as ultimately optimistic but not everyone would have a positive interpretation of such ideas. There are strong feminist critiques of the ‘brain in a jar’ basis of much transhumanism. UBI can be argued to be extended life support for consumerist culture. And many would argue our right to begin transforming the solar system having wrecked our corner of it.But as I frequently have to explain, the role of a futurist is not necessarily to describe the world we want to see, but the world that we do see. This book is an exploration of our current trajectory, more than an attempt to define an alternative.

Sketching the boundaries

As someone who spends their professional life engaged with futuristic ideas, both in fiction and in fact, many of the ideas described here are familiar. But most will find this a book packed with novelty. As a vehicle for expanding your thinking, pulling off the blinkers and opening your mind to the possible, it has incredible power. It should be required reading for anyone struggling to imagine a social, technological, and political landscape beyond these times. And for anyone who wants to understand the potential consequences of our current path.Order Now from Amazon

#AskAFuturist: What have you been most wrong about in the past?

The inspiration for this post comes from James Saye who responded to my #AskAFuturist thread on Twitter with this question: "What have you been most wrong about in the past?"The short answer is that I got lots wrong, particularly in the early years when I was less cautious about making actual predictions (this is a surprisingly small amount of the work of a futurist). But having analysed why I was wrong, there is an incredibly consistent theme. I don't think I have been very wrong (if at all) about *what* is going to happen. But I was consistently wrong about *when* it would happen. And always in the same direction. I was too positive, or optimistic.It took me a few years as a full time futurist to learn this lesson, and it was part of the thinking that went into High Frequency Change. There are many factors that get in the way of possibility becoming reality.But you don't care about theory do you? You want to know when I was wrong! OK. Let's dive in to some examples.

Wearables? Ahead of their time

For the first two or three years I was working full time as a futurist, I was consistently underestimating the time it would take for technological possibilities to become everyday realities.Take this example from an interview I did with CNBC back in 2014. Here, I was rather forward in predicting the uptake of wearables. Sure, the smartwatch has been something of a success (Apple alone now sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry), but wearables are not yet truly ubiquitous. And the smart glasses I could see coming back then are probably still five years away.Do I still believe that we will start to use other devices as our primary digital interface? Absolutely. A small cloud of connected devices can provide a much lower friction interface to our digital world if their interface is truly intuitive. But right now, the experience still isn't that slick, even with the Apple Watch. And charging it remains a bit of a commitment.We'll adopt more wearable tech when its use is just natural. Take the smart shoe inserts I reviewed a few years ago that connect to your navigation app in your phone and tell you when to turn left or right without looking at your screen (themselves worthy of a retrospective blog post at some point). At some point I think we will have more tech like this that takes advantage of our other senses, other than sight and sound, to subtly feed us information. But such devices being so ubiquitous as to be a normal part of your everyday trainers? That's still some time away.

A smarter office? Not yet

How about this interview I did with CNN, also in 2014, about the future office. Here, I am incredibly optimistic about the timeline for some technologies: eye-controlled cursors, smart glasses, and VR video conferencing. All of those are here of course. They were here in some form in 2014 when I did the interview! I had (and must get back from the person I lent it to), a USB eye-tracking interface from a company called The Eye Tribe, that was already pretty slick. But slick enough to replace (or augment) the mouse or touchscreen? Not quite yet. But I think we'll get there, even if it is just part of the smart glasses that I still think are coming - eventually.Hey, at least I was sceptical about implanted microchips...

3D printing

I've written in the past about one of my most optimistic moments about the pace of change: my conviction that a lot more stuff will be 3D printed. This seems to make so much sense rather than manufacturing for an uncertain market on the other side of the world and shipping finished goods at great expense - both financial and environmental. If we can manufacture on demand, then we should. You can read the full article here. TLDR: there are many barriers but eventually additive manufacturing becomes a lot more mainstream in (the alternative to) mass production.

The end of Facebook

Perhaps the timeline I have got most wrong is around the decline of Facebook. Based on this post I was already predicting its decline back in 2011! The gradient of that decline has been a lot shallower than I expected. It continued gathering users in new markets even as it lost them in others, and it made the transition to mobile better than expected. Still, one day it will be eclipsed - not necessarily as a company, but as a network.

Back to the theory

The lesson I learned from all this, is that it's not enough for things to be possible, or even highly desirable for the relevant audiences, in order for them to happen. There are many social, cultural, legal, financial, and behavioural barriers to change. These are much harder to predict or even understand than the primary drivers of scientific possibility and objective benefit. Or in short, it's much easier to predict what will happen than when it will happen. These days I am much more cautious about the pace at which things change. Hence, in High Frequency Change I tried to analyse some of the factors that inspire and delay change, making that more nuanced argument about what moves fast and what doesn't.What is important when developing strategy though, is the possibility of high frequency change. As the current crisis has shown, there is enormous value in preparing for accelerated change rather than optimising completely for your current environment. This is a theme I return to in my next book, Future-Proof Your Business. Watch this space... 

How I can help you if your event is cancelled due to coronavirus

Lots of my clients are calling and mailing to cancel upcoming events, for obvious reasons. Everyone wants to postpone but let's be frank, that won't always be possible. We won't have twice as many people to attend events in the second half of the year, or twice as many venues. So while postponing is obviously the ideal situation, it is worth considering alternatives. Here are a couple of suggestions based on my recent experiences.

Do it digitally

Yesterday I was due to speak to an audience at a local authority as part of their internal strategic and management development programme. I had created a 90 minute workshop covering the basics of applied futurism, athletic organisations, and the critical future skills. This is content that I have only ever delivered face to face. But for obvious reasons, they had to cancel the big gathering. Rather than try to postpone though, they moved the session to one that was all digital.Everyone dialled into a session run on GoToTraining that I delivered from my workshop at home in Manchester. I confess this was a little daunting at first. I'm used to feedback from the crowd. I couldn't quite see how it would work without that face to face interaction.Do you know what? It was brilliant. For a start, more people turned up than had been expected for the face to face event. And throughout the session, the engagement on chat was amazing! Not only could the participants chat to me, but they could chat to each other, sharing ideas as the session spurred them. The client told me afterwards that in the 15 years she had been working with that leadership team, she had never seen them so engaged!Obviously I would like to take some of the credit, but I think the format can really work as well. And at much bigger scales than I expected. We had 72 people in this session and they could all participate if they wanted to, whether that was on chat, polls, or in the exercises I set them as we went through.A week ago I would have been very sceptical about delivering talks and workshops down the line, but now I am a confirmed fan.

One to few or one to many

My session was interactive with a medium-sized group, but there's no reason you couldn't live stream to many more. If you're organising an event for a corporate or conference and want to talk about my experience of doing it digitally, then drop me a line. Happy to share what I can of what worked.

Turn it into a content programme

Events are just one form of content. If you can't get people together, and you don't think digital will work, then maybe turn your event into another form of content. Especially if it is for something time-sensitive, like a product launch.I have worked on a few incredible content marketing programmes recently, including Auto Trader's Future Car project and the Future Pizza project to launch the Big Bang Fair.The Future Car project combined an in-depth analysis of the future of the car over the next three decades, backed with a round of broadcast interviews that I gave to support it. (There are advantages to having 14 years and a few thousand appearances behind the microphone). The story went truly global with coverage in Nigeria, Malaysia and Portugal as well as on BBC News and in many of the national papers. You can find more information at https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/features/cars-of-the-futureThe Future Pizza project was slightly different. I was commissioned to work out what the future pizza might look like, with our recipe (involving insects) turned into a video and a PR campaign. This again caught attention around the world, including from Germany's biggest science show, Galileo, who came to Manchester to film me making the future pizza. Again, the story was picked up by many of the national press. You can watch the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEJpSLyUQsM

Get the message out

If you are worried that your marketing campaign is going to suffer because of the event shutdowns, maybe think about a future-focused content campaign? Drop me a line if you would like to chat through some ideas.

#AskAFuturist: Will we ever have driverless cars?

Will we ever have driverless cars? In my #AskAFuturist thread on Twitter, Ian (@ianeditz) asked a rather more negative version of this question: "Why will we never have driverless cars?" Ian is a sceptic when it comes to the idea of autonomous vehicles. In this post I will explain why he is right to be sceptical, but ultimately why cars will indeed drive themselves.

The case for scepticism

A truly driverless car, or autonomous vehicle, must be able to pilot itself in all conditions, with or without passengers. This means every street scenario, from a four-lane highway to the narrowest and busiest city street. And it means every weather situation, from three feet of snow to the glaring sunlight on a mid-summer's morning. If you think this is simple, then you underestimate the incredible capabilities of the human brain, body and senses. We are unbelievably good information processors. We filter huge numbers of signals from the noise around us and react constantly with small adjustments to our speed, road position and more. Replicating and even beating human capability in controlled road conditions is within the bounds of current technological capability. But doing so in a range of conditions to which humans so readily adapt, is much, much harder.So, before we can have truly driverless cars there is first of all a technological challenge to overcome. Can we equip the vehicles with an array of sensors, and a digital brain to process their output, that is better than humans?

Better than human

The key word in that last sentence is 'better'. Autonomous vehicles don't just have to be safer than humans, they have to be much safer. Perhaps an order of magnitude safer or even more. Because from their inception they are fighting a very natural fear in us: the fear of giving up control. It is scary to consider being in a vehicle that can move at life-threatening speeds and that is constantly making decisions about your safety and other people's around you. Every time an autonomous vehicle fails and someone is injured or killed, the date by which most people will accept riding in an AV is pushed back. And sadly, this will happen many more times.This is before we even get into the issues of security. What's scarier than being in a rogue driverless car? Being in one that someone has deliberately hacked to cause harm. Right now car manufacturers are some way behind the curve on internet security. Lots of vehicles have shown themselves to be highly hackable. In fact the very nature of current vehicle electronics, using lots of components, both critical (e.g. the throttle) and non-critical (the stereo) interconnected over a relatively simple networking system, opens itself up to hacking.

Red tape

Because of the incredible risk to life that autonomous vehicles represent, they will naturally be covered by extensive legislation. This will take a lot of time, as legislation does, however much ministers might like to announce programmes of support for the technology and the companies building the cars.The legislation will undoubtedly require insurance cover that is somewhat different to what is required today. That too will take time for the insurance industry to organise. But who buys that insurance? Is it the owner of the vehicle? If so, what grounds do they have to be confident in the algorithms doing the piloting? So, is it the manufacturer of the car? Chances are that they may have bought in all or part of the software running the system, as well as most of the components that make up the sensors and systems on which it runs. So we have a complex chain of liabilities. This is true today, it just gets more complex when a human isn't in charge of the vehicle.It gets even more complex when you look at the trends in car ownership that are likely to be accelerated by autonomous vehicles. In short, most of us are likely to slowly move to greater reliance on fleet services like Uber rather than car ownership, especially in large cities. Car ownership seems to be losing prestige amongst young people who are learning to drive later and later. They are choosing to spend their money more on things to do than things to own (the subject of a future #AskAFuturist post). If a car can be at your door in minutes whenever you need it, and you don't get to drive it anyway, why own one?

The case for the defence

Given all of these good reasons to be sceptical, you might rightly ask why I am so confident that we will - eventually - have self-driving cars. This comes down to four things: culture, cash, safety and good old-fashioned human laziness.

Culture: do we even want cars anymore?

What I mean by culture is that we care less about cars now than we did a generation ago. They aren't the status symbol they once were. And in the context of a changing climate, owning a car - particularly a fast or extravagant one - is looking more and more like an unnecessary luxury, even an insult to your neighbours. I'm still a bit of a car nut but I recognise that fewer and fewer people share my passion. Self-driving cars allow us to get away from car ownership without requiring the large scale investment in public transport, cycling infrastructure, and city redesign that I would love to see, but do not see coming any time soon.

Cash: human drivers are expensive

The second point is more about the wider economy than cash in your pocket, though a subscription to a fleet service could be much cheaper than car ownership. Especially with economies of scale if most people go down that route. Human drivers cause accidents and traffic jams, which cost the economy and the tax payer an awful lot of money. I believe it is inevitable that self-driving cars will eventually be a lot safer than human drivers, saving us all a lot of money - and time.

Safety: computers don't get distracted

That leads neatly to the third point: safety. Of course the greatest cost of failures by human drivers is not financial but the cost of lives, blighted and ended. Self driving cars will be, statistically, a minimum of ten times safer than humans. Probably at least 100 times safer. The lobbying power that will be brought to bear by road safety campaigners once a direct comparison is possible will be hard to resist.

Laziness: we like low-friction lives

Finally, there is good old fashioned human laziness. We have strived for a few million years to apply technology to take friction out of our lives. And what could be more appealing than a service that whisks you from one destination to another with barely any interaction required? Ultimately I think this leads us to overcome our fear.

So, will we ever have driverless cars?

Yes. But, it's going to take a long time for all the reasons that Ian is right to be sceptical. Longer than people think. I don't think the technology will truly be there for a 'Class 5' self-driving car that can operate in all environments and conditions until the end of this decade, and I think it will take a few years after that for all the legal and legislative wrinkles to be ironed out. Along the way, sadly, I'm sure more people will be killed by autonomous vehicles that aren't quite there yet. There will be a public backlash against them. But ultimately, we will accept driverless cars because they make us richer and safer, and allow us to be lazier.##(A reminder at this point is worthwhile, that this is not what I want to be true but rather what I see happening. I can think of better alternatives but that's not the question I'm trying to answer).

Why High Frequency Change doesn't affect everything

In my book, High Frequency Change, I laid out the argument for why we feel like change happens faster now. According to a poll of over 2,000 adults I commissioned from YouGov, 69% of people feel like change is happening faster now than 20 years ago. Some things clearly are moving at an incredible pace. But you only have to look around to realise that somethings have changed very little. High frequency change doesn't affect everything - at least not at the same time. Beds, baths, and buildings for example. Or clothes, schools, or shoes. There have been marginal changes in all of these. Some of them have even felt quite dramatic. But they largely look and operate as they did twenty years ago, unlike say, television, music, or personal computing.What are the differences between these different domains? Why are some subject to high frequency change and others not - or at least, not yet? There are a few damping factors that slow the frequency of change in a domain. These include:

Capital

Change can be expensive. Sometimes it is hard to raise enough capital to drive change through, especially when the industry you want to disrupt looks firmly entrenched and it is hard to make clear the scale of the opportunity. Construction is a good example. There have been changes in the materials used over the last twenty years and in some of the building techniques. But nowhere near as radical or as widespread as they could have been. There are other factors at work here (culture, safety), but capital is one of the most important. Building is expensive, and it is a relatively low-margin exercise. If you want to disrupt the construction industry, you have to convince someone to give you lots of money and to do that, show that you will make much better returns than the established competition.

Regulation

Big companies frequently rail against 'red tape'. But behind the scenes they are frequently lobbying for more of it. Why? Because it makes it harder for new entrants into the market to compete. Compliance is expensive, and that's before you get into regulations that specifically require a level of financial stability to even compete for contracts. Regulations are rarely there to protect incumbents. They often have good purposes, like protecting the consumer or government procurers. But they frequently operate to entrench incumbent positions and defend them from disruption. The more highly-regulated a market, the less likely it will be affected by high frequency change. Just look how long it took for digital challengers to begin to disrupt the established players in retail banking - somewhere that there was clear opportunity and disgruntled customers.

Centralisation

Control of the primary and secondary education system in the UK is highly centralised. Too centralised, I would argue. The result is frequent upheaval driven by political whim but not what you could call high frequency change. There is too little opportunity for small-scale and high speed innovation, and for that innovation to then spread from school to school. It happens, but the changes tend to be marginal rather than revolutionary. Centralisation where there is true power at the core, is a good defence against high frequency change. Though that's not always a positive...

Culture

People can block change. Because it scares them or because it disadvantages them, or because they're just lazy. I don't buy into the idea that humans intrinsically hate change. I just think that by the time we're in our 30s or 40s, lots of our experience of change - particularly in the workplace - has been more negative than positive. Instinctively rejecting it is a learned response. When you get an alignment of the powers in a company or industry, all of whom feel they would be disadvantaged by change, then it can slow that change dramatically. But it tends not to stop it. Rather, when the change comes, it is all the more dramatic. I think there is some argument this happened in local authorities. There were lots of good reasons to make quite dramatic changes pre-austerity that had been deferred. Austerity forced them through. I don't think this is an argument that austerity was somehow a good thing or ultimately necessary: the ideal would have been reforms without drastic cuts to public service. Instead, people were able to make the case that austerity was a necessary shock to local authorities because of the reforms it drove through.

Scientific Progress

Sometimes there is no good alternative to displace the established product or service. Beyond marginal changes in mattress materials and duvet filler, there has been very little change to the bed in a hundred years. But what would you change? No-one has invented a different way of sleeping. Same for the shower. Ultrasonic showers are fine for science fiction but they're not a realistic alternative to a good old spray of water just yet.

Safety

Sometimes people are conservative for really good reasons, particularly when established procedures and processes are there for reasons of safety. It's hard to change a tried and trusted design when you know alternatives might kill people. That means it takes a long time to gain support for any change. These are some of the main reasons that high frequency change doesn't affect everything. But there are more. Ultimately most barriers to change will fall. If enough fall and if there is enough connectivity and innovation in a market, it is likely to be subject to high frequency change.

Five trends for the 2020s

What are the five trends for the 2020s that will cause the greatest change in the next decade? The five trends by which businesses will live or die. Or by which governments might rise or fall? I have been tracking these trends for the last five years. One of them was the basis for my first book, High Frequency Change. I strongly believe that these trends, as they clash with global pressures like climate change, will drive the greatest change in almost every aspect of our lives, in the next ten years.These five trends for the 2020s are all indirect effects of technology. That doesn't mean that these are technology trends. They touch every aspect of our lives from healthcare to housing, employment to education, finance to foreign affairs. Technology takes friction from our lives and our work. It allows information to spread faster and further. Technology lowers the barriers to entry to markets. And it enables every human to do more. This friction-lowering effect is continuous and irreversible. And it is therefore important that everyone understands what it does to our companies, our organisations, our careers and our lives.These five trends for the 2020s are how this friction-lowering affects our lives and our work. Therefore they show what you can expect to see in the next decade.

Trend 1: The spreading impact of High Frequency Change

When friction falls it allows a higher rate of change. This does not mean that everything changes faster: the grand arc of history continues on its steady, low frequency way. But overlaid upon it are harmonics of high frequency change. These are most visible in those domains where there are fewer dampeners to slow change down. These dampeners include capital requirements (if a market is expensive to get in to), regulation, and innate human conservatism. In the past I have written about high frequency change being visible primarily in popular culture or consumer electronics. But increasingly I see it in politics, in regulated markets like finance and banking, and even coming to extremely conservative industries like construction. Ultimately, every dampening effect is overcome, if there is pressure for change.Therefore, the first of my five trends for the 2020s is the growing impact of high frequency change in a wider range of domains. You can expect continuing volatility in our politics. More big, established names will be disrupted and displaced from their dominant market positions. And you can expect to see some things that haven't changed for decades suddenly be transformed.

Trend 2: More intermediaries feeding on the choice explosion

Low friction means lower barriers to entry. This inevitably means more competition in any market. That creates more choice for the consumer, whether in a personal or corporate context. This in turn puts pressure on price and service, ideally driving one down and the other up. But it also puts pressure on the buyer. How do you choose when your options seem almost infinite?As choice grows, it gets harder for buyers to find the right sellers and the right products. Inevitably we therefore see new intermediaries coming into the market to do the matchmaking. So the second of my five trends for the 2020s is the growing role of intermediaries. In the next decade, there will be more and more services to help us choose, whether it is insurance, energy, TV shows or breakfast cereals. And more and more of these matchmakers will be robots, not humans. Or they will be combinations of the two. You can expect to outsource more and more of your decision-making to machines. In fact, you will just forget about a lot of decisions as they are made on your behalf. If you can afford it, you will place a growing premium on advice with a human face as more and more services are purely digital.

Trend 3: A nation of iron men and women

Technology is really a long word for tools. And tools amplify our strength in particular areas. In the 2020s, three classes of tool will take human strength to new heights.The first class is physical. Strength and endurance augmentation will become increasingly a normal part of work wear and even clothes. From passive reinforcement of joints with smart materials, to active strength enhancement with exoskeletons. Expect to see these deployed not just in the military but on construction sites, in warehouses and elsewhere as the price comes down.The second class is cognitive. Our brains have long been augmented by technology. But we have little awareness of it. In the 2020s our augmentation goes up but our awareness falls even further as the interface between human and machine becomes so slick as to be invisible. At home and at work you will be increasingly reliant on machines to do your thinking for you. That might sound scary but it should free your mind for more productive and creative tasks. Though there is a huge risk to privacy. Drugs too will play a part. Get comfortable with pills to boost your brain power.The third class is where cognitive and physical augmentations combine into automation. There will be more and more embodied devices in the 2020s, acting autonomously in the physical world, whether they are cars or drones or household assistants. They won't be cute like R2D2. But they will be functional and they will change the employment environment and our streets. Note: I don't expect full autonomy in cars until the end of the 2020s at the earliest. There remain technological barriers, but more importantly, legal, cultural and business issues to overcome.The third of my trends for the 2020s is human augmentation. Over the next decade we will be increasingly bionic.

Trend 4: Now, now, now

In the 2020s we will get even less patient, if you can believe it. There will be growing counter-trends to slow things down as a result. But overall the trend will be for everything to accelerate.Trend 3 will somewhat insulate us from this. Much of the high speed traffic of commerce and consumerism will increasingly be between machines rather than humans. All we will see is notifications that things have been done in the background.  But where humans are the interaction we will have less patience with any delay. This has big implications for streaming and gaming, customer service, ecommerce and deliveries, and physical retail.The responses will include increasing levels of personalisation (balanced with the demand for privacy), accelerated networks (5G and fibre), and a growing role for automation and AI assistants.

Trend 5: Everyone is a corporation

Lowering the friction in communications and business interactions allows you to build businesses differently. Companies no longer need to sit under the same physical, legal or financial umbrella to be efficient. Instead you can assemble a network of smaller corps, freelancers and partners to meet the customer's needs. This is increasingly the model for tomorrow's business: networks, not monoliths.The ultimate expression of this is the growing prevalence of freelancers, corporations of one. In the 2020s, we will see more and people put a corporate wrapper around themselves, whether for their full time employment or as part of their side hustle. Freelancers, already a growing population, will grow even further. Most teams will have a proportion of flexible labour on them, allowing the company to scale up and down, and bring in expertise as required. And networks of collaborators will become increasingly competitive against more established business models.

Five trends for the 2020s: hope and fear

So, that is my five trends for the 2020s. Expect to see more high frequency change beyond social media and consumer electronics. Expect the explosion of choice to drive a subsequent explosion in intermediaries, middle men and women. You will be more a cyborg in 10 years than you are today (though you are already bionic). The one bit of you that won't be augmented is your patience. And more than ever you are likely to work for yourself.It is going to be a difficult decade in many ways. We live, as they say, in interesting times. But there are great opportunities as well, for us as individuals, as organisations, and as a race. Let's hope we can take them. 

3D printing might still change everything

I wrote in a recent post about how predicting what will happen is easy, but predicting when it will happen is hard. Here's a very personal example: I thought the 3D printing revolution would be much further along by now. I even said as much on national radio, on new years day in about 2016, from memory.What I mean by the 3D printing revolution is a fundamental change in the way we produce and buy physical goods. Everything from clothes to cutlery, to consumer electronics. Right now, most of our goods are produced in giant factories, or networks of smaller ones, on the other side of the world where labour is cheap, or raw materials are accessible. They are then shipped or flown to us to trickle down through a network of distributors, wholesalers, brands and retailers, before landing in our homes or on our person.The possibility with a new range of manufacturing technologies is that instead of shipping finished products we ship a smaller range of base materials that can be transformed into products by machines driven by digital patterns. At home or in local bureau, the raw materials are transformed into the goods we want. The potential advantages? Lower environmental costs, reduced waste, total personalisation, easier recycling. With the right technologies in place, and the accompanying shift in economic power and consumer culture, we could see a very, very different - and arguably better - world.I didn't think we would be there now. But I thought we would have taken the first step. I thought basic 3D printers would have become more reliable, and cheaper, so that they were as common as inkjet printers in your average family home in the late 90s/early 00s. This hasn't happened.The price has fallen, for sure. You can now get a basic 3d printer for around £100, and a good one like my own Creality CR10S Pro for around £500. But 'good' for 3D printers remains a relative term. They still require a lot of fettling to print reliably. The process for turning out goods is nowhere near as accessible as say, desktop printing, even though great strides have been made with incredible software like TinkerCAD, Fusion360 and Cura. The finish on these goods is often still rather rough. The 3D printer is still not a mass market machine, as evidenced by the curiosity that is engendered in people when I tell them the noise they can hear in the background of our conference call is something printing.And yet, the potential is still there. And my enthusiasm for it has been renewed by a recent side project.

Keeping your data on site

The world of home automation enthusiasts is up in arms at the moment because many of the big software and hardware companies involved keep changing the rights of developers to connect in to their home automation devices. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the means by which one piece of software can talk to another, are getting turned off and breaking what might be years of hard work from the open source community. At the same time, these companies are often selling services that rely on our personal data being stored on their servers, sometimes with them having rights to use that data for targeted advertising or other analysis.In a recent example, Google announced it would be turning off the Works with Nest programme by which my thermostat talks to the rest of my home. From August, I will no longer be able to automatically turn the heating down when the alarm is armed, or control it from the same panels from which I control the rest of my home*. This is a problem only for those at the intersection of privilege and geekery, but it has offended many.The result is that more and more enthusiasts are turning away from any product that relies on cloud-based software beyond their control, and looking for alternatives. There are many great software alternatives, like the incredible Home Assistant project. But there are fewer options in hardware.So having refreshed my 3D design skills (I originally studied Mechatronic Engineering), I set about starting to design some. The first project has been a network connected camera to replace the ones in my cloud-based alarm system. These are different from your average camera because they have a physical privacy shield that slides into place when the alarm isn't armed, removing that sense of being watched in your own home. I wanted to replicate this, so designed a camera with a rotating shield driven by a small servo. The whole thing is powered by a Raspberry Pi and should be assembled for under £50 if you have the requisite skills. It's still a work in progress but when it's a little more polished I'll move all the code and design files to a shared repository so that it is updated as I make changes, and post a full build guide.

3D printing: not just geeks

Right now my little creation is only of interest to geeks like me. But building it has shown me that while my expectations for 3D printing may have been optimistic, we're not that far off. It's very easy to see that in a few years, devices like this could roll off a 3D printer with all of the required wiring embedded, have a standard microprocessor added (it could be programmed on the same machine that builds the body), and you have an instant piece of custom consumer electronics. Since anyone can share a digital design at nearly no cost, the range of options could be nearly infinite. A ratings system could ensure that you only print things that work.This isn't a new idea but it's one that still excites me, and it's one that I can see being realised in some form in the future. Just not quite yet. *Google has since relented, allowing people like me to keep their developer accounts for the time being.

Predicting the future is all about time

Predicting the future is easy. Some things will clearly happen eventually. The hard part is predicting when they are going to happen.There is a set of forces that are not immutable, but that are at the very least, slow to change. These forces drive us in particular directions. Some of these forces spring from human nature. Some from the fundamentals of our current economic system. If you understand properly where we are today, and how these forces drive us, then like a sailor plotting a course driven by the prevailing winds, when predicting the future you can make a pretty good shout about where we might end up.This rather Newtonian approach to predicting the future doesn’t work for everything. It’s much better at the macro than the micro. But it is this approach that tells me that at some point, machines will replace humans in a lot of jobs. It underpins my long term optimism but also drives my short term pessimism. But it does very little to tell me when things will happen. Because time is beyond the control of these primary forces.

Predictions of the past

If you look back at the predictions of the past – ones at which we frequently laugh – I often find that what they got wrong was not the destination but the journey time. The paperless office? It’s coming, but slowly. Office paper sales are dropping about 2% a year, or they were the last time I spoke to someone in the industry about it. We probably won’t be totally paperless (or near enough so as not to count) for at least a decade or two yet.What about flying cars? We’ll get there in one form or another over the next few years, though they won’t be mass market items for a good few years after that – if ever. They will exist, just not on the timescale any previous forecaster expected.Could we have had flying cars before now? Or the paperless office? Both were plausible, if we had improved certain technologies more and adopted them faster. But the speed at which we make the relevant research leaps, development investments, policy shifts, and cultural adaptations to certain changes is deeply unpredictable. Because they exist in the realm of human collective behaviour with a multitude of conflicting forces. To come back to my ship analogy, we can see the start and end points and plot a rough path, but there is a storm along this path. How long it takes the ship to navigate that storm is deeply unpredictable.

Scenario planning

When we cast out into the relatively far future, say 30 years and beyond, we can make some assumptions that whatever the scale of the storm, some ships will have navigated their way by this point. We’ll often be wrong though, which is why when looking to the far future we often imagine multiple scenarios.Looking to the near future, we can see our ships emerging from the storm. We can see where they have already made port, to stretch my analogy even further. The industries and sectors and aspects of life that have already been touched by these new trends or technologies. Our challenge is to understand when they will reach our particular sector, the one for which we are trying to make predictions. This is why we look for pressure points, the issues that determine how great the impact of the incoming change might be on our target sector or organisation. The more disruptive a change is likely to be, the more attention we must pay it. 

Let's play Fear of the Future BINGO!

We all fear the future, to a greater or lesser extent. You can be an optimist, like I am. You can embrace change and new experiences. But I've learned over the last few years that everyone has a few issues about the future. And some people have ALL of them.In a radio interview this week, I encountered a wonderful woman caller who managed to embody pretty much every classic fear of the future. So thought I'd list them here. Which ones do you suffer? And which can you recognise in others? What have I missed?

I can't learn anymore!

"It's all changing and I don't understand these gadgets! What about people like me? Old people who just don't understand it?"This is not an unfair complaint. Change forces effort on the part of the people it affects, and often those people are out of practice at learning new things. But these are the people for whom change is probably most important, as long as their ambitions stretch beyond managed decline. There is evidence, albeit limited so far, that cognitive engagement later in life can slow age-related cognitive decline. In short, always be learning."I've spent years learning how to do this and now you want me to learn something else?"Yes, I'm afraid we do. Or rather the world does. The impact of high frequency change on the employment market, let alone automation, means that people will need to constantly learn new skills and propositions throughout their careers. No-one is spending 40 years down a coal mine anymore, or even 40 years as a solicitor, without learning a lot of new skills. 

It used to be better!

"We didn't used to need all this technology just to talk to someone..."That's because you only knew about 100 people who lived in your village, or suburb, or worked at the same place. Personally, I quite like living in a global village."Life was much better without all this..."Without wanting to sound like Steven Pinker, it really wasn't. If your metrics are anything reasonable -  infant mortality, for example, or chances of a violent death - things are much better now (for particular values of 'now'). History is always viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. That's not to say some things aren't worse. Whether it's increased incidence or reporting (likely both) we're in the midst of a mental health crisis. And climate change sucks. But in the absence of a time machine, the only option is to look forward. 

THEY are taking everything!

Sometimes it's the government spying on us (note: they are). Sometimes it's Silicon Valley tech moguls stealing our data and selling it (note: they mostly aren't - we're giving it to them). Sometimes, it's just barely-veiled racism. But lots of people are scared of a future where someone else 'wins'.This comes down to a classic factor of human psychology: our success is always relative, not absolute. This is, in part, why more equal societies are happier: the smaller the differential between us and everyone else, the lower our anxieties about our own achievement. Note this goes both ways: as headlines about benefits cheats show, we're as concerned about people much poorer than us apparently getting something for nothing, as we are about the disparities between us and the super-rich. Perhaps more so.But there's also truth in this fear: other people are going to do better out of the future than us, and there are absolutely risks to our own privacy and wellbeing associated with the behaviour of governments and tech moguls. Unfortunately we rarely focus our ire on the right people, or with sufficient impact. 

Think of the children!

"They don't go out and play anymore, they just sit on their screens all day. It's BAD for them!"Even the responses to this wail are now cliched. It's the argument that probably gets me the most heated but I find myself simultaneously getting a bit bored of my response: "No, there's actually no science behind 99% of those headlines you read. Yes, you should be restricting their screen time. If you're not, or you don't feel you can, the screen probably isn't the underlying issue..."This argument is almost always a proxy for our own fears and lack of understanding. Focusing on the children adds emotion and makes us feel righteous instead of scared. Instead, we should embrace our fear and either get comfortable with our ignorance or start to learn. I'm not saying that's easy. For many it might be impossible. But there are many who make their living or just their five minutes of fame from spreading outrage. And they can frankly pipe down. 

You can't trust SCIENCE!

From a very early age we are taught to be equivocal about our belief in science, as a process and as our aggregated understanding of the universe. Alongside physics, chemistry, and biology, we're taught that a burning bush spoke, a man rose from the grave, and that the world was made by a man with a beard in a few days. If you believe these things, as metaphor or actual reality, you can't deny that they would all breach the laws of physics. Laws that are constant in every other scenario. Science and religious education may no longer have equal weight in the curriculum, but we still devote time each day to collective worship. Every day, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the school, we teach children that science isn't always right.I believe this is part of the reason that we seem to be so confident challenging reality later in our lives. "Vaccines? Don't believe in them." "Climate change? All a big conspiracy." The world is round? NASA made it up."Science tells us scary things about the future. Things we need to deal with, not run from.

I don't wish to be dismissive of people's fears of the future. As I've tried to show above, some fear of the future is justified, and some fears are rooted in our childhood. I share some fears: I often say I'm, a long term optimist but a short term pessimist. I don't fancy the next 20 years much from an environmental or economic perspective. But we have to tackle our fears with a rational approach. And sometimes we just have to accept that it is us that needs to change.

Applied Futurism in 2019

2018 was a big year for me, so I took an extended break over Christmas and New Year to refresh and recharge. Now I'm ready to kick off what promises to be another exciting year. No views or insights in this post, just a few things to be aware of if you're interested in applied futurism in 2019, and what I do.Here are a few things you can expect to see - or that you may have seen already.

Tom Cheesewright vs Book of the Future

When I started this business, I didn’t honestly know what it was going to be. But I knew that I wanted it to be a company built around ideas and processes – something with a product – rather than just an extension of my personal brand. Hence for the first five years I presented myself as a founder of an applied futurism ‘practice’, with the expectation that through either employees, or more likely franchisees, I would build something that I could grow and perhaps ultimately, sell.One of the great things about having a good team around me is that they will tell me when I have got things wrong. In late 2018, thanks particularly to Penny Haslam, and the Nothing But Epic team, I accepted this was the wrong approach.Book of the Future was a cute name for the blog I started back in 2006, but it didn’t really mean anything to anyone. It was my name people saw on stage and on telly, so it made much more sense from a marketing perspective to amplify that brand. It also means we can condense all the various websites I was operating down into one – now here at tomcheesewright.com.I will still be looking to grow the business through the franchise model, teaching and licensing my toolkit to others. But I have now accepted that my brand is stronger than the business I was trying to build (something that is hard to swallow for someone with rather British instincts about showing off*). My futurism in 2o19 will be entirely under my own name.

Finally, an actual book

The timing of the switch to a personal brand is rather ironic: just as I stop branding my business as ‘Book of the Future’, I have finally finished my first book. High Frequency Change will be published in June 2019 by LID Publishing. It’s with the editor now and so far, so good. Watch this space for news about launches and availability (it will be in shops as well as online and digital). For those that are really keen, we’ll have a pre-order page up soon.High Frequency Change collects a lot of my thinking about the way the world has and changed, and continues to change, with an emphasis on explaining the sense that many people have that things happen faster now. I try to qualify this idea, addressing the flaws in the classic accelerationist arguments (‘everything happens faster now’) and the frequent critiques of this theory (‘change has always happened fast’). More importantly, I try to help people and organisations respond to this sense of acceleration with practical tools and ideas to help them to be more agile and resilient in facing change.Expect to hear more about this throughout the first half of 2019.

More courses in Applied Futurism in 2019

In 2018, I started offering a one-day course in Applied Futurism to people in leadership, management, strategic and marketing roles. It's an evolution of the course I was teaching through the University of Salford but with a greater emphasis on simple, highly-usable components that you can apply in day-to-day business. The first course was very popular, so this year we will be running it four times, with dates to be announced in London and Birmingham, as well as Manchester.Here's some feedback from the first course:"The workshop was really useful. I enjoyed the day immensely and picked up some great tips and techniques to help me apply futurism in both my own role and across the business. The discussions and examples around the slide deck were invaluable and I’ve already started analysis work that I hope will help get our business using new technologies in better ways to provide us with a competitive edge."If you're interested in attending the course and learning applied futurism in 2019, drop a mail to Rachel at rachel@bookofthefuture.co.uk and she will give you the details.

Increasingly International

2018 was a year of travel for me. I spent time working in Paris, Barcelona, Toronto, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam and more. Already this year I know I will be returning to Boston and Barcelona and have enquiries from all sorts of places across Europe and the US.What has been absolutely fascinating is how well ideas that were developed from a very UK/US-centric perspective have translated. There are clear cultural differences to account for, and I have work to do to expand my range of reference points so that they work for a wider audience. But fundamentally the principles of applied futurism that I have developed over the last few years resonate very well with most people.Where there are clear differences in where high frequency change has struck already and where it is still to come in different industries across the world. I'll be writing about this soon, based on some observations from time spent in Germany.

How will 2019 be different for you?

2019 is likely to be a year of great disruption, not only because of Brexit on the horizon and the run-in to the next US presidential election. Some of you will already have been facing this year for nearly a week, but it's still early and there's still time to take a step back and do some thinking. I'd urge you to focus first not on the coming events themselves, but your tools and processes for thinking about them. How do you collect information from internal and external sources about coming events? How do you build a coherent picture of what that means for you? How do you develop and enact a response? How is this communicated across the organisation and to partners and customers? These are the key business questions for applied futurism in 2019.Establishing good processes for dealing with change events is vital in an age of high frequency change, starting with the process for how you see them early. Do it now, under the guise of your Brexit preparations, and build yourself a toolkit for future resilience, not just a one-off response. *Yes, I know, I do enjoy the sound of my own voice and I'm not exactly shy. But more American-style self-promotion still makes me wince at times.

Who answers the questions that futurism raises?

There’s a small product design company in Manchester that has designed a $5 solar light. Developed for Yingli Namene, affiliated with one of the world’s largest solar panel manufacturers, it is now being sold in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia by SunnyMoney, the social enterprise created by the charity Solar Aid.

Why is this light important?

Because it offers an extremely low-cost alternative to kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps are widely used by the nearly 600 million people across the continent of Africa who don’t have access to electricity. Kerosene lamps are dangerous, dirty and expensive to run. Solar lights are free to run, totally clean, and give much better light.Why mention this light? Three reasons.First, this story highlights just how much of a role geography still plays in determining the macro factors that influence your future. This is Gibson’s quote about an unevenly distributed future made very real: while I’m writing about having a robot control my lights, for others the challenge is getting any electric light at all.Second, because it neatly captures some of the ‘supermacro’ issues that affect the big picture of everyone’s future: poverty, inequality, climate change, and of course, technology. While geography remains a huge determinant of the pressures affecting your future, these supermacro trends are playing out in different ways across every continent.And third, because of what it represents: a solution to a well-defined problem — something that I know I can’t deliver.

Answering the questions you raise

Applied futurism provides great tools for questioning the future. And for laying out possible routes to answer those questions. It can even offer a framework for the type of organisation most likely to recognise the right questions early and answer them quickly.But there is a limit. Nothing in the toolkit addresses solution design or implementation at anything beyond the surface layer.If futurists — I and other users of the toolkit — are going to help people answer the questions they raise, then they need partners. People who can follow questions through to a practical answer. Like the $5 solar light.inventid & Future Product are the first partners in what I’m loosely calling my 'Labs' — a collection of formalised partnerships with organisations and individuals who can help clients pursue practical answers to the questions raised by futurism.inventid is an award-winning industrial design studio working in product, packaging and customer experience. Based in Manchester, UK and working with international partners, inventid believes thoughtful design transforms businesses and improves quality of life for people and our planet.Future Product is a spin-out project by the two founding members of inventid and additional board member Kevin Smith. Future Product uses design to activate technology, helping partners understand both the market gaps and operational threats technology presents. Without design, technologies that start in the lab stay in the lab. Future Product was started to help emergent ideas crossover into everyday life more quickly, helping them make better sense to customers, investors and mainstream media.I’m really excited to be working with these teams and we’re already speaking to clients about potential joint projects.I’ll be adding more partners this year and looking for other projects with my clients where they can really make a difference.

When driving faster, look further ahead

The faster you’re travelling, the further ahead you need to look. When we get behind the wheel of a car, we all do this automatically.

But we don’t seem to do it in business.

The reality is that all of us in business are travelling faster now. We may not notice it. The effects are subtle. There are no trees whizzing past the window to give us the impression of speed. But it’s there. Information flows faster. Disruption happens quicker. You can see it in everything from the speed of the delivery to your door, to the turnover on the stock market.

This places an imperative on every business leader to look further ahead. Not necessarily at the far horizon — the rate of disruption is so great that it is further clouding that already-unclear picture. But certainly beyond the next quarter or year.

Expand your field of view

Not only do we have to look further, we have to expand our field of view. To return to the driving analogy, we’re not on a long, straight motorway. We’re crossing a constant stream of intersections. Industries are colliding at an unprecedented rate. The threats to the safety of our journey do not come from our competitors coming up behind us. They come from the unexpected entrant to our lane, veering in from elsewhere.

Few — too few — leaders have gotten to grips with this new reality.

From a vision to a mission

I confess a level of self-interest here. This is what I do. I help businesses to see the future and expand their field of view. It’s called Applied Futurism. I’d like to do it for you. But even more, I’d like you to do it for yourself.

Because this belief in the need to look beyond has gone beyond a business proposition. It has become a mission.

I genuinely believe the way that most people do business now is broken.

Firstly, we spend far too much time worrying about our competitors. To return again to my driving analogy, this is like watching your rear view mirror instead of the road ahead. You’re so focused on who might overtake you that you miss the turning that could put you on a much faster route.

Secondly, we spend all our time focused on incremental improvements when there’s an existential threat around the corner. This is like concentrating on your fuel economy when there’s a crash in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a few more MPG than your peers if you’re all headed for a pile-up.

Be a futurist

I can’t fix every business. But I can share what I’ve learned in the last five years, working with organisations around the world to address these problems. That’s why I now license my knowledge to consultants and business leaders, so that they can address these problems in their own businesses and those of their clients. And I teach the tools I I’ve created to professionals on one-day courses at the University of Salford.

In fact, we’ve just announced new dates for the course. You can find out more about the course at https://www.salford.ac.uk/onecpd/courses/futurism-for-business. And if you’re interested in the tools, check out https://futurism-tools.com.

Whether you choose to use my tools or not, I’d urge you to do this: next time you get in the driving seat of your business, stop and look up. Look ahead, not one year but two, three, five. Look around. Look to your left and to your right, at your customers, at the businesses you interact with at home and think: what could these people, their processes, their technologies, do to my industry and my business?

Look ahead and then act. Make change. Steer around that potential crash. Be the first to take that new route.

Futurism is strategy and storytelling

The team at my new marketing agency tell me that people don’t know what futurism is, let alone ‘applied futurism’.

I think they’re probably right.

What is futurism to you? (Please don’t say ‘a fascist art movement’).

For me, it’s about two things: strategy, and storytelling.

Futurism is strategy

My friend, former colleague, and creative problem-solver extraordinaire Phil Lewis of Corporate Punk pointed this out to me yesterday. When I look back at everything I’ve written about applied futurism, it turns out I’ve always been saying this, but never clearly or explicitly enough. Futurism is strategy.

Strategy is a long term plan built in the face of uncertainty. The tools of applied futurism inform that strategy and clear some of the uncertainty. That’s perhaps why many of my customers are people who are fearful of the future, either for their company or their industry. A smaller number are excited about the opportunity.

Futurism is storytelling

Whether you want to compel people to follow your strategy, or whether you simply want to show some thought-leadership on the issues of tomorrow, you have to translate your vision of tomorrow into a story. This is a crucial part of futurism and largely explains the remainder of my customer base: brands and marketing agencies who are looking to say something new.

Futurism is the writing and telling the story of tomorrow’s strategy. But it appears I still need to work on the story of futurism.

The art of the probable, the possible, and the desirable

‘The art of the possible’ is a phrase historically associated with realpolitik. It has come to mean ‘achieving what we can (possible), rather than what we want (often impossible)’. But as this piece in the New Statesman points out, it was once used a little more optimistically as a challenge to aged ideas.

For me, science is a much more optimistic ‘art’ of the possible than politics. It explores the boundaries of what the laws of physics permit us to achieve, pushing back those boundaries with knowledge all the time. Inside the envelope defined by science, everything else comes down to choices.

The art of the probable

What, then, is the art of the probable? What shapes those choices inside the bounds set by science?

For the most part, it is money. What is most profitable, or affordable, seems to be the greatest predictor of what will be. Technology drives change, but the direction of that change is largely steered by financial considerations.

There are, of course, other motivations — moral, emotional, environmental. But in our capitalist economy, and (still) reasonably stable democracy, dominated for most of the last thirty years by a particular strain of economics, money tends to drive what’s next.

The art of the desirable

Whether I'm writing or speaking, this reality often causes people consternation. They confuse what I believe will be the case, with what I would like to be the case. They confuse futurism, with politics — the art of the desirable.

You can’t eliminate politics, or personal bias, from your perspective. That’s why I do my best to systematise my analysis. But it will always be, to some extent, subjective.

Arguing for what you would like to see is the job of a politician. I can do that, but it’s not what people pay me for. They pay me to try to be objective about what I think — given all the factors — is possible or likely to happen.

Until the dominant political ideology goes through a major shift, that will largely be a case of understanding how economic factors shape choices within the boundaries defined by science.

How (and why) to be an applied futurist

Futurism is not an innate skill. It is a process that can be taught and learned.Most futurists, or futurologists, have made this a career out of a fascination with the future. And, because they have the confidence to tell the world that they are taking this, so far, unusual path.But there’s a problem with this: I think we need many more futurists than we have. Put simply, the world is changing faster now. (You can read a more nuanced version of this argument here).

Three challenges of a faster world

In a faster-changing world, organisations need three things to succeed.

• To see what’s coming, early enough to act
• To respond at speed, translating foresight into action
• To be inherently agile, designed for this rapid response

The people who provide these capabilities to organisations are applied futurists.

Futurism is central to sustainable success

Futurism can no longer be an occasional exercise, dreaming about a distant tomorrow. It has to be a constant and vital part of management and operations for any organisation with an expectation of sustainable success.For that to become a reality, we need may more people trained in the tools of futurism and equipped to deliver them, either inside their own organisations or for others.This has become my mission in the last few years: to build an army of applied futurists capable of creating real change.(Note the addition of the word ‘applied’ to ‘futurist’. There is a technical meaning to this word, but its real importance is that it signifies that this is about making change today, not tomorrow. That it is about reality, not fantasy.)

The Mission

How do I go about fulfilling this mission? Two ways.Firstly, I created the Applied Futurist’s Toolkit, a set of answers to the three things organisations need. This is a set of step-by-step instructions on how to see the future, how to share that vision, and how to build an agile organisation.Secondly, I’ve started teaching these tools, in partnership with the University of Salford.For anyone who wants to be an applied futurist, whether to aid their own organisation, advance their career, or deliver new services to the clients, there are now clear steps to take.Will you take them?

The Victorian Arrogance Trap

Back in 1899, Punch magazine carried a satirical sketch looking at the coming century. In it a genius enters a publisher's office seeking a patents clerk, only to be told: “Sir. Everything that can be invented, has been invented.”This quote has since been attributed to various real-life characters with (it appears) very little evidence, and used to support the popular idea that the Victorians, in their arrogance, thought they had invented everything.You can see why a piece of satire became accepted as fact. The idea has the ring of truth to it. Walk around the cities of Manchester or Liverpool and look up at the architecture from the turn of the century and it is brimming with confidence. The preceding 100 year period had seen incredible progress — the industrial revolution — utterly transforming the UK. To live then, assuming you were reasonably well off, must have felt like you’d arrived in the future.I think we all fall into this trap sometimes. As I pointed out in my last post, it’s hard to imagine just how much life could yet transform. And yet we know so very little.I’m reminded of this every time I listen to an episode of Radiolab. Podcasts are one of my primary sources of information. The means by which I try to stay abreast of a lot of areas of science and technology with very limited time. One of my absolute favourites is Radiolab from public radio in the US.A recent episode carried the story of giant viruses, a class of life that has been around for millions of years but that we only discovered since the turn of the century. The discovery of this new class of life that shares traits of both viruses and bacteria shows how many biological things there likely are still on this planet that we haven’t yet witnessed. The gaps in our knowledge of the physics of the universe are greater still. And the things we have yet to invent using that knowledge, near limitless.A recent episode of another of my favourite podcasts, The Infinite Monkey Cage, guests discussed the possibility that we may well be the smartest beings in our galaxy, based on the lack of evidence to date of other civilisations. Whether or not that’s the case, when measured against the number of things we don’t yet know, we should be very humble about our achievements so far.

The Future of Moore's Law

Apparently AMD sees the end of Moore’s Law approaching. While the law may cease to be true in the strictest sense, I believe like many futurists that the spirit of the law will continue. The future of Moore's law is about a continuing growth in the bang for buck that computing delivers.

Nanometre hurdles

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, never intended to create a ‘law’ in his own name, he merely observed that the number of transistors on a silicon chip was doubling approximately every two years. This was way back in 1965, and the trend he had observed stretched back to 1958. Amazingly this statement became a ‘law’ because it remained true and continues to be so right up to the present day.Now we are constructing chips with such tiny components — working on a process at 22 nanometres, the width of just 220 helium atoms — that we are coming up against the limits of the laws of physics. AMD is struggling to shrink its transistors to this scale and beyond, though its main competitor Intel seems confident it will get down to 14nm and even 10nm in the next few years. The slower transition to 22nm is effectively breaking Moore’s law, at least for AMD.

Eventual expiration

Moore’s Law was always going to expire eventually. There are only so many transistors you can cram on to a chip however incredible your technology. But to understand the spirit of the law you have to go back to what Moore originally said: he wasn’t talking about what was technically feasible, but what was economically feasible. Now if you accept that transistor count used to be a reasonable analogue for computing power, what Moore’s Law really represents is that computing power per pound increases exponentially.Of course the measure of computing cost is not only the unit’s acquisition: you need to consider its power consumption. This too though has been falling exponentially. We can now deliver more computing power per pound and per watt than ever before. Continuing the trend is a challenge but you only need to look at initiatives like HP’s Moonshot to see the gusto with which it is being attacked (think of Moonshot like Southampton’s Raspberry Pi ‘supercomputer’ on a grand scale). After all, no-one would bet against there being a big market in the future for the infrastructure behind all internet services.

Future of Moore's Law: Continuing exponential

Ultimately we will reach the outer limits of what can be achieved with silicon. Physicist Michio Kaku predicted some time ago that we will reach that limit by the middle of the next decade. Though this may slow our ability to increase absolute computing power for a short time, it is unlikely to diminish our ability to refine the production processes and hence further diminish the financial and energy cost of each unit. And beyond this there are a number of candidates on the horizon to replace today’s silicon chips.Many people believe that Moore’s Law or its successors simply cannot continue: exponential growth would ultimately end up consuming everything in the pursuit of computing resource were it to continue. But some don’t rule out even this extreme future. In Charles Stross’ visionary novel Accelerando, humans (or our information-based descendants) begin to demolish whole planets and asteroids to support the manufacture of ever greater volumes of ‘computronium’ — smart matter — the substrate on which their pure-intelligence life form exists.That today though is the stuff of science fiction, outside of the 20 year window in which I choose to operate. Suffice to say, within that time frame I certainly don’t expect the rate of growth of computing power per watt and per pound to diminish. The future of Moore's law is safe, in spirit if not in specifics.