KerryJ's Neotenous Tech

Predicting the future accurately is possible, so says Daniel Burrus, author of Flash Foresight: How to see the invisible and do the impossible. I’m only in chapter 3, but I’m so excited I want to get down my early thoughts now. There WILL be more posts, I can predict that already. ; ) Predicting the future is possible – you just have to know where to look. Obviously, knowing your field is important — but most times the experts get it really, really wrong. General Motors for instance. Here are some early brain dumps: Hard trends v.s soft trends – cyclical and linear hard trends vs. short term soft trends – not every third American is an Elvis impersonator, despite the seeming statistical “trend” from the growth in this profession from 1977 to 1982. Changes in tech WILL happen — there are 8 “pathways of technological advancement” — dematerialization, virtualization, mobility, product intelligence, networking, interactivity, globalization, and convergence — and three accelerators: processing power, storage and bandwidth. These are hard trends. The SOFT trend is – who is going to actually DO it? Be PRE-active – anticipate problems before they occur, rather than PRO-active, dealing with a problem in its early phases. The 2006 Tsunamai was predictable – earthquakes happened prior to – and right before the tsunami hit, the ocean receded. A British schoolgirl, Scottish teacher and an aboriginal tribe all saw this and knew that when the ocean recedes notably – it’s gonna make a comeback. His discussion of what’s happening in tech already and what’s on the horizon is jaw-dropping. Here are his trend predictions for 2011, what are you and your organisation doing about these? What am I going to do about these? http://www.flashforesight.com/trends-for-2011/

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