It was a frenzy of activity as workers scurried from office to office, making their final checks, gathering books, papers, and personal belongings. Many were still stunned over the announcement that Google was closing its doors. The final minutes before the deadline were reserved for tearful hugs and remorseful goodbyes, but for the people of the world these brief moments of stunned silence would soon be replaced with long term anger and outrage.

A mere three weeks earlier this one-time tiny search engine company that overnight had grown into a goliath on Wall Street had appeared to be an invincible force on the global business stage. But now after wave upon wave of well-orchestrated attacks, the giant corporation had fallen to its knees, and in true medieval form, endured the equivalent of a public beheading of its data, its once stellar revenue streams, and its corporate integrity.

Teams of their best data-smiths and strategy people worked around the clock to plug the holes in their sinking ship, but were woefully unprepared for this kind of assault. After weeks of sleepless nights, witnessing one crippling blow after another, a grim new reality began to take hold. In the end, all data had become mangled to the point where it was irretrievable, and all backup systems suffering a similar fate.

TV cameras from around the world watched in horror as a single hand reached up and turned off the final power switch.

With the power turned off, an eerie silence filled the room.

The former giant of global business had breathed its last breath. This was the day that Google died.

Major System Flaws

The picture that I’ve painted above is a scenario designed to both shock and alarm you. While it is still only a fictional account, it is indeed a real possibility. It may not happen this quickly, or in this fashion, but it is possible.

Recent announcements from Google about massive attacks by Chinese hackers and stories about cyber criminals hijacking over 75,000 computers in one large-scale attack have left us feeling less than secure about our data’s future.

While I have focused on Google, there are many other corporations at risk, and the risks involve everything from the loss of individual jobs to the economic stability of entire nations.

Our governmental systems are evolving at speeds that are exponentially slower than the businesses that use them. They are ill-prepared for the sweeping pace of change and ill-equipped to handle the disruptive forces intent on exploiting every loophole.

Who Owns the Data?

Currently the vast majority of “humanity’s data” lies in the hands of individual corporations. Companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft have staked their future on the value of the information being collected and archived in their datacenters. They have created the systems for collecting it, and have invested heavily in vast server farms for storing it.

However, if one of these corporations ceases to exist, what happens to all of the information currently residing on the servers?

Thinking long-term, and knowing that only a very small percentage of companies survive long enough to celebrate their 50th anniversary, let alone their 100th or 200th, how much of this information will still exist 200 years from now?

What will our great, great, great grandchildren know about us? Will they even know we existed?

It’s easy to make the argument that information created “by the people, for the people,” should be preserved through some form of public ownership. But that doesn’t make sense in our current state of the world.

No global entity currently exists with the credibility and resources to take on this kind of task. Putting it another way, there is no global entity that would be able to align itself with the speed, creativity, and evolving nature of the private enterprises that create and use the data… without meddling with it.

The Evolving Nature of Data

For the past several decades the format of digital information has been evolving – from 8” disks, to 5.25” disks, to 3.5” disks, to CDs, stick drives, tape drives, and more. Few of these formats will still exist even 10 years from now.

One of the ideas behind cloud computing was to free users from the ever-changing nature of storage devices by using remote storage in server farms far, far away. Changes that happen inside the server farm will then be invisible to the end user.

Even though the clouds will be invisible, each of the clouds will be owned by individual companies.

As I have mentioned in a previous article, we are not likely to see an end to the evolving nature of data storage for over 100 years, so there is no end in sight.

What Information is Worth Saving?

One question I wrestle with frequently is the questions, “of all the information we are creating, what should we be saving?” And perhaps more importantly, who gets to decide?

It’s easy to argue that much of what is being posted on YouTube and Facebook is simply crap. It holds no long term value.

However, when we see archeologists fretting over hair, bone, and pottery fragments from centuries ago as they try to puzzle together information about past civilizations, we can argue that today’s “information fragments” hold far more value, and even the meaningless, mindless, and boring stuff will retain tangential significance.

Do we know now what information will be valuable in the future?

The Question Remains…

How then do we create a long-term strategy for data preservation, and by long-term I mean 1,000 years or more?

The information volumes in storage today are sure to be miniscule when compared to the massive volumes being collected in the future. Not only will we be collecting raw data on virtually every living and non-living object on the face of the earth, but we will be creating information about the information.

As an example, the flight patterns of individual flies or insects may be layered with a system for detecting pattern anomalies to determine if the insects are growing in intelligence over time.

Information about the information can easily dwarf the size of the original data by a factor of a thousand, even a million.

Another critical element in this conversation is the overall cost of data storage. The cost of storing an individual document is just a fraction of a cent, and continues to drop. However, when trillions of documents begin to multiply exponentially year after year, the cost becomes huge.

IDC is predicting that the cost of powering data centers around the world will reach $40 billion annually by 2012. How long before that number doubles, triples, or quadruples? When do we reach a point when we can no longer pay the bill, or can we invent some revolutionary storage system that is a factor of a million cheaper than what we have today?

Building for the Future

As we look at the directions we are headed in, the trend lines are being red-flagged with ominous signals. In addition to the volume and cost issues, the ownership question is sure to haunt us for many years to come.

However, what we are trying to build is something truly impressive – the greatest data archive in all history.

Before the Internet, mankind’s greatest data storage archives were physical storehouses like the fabled Library of Alexandria and today’s Library of Congress.

The coming era of cloud computing is being designed around super-intelligent communication systems that will make information extraordinarily pervasive, incredibly fast, and amazingly cheap. It will serve as the foundation for literally millions of new businesses.

The challenges, as I have pointed out, are huge, and detractors are quick to zero in on the pitfalls. But if not the cloud, then what? What is plan B?

In our current state of technology the cloud looks rather primitive. Some of the industry leaders see it as a Model-T holding together a network of BMWs. But that will change quickly.

In the future, the cloud is where the people will be. It will become mankind’s most valuable resource. Storytellers will refer to it as the mythical city in the clouds or perhaps describe it as the proverbial cloud with a silver lining. But in the end, we will find a million new ways to leverage it, capitalize on it, and integrate it into an inspiring future world that most will be proud to live in.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The smell of corruption is offending more than few nostrils

Recent attempts by Congress and the Federal Reserve Board to curb the excessive fees being charged by credit cards, banks, and finance companies have resulted in a punitive industry response with interest rates and fees climbing in almost every category. This action has resulted in nothing short of a full-scale revolt by a victimized-feeling public.

Consumers are slamming on the brakes. Revolving credit — largely made up of credit card debt — fell by nearly 20% in November, the largest drop on record, according to the Federal Reserve. Through October, the number of new credit card accounts dropped 46% from October 2008, according to Equifax.

“Washington doesn’t get it,” said one DaVinci Institute researcher. “People now view banking and credit cards as some of the most corrupt industries on the planet. The length to which they are willing to abuse their own customer base to improve profits is astonishing, and congress has been condoning this practice for years.”

The smoldering flames of animosity behind the credit card backlash are being fueled in part by an equally malicious banking industry. Controversial banking fees have fattened banks’ bottom lines at the expense of our most vulnerable consumers.

At first glance, the arrangement posed by banks seems reasonable enough: Overdraw your account, and the bank will cover the transaction — for a fee. Problem is, consumers don’t get a choice in what transactions get covered and how the fees get assessed. In recent years, as bankers have begun to drool over how lucrative these fees can be, they’ve devised even sneakier ways for consumers to overdraw their accounts, to the tune of $36.7 billion in revenue last year.

Banks have done this by covering debit card transactions as small as $1 and charging a fee as high as $39. Some also charge fees before consumers are overdraw by deducting a purchase when it’s made, instead of when it clears. The timing trick alone has been worth billions. And they’ve nefariously learned to order transactions from highest to lowest dollar amount, emptying consumers’ accounts quicker and trigging more overdrafts.

On average, consumers will pay a fee of $26.68 every time they overdraw their account, according to data from Moebs Services, an economic research firm. That means that if consumers overdraw their account by $100, they’d pay an annual percentage rate (APR) of 696%, if the credit is paid back in two weeks.

Another casualty of this war is declining credit scores. From the 3rd quarter of 2006 to the 2nd quarter of 2009, the number of consumers considered “deep subprime,” with such low credit scores they qualify for credit only at steep interest rates, if at all, rose from 34.4 million to 39.8 million, according to Experian.

While lending companies are quick to say they have no incentive to lower credit scores, they indeed do. Lower credit scores mean higher interest rates and potentially higher fees.

As the burden of repayment climbs, higher risk individuals paying a higher interest rate will have a higher default rate. Higher payments increase the likelihood of failure. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, when an industry can point and say, “I told you so.”

Yes, the interest rates, overdrafts, and declining credit scores are fueling calls to reform the entire industry. But banks and credit card companies form a powerful lobby, and as distrust over any action taken by Washington grows, and campaign contributions are being dangled by the industry to blunt the outcries for reform, consumers are left with few options and have resorted to taking matters into their own hands.

The backlash is in full swing. Credit cards are being cut up, houses are being walked away from, and the industry is now left holding the bag. In the process, few tears are being shed over industry losses.

So where do we go from here?

Major industry players have set themselves up as easy targets. In the midst of this chaotic backlash lies some tremendous opportunities, and smart entrepreneurs will figure out ways to capitalize on them.

The cornerstones of the next generation financial service industry will be based on attributes like trust, openness, ethics, and credibility. Players that base their company on these founding principles will quickly gain favor among fee-weary consumers.

Long-term winners will forego near-term profits in favor of establishing themselves as a major contender.

Credit cards will be replaced with a variety of easy to use, bank-on-a-chip devices, complete with biometric security and the ability to monitor account activity real-time. Other devices will give consumers real-time access and monitoring of their own credit report.

Look for foreign banks and foreign credit card companies to make a serious play. Some will even come with easy forms for establishing a foreign corporations through which your money can be channeled.

In the end, consumers are okay with paying small fees and service charges. But when customers feel victimized by the companies who have been placed in a position of trust to guard and protect their money, change is inevitable, and it’s happening now.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

In the end, its less about the device and much more about the interface

Over the past couple decades the World Wide Web has been growing by leaps and bounds with huge amounts of new data being added on an hour by hour basis. Accessing this information, however, has always required an interface device which has traditionally been the computer. A computer was a computer and for most of us if we had a screen and a keyboard we were good to go.

However, as gamers are quick to attest to, there are huge differences in the gadgets we use to interact with the data, and these gadgets often determines the speed, ease of use, and even our willingness to interact with it.

Until recently, the push among device manufacturers has been to create one awesome super cool piece of equipment that could do everything, although nothing particularly well. That, however, began to change when Amazon and Sony started getting traction with their electronic book readers.

The reason book readers began to catch on was because they provided a better user experience. The way a person reads a book is vastly different than the way they interact with a computer. People who studied the humans-to-book interface realized that generic computers provided a rather poor book reading experience and that if a specialty device were to be constructed, it would open the doors to very niche marketing opportunities that were currently getting lost in all the noise of Web.

They concluded that the optimal book interface would have to be a book reader with a paper-like reading surface that allowed people to read for long periods of time while lying in bed or sitting on a plane without the slightest hint of eye strain. It needed to have wireless download capabilities, batteries that last as long as the person doing the reading, the flexibility of changing font sizes, making notes, marking up the pages, and saving the changes for later access. It had to be light and portable, and to really make serious inroads, it had to be less expensive than a computer.

With Amazon’s success in selling the Kindle, others have been quick to jump onboard with their own book reader products. Recently my wife Deb and I visited several dozen of the companies who were launching new book reading gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. (Notes on these companies below)

What’s most important to understand here is that Amazon didn’t just create an opening for book readers. They proved a market for many other single use devices, provided they have a superior interface than multi-use devices.

With this idea in mind, I began to think through the world of possibilities, speculating on the next big idea for single use devices, and what the applications might be. I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface, but here are a few ideas that came to mind:

• Airline Booker: Travelers in airports have a tough time accessing the Web. Currently it is very difficult to use an iPhone or Blackberry to surf the web and make an airline reservation and airports tend to be a rather unfriendly setting for someone sporting a laptop. The trend here will be toward branded airline bookers with names like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia taking the lead. Individual airlines like Southwest, United, and British Airways will be quick to follow, with some offering free devices to their “gold club” members.
• Day-Trader Portfolio Manager: People who have money to invest are often too busy to sit behind a computer monitoring the minute by minute changes in a stock. They need a device that is lightweight and portable with super fast access to specific pieces of data. Perhaps what’s most critically important is a feeling of control where the user has the feeling that they are in command of any given situation. Again, look for branded devices to surface with names like Ameritrade, E*Trade, and Charles Schwab.
• Courseware Taker: Students immersed in online education know the current limitations of sitting behind a computer all day. And the people creating the courses know all the limitations of channeling a learnable experience through the Internet. People who carefully study the student-learning interface will quickly find hundreds if not thousands of ways to improve upon it. These improvements will then manifest themselves into a device that is lightweight, portable, and inexpensive, with book-reader screens and audio-video capabilities that allows students to do all the things they like to do on the side.
• Health Checkers: Our ability to understand the inner workings of our bodies is creating a greater need to monitor and manage certain conditions. Athletes in training, people with restrictive diets, and those with diabetes, heart problems, and other reoccurring conditions are all seeking more timely information as well as access to solutions, experts, and the location of nearby medical facilities should problems occur. As a way to extend their brand, look for HMOs and insurance companies to put their name on these devices to create a branded health experience. Future heath care companies will be judged by the devices they offer to their customers.
• Facebooker: Many social networkers don’t want to be left out of a conversation, not even for a little bit. Devices for managing multiple accounts, allowing for quick audio and video segments to be both produced and reviewed, may unlock even larger audiences. Although some believe the world revolves around Facebook, the interface will also need to accommodate other social networking platforms like MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and much more.
• Buyer-Seller Device: People who engage in online auctions know the importance of a timely bid. Others who are involved in buying and selling products online have an ongoing need to stay plugged in to the marketplace. As a way to separate themselves from the free services like Caigslist, look for Amazon and eBay to take the lead on this one.

Certainly there have been many single use devices in the past like pocket games, address books, and music players that have failed to get much traction. The difference here is the level of sophistication and the deep understanding of user interaction.

The advantage of a single use device is that it is less complicated, and far less distracting. It caters to the specific needs of an individual and helps focus their attention with a superior operator experience.

I should make one clarification though. Certain kinds of data require a unique and different interface. While I have been referring to them as single use devices, they can in fact be multiuse devices based on a newly established interface. The inputs and outputs will start out as industry specific applications, but additional applications may give end users far more latitude.

At CES it was very easy to imagine how existing components like keyboards, screens, and touchpads could be combined to make an entirely new device. Whether it has a flexible screen, head-mounted displays, flip-down lenses, or embedded Pico projectors, or the user requires a touch screen, gesture controls, or sensory monitoring components, the advantage will go to people who best understand the specific user interface.

In the end, the best device will be the one that is invisible to the user, an imperceptible doorway between the user and what they are hoping to accomplish. Final results far outweigh the look and feel of the metal and plastic clenched between one’s fingers, but we have a few more evolutionary steps before the physical interface goes away.

PREDICTION:

• Within the next five years, dozens of new single use devices will hit the marketplace.

OPPORTUNITIES:

The biggest opportunities are for human factors researchers to carefully crystallize the critical element involved in each aspect of the human-data interface. Well-crafted interface storyboards will lead to well-designed next generation devices.

Virtually everywhere you look there are video screens. You see them in bars and restaurants, on elevators, in the back of taxis, and on airplanes. Even most cell phones have now have video screens. Some are connected to the Internet and others are connected to cable television, two distinctly different uses for what amounts to the same screen technology.

In the future, people will look back at this time and see it as very confusing. Corporate turf battles have slowed the promise of the everything display where all content is available through all screens. And in many cases the public wasn’t ready to make the leap. All of that is about to change.

Cable TV companies and the major television networks are not going to like the years ahead as their market shares of the video content world begin to dwindle.

Until now, consumers have felt ill prepared to deal with the dizzying array of options when they enter an electronics store and manufacturers have interpreted that confusion as a marketplace not ready to make the switch.

Greg Belloni at Sony says, “Our stance is that consumers don’t want an Internet-like experience with their TVs, and we’re really not focused on bringing anything other than Internet video or widgets to our sets right now.” A widget is an industry term for narrow channels of Internet programming like YouTube or Hulu.

Bob Scaglione, Senior VP of Marketing at the Sharp voiced a similar comment. “I don’t think that consumers are yet ready to access all content on the Internet on their TV. For now, it’s more important to deliver content consumers want on a TV and let them do their browsing on a PC.”

Industry analysts also make the point that watching television is an entertainment activity where people lean back in their couch and disengage. Browsing the Internet, as the thinking goes, is a more immersive, lean forward activity, where the brain is in both output and input mode.

However, that argument has already been disproved with the iPhone, a do-everything device that has met with raging success.

3D video coming soon to a cell phone near you

Most of the problems leading up to the convergence have centered around the design of the interface. Consumers have become well-versed in working with browsers and surfing the Internet. And most have logged time working with game controllers found in the likes of Wii and Xbox. But they feel like they took a step back in time when they try to work the cable TV controls to access a television show or movie.

The Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas will feature TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content sites such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intermingled with the living-room TV experience, a new consumer-friendly television interface will emerge, and downloading and streaming content services will take on a major role in the home entertainment ecosystem.

Here are some of the key data points to consider:

• The FCC recently announced it is moving forward with plans that will ensure broadband Internet access is available to virtually all households.
• Computers have penetrated 74% of American homes, but televisions are in 99% of all homes. Adding Internet to television will improve market penetration of the web by 25%.
• A recent survey by Deloitte showed that 65% of Internet users want online content available on their televisions with the younger generations pushing the hardest to switch.
• In Sao Paulo, a consortium of university researchers is nearly finished with a five-year digital TV project that promises to bring low-cost, high-quality broadcasts and TV-internet convergence to 50 million Brazilian households.
• In October, Intel announced its own TV-centric SoC (system-on-chip) chip, and other semiconductor designers and manufacturers are following close behind.

With the economy showing signs of improvement, and people have already started to wash their hands to rid themselves of the past decade, the consumer marketplace is preparing for some long overdue changes.

PREDICTIONS:

• Within 5 years, over 98% of all new televisions will be broadband Internet compatible.
• Within 10 years, cable television set top boxes will no longer exist.

OPPORTUNITIES:

If Apple were to start manufacturing their own televisions, they would quickly dominate the consumer TV marketplace because they know how to build an interface. Significant opportunities will be found in the design and implementation of next generation interfaces.

Video search technologies continue to be an area ripe for innovation. So far no one solution has really risen to the level where video search results are comparable to searching text.

Major opportunities can also be found in the aggregation and delivery of video content, and most importantly, the advertising and marketing mechanisms used to monetize the content.

Most living room furniture will need to be redesigned to match the needs of the active/passive uses of next generation Internet TV.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

In a country that claims to be the land of the free, the number of people under the control of the U.S. corrections system has exploded over the last 25 years to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults, according to a report released by the Pew Center on the States. The actual number of people behind bars rose to 2.3 million, nearly five times more than the world’s average.

The U.S. currently boasts the highest rate of incarceration of any country at any time in history, a full 25% of the world’s prison population. We also have the greatest number of laws of any country at any time in history, laws created by nearly 90,000 separate governmental entities. This spaghetti mess of rules and regulation is so complicated that virtually any person can get tripped up by them. One simple mistake may very well result in incarceration, and it goes downhill from there.

Incarceration is a system that breeds failure.

On the prisoner level, an incoming prisoner is instantly immersed in an “us-vs-them” mindset as their surrounding community is transformed into the worst of all possible social circles.

On the operational level, success in the prison industry is not measured by how many lives have been improved, but rather on occupancy levels, the number of prison incidents and escape attempts, and how well the budget is managed.

On the justice system level, more prisoners translate into larger budgets. The system was created to protect people from criminals.  Its based on the notion that if someone is removed from society they can no longer harm anyone. While certain crimes warrant imprisonment, it becomes an inappropriate form of punishment for most.

Police and court systems improve their standing in the justice community through the size of their organization which directly relates to the sheer volume of cases they handle. On a certain level, albeit indirectly, there are incentives to “create more criminals” because more criminals mean more money. A more appropriate measure of the effectiveness of an organization would be in the corrective or transformative nature of their actions, the overall efficiency with which a problem is solved and people (both the offenders and the offended) go back to leading productive lives.

The flaws in the overreaching authority of the U.S. justice system can be found in the system itself. There are no checks and balances on the system level for the criminal justice system. There are no caps or upper limits, no incentives for rehabilitating criminals.

Fact is that people coming out of the system are worse than when they went in, and virtually all of them will eventually make it back into society. There are no ways of measuring the toll it takes on society on an individual level, the relationships it severs, the dreams it shatters, the cost of opportunities lost.

Individuals who enter the prison system lose their jobs and their ability to earn an income. The spillover effect is severe. In most instances it has major repercussions on their spouse, their children, parents, siblings, and friends. For the victims it offers little resolution. Each imprisonment creates a blast zone of destruction that is difficult to recover from.

Authorities will be hard pressed to argue that the U.S. has an inferior gene pool, so therefore higher incarceration rates are warranted. They will also be hard pressed to argue that the system works well. A recent study showed that among nearly 275,000 prisoners released, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% went back in prison.

Making matters worse, 35% of the people entering prisons in the U.S. are there for violating parole.

Some minority groups are being particularly hard hit. Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice puts it this way. “On a national level, an African-American man today has a 30 percent lifetime chance of serving at least one year in prison. I would like to be optimistic about the likelihood of reversing this reality and returning to the status quo of 1972, but I think the chances of even getting close to that are slim. I think we have to recognize that we now live—regrettably in my view—in an era of mass incarceration.”

Martin Horn, NY City Corrections Commissioner, voices a similar concern. “We are creating a culture of imprisonment; we are turbo-charging whatever is going wrong in those young people’s lives.”

In addition to the great human toll of incarceration, $68 billion of our taxpayer dollars has been committed to pay for this travesty.

In the past two decades, state general fund spending on corrections increased by more than 300%, outpacing other essential government services like education, transportation, and public assistance.

But things may finally be looking up. We are simply too broke to keep locking people up.

Incarceration rates in 30 states declined last year. Could this be an indication that the $22,000 per year spent on housing prisoners is starting to outweigh the benefits?

Restorative Justice

The U.S. has constructed a massively bureaucratic justice system that feeds off the missteps of its citizens, a system that it can no longer afford. As a result, new systems are coming to light.

Restorative Justice is one such approach where offenders are brought into the same room with the people they harmed and encouraged to take responsibility for their actions. Sometimes they agree to repair or pay for the damage, return stolen money, or perform community service.

In Longmont, Colorado, Chief of Police Mike Butler has been a pioneer in Restorative Justice techniques, applying it in more than 1,200 cases with an amazing 90% success rate.

“We work with people before the lawyers get involved and before they enter the courts,” says Butler. “By doing this, we have been able to eliminate most of the costs and give the offenders a reasonable shot at turning their life around.”

These offenders are given a chance to meet with their victims and community members in a respectful process where they can learn the full impact of their crime and agree to repair their harm. On average 90% complete their agreements and are welcomed back to the community. Its a far different model than the old school idea of just “lock ‘em up!”

Restorative Justice is a balance between the rights of offenders and the needs of victims. Perhaps better stated, it is a balance between the need to rehabilitate offenders and the duty to protect the public.

You might think it is dangerous to allow lawbreakers back into the community, yet the opposite appears to be true. The average re-arrest rate for offenders who participate in Longmont’s restorative justice program is 10%.

Compare that to the nearly 70% re-arrest rate for the national penal system. According to participant feedback data, every group engaged in the Longmont program – including victims, offenders, parents and community members – reported over 95% satisfaction with their restorative justice experience.

In restorative justice, because victims are heard and offenders repair the harm of their crime, they become higher functioning citizens able to work and make a contribution to their community, including paying their share of taxes.

So why hasn’t Restorative Justice caught on in a big way yet? My guess is that the current prison system has a lot of inertia and any changes will require the buy-in from everyone currently working inside the system. Barring any legislative changes, its just easier to maintain the status quo.

PREDICTIONS:

• Even though the signals are weak, the system is too broken to be maintained. Look for the U.S. prison population to decline by over 25% over the next ten years.
• Look for a significant defunding of the justice system and a radically new set of criteria for measuring success.

OPPORTUNITIES:

There will be major opportunities for those who can help unravel the present bureaucracy and help rethink the new system that will soon be created.

Since many of the people in the currently criminal justice system will be looking for new career paths, significant opportunities will be found in helping people through the transitions.

Prisoners who are released early through this process, and there will be many of them, represent a sizable labor force that can, and should, be put to good use.

Many existing prisons will be closed. These facilities will need to be converted into other uses.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

7.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – Colleges Face the Perfect Storm
9.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – TV-Internet Convergence

After looking at all the signals, there is no other way to describe it. Colleges are under attack.

Several legs of the financial stools upon which they are sitting have been kicked out from under them, forcing higher tuition rates on an already cautious base of consumers. But money is only part of the equation. Cultural shifts, technological advances, and changes in customer perceived value are all working to create the perfect storm for colleges.

To the carnivores of the free enterprise system, the slow lumbering gate of colleges today makes them look like easy prey. But they bring with them tremendous inertia and the longstanding loyalties and traditions of generations past.

The true effects of this storm front have been masked by higher enrollments, as people without jobs opt to go back to school and hit the reset button for their next career. But that is about to change.

Much like Henry Ford’s “control everything” approach to building cars at the River Rouge Plant where raw materials were brought into one end and finished cars rolled out the other end, colleges have maintained tight control over virtually every aspect of the academic food change.

Professors are carefully recruited, classroom times and schedules are thoroughly planned, courses are tightly prepared, degrees are framed around in-house talent, and academic accomplishments are meticulously positioned to help brand the experience.

Those days are numbered.

While there are many areas subject to change, the primary attack points will be the six areas where colleges are most vulnerable:

1.) Money – As the cost of colleges skyrockets, student loans and financing are becoming harder to get. Here’s what’s going on.

Many states are hurting financially, and they are cutting their support for colleges. As an example, ten years ago the price of tuition at the University of Virginia, excluding room and board, was just over $4,000 for in-state students and nearly $17,000 for out-of-state students per year. Now it’s nearly $10,000 and $32,000, respectively.

Similarly, the State of California slashed their support for colleges by 20% causing the state board of regents to increase tuition by 32% in 2010.

Exacerbating the deficits are losses to college endowments, which declined significantly with the losing stocks in their portfolios.

At the same, student loans are getting hard to come by. Students can individually sign up for the government-backed Stafford loans, but they have limits of $5,500 a year. The other major type of federally backed student loan – the Parent PLUS – has no limit, but it requires the parents to co-sign, making them responsible for repayment. To make matters worse, the interest rates for these loans have nearly doubled in the past five years.

Most college students have relied heavily on credit cards to handle personal expenses while they were in college. However, congress passed a bill in May that will dramatically restrict the issuance of credit cards to anyone younger than 21. Consumer groups helped push the measure through because credit card companies have been praying relentlessly on naive college kids, charging hidden fees and exorbitant rates. According to Sallie Mae, 84% of college students have credit cards, carrying balances of more than $3,000.

Parents are also struggling to help out because they are losing access to home equity loans. The availability of money to homeowners through home-equity lines of credit has fallen by 25 percent in the U.S., to $538 billion, since the end of 2007, according to federal data.

In our fast-paced society, student thinking can change quickly, and the forest of red flags now being raised spells troubling times ahead.

With entrepreneurial minds cleverly attacking the flow of money currently being allocated to colleges, even seemingly minor changes will have profound effects as revenue streams change course and build momentum around alternative forms of education.

2.) Courses – Our existing semester and quarter-based college schedules are a poor match for today’s plugged-in, hyper-jacked students. Passed down from generations past, the current timetables for courses spread out over 8-12 weeks only works for an increasingly small segment of society, leaving most working adults to fend for themselves.

With courses being so narrowly defined, colleges are leaving massive opportunities up for grabs, and the vultures are beginning to circle.

Courses are on the verge of being fragmented into smaller, faster learning units. The goal will be to turn individual courses into bite-sized morsels of learning that fit into virtually anyone’s schedule.

Similar to the way Wikipedia and iTunes have evolved future courseware authoring systems will be rooted in a templated process that allows topical experts to turn their expertise into quick learning modules. With the proper monetization system where money is parceled out to course authors as well as other critical elements in the delivery system, the resulting structure will become an organic explosion of easily digestible knowledge.

Courses will be available on-demand, anywhere, anytime, to satisfy virtually any need, desire, or interest. They will be easily affordable, universally available, and presented to the students in a fashion most comprehendible to their style of learning.

3.) Teachers – As new economic realities hits college campuses, their first impulse will be to cut staff. Some will attempt to limit the damage to wage freezes and curtailed hiring, but others will begin to roll out the pink slips.

Research institutions will focus heavily on grants and corporate alliances to rebuild the revenue streams of the past.

As prospects for a long-term future inside academia grow dim, corporations will take notice of the fertile talent base and begin offering “greener pastures” for professors and teachers.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter once described entrepreneurial innovation as a “perennial gale of creative destruction,” forcing existing companies to adapt or fail. “Economic progress in capitalist society,” he declared, “means turmoil” and that will be particularly true for colleges.

4.) Classrooms – There has long been the pervasive notion that learning can only take place in a classroom. Even though schools use field trips and outdoor experiences to enhance education, the classroom remains a dominant central fixture in education today.

Classrooms are designed to focus attention, close off the rest of the world, and create a controllable environment where learning can take place. The person or education system that controls the classroom also controls the time when learning can take place, the students who will participate, the lighting, the sounds, the media used, the tools, the pace, the subject matter, and in many cases, the results.

However, classroom-centric education is not necessary for learning. Our need to physically “gather at the feet of the master” will be replaced with faster, easier systems for connecting thoughts and ideas. If the objective is simply to get credit for a course, the convenience of an anytime, anyplace delivery mechanism will be the most salable feature. For students who want to truly understand the material, a more apprentice-like approach will serve as the primary attractor.

In the future, the cost and overhead burden of maintaining classroom space will be closely scrutinized as financial pressures force colleges to get creative. Each change will feel like a grand experiment, but the advantage will swing towards the virtual classroom where the overhead costs of facilities, classroom schedules, and alarm clocks no longer matter.

5.) Credits – What types of learning are credit-worthy?

In the future, this question will be at the heart of new course offerings as they work their way into the marketplace.

Learning takes place from the moment a person wakes up in the morning until they fall asleep at night. In fact, most of the time, learning continues even when a person is sleeping. Yet only a small subset of the learning that takes place has been dubbed “credit worthy.”

College credits are a rare form of currency assigned to the value to what a student learns. As credits accumulate, they are used to “buy” a diploma.

Credit granting authority has been relegated to accredited institutions and is protected with laws and systems that are closely guarded by people inside the system. There is no one central authority for determining credit-worthiness. Rather, each institution, once accredited, decides for itself.

Credit-granting authority will be the most difficult area for outsiders to penetrate. But rest assured, when the economic foundation of colleges begins to feel shaky, the creative opportunists will begin to emerge.

Things like co-branded courses, experience-based credits, and alignment with professional society certifications will begin to emerge to provide much-needed revenue streams for colleges. Each opportunity will be a challenging decision, but every change will dilute the sanctity of the credit system, creating precedent for others to follow.

6.) Status – Academic elites have long been drinking the Kool-Aid, espousing the gospel of superior standing in one’s community that can only be achieved through diplomas and scholarly achievement. With a record numbers of college graduates now unemployed and under-employed, the bragging rights have begun to tarnish.

Academic accomplishments do not always translate into “functional member of society,” and society has been inventing hundreds, if not thousands, of new “status” markers. Professional certifications, individual accomplishments, note-worthy projects, association memberships, achievement awards, and even being employed by a pedigree corporation will often carry far more weight than the status gained through a college degree.

So what kind of status will be used to open doors in the future? Look for marketing messages to appear as “more valuable than a degree at Harvard” or “a better entrepreneurial experience than attending Stanford or MIT.”

A college’s ability to sell its elite status will increasingly be met with resistance as we move into an era of austere frugality.  Our claims of accomplishment, self-worth, confidence, and respect are destined to shift along with the changing face of the institution.

Rest assured the coming war on colleges is not being waged by societal misfits or some rouge band of college haters. Instead, it will come from some of our most admired companies and people with every bit as good of intentions as people working inside colleges.

PREDICTION:

• Within the next ten years 10% of all colleges in the U.S. will fail.

OPPORTUNITIES:

We are entering a grand age of experimentation. The biggest opportunities for colleges and universities lie in the unchartered territory outside of their current domain. They can be found in the disruptive thinking and disruptive technologies described here and here.

Colleges will need to position themselves on the bleeding edge of what comes next.

For college professors and teachers, their biggest opportunity will lie in their ability to syndicate their work and reach the widest possible audience.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

6.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Turing Test for Avatars
8.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – Alternatives to Incarceration

The recently released James Cameron thriller Avatar has set an entirely new standard for moviemaking, and in the process has given us a visualization of what the evolution of the avatar may lead to.

The term “avatar” in the context of a digital computer-self was first coin by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. Before that, the concept of avatar within Hinduism was associated with Vishnu, the preserver or sustainer aspect of God within the Hindu Trinity. The translation for avatar is ‘a form of self’- a virtual clone that has long meant nothing more than an intangible visualization. However, in the movie Avatar the envelope of understanding has been pushed far beyond the virtual world into a life-breathing physically-interactive being.

The power behind the movie is in its portrayal of the future. Much like DaVinci’s portrayal of human flight 400 years before the time of the Wright Brothers, the images became a visual goal, a rallying cry if you will, for a future yet to come. In Avatar, audiences become fully immersed in this exciting new vision of the future, and in doing so, begin to mentally plan for the technology that will take us there.

But, as much as we’d like to ratchet forward in time and move to that new level of sophistication, the movie glosses over many of the key technological stepping stones along the way.

An avatar today exists as little more than a cartoonish representation of ourselves, sent as our personal emissary to experience online, virtual worlds. Think of today’s avatars as the Model T version on a pathway that will eventually lead to flying cars. With each new generation of the avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world.

Alan Turing

Eventually we will pass the Turing Test for Avatars.

In 1950, computer visionary Alan Turing proposed we would reach a time where a person entering a room with a human and a computer placed behind separate curtains would find it impossible to distinguish which was which through mere conversation. This idea of “passing the Turing Test has long served as a benchmark for bestowing humanoid qualities on a computer.

Raising the stakes even further, the Turing Test for Avatars will be a realism test with multiple stages of accomplishment.

• Stage One – An avatar become indistinguishable from a human on a two dimensional screen. Our visual and auditory senses will make it impossible to differentiate.
• Stage Two – Avatars will only live in the computer world for a short time longer. It is only a matter of time before they emerge from the computer and appear as visual beings, walking around among us. The Stage Two Turing Test for Avatars will yield a tree dimensional representation that is impossible to distinguish without touching.
• Stage Three – Once an avatar goes through the radical metamorphosis from an image that we see on a screen to a three dimensional being that joins us for dinner, carries on conversations with our friends, and serves as a stand-in for us at meetings, we will see work start on an even more realistic avatar, one that we can touch. The long held ideas of humanoid robots, and more recently cloned humans, will be superseded by organic avatars with human mannerism and capabilities so lifelike that they become indistinguishable from real humans.

The avatar of the future will become an extension of ourselves. The pain that we feel is the same pain that they feel, and vice versa. Like symbiotic twins separated only by a dimension or two, we are destined to become one with our avatars.

One key issue that will arise will be the autonomy with which our avatars can operate. How much freedom should an avatar have?

While some might envision the avatars to be the perfect clone of ourselves, the reality will be much different as frictions develop between us and the autonomous avatars that represent us. Men will find their girlfriends are more attracted to their avatars than to themselves, even having affairs with them. Avatars will eventually get their own apartments and start buying things for themselves. Some may even go off the deep end and start stealing money, even taking on insane addictions and diseases that only avatars can experience.

A series of self-help books will emerge that discuss “how we can improve our relationship with our avatars”, “how to keep our avatars from reproducing without our consent”, and “how to breed avatars for fun and profit”.

Only after going through all these technological evolutions will we get to the state of avatars portrayed in the James Cameron movie. We have a long ways to go.

PREDICTION:

• Within the next five years a series of prize competitions will emerge based on the Turing Test for Avatars

OPPORTUNITIES:

Great opportunities lie in our ability to create storylines, images, movies, and other visualizations of each of the intermediate steps leading up to stage three avatars.

Along with each new generation of avatar will come an exponential growth spurt of innovation surrounding the tools, games, and other forms of technology spawned by the avatar economies.

Many people regarded the September 2009 headline, “Cushing Academy Goes Bookless” as more of a curiosity than a serious trend. The way Cushing Headmaster James Tracy put it, “Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books.”

But underlying this blip on the radar screen lies a groundswell of innovation that promises a revolution in books. The book industry along with authors, publishers, and the online giants: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are still arguing over the rights conveyed to each member of the value chain. Consumers, however, are simply looking for faster, cheaper, quicker way to access books and information.

Beyond the issues of digital rights an entire new industry is emerging around interface devices with electronic book readers gaining tremendous market share. Amazon’s Kindle broke the ice in 2006 and is now joined by Sony, LG, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and others. 2009 saw the price of bookreaders drop by 50% to under $200. 2010 will see a similar plummet with some being offered for under $100. In less than 5 years bookreaders will cost less than $20 and become ubiquitous. The result will be a very chaotic downward spiral for the ink-on-paper publishing world.

Books have long created an impressive backdrop
for library activities, but those days are numbered

In spite of the dwindling interest in books as a physical object, books themselves will flourish. The demand for well-produced literary works will continue to grow, but will transition in style and form as technology creates new ways for people to interact with authors and experts in the field.

Despite the objections of book lovers, the days of wandering through the stacks are coming to an end.

As the popularity of books in the printed form begins to dwindle, libraries will be faced with rethinking their role and the way they interact with their user constituency. Their purpose will still revolve around being a point of access for information, but will evolve into a center of culture, a media archive for the community, and a place where great ideas can spring to life.

Even with expanded services through the web, their greatest value will lie in their sense of place. They will remain a place where questions get answered but will also become a gathering place for people to meet people and teams are able to plan, network, and interact with the information before them.

Future libraries will become fluid structures for causing positive human collisions. Next generation tools and equipment will be a source of intellectual spontaneity, giving people the ability to produce audio, video, graphic, and other sensory works as a way to breathe life into their thinking.

The ultimate “library of the future” will be the home for highly relevant informational experiences, where great ideas are born, and people have access to the tools and facilities to act on their ideas.

PREDICTIONS:

• In less than 20 years, the majority of libraries will no longer have traditional printed books in them.
• Since digital libraries have a much smaller labor component, the demand for traditionally trained librarians will drop over the next 20 years to less than half of what it is today.

OPPORTUNITIES:

Along with the transformation of libraries will come a great opportunity to help them reinvent themselves. The technology component will continue to increase and support for the technology will create many new openings.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

4.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Personal Mobility Explosion
6.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Turing Test for Avatars

The Audi Snook – concept vehicle

Pay close attention, there is a revolution brewing on the personal mobility end of the transportation spectrum.

Nothing symbolizes personal freedom more than our ability to travel from one place to another quickly, and efficiently. But for the most part, we’ve been putting all our eggs into one basket – the basket of automobile transportation.

In this post I will try to spell out the reasons why transportation is on the verge of dramatic change, and show you photos of a few of the unusual personal mobility devices that will play a key role in this revolution.

Transportation varies tremendously based on the country. As an example, in China, non-motorized transportation accounts for roughly 50% of all trips, and in India, the number is around 30%. But when it comes to public transportation, over 60% of the Indian population use bus and trains compared to 25% in China. The China and India statistics are vastly different from the U.S.

Some will argue that an efficient transportation system in the U.S. has led to a healthier economy. The US Bureau of Transit Statistics now shows over 243 million registered passenger vehicles in the US, which amounts to more than one for every licensed driver.

But cars are expensive. The average cost of car ownership in the US combining payments, maintenance, insurance, and licensing has mushroomed to over $10,000 per year, with California and Hawaii pushing the high end of $12,000 per year.

According to the U.S. Dept of Transportation, commuters in 2007 drove their vehicles over 3 trillion miles on a road system consisting of over 4 million miles of roadway. This is a dramatic increase from the 458 billion vehicle miles on 3.3 million miles of roadway in 1950.

The average car in the U.S. is driven 12,345 miles per year, or about 34 miles a day. Assuming an average speed of 30 mph, the average car is only in use 68 minutes a day. That means the remaining 95% of the time the car is sitting idle. From the standpoint of how well we are utilizing our natural resources, cars represent a hugely under-utilized resource.

As of lately, people and their love of cars has been shifting to a craving for something better. However, the “perfect car” doesn’t seem to exist. The perfect car is one that doesn’t pollute, is highly efficient, is only as big as necessary for the demands of the moment, makes virtually no noise, is extremely safe, and collapses into the size of a suitcase when not in use.

It is this quest for something better that is priming the market for unconventional vehicles. Below are a few of the alternative transportation vehicles coming out of the woodwork.

Capella – The Electric Backpack Motorcycle

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Huvo Electric Pod

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Hecheng Scooter

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Peugeot Hymotion 3 Scooter

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Tricyclopod

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TVA Gazelle

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The Ecooter

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T3 Motion

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The Suzuki Pixy

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The Uno

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The Hawk

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The PUMA by Segway

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The Monotracer

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Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle sold in Best Buy

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Chariot Skates

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Honda’s walking-assist device

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Winglet by Toyota

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Honda’s U3-X

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The Electropositive

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These represent just a small sample of the hundreds of vehicles now available. Since they fall outside of the current requirements for automobiles, many cities have chosen to ban them altogether until they can figure out what to do with them.

Our current infrastructure, the highway system, is all about cars. Whenever a smaller alternative transportation vehicle drives onto a highway, it’s at a significant disadvantage in terms of safety and risk. Currently there is no infrastructure – roads, trails, or pathways – designed for non-traditional forms of transportation.

Most importantly, any city that does not actively promote alternative transportation, will by default, encourage more car usage. The one-size-fits-all thinking about cars has left some gaping holes in the transportation market, holes that some very ingenious entrepreneurs are attempting to fill.

Manufacturers and distributors of these vehicles are search desperately for alternative transportation friendly communities to work with. Therein lies the opportunity.

PREDICTIONS:

• Within the next 5 years we will see over 1,000 new alternative transportation vehicles hit the marketplace. (Non-gas powered, light weight, smaller than car vehicles)
• Much like the “green movement” cities will begin to compete to become the most alternative transportation friendly city.

OPPORTUNTIES:

Presently alternative transportation vehicles come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. There will be a significant opportunity for someone to develop a classification scheme around size weight and speed of vehicles.

Currently there are no associations that provide market data or industry statistics. There is also a significant need for someone to lobby on behalf of the industry and create industry standards.

The first city to firmly establish itself as an alternative transportation friendly city will be able to leverage it as an economic development opportunity. The entire industry is presently looking for a place to call home.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

3.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – Forced Entrepreneurship
5.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – Bookless Libraries

Forced entrepreneurship, making its way to a family near you

One of the overriding forces in 2010 will be the financial pressures stemming from the recession. The recession will not be ending anytime soon because Washington is too focused on the wrong issues, and the stimulus money is not being channeled to the people who are most likely to create the jobs.

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported 8.7% of job seekers started their own businesses in second quarter 2009, a dramatic increase over the 2.7% during the last quarter of 2008.

May of the laid-off workers have simply reached the end of their rope. They have given up on sending out resumes and have concluded the only way to deal with today’s brutal job market is to start their own business. Even though they start out as reluctant business owners, and the learning curve is anything but smooth, once they get a sense of the true potential in controlling their own destiny, there is no turning back.

Whenever the economy takes a nosedive, it is typical for people to begin to dance with their “inner entrepreneur” and brainstorm ideas for launching their dream business. But today’s business climate no longer allows for people to wait for the ideal time or prefect conditions to make it happen.

When nothing else is working, they decide it’s time to blow the doors off their “comfort zone” and enter the “entrepreneur zone.”

To be sure, starting a business during a recession is not a bad thing. In fact more than half of today’s Fortune 500 companies were founded during a recession or bear market.

Forced entrepreneurship often starts with project work, temp jobs, consulting gigs, or other opportunities for making money. Sometimes the work is done as a trade-out to just get a foot in the door. Very often one opportunity will lead to another, and a patchwork business plan begins to form in the person’s mind. Formal business plans are rare, but the key metrics for managing the operation begins to crystallize in their head.

The Internet is now enabling people and ideas to connect in ways never before possible. The business models that eventually spring to life often have little, if any, resemblance to their original idea for a dream business. But the fluid nature of the startup world is more than enough to keep them engaged.

To succeed as a forced entrepreneur, bootstrapping is king. They quickly learn to never spend a dime unless it is absolutely necessary. Their skills, talent, and ideas become a form currency that they can exchange for equally valued goods and services.

The web is an extraordinary tool not just for finding ways to do things for free, but for marketing ideas, find business partners and suppliers, and to run the entire operation on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea.

In 2008, 3.8 million companies had fewer than 10 workers, and they employed 12.4 million people, or roughly 11% of the private sector work force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Don’t look for a lot of hiring with this crowd though. It’s far easier to work with people and not take them on as employees in today’s virtual work environment.

PREDICTIONS:  Within the new ten years we will see the all-time greatest wave of entrepreneurship ever to hit the U.S. and the number of one-person “empire of one” entrepreneurs will more than double.

Many cities will begin to establish “business colonies” as next-generation incubators for growing their local economy.

OPPORTUNITIES:  Since no colleges or universities currently teach one-person entrepreneurship, there is great potential for training and study material.

Many projects call for an complete team to cover the entire range of talent and skills required. People who are good at assembling and managing virtual teams of solo entrepreneurs will find an endless stream of opportunities ahead.

Large and midsized companies that learn to master the fine art of engaging solo entrepreneurs on a project basis will quickly discover the wide range of talent available to them outside the normal hiring channels.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

2.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Coming Legal Marijuana Era
4.) Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Personal Mobility Explosion