This occasional feature is a 'gossip column' of the future, highlighting developments and trends that I believe may become significant over time.
• NASA recently reported that the speed of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation system slowed significantly in the late 1990s, which could be really bad news. The real catastrophe scenario associated with global warming is not hurricanes or shifts in rainfall causing brush fires and crop failures, but the threat of the next ice age, with glaciers covering large chunks of North America and northern Europe and Asia. Evidence suggests that the North Polar ice cap is melting more rapidly than expected, pouring cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic, where it displaces warm, salty water. This could destabilize the global oceanic conveyor, a ‘river’ that runs through the world’s oceans. Among other things, this conveyor produces the Gulf Stream which has a major effect on climate in the Northern Hemisphere. If the Gulf Stream were disrupted, it would no longer moderate the climate of northern Europe, which could well see significant increases in snowfall, cold weather, and ice. If the cloud and snow cover produced reflected enough heat from the sun back into space, it could flip the Earth’s climate over into the next ice age. And if that sounds far fetched, just remember: that’s pretty much how the last ice age started. And we’re not talking about gradual changes happening over hundreds of years, either: the onset of the last ice age, 13,000 years ago, happened in the space of about 30 years.
• As the baby boomers age and move towards what has been considered retirement age, they may cause one more disruption: depressing the wages of younger workers, notably their own children. Many boomers either don’t have enough to retire fully, or don’t want to sit around doing nothing. As a result, there is a trend emerging for people in their 60s and 70s to re-enter the workplace, either taking low-wage jobs, or doing highly skilled jobs at lower wage rates in order to supplement their retirement incomes and occupy their days. If this becomes widespread, it will have the effect of depressing some sectors of the labor markets, making it hard for younger adults to make as much because of the unfair competition of their elders. Outsourcing to India is not the only problem the next generation faces.
• Readers of these pages will recall that I have spoken repeatedly about the wearable computer companion that will, among other things, monitor our health, heartbeat-by-heartbeat, as well as managing the routine aspects of our lives. It’s clear now that the latter set of responsibilities are going to emerge not from handheld computers, but rather through cell phones, whose manufacturers are being pushed by emormous competitive pressures to come up with novel, sexy applications for these nearly-ubiquitous commodity devices. Meanwhile, the health aspects are starting to emerge with everything from heart monitors for athletes (from companies like Nike), to continuous glucose monitors for diabetics (from Abbott Labs, among others), some of which feature alarms if blood sugar levels get too low. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes Nokia, Motorola, Sony, et al, to start segmenting the market and working with diagnostic companies to introduce health monitoring as part of cell phone function sets – especially as the baby boomers age.
Meanwhile, ‘always on’ will take on new depth of meaning with wearable computers, or any other kind as well. Verizon Wireless, the national cellphone service provider, is starting to roll out true wireless broadband, called EV-DO (‘Evolution-Data Optimized’), blanketing entire cities rather than just a coffee shop here or bookstore there. This kind of service will catch on because people are starting to view high speed Internet access as a necessity, and this has significant long-term implications in a wide range of areas as well, from education to marketing to interpersonal relationships. Imagine, for instance, downloading the answer to a question during an exam, calling up a map to a restaurant while you’re driving, or ‘Googling’ someone you’ve just met at a party while you’re talking to them. It’s going to change the way we think about, and do, lots of things.
Meanwhile, wireless broadband will also mean that VOIP (‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’) will start to muscle in on cell phones, just as it has on landlines. Voice over Internet basically offers anyone with high speed Internet access a flat-fee, unlimited long distance service with a number of interesting wrinkles, such as being able to select a distant area code as your ‘local’ phone number, meaning that anyone in that area code can call you, and it will be a local (i.e., non-toll) call. VOIP is now threatening both traditional telephone and now cell phone service providers, while continuing to drive down the cost of telephony.
I recently addressed the project managers of a major telecommunications provider. They asked me to address the question of whether there was a future in telecommunications. Somewhat to their surprise, my answer was ‘No!’ Telecommunications is going to disappear, but there’s a huge future in new communications applications.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that a comic book illustrator and a New York fashion designer have teamed up for cross-promotion. The ‘Shi’ comic book character, Ana Ishikawa, is a trained samurai warrior who, when she’s not wearing the de rigeur crime-fighter’s spandex, has taken to sporting Anna Sui’s clothes and accessories in the pages of the comic. Moreover, ‘Shi’ comics will feature a free page of ads for Anna Sui, along with a website where readers can examine and buy the clothes they see in the comic. Interesting in itself, it also represents the kind of novel approach to reaching the ‘Elusive Echo’ generation that marketers are going to have to adopt (see Futuresearch bulletin dated January 5th, 2004 for more on the Echoes).
• Advances in health care are welcome, but the loudest grumbles of elderly people have to do with the mechanics of living, notably focusing on problems with teeth, hearing, and sight. Now bioscience research may be moving into some of these areas. Researchers at Kings College in London, England reported in early May that they have successfully grown new molars in mice using stem cells. (Stem cells are the precursor cells from which other cells develop in a fetus, and are widely thought to hold promise for treatments involving failing hearts, brains, and many other organs.) They are now starting trials in humans, and hope to move to market within five years. Accordingly, instead of having a root canal and a crown for a dying tooth, you may grow a completely new tooth over a period of a month. Denture manufacturers may see a big bite taken out of their business.
• Just as we’re adjusting to same sex marriages and families, a new development emerges. ‘OSO’ stands for ‘other significant others’, meaning intimiate relationships between more than two people, possibly involving several intimate relationships in one family unit. In April the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the ‘Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness,’ where ‘polyamory’ means ‘loving relationships between more than two adults at one time.’ And where else would this be reported than in San Francisco, which tends to lead North America in social trends? If this sounds bizarre now, wait a while and it will start to sound more ordinary. Not only is it going to further confuse marketing trends, and add to the eccentricity of today’s marketplace, but it is going to drive a further wedge between the radical, leading edge of society, and the more traditional and religious fundamentalist segments. If DisneyWorld has ‘Gay Days’ now, how long before ‘bring the whole family’ takes on new meaning?
• One question that I get asked fairly regularly is what the future holds for farmers and farm communities. Interestingly, the future of farms and farmers lies in innovation, just as it does for their city slicker cousins. If you look backwards, agricultural employment has dropped consistently for almost two centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, almost three-quarters of all employed Americans worked on a farm. By the beginning of the 20th century, that figure had dropped to 40%. By the beginning of the 21st, it was down to 3% and still falling. All of this happened because of automation and the dramatic increases in farm productivity. Now farmers are facing not only the huge automated farms of the agribusinesses, but also rising competition from farmers in developing countries, who are copying First World techniques to become first self-sufficient, and then compete for export markets.
Accordingly, any farmer looking to survive must find niche markets, and stay away from the low-margin commodities. Many farmers in the plains and praries switched from grains into pulse (seeds like chickpeas and soya) to avoid international competition, but must now think seriously about where to move next as countries like India move aggressively into these crop lines.
But the future of farming communities may lie in two unexpected directions: industrial products and eco-tourism. Biotechnology is moving rapidly into the creation of industrial products from plants. Accordingly, tomorrow’s farmers may grow genetically modified plants that can be used as feedstock for plastics, for example, or converted into ethanol, both of which will replace petroleum. And city folk may seek vacations on a farm to get away from the stresses and pressures of urban life. What is clear, though, is that farmers are going to have to be just as nimble, and just as innovative, as their manufacturing counterparts to survive.
© Copyright, IF Research, July 2004.
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
|
|