Cyborg‬ ‪‎scenario‬ ahead?

• “Mass media”: Not now
  Mobile AR will not be the gadget for the masses in the next 5 years, but …
• Tool in professional branches: Yes
  Mobile AR (of theglasses / eye wear type) will become the standard interface in some professions
  – e.g. security (‪‎cybercops‬), army, maintenence, medical surgery
• Hyper-‪‎transparency‬ angst: Yes
  as a consequence the ‪surveillance‬ topic (google PRISM, XKEYXSCORE, NSA super surveillance) will stay on the political agenda
• Politics and law: Adapt fast!
  The law system has to adapt rapidly – else the wave of ‪augmentation‬ tech and hyper-‪‎transparency‬ might end in a disaster for civil rights and democracy

Details

• Meta, The Crazy AR Glasses That Aim To Do What Google Glass Can’t, Go Up For Pre-Order | TechCrunch
• spaceglasses.com

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Internet of Things – Internet of Everything – Power of Anticipatory Intelligence
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Since IPv6 means the unimaginable explosion of the addressable space mankind is prepared for tagging and tracking of everything – goods, vehicles, animals, human beings. Not only managing the data of their trajectories in space and time, but in combination with Big Data and Ubiquitous Intelligence allowing predictive intelligence. The most evolved and complex systems in natural and cultural evolution have created subsystems of anticipatory intelligence – the predator “sees” where the running prey will be in the next tenth of a second. Individuals are making plans over years and decades – as a CEO, a politician or a citizen thinking about the pension. Civilisations have created professions concerned with the future – in modern times based on science, math and computer simulations. The vast “smartization” of the lifeworld will result in much more anticipatory processes, just for the advantage of prediction, but also because of the grown complexity, which in turn might demand more “simulation runs” to find the best decision.

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Update 2013-02-22: The graphics on top has been added, though in beta version. Some resemblance with the text and graphics in the newsletter (German text) of the appreciated foresight company Z_punkt is not an accident, since I am quite involved in the process.

Why is this? Because most of the ecological research is still underscoring the “human factor”. But don’t researchers talk a lot about the anthropogenic factors? Yes, but they do it in a static way, neglecting the dynamics that comes with disruptive innovations.

Radical systemic change – or perish! The need for a kind of
“eco-political holism”
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a “technological optimist”, who thinks, that we can ignore the alarming headlines and we can just lean back, since we will have cold fusion in some years to solve all energy and scarcity problems. Another vision would be, that we will soon have miraculous “synthetic organism” solving any thinkable waste problems.

No, we cannot rely on those promises, in the contrary – technology innovation alone will not solve the problems. We need more socio-cultural innovation to realize the  urgent and painful radical systemic change.

I have written about the scenario logic of the ecological singularity and I even claimed that “Eco-Singularity is the top issue of our time” (here). Actually there  are solution concepts – contrasting with the two extremes of the naive eco-apocalyptic stance or the also naive believe in hypertech solutions. The first one underscores the gamechanging role of innovation, the second one is narrowing the innovation issue to the technological realm alone. Typically the techcentric approach is neglecting also the economical system framework, let alone the ecological, the planetary boundaries. How can we find a new balance with our limited ressources, when hyperproduction, hyperconsumption and a unhealthy financial system are systematically cursing us to shred our ecosystems?

Gilding and Diamandis are both right and wrong
The technological optimist Diamandis has to understand the severe crisis and the limits of “technological salvation”. The ecologist Gilding has to integrate innovation more radically.  

The technological optimist Diamandis has to understand the severe crisis and the limits of “tech salvation”. The ecologist Gilding has to integrate innovation more radically.

It woutd be encouraging if we can see the entanglement of both “cultures” in the soon future.

Update 2012-05-16 – The text has been completely reworked. Graphics had been added.

Map of all Arab Spring and Occupy Movement nations 2011 - Source: blatantworld.com

A dynamic year 2011 is ending: Crisis. protests, movements, system skepticism

What is in your mind? What will I have I forgotten to mention? Arab spring, occupy movement, maybe a stolen Arab spring in Egypt, maybe an awakening civill society in Russia. And kind of “cold (civil) war” in US. And ever more extreme weather conditions around the globe. Durban climate conference at the end of the year is a new confirmation of cognitive mis-mapping of the political leaders. As cognitive psychology has shown often: A certain complexity of a system cannot be handled by most of human beings, they take refuge to heuristics and kind of superstitious solution approaches.

Oh, Fukushima not to forget – for some 10,000 years – radiation is a reminder future generations did not ask for … What else? A lot of rather helpless activities to handle the debt cirisis in Europe. Angry citizens. Credibility of systems solutions going down, down, down. Politicians’ growth paradigm seems 99% unchanged. Locked in the mindset, which is the problem, not the solution. And again confirmation of the uncontrollable “innovation avalanche” of the hightech super-innovative society. News: H5N1 avian flu created in the laboratory.

Occupy the economy – New models please! 

Oh, not only bad news!!! Some weeks ago I was really surprised and excited about the announcement of a “Funky Business Barcamp” in Berlin. Was this the “mycel of transformation” reaching the economy? Will there be emerging new models how to make business in a different cultural setting, with different values and goals – and in a intrinsically sustainable manner. It was an unconventional barcamp and time will tell, whether something substantial will spread from it. I will watch this carefully and will tell if it is …

Update – related posts (oops … Cassandra complex)

• 2009 vs. 1789 – Will the crisis end in a revolution? (March 30, 2009 – detecting weak signals)
• Titanic in full speed, me, you and the Trojan horse (II) (October 23, 2010 – the economic-political world system with extreme deficit of learning capacity)

There are different names out there: sharing economy, peer-to-peer value exchange – and “people-powered markets”.  The last title is from Vanessa Miemis, who has done a great job to collect and sort 60 (!) of that markets (emergentbydesign.com). There are some more facts from her research:

• There are over 2.8 million couchsurfers in 80,317 cities across 246 countries
  http://www.couchsurfing.org/ 
• Over 820 coworking places are active worldwide
  http://www.deskmag.com/en/820-coworking-spaces-worldwide-statistics 
• Car sharing will be a 6 billion annual business by 2016
  http://www.cleanfleetreport.com/clean-fleet-articles/zipcar-ipo-car-share/

Source: emergentbydesign.com

Beyond ideology 

You might ask: People Economy – is that communism reloaded? Definitly not! Just in the opposite direction. Yes, it has to do with re-wiring the value chains, but to give people more power. It is about empowerment. The leftist ideologies often did show that they have no real trust in people. When they have acquired power they have again and again build massive control structures – to keep themselves in power and keep people powerless. They even did hate freedom of speech, freedom of thought. The new “people economy” is quite the opposite: It accepts your economical empowerment, conceives you as an entrepreneur, encourages you to monetize on your ressources.

Airbnb story as an example

“Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone device.” (techcrunch.com) The company is funded with 108 million USD. The competitor wimdu.com has got 90 million USD. (techcrunch.com). And if you check the growing directory of Lisa Gansky you will find dozens of platforms in the travel category alone ( http://meshing.it/categories/29-Travel ). By the way the directory has 32 categories.

It is the unfolding socio-digital “matrix” again

Why is this happening now? In the US context there might be an influence of the ongoing economical crisis, but the primary driver is the maturity of the “socio-technological complex”, the matrix of highly inter-connected people – technologically supported with digital mechanisms of trust and reputation, with the habit to connect and interact. We will see this spread and gaining momentum in the coming years. While this trend is about sharing some posessions or skills there is another disruptive trend in close company: microwork crowdsourcing in the  real world. Curious? Check out Gigwalk, the “first ever distributed workforce”: “We turn the world’s iPhones into your instant mobile workforce.” In the moment available only in US .

What is Gigwalk? from GigwalkTV on Vimeo.

Quote: “It’s time for all those focusing on sustainability to change gears and review strategy. With the ecological system groaning under the strain of an economy simply too big for the planet, we have to face the uncomfortable truth. The time to act just preventatively has past. It is time to brace for impact as we enter The Great Disruption.

The coming years won’t be pleasant, as our society and economy hits the wall and realigns around what was always an obvious reality: You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.  …”

Paul Gilding is an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability, and author of  “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

http://www.sustainability.com/blog/the-great-disruption-are-you-ready

What is important now?

The consequence of insight in the necessities ought to be action, informed action – in the private and corporate spheres of responsibility. And one should spread the word.

Other consequence: Take a new perspective, perceiving the “Social Wave”

Quite a while ago I realized that the standard distinction in the foresight area needs a new department with a special focus issue and research target. We have corporate foresight and public foresight – and in these times we need social foresight. If you google the term you will find the texts of the Australian futurist Richard A. Slaughter. His concept seems to be primary about the political direction. My own approach is a bit broader, thinking about a “social wave”, with a plethora of “Social X” terms, which have been spreading for some years now: Think e.g. of social business, social media, social innovation – the “social” here does mean something different than in the political coordinate system.

Social Wave – finding contours

It is a mode of thinking, of conceiving, or of designing software, or designing the corporation for instance to have the beneficial results of collective intelligence or socially induced motivation ressources. Finally I started a new blog for a better understanding of the different phenomena and how they interact. I started in German, but the next steps will realize some kind of social media strategy sensitive to the language issue. For now I invite you to the mind map, to get an idea about the “social wave” and the “social foresight network”.

http://www.mindmeister.com/96023893/social-wave

http://socialforesight.wordpress.com (actually in German)

The narrow “political” concept of “Social Foresight” in the writings of Richard A. Slaughter: Pathways and Impediments to Social Foresight (pdf)

As I have said in the posts above there is a structural problem with our accelerated hightech civilization: We are witnessing two growing avalanches – the avalanche of technological solutions and the avalanche of secondary effects of these solutions. The manifold and shocking helplessness to deal with the nuclear accidents in Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami are a strong example about this fatal dynamics.

Damage after an Earthquake and Tsunami at the Dai Ichi Power Plant. (credit: DigitalGlobe) http://www.digitalglobe.com

In this week I have an exciting contrasting program to this anachronistic technology. I am attending the Ecosummit 2011, where the smart green economy is meeting. That feels good.

Image source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_Fukushima-Daiichi

Things are changing in front of our eyes. As I said we need an avalanche of innovations beyond the hardware and material innovation realm: Organisational, social innovation will be essential for the successful transformation to a more lasting civilisation (see Eco-Singularity is near. Solutions (III)).

The first adequate platform for the open enterprise

Just found something that might be a decisive catalyst to change the game: BetterMeans.com. They have just gone public these days. Watch the great intro video (around 4 min)!

If it works this will be a quantum leap as an innovative layout for organisations. Why? This is not just another project management platform with some cool features. BetterMeans is holding the option to reciprocally rate contributions of members. This is in the direction of more adaptive, scalable, faster and more fair economical structures – the “Fairconomy”* if you like the term.

Flatness, transparency and openness

They really apply their principles onto themselves and want to spread the good. On the pricing page you find the “zero charge” for all prjects, who keep things open and inclusive! So it is really worth a thought for social entreprises etc. to consider switching, even if they have a running platform …

The quote for the 21st century

More and more people are citing this famous quote of Einstein – you find it on the BetterMeans page too. I ask myself whether it will be the quote of our time!

The significant problems we have
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
with which we created them

Albert Einstein

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* Actually I am not linked to other people using the term “fariconomy” in maybe a very special or narrow way e.g. the German e.V. at http://www.fairconomy.com/. They look more like a political movement with a normative core. I suppose they are having good intentions, but maybe with only a too simplistic solution portfolio – I am not quite sure what to think about their approach, that has to be checked some time.