Tech Trendspotting For The Future

Dylan Knight Rogers writes to mention a CNN article about an annual 10-year forecast of tech trends. Lots of analysts produce forecasts, but the Institute of the Future goes one step further by crafting artifacts from the future: "mocked-up products claiming to be from, say, 2009. You might go to an IFTF presentation and see baskets of finessed fruit that promise cognitive enhancement. Or you might wake up in the hotel where the IFTF seminar was being held to find your newspaper dated 10 years hence."

Comments

I'm Sorry

[Enderandrew]

I try not to usually respond with such vitrol, but what is the point?

Forecasting is important and people spend tons of money on forecasting reports only to not read them? So we repackage the forecast in a shiny method claiming to be a product from the future?

The article doesn't have any real pertinent information. Was this really worth our time?

Some of the stuff in there is scary.

[thealsir]

Reputation accounts? "Downloaded song legally from itunes" Nay sire, I do NOT need people knowing each and every "good" thing I've done. It seems more like a thing from an Orwellian science fiction movie than anything else.

Socially networked movie tickets? Leave me and my friends the hell alone.

RFID

[Lord_Dweomer]

Does anybody know of any products that sell a bunch of RFID chips on stickers so you can affix them to objects in your house, set up a 3 (minimum) wireless scanners and transmit the triangulated data to a computer program displaying the room so you can tell where in the room those objects are? That would be a godsend to us disorganized folks.

Re:Just one word: sattelites

[Enderandrew]

What I would have been more interested in is a breakdown of the 5 prototypes in the image gallery. Why do people believe these will take off?

I know drug companies have more lobbyists than there are people in Congress, but do you really think they'll get precription drugs in an apple? What about kids eating them? Or what about the prescription itself? Where would it be sold?

Last time I checked, the growing trend was for more organic food. Every grocery store in town has added a large organic/health section, and full organic stores like Wild Oats and World Market are popping up all over the place.

Then we have social movie tickets. Do you really think that people will be fine with a movie theatre knowing exactly where you are at all times with GPS coordinates? Frankly, if I want to see a movie with my friends I call them on my cell phone. I don't divulge my personal data to a movie company to track me.

Worthless

[Umbral Blot]

Experience tells me that such predictions are more wrong than they are right. It's part of the nature of advancement to take us places that we didn't even know existed before (ex: computers). As a company it would seem to be more prudent to pay for real research on real products than to worry about what may or may not come about. You really only need to be looking about a year into the future to roll with the punches, and you can to that by reading academic journals (so that you know what areas are expecting breakthroughs).

Accurate

[Enderandrew]

I find it funny that companies that are paid big money to forecast the future are so often wrong.

However, there are virtual stock markets where people predict the future in regards to news, sports, movies, etc. More often than not, these are correct.

http://www.ideosphere.com/
http://www.hsx.com/
http://blogshares.com/
http://us.newsfutures.com/