Ariadne

Australia 2030 – CSIRO’s scenarios

Robert Hickson • May 30, 2016

• agriculture,
• Australia,
• digital,
• Economic,
• futures,
• healthcare,
• mining,
• scenarios

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has a futures group. They’ve just released a report called Australia 2030: navigating our uncertain future.  There are some nice aspects to the report, and it is good to see rigorous futures techniques being applied in our hemisphere. But, overall, I was underwhelmed. The report is based around four scenarios: Digital … Read More

Beware the pundit industrial complex

Robert Hickson • May 25, 2016

• History,
• media,
• prediction,
• pundits,
• robotics

In one of my very first Ariadne posts I referred to the prediction pundits. You have, perhaps, noticed the prevalence of this species in the technology world. In a recent newsletter the folks at CB Insights have called this the pundit industrial complex, and illustrate it with various headlines about the future market size for drones and virtual … Read More

Algorithmic organisms?

Robert Hickson • May 21, 2016

• algorithms,
• artificial intelligence,
• future,
• prediction,
• robotics

Here’s a really absurd mis-reading of biology from a Professor of History in a Huffington Post interview: The whole of biology since Darwin can be summarized in three words: “Organisms are algorithms.” I wasn’t aware that we were living in the Matrix. This is the type of talk you most commonly hear from Silicon Valley folk talking or writing about technological progress and what … Read More

Future work

Robert Hickson • May 16, 2016

• artificial intelligence,
• Automation,
• employment,
• trends

There are four narratives about how increasing automation of manual and cognitive tasks will affect employment: Many people will no longer have paid employment, and will depend on government assistance. Many people will no longer have paid employment, but automation will create highly productive and equitable economies that enable people to pursue their own creative and social endeavours. As in … Read More

Smart technologies – uninvited guests?

Robert Hickson • Apr 14, 2016

• Health Care,
• smart technologies,
• Social

This nice short video from Superflux looks at how some people may actually respond to smart technologies around the home, particularly if it wasn’t their choice. What are the messy, whimsical, unintended human behaviours that might collide with the one-size-fits-all ‘care’ that many smart devices are designed to deliver? It is also a commentary on … Read More

High-Tech Sechs

Robert Hickson • Apr 09, 2016

• high tech,
• innovation,
• pleasure,
• robots,
• sex,
• Society

Wired magazine has always been somewhat of a tech fetish publication. Recently they’ve highlighted fetish tech. Silicone valley comes to “adult” toys. [I’m not revealing anything explicit here]. It’s not the sad and seedy that you may expect. These are items designed to be flaunted, or at least not to be seen as embarrassing items hidden away in a … Read More

Minister of the Future, please no!

Robert Hickson • Apr 04, 2016

• futures,
• government,
• Planning

Something that I didn’t pick up at the time during the World Economic Forum in January was the suggestion by Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CE of Salesforce, that “Every country needs a Minister of the Future“. Last year, though, I did write about Sweden’s new Minister for Strategic Development and Nordic Cooperation. The World Economic Forum’s … Read More

Societal trends

Robert Hickson • Mar 30, 2016

• demographics,
• population,
• poverty

Hans Rosling, of Gapminder fame, and perhaps the world’s most enthusiastic statistician, has an hour long video making the case that increasing global population levels aren’t fundamentally a prelude to disaster. (You can read a synopsis here). You can also save time by looking at these shorter videos showing the key trends of … Read More

Artificial intelligence research in New Zealand

Robert Hickson • Mar 24, 2016

• artificial intelligence,
• New Zealand

AlphaGo’s been leading the artificial intelligence news the last few weeks. It’s an impressive display of the advances in AI, but as the Verge notes, AI doesn’t do so well (at the moment) when there is imperfect information – which is most things in life. While the likes of Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley companies are investing … Read More

Fonterra and foresight

Robert Hickson • Mar 13, 2016

• Fonterra,
• foresight

I can’t help thinking whether Fonterra, and NZ’s dairy industry, would be in a better position now if they’d devoted some (more) resources to strategic foresight. They may have, but it isn’t evident so far. What is “strategic foresight”, and what, if anything, is it good for? Strategic foresight, which is being used increasingly now in the private sector rather … Read More