Ariadne

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

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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

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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

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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

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Rethinking universities

Robert Hickson • Mar 10, 2016

• education,
• future,
• innovation,
• universities

A few years ago “disruption” in the university space was mostly about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The hype on that is over, with providers in this area rethinking their strategies.  But a lot of venture capital is still going into these types of “ed tech” companies. There are also other approaches to improving the … Read More

Poor robots?

Robert Hickson • Mar 03, 2016

• automotive,
• collaboration,
• manufacturing,
• robotics,
• trends

Hard on the heals of robots getting “bullied” …   … are humans now “stealing” robot’s jobs? No. As Forbes notes, it is more an evolution of robotics within the auto industry. Big clunky first generation industrial robots are being replaced by smaller more agile machines which can work more safely and efficiently alongside human workers. A … Read More

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Global risks 2016

Robert Hickson • Jan 20, 2016

• Economic,
• geopolitical,
• prediction,
• risk

It’s Davos time again. As usual the World Economic Forum publish their Global Risks Report to coincide with that. Source: World Economic Forum http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2016/shareable-infographics/   Also as usual, it mostly seems to be the here and now issues that pop to the top. That’s not surprising, given that it is based on a perceptions survey. It … Read More

Fashionable futures

Robert Hickson • Dec 24, 2015

• Baby Bottle History,
• fashion,
• future fashion,
• history of fashion,
• prediction,
• wearable tech

Tis the season of prediction. However, the Wonkblog “re-discovers” a whimsy from 1893 predicting the future of fashion. The original article, written by W. Cade-Gall, has popped up previously. The revealed truth from a dreaming gentleman in Cade-Gall’s piece is that during the 20th Century the “immutable laws” of fashion were discovered, and fashion became a science … Read More