Robert Hickson • Dec 16, 2011 •
I’m still preparing my end of year trend posting, so for now I’ll just point you in the direction of a short article on the future of healthcare that I wrote for Pharmac’s (the New Zealand government’s pharmaceutical purchasing agency) Annual Review (PDF, 1.5 MB). The Pharmaceutical industry is in an interesting period of change. About US$100 Billion “patent dividend” … Read More
Robert Hickson • Nov 25, 2011 •
The Institute for The Future has released another of its graphics of future developments. This one is about where science will be in ten years’ time. I find their graphics in general are more style over substance, and often difficult to digest. Their ‘Multiverse of Exploration’ includes fairly obvious advances over the next decade, such as developments … Read More
Robert Hickson • Oct 25, 2011 •
Rather than thinking that we can’t be prosperous (economically and otherwise) because we are small and isolated, we should consider how we can make New Zealand ‘Too Small To Fail’ during turbulent times. Fail (with a capital F) is when our economic, social and environmental performance not only decline but remain where they are now. Because, as … Read More
Robert Hickson • Oct 24, 2011 •
In my previous post I noted some of the major global changes underway. No one has the solution to how best navigate the energy, economic, educational, and geopolitical transitions underway. So what could New Zealand do? Futures practitioners often write about ‘possible futures’, ‘probable futures’ and ‘preferred futures’. The object of the last is to identify where you’d … Read More
Robert Hickson • Oct 17, 2011 •
If you are keeping up with your futures’ reading then you’ll know about the plethora of trends and drivers that are shaping, or could shape, our future — continuing globalization, population growth or stagnation (depending where you live), multilateralism, paying down debt, urbanisation, aging western populations, obesity, rising economic inequalities, energy crises, climate change, technological convergences, economic growth across Asia, … Read More
Robert Hickson • Sep 15, 2011 •
Part 1 looked at trends in Robotics. Here I consider some of the challenges, as well as provide more information on military robots. Challenges What is needed for robots to be valued and respected members of our world? As a non-specialist I see five main requirements: Discriminating – It is easy for us to distinguish individuals and objects by … Read More
Robert Hickson • Sep 14, 2011 •
Robots have been a promise and a fear for the last century. Up till now robots have been used for what have been called the 3 D’s — Dull, Dirty and Dangerous work. Things like building cars, vacuuming, mining, chopping up carcasses, search & rescue, and joining the armed forces. But there are also robotic footballers, … Read More
Robert Hickson • Sep 02, 2011 •
An interesting infographic from Cisco forecasts the anticipated growth of devices connected over the internet. It notes that the number of things connected to the internet in 2008 was greater than the world population. By 2020 it predicts that 50 billion things will be connected — from cows to household appliances. This assumes that Internet Protocol version 6 is … Read More
Robert Hickson • Aug 02, 2011 •
These blog postings will be on the theme of looking to the future — foresighting — particularly in relation to science and technologies. But not exclusively; I’ll also be examining social, environmental, economic and political trends and developments around the world as my fancy and browser take me. I’m on the look out for interesting developments, significant trends and influencers … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • Aug 02, 2011 •
Honestly, what is there to say at this point? Sciblogs just keeps getting more awesome. The newest foal to be welcomed to our fold is Robert Hickson, who will be penning the fantastically classically-named ‘ariadne: a foresight blog‘. He’s going to be doing a spot of foresighting. Some scrying, … Read More