Sunday, September 20, 2009

Outlook from World Future Society

Predicting the future is a fascination for many - some may want to be assured of their personal accomplishments, but businesses also want to be prepared for what's ahead. Working with futurists can bring companies significant competitive edge, allowing them to organize, hire, produce for consumer wants and needs in the next decade.

Looking over the World Future Society's latest outlook report, I would like to call out a few predictions that might affect the tech and communication industries:

1- Computers will store memory using light, rather than electrons. This will increase their storage capacity by 1,000%. (Think, we'll be able to process information faster, save and transfer more electronically. More entertainment will shift online, we'll store less paper.)

2- Health-related gaming will be used to train caregivers and health workers. Some patients will even be able to treat themselves. (Check out great work already done by Games for Health and Health Games Research.)

3-Identity theft and other online crimes will increase.

4-Social roles will continue to transfer online, unchanged. More girls will become victims of cyberbullying.

5- The Internet will become more factually reliable and more transparent. (There is actually research on how crowd-sourcing on wikis during disasters or catastrophic events yields accurate information.)

So, it looks like we'll get more and better information at a faster rate, but the fallacies of human nature will remain.

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