Category Archives: Futurist

LANCASTER, Pa. Dr. Lowell Catlett spent an hour challenging and entertaining more than 500 dairy producers at the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit on Feb. 8. He kept the audience on the edge of their seats as he wove strings of statistics and studies into a positive story for dairying.

I believe this is the best time ever to be in agriculture, he told the group. It is the best time ever to be alive.

Catlett is a futurist and was the regents professor in agricultural economics and agricultural business and Extension economics at New Mexico State University. He was also the dean for the universitys College Of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

Technology is changing how the world works, he said. Agriculture provides enough food for almost 9 billion people, something that was not thought possible back in the 1970s. Scientific breakthroughs continue to push the envelope.

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said 10 years ago it would have been hard to believe the production levels the state is achieving. Its brought some very real challenges. However, he said dairy farmers need to take the long view for success. We have come to the summit to move forward what to do differently to stay in this business.

You have to take the long view, Catlett reiterated. He compared different elements from the 1970s to today. His takeaway was the good old days were not as idyllic as envisioned.

He picked 1970 because it was the first time the U.S. economy hit $1 trillion in gross domestic product, one-fourth of the world economy. The United Kingdom was second. Global agriculture could not provide enough for every person to have 2,450 calories daily. A U.S. consumer spent 20 percent of their annual income on food and only ate away from home once a week. The world spent 60 percent to eat.

In 2014, the United States is still the leading global economy. The population doubled since the 70s, and there is a new economic power in the global marketplace.

Now, we produce 3,200 calories for every man, woman and child in the world, Catlett said, exceeding what the average person needs. Worries abound on how to feed nine billion in the future. The overwhelming question is can we feed nine billion people? Slam dunk, already done thank you American agriculture.

American families spend less on food today. You, because of your energy and efficiency, gave back the American people 10 percent of their income. and what did they do with it? They got weird.

Technology helped to push the needle. If farmers had not advanced, it would take an arable land mass the size of the United States, China and Canada combined to provide the same level of food.

The second largest economy today is China. The fastest growing economies are India and Vietnam, Catlett said. Abject poverty recorded the fastest drop in history, he shared. There are still too many, but its the fastest drop in recorded history and the trend continues to drop.

As economic conditions improve, peoples perceptions change. The luxury of one generation because a necessity of the next, he said. For example, previous generations considered a mobile phone as a luxury, today they are considered a necessity. Once you go up, you dont ever want to go down.

The needle is moving from substance to values of love and then acceptance. What the first thing we do at love and acceptance, we get pets, he said. Chinas pet population has exploded as the economy has improved. As those countries emerge and their economies improve, the first thing they change is their diets, he said. They begin to seek more meat-based protein. If the population trends hold, the world will have to double meat-based protein production.

It will not be done in pastoral agriculture, he said. It will be done by intensive animal operations. The efficiencies of input to output are better, and the physical health of the animal is far superior and the impact to the environment is far less.

Dairy producers cant forget they are also a part of the beef industry One out of every five pounds of beef is dairy. Dont tell me you are not in the beef business, he said. Beef demand could influence dairy breeding in the future as dairy cattle might have to return to a dual purpose.

Dairy farmers will have to think globally and locally. Catlett said there is a shortage of hops in the United States. Why? Its the craft beer industry. Artisan cheeses, buy local, organic and other unique enterprises are finding an opportunity.

We can feed a hungry world. And, (if) we can feed this beast, they have a lot of money, he said.

Technologys driving more than an agricultural revolution, its changing how people live their lives. Things are going SMACC. Everything is going to be social, mobile, analytics, cloud and cognition, he said. Things are now talking to things. That technology can be found in dairies to control the barn climate.

Presently, 99.9% of all things in the United States do not talk to each other. Get ready folks, theyre going to start talking to each other, he said.

Get ready for a revolution in agriculture folks, he said. You will own this new world, because it will be totally connected. Lowell Catlett

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Futurist believes dairy has a bright future - Lancaster Farming

Fri, Mar 17, 2017 11:21am

Futurist Syd Mead is perhaps one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and his pioneering, optimistic visions of a sleeker, brighter tomorrowhave been featured in everything from streamlined Detroit car designs andRidley Scott's Blade RunnertoTron, Aliensand Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

A deluxe new coffee tablebook, The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist,detailing the concept artist's enduring legacy, is coming this fall from Titan Books. It's a lavish 248-page hardbackvolume offering a fantastic assortment of Mead's engineering art and conceptual designs for Hollywood. Many of the hundreds of brilliant sketches and illustrations will be published here for the first time.

Mead began his legendary career back in the late '50s at Ford Motor Company's Advanced Styling Studio before being lured to the bright lights of Tinseltown in the '70s.

Last year Mead was honored at the 14th annual Visual Effects Society Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where he was presented with a special Vision Award for lifetime achievement.

Sydis truly a defining creative force in the world of visual arts, saidMike Chambers,VESboard chair. He has a rare ability to create fiercely inventive images, both iconic and sublime, and he hascontributed tosome of our most unforgettable cinematic experiences.Sydslegendary contributions to the field of design, and the inspiration he has provided for generations of visual effects artists is immense.

Check out a preview ofTitan'sThe Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futuristcoming on September 5, 2017, and let us know which of the visual wizard'smany creations have moved you the most.

(Via Coming Soon)

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Deluxe coffee table art book for futurist Syd Mead coming this fall - Blastr

Visions of the future, from the early 20th century. Umberto Boccioni: Dynamism of a Cyclist. Image: WikiCommons

The Italian Futurists celebrated technology, youth, and violence in their avant-garde works. Selena Daly, a professor and expert on the movement, explains its role in shaping Italian society.

This article is based around a transcript of a segment from The Anthill 10: The Future, a podcast from The Conversation. Gemma Ware, society editor at The Conversation and a producer of The Anthill, interviewed Selena Daly, an expert on the Italian Futurists.

When the Italian journalist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti went off to the frontlines of World War I, he was thrilled to be pedalling there on a bicycle. Back in 1915, bikes were an avant-garde mode of transport and Marinetti was an avant-garde kind of guy. Hed made waves across Europe a few years earlier when he launched the Futurist Manifesto.

Selena Daly: Marinetti, who was a master at advertising and self-promotion, got the first manifesto published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro in February of 1909. This really was a very bold launch of an artistic and cultural movement at this time and got a lot of attention also around the world.

Selena Daly is a lecturer in Italian studies at University College Dublin and an expert in the Italian Futurists. Marinettis vision of the future was built around high praise for technology and the aesthetics of modernity.

SD: So he praised in this manifesto the speeding automobile, steamships, locomotives. All of these technologies that perhaps to our eyes now may seem a little bit quaint but at that time were really at the cutting edge of technology. So very famously, Marinetti in that manifesto praised the speeding automobile as being more beautiful than the famous Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace which stands in the Louvre then and still today.

It was a movement that began with literature and poetry and spread to sculpture, fine art, music and even textiles. For example, this 1921 piece called Fox-trot Futurist by an Italian composer, Virgilio Mortari, was influenced by the Futurists. Marinettis vision was as destructive and provocative as it was creative and forward-thinking.

SD: He felt that Italy as a country was completely weighed down by the baggage of the Renaissance and the baggage of ancient Rome and its classical past. And he really wanted Italy to just stop looking backwards always and instead look to what the future could offer them in terms of inspiration for art and literature. And in that first manifesto he says he wants to rejuvenate Italy which he found very stagnant and therefore he said that everyone should set fire to the libraries, flood the museums and in this way break all links with the past.

A 1912 photo of the futurists. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti centre, and Umberto Boccioni, second from right. Wikimedia Commons

With World War I in the offing, Marinetti and his band of followers quickly agitated for Italy to join the fight. They felt that war would help bring their Futuristic vision into being.

SD: One of the most famous slogans that Marinetti coined was in that very first manifesto where he said that he praised war as the sole hygiene of the world. The idea there should be a purging war which would rid Italy and Europe of all of its obsession with the past and they could move forward to a brighter future.

It took nine months for Italys leaders to agree to join the war during which time the Futurists campaigned vigorously for intervention. When Italy did enter the war on the side of the Allies in May 1915, Marinetti and his group of fellow Futurists signed up as soon as they could.

SD: They were terribly excited by the bombardments. They found this to be an inspiration also for their art and in very many ways putting into practice what they had preached and what they had thought about and imagined in advance of World War I.

When the war ended in 1918, the Futurists went through an intense period of political engagement, forming the Futurist Political Party and forming a close alliance with Benito Mussolini and his Fascist movement. The Futurist party wanted to make Italy great again. They wanted a country that was no longer in servitude to its past where the only religion was the religion of tomorrow. Their manifesto promised revolutionary nationalism, and included ideas such as totally abolishing the senate and the gradual dissolution of the institution of marriage.

A 1914 design by futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Antonio Sant'Elia

SD: But in the end of 1919 there were Italian elections and the Futurists and the Fascists performed disastrously. So they received less than 2% of the vote in Milan and its at that point that Marinetti actually decides that parliamentary politics isnt for him and he withdraws. He disbands the Futurist political party and he withdraws completely from parliamentary politics because he feels disillusioned and he feels that the message that he has isnt getting through.

Post-1920, Futurism no longer goes down the parliamentary politics route but it was, after 1924, very closely aligned with Mussolinis Fascist movement. So while they may not have been engaged in parliamentary parties they were very much on the side of the Fascist regime and that didnt change at all during Marinettis lifetime.

Marinettis association with Fascism has tainted the Futurists legacy ever since.

SD: Obviously some Futurists distanced themselves from the movement because of this alignment with Fascism. But others didnt. Its interesting a lot of the art in the 1930s and some of the 1940s is what can be described as Fascist pro-regime art. There are a lot of portraits of Mussolini done in a Futurist style for example. And the Futurists, while they were never the official state art of Fascism because Mussolini never wanted to proclaim one art to be the state art of Fascism the Futurists were still featured at official events and did have this very strong alignment with Musssoinis regime at that time.

Marinettis allegiance to Mussolini went right up to his death in 1944 in Bellagio in the north of Italy, near to the puppet regime run by Mussolini towards the end of World War II.

SD: Because there was such a cult of personality also around Marinetti and he was really the focal point of the entire movement it did rather peter out at that stage after his death and then at the end of the war as well. So there were surviving Futurists who did try in the 1940s and 1950s to keep Futurism alive and there was an interest in Futurism most definitely, but it was tainted by Fascism and there was a reluctance in many circles to really address the Futurist art and Futurist literature on its merits because of the shadow of Fascism that was hanging over it.

Italys relationship with Futurism is still complicated, but some Futurist images have remained iconic.

SD: There is a sculpture of Boccioni, one of the most famous Futurist artists, actually featured on the Italian Euro 20 cents coin, just to give an indication of how important the Futurist aesthetic is to a vision of modern Italy today. Boccioni, died actually in 1916. He died under arms, he actually fell off his horse in training so he didnt have the glory of a battlefield death that he may have wished for because he was also very belligerent.

But he was never tainted by Fascism because he died before Fascism actually came into being. So therefore its much easier to place a Boccioni sculpture on a Euro coin in Italy because he doesnt really have those other connotations and other associations with Fascism.

And the Futurists did help shape the way others in the 20th century went on to imagine what the future could look like.

SD: The Futurist aesthetic had a very profound influence on the language of advertising for example in the 20th century. For example, BMW recently said that they were very much influenced by the Futurist aesthetic in the design of one of their cars. There are fashion houses that are still using Futurist prints and Futurist textiles to inspire their collections. There is still an affinity for the Futurist aesthetic even today.

So while Marinettis technological, streamlined vision of the future may have been born out of a specific political moment, it has continued to resonate. Even the generic use of the word Futurist today remains strongly connected to Marinettis vision from 1909.

Selena Daly, Assistant Professor in Italian Studies, University College Dublin

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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How the Italian Futurists shaped the aesthetics of modernity in the 20th century - The Local Italy

DUBLINSecurity Systems News caught up with Allegion futurist and VP of strategy and partnerships Rob Martens to get his take on the top emerging technology trends in the industry, from big data and analytics to AI and robotics, as well as the companys plans for ISC West.

On a personal level, Martens is doing a presentation on April 6 at ISC West on what he calls enhanced design.

This is a huge topic and an unbelievable opportunity for our industry, Martens told SSN. This is one of those where you truly need to embrace the change, and if you do, you can be insanely rewarded but if you dont you could be punished.

He pointed out that enhanced design is the idea of incorporating new technology into the aesthetic and functional design of a projectcreating opportunities to make a home or a building safer, more efficient and more convenient.

The real concept of enhanced design isespecially for integrators and security professionalshow do we help these architects, who are already pretty burdened, integrate in this new technology at the beginning of the design process, because it will fundamentally change the way that an architect designs the interior and potentially even the exterior of a building, he explained. But in order to do that, weve got to be more than wire pullers or mechanical security guys.

From an Allegion standpoint overall, Martens said the company will be very focused on electro-mechanical convergencehow devices that have historically been mechanical in nature, effectively integrate electronics, software, and play well within more complex ecosystems, he said. The big announcement for us it that our Engage platform is expanding hugely, to include many more products, so that level of connectivity is now getting rolled out and becoming a reality.

Looking beyond ISC West, Martens said that the way the industry responsibly leverages all of the data that is available today continues to be a hot topic.

The data in the more tech-driven opportunities that you are starting to see people embrace, not only are they inevitable but they are crucial to the growth and the health of our industry, he asserted. And with more people concerned about their data being sold, crowdsourcing data to create better experienceswhile keeping individual user data privatewill only become more important in 2017.

One of the mega trends that he is seeing is differential privacy, which in simple terms, is the ability to collect data without collecting specific data about a person. So there is an ability to protect people while still extracting beneficial things that allow you to recognize big opportunities and use that data effectively, he said.

He noted that the utilization and application of tools like differential privacy are going to be a really important part of the debate around: What do you want to extract and why?

The key, said Martens, is that everything is getting faster and cheaperstorage, the sensors that collect the data, the pipelines that transport the data, and the tools that sort the data into useful, clean and analytically capable intelligence.

So I think the security industry is going to benefit hugely and I am very optimistic about the inclusion of meaningful data into physical tools and managerial tool sets, he said. I think we leave a tremendous amount of productivity on the table every day, and you will continue to see more key decision makers on a project, such as the CIO and IT person, working closer than ever with integrators and security professionals to bridge that gap between physical security and digital or IT security.

The growth of intuitive interfaces and the emergence of AI will also see continued growth this year and beyond, noted Martens.

AI is multiple levels and many flavors, from chatbots to more complex voice interfaces, he said. It is not just its ability to crunch numbers, and give you the right answers at the right time, but also the nature of the interaction itself. How intuitive or frictionless can we make it? And how can we make the technology so everyone can use it?

Where AI gets interesting in security is how fast it can analyze all of the data that is being produced.

If you look at IBMs Watson platform, for example, it is looking for statistical anomalies across mountains and mountains of research, and Watson exponentially speeds up that evaluation process that would take someone, such as a doctor looking through cancer research, years and years to complete. And the applications on the security side are endless. What that is ultimately going to do is give the user better and more control than they have ever had before and if they want to cede some of their activities so they can focus on other things, they will be able to do that.

He pointed out that robotics is the physical manifestation and a great and meaningful extension for the capabilities associated with AI. Drones can do the job of many security guards, and you can use unmanned vehicles in manufacturing and all the other things that people have said, but there are some really excellent and interesting use cases for robotics in a security environment as well.

Augmented and virtual reality will also play a role in making security much more intuitive and frictionless. People think headsets right away, but AR is just another user interface for the technology that is in the building, and it can help a technician, for example, do his job faster and more effectively, he noted. AR is overlaying information over a picture, so if you are using AR as a service tech coming to do an audit, for example, and you have never been to the building, when you get out of your car and turn on the camera on your phone, all of the sudden the devices that are within range are going to call out to you and alert you to any issues, from a battery to an audit that is needed, and also give you the fastest route through the building to get to each device.

Another technology that will help improve the overall user experience, as well as help protect systems from ransomware, is the cloud.

I see greater adoption of cloud-based solutions, he said. The truth of the matter is, if you are worried about ransomware, you are a lot better in many cases ceding that control to the experts in the cloud than trying to protect your own local network. Who has better resources to defend your network? [Amazon Web Services] or your local IT guy?

Another factor that will drive the cloud forward is the introduction of 5G. The amount of data that is going to be available through 5G is so staggeringly huge, the response times for huge amounts of data are just milliseconds, so any concerns that people had about if it will be fast enough will no longer exist.

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Allegion futurist looks into his crystal ball - Security Systems News

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Google's Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil believes a technological singularity will turn some people into super humans by 2029

(VERO BEACH, FLA) During an interview on March 13th at the 2017 SXSW tech conference self described futurist Ray Kurzweil said he believes a singularity, where carbon and silicon-based intelligence will merge to form a single global consciousness, will occur in the next 12 years.

Kurzweil said this singularity would create a cybernetic society including humans with computers in their brains and machines smarter than their creators.

'By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence,' Kurzweil said. That leads to computers having human intelligence, our putting them inside our brains, connecting them to the cloud, expanding who we are.

Today, that's not just a future scenario, Kurzweil continued. It's here, in part, and it's going to accelerate.

Kurzweil said that machines are already enhancing humans and by connecting chips to the neocortex in our brains this effect will exponentially increase.

We're going to get more neocortex, we're going to be funnier, we're going to be better at music, we're going to be sexier, Kurzweil said. We're going to really exemplify all the attributes we value in humans to a greater degree.

Kurzweil, who has long been active in the tech sector and is the author toeight books on the subject of trans-humanism including, The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999); The Singularity is Near (2005); and Visions of the Future (2015), has previously made147 predictions with 86 percent of them coming true.

In the same realm of techno-philosophy, the US National Science Foundation predicted in the early 2000s that network-enhanced telepathy the process of sending thoughts over the internet would be practical and implementable by the 2020s.

The term singularity was first used in the 1950s by a Manhattan-project mathematician named John von Neumann.

Ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue, Von Neumann wrote.

Kurzweil cited von Neumann's term in a foreword to von Neumann's classic The Computer and the Brain. Neumann was also part of the inspiration for the maniacal former Nazi scientistdepicted in Stanley Kubricks 1964 dark-humored apocalypticfilm, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

In 2015, Alt-media commentator and author Mark Dice, who has accumulated over 315 million views on his YouTube videos, said Transhumanists are dangerous psychopaths.

Dice was referencing a 2014 quote from a self affirming Transhumanist named Richard Seed, who previously won a noble peace prize in 1998 for his work in economics and gained global notoriety on December 5, 1997 when he announced that he planned to clone a human being before any federal laws could be enacted to ban the process.

We are going to become Gods, period, Seed said. If you dont like it, get off.You dont have to contribute, you dont have to participate, but if you are going to interfere with me becoming a God, youre going to have trouble. Therell be warfare."

At the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, TRUNEWS host Rick Wiles was told by keynote speakers that the integration of computers into human beings is a goal being pursed by the same architects behind the implementation of an Artificially Intelligent (AI) ubiquitously connectedGlobal Brain.

TRUNEWS copy, TRUNEWS analysis

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Futurist Ray Kurzweil: AI-human merger only 12 yrs away - TRUNEWS

Each spring in the United States youll find a flock of futurists from myriad disciplines migrating to North Carolina for discussions and celebrations surrounding boundary-pushing technologies. The gathering officially began in New York in 2004, when Moog Music created a one-night tribute to namesake synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog. After growing in popularity and with a desire to expand the platform, Moogfest moved south in 2010; today the four-day affair takes place in Durham and is wildly revered for its awesomely nerdy program that fuses engineering with artistry across exploratory workshops, keynote speakers and experimental music performances.

This year Moogfest has tapped particle physicist Dr Kate Shaw of ATLAS @ CERN and artist-scientist Joe Davis of MIT Media Lab to lead conversations about how technology will be used to change the future alongside creative thought provokers like Marc Fleury, Zoltan Istvan and Michael Bierylo. Additionally, this year sees musician Michael Stipe release a never-before-seen art installation comprised of years of video footage shot in NYC, which he uses to explore desire and movement. Stipe used Moog gear to score the piece, and it's his first-ever solo composition.

With such an enlightened line-up, we caught up with Moogfest creative director Emmy Parker to learn more about the 2017 program.

Moogfest is a concentrated experience in exploring how technology enhances the way we create art, music and how we design our future communities. We bring together creative technologists like musicians, coders, scientists, filmmakers and inventors to present their unique perspectives through workshops, keynotes, conversations and performances. We try to build an experience that exposes both participants and attendees to new ideas, and empowers them to take those ideas back to their communities to create something new.

Each year, we try to expand on the impact Moogfest programming has on equipping participants and attendees with tools to design the future they want to create. This years program more strongly reflects recent sociopolitical events. As announced in February, we will have a dedicated Protest Stage at this years festival in response to discriminatory policies in our home state of North Carolina and around the world. In keeping with Moogfests essence, well look at how technology will enhance the way we resist, organize and protest.

Absolutely. The beauty of Moogfest is that the understanding of the "Future" has no limits. Spirituality is a pillar of human experienceit, along with science, plays a fundamental role in how people understand what this life is all about. Plus, scientists and artists are using technology to enhance their spiritual lives which makes it a fascinating point of exploration for us.

We know Michael Stipe as an accomplished musician, but this installation is a platform for his long-time work as a multimedia artist.The sound and visual piece is a unique presentation of film shot by Stipe and projected on storefront windows along a main street in downtown Durham, scored with a never-before-heard solo composition by Stipe featuring analog synthesizers. The installation can be seen and heard from both the inside and outside of the space, and beautifully explores movement and desire by an integral member and supporter of the south easts music and art communityMoogfest is a celebration of beautiful minds like his.

A futurist is a person that actively seeks to know the unknown, and who shares their findings so that we can collectively enhance how we design the future. Musicians, artists, comedians, scientists, sound designers, inventors, researchers, coders, teachers and even pre-schoolers engage in showing us the way to design a more equitable future. We are all seeking answers for what tomorrow will bring, not just technologists.

Images courtesy of Moogfest

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Moogfest 2017's Futurist Line-Up - Cool Hunting

The SXSW festival here in Austin has always contained strands of futurism. Beyond the brands and the parties and the barbecue, its a place where people come and prognosticate about technology and what itll look like years from now. But in recent years, attendees of SXSW have taken on the bolder, weirder, and longer-term mission of trying to imagine what the world will look like when we have human-level artificial intelligence and science fiction-grade human augmentation. Because when theres no new apps to talk about, the thing only left is mining The Matrix, apparently.

Case in point: the audience polling service Slido, which is used to crowdsource questions for panelists, is being used to ask futurists whether they think humans will one day swim as fast as sharks.

Best ever audience q - To director of pentagon "if you could make soldiers who can swim as fast as sharks, would you" #sxsw

The question was seemingly first posed to Will Roper, the director of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office, in a conversation about advanced weaponry and supersoldiers. It was then posed again, perhaps even by the same person, in a different panel discussion with Ray Kurzweil, one of the best known futurists and author of the book The Singularity is Near.

Theres a lot to unpack here. Lets start with what this question is actually asking. A common theme in the futurist and transhumanism movements is that humanity is destined to one day augment and improve itself. In other words, we just might one day have genetically engineered superhumans, brain-computer interfaces that make us smarter, merged AI-human consciousness, and the ability to live forever you know, that sort of thing.

The shark question is the new simulation hypothesis

In this case, we have people wondering about a very specific and very peculiar use case of human augmentation to create very fast swimmers, as if humanitys gravest threat right now is not being to outrun an amphibian apex predator. Think of it a bit like the are we living in a simulation? debate that was all the rage in Silicon Valley last summer.

While the simulation hypothesis is all good fun, the shark question is bit more stupid, if that wasnt abundantly clear. Humans at their peak athleticism can swim at best around 6 mph Michael Phelps topped out around there in 2010, according to ESPN, and thats still about three times faster than the average human swimmer. A shortfin mako shark, on other hand, can hit top speeds of about 60 mph. Besides being nightmare fuel, that a mako shark can swim 10 times faster than Phelps likely means its probably not worth the resources it would take to reach out-swim a fish at the top of the food chain.

Still, both Roper and Kurzweil were good sports about it. Roper said that he wasnt aware of any active Pentagon research trying to augment humans with fins or gills, but said he would happily sign up to be made a faster swimmer if the opportunity arose. Kurzweil was a little more confused, choosing to comment about medical devices that help people restore lost limb functions and whatnot.

I dont know about the shark application, he added. Neither we do, Ray, neither do we.

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People are asking futurists if humans will one day swim as fast as sharks - The Verge

Predicting the future of marketing is a near impossible task, given the fast changing technologies and often at times unpredictable nature of consumer behaviour. All I know is that there will be more and more marketing in so many fields as the abundance of resources means more will be commoditised, and messages drowned out, and consumers alienated.

Brands with clear direct messages, and which project strong values that capture the Human spirit continue to win through. Think of the John Lewis Christmas ads, which British consumers longingly wait for every November. This year it stars bouncing dogs, foxes, badgers, squirrels and hedgehogs. The questions faced by every marketer is how can we create smart cut through marketing in a world constantly bombarded by information, news, social, paid and earned media. Iconography, for example, one of the oldest marketing tools in the world, could make a comeback. How do you measure ROI to ensure the biggest bang for your buck?

More importantly is ROI the right, or only, measure? Ask our Singapore customers this year whether they remember Caltexs flash gif file Facebook post, or special card discount, or even our new loyalty programme, and the answer will probably be No, but I really liked your blow up Pump attendant waving us into your stations. The problem for a marketer is how do you measure ROI, on an inflatable doll?

We have become ROI and KPI dominant, wanting to measure everything. We show all kinds of measures that highlight how our new Facebook campaign, or programmatic buy, or price discount, or new AR game achieve good numbers; but are these enough to change consumers hearts and habits? Good marketers will step back and realise people follow their heart when selecting brands. People want to choose useful brands they like. David Ogilvys dictum was right after all: The consumer isnt a moron; she is your wife. Marketers need to think more about the relationships their brands should have with their customers.

Trust is a key part to this relationship. As brands go data-centric, collecting data with every customer interaction, consumers know that they are being monitored but expect more things in return. This data can be used two ways; one to destroy trust, or best, builds more trust by closer matching and anticipating human needs. Data capture, protection and encryption, usage and dissemination will be a minefield to marketers which needs Brand guardians to tread carefully.

The plethora of new technology will help marketers hone in on their audiences with the right offer, at the right time at the right place, but the right emotion will always be the secret sauce that builds bonds better.

The smart marketers will be focusing on behavioural psychology as the future of marketing. To successfully influence customers, its best to understand their behaviour at a deeper level. You need a clear and candid understanding of how people arrive at their decisions at the foundational level. Evolving research approaches will become an even more important tool in managing this. We know, for example, that consumers are twice as likely to buy from a brand if the message is aligned with their personality.

Whilst most marketers are looking at tech industry to give themselves an advantage, we could see a swing back to exploring the human mind and condition more first. We have to embrace the human elements and complications to see what makes us tick in the fast changing world and apply to technology to get our message out and resonating. If we want to create the best tech innovations then we have to place the human condition at its centre first.

The marketing space is littered with more and more fads, fashions and new shiny tools that trendy ROI focused marketers will grab onto and use. But unless you are connecting with the heart, all marketing will become more transactional and transient; and ultimately forgettable. The need to be human will make us better marketers, rather than mere sellers.

The writer is Brian Fisher, brand manager at Caltex.

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The Futurist: Putting the human heart back at the centre | Marketing ... - Marketing Interactive

"Over the past few years, I've conducted extensive interviews with over 150 executives and analyzed over 250 global organizations to better understand what the successful ones are doing when it comes to collaboration," said Morgan. "It turns out there is a very specific set of activities and behaviors that the top organizations are focused on, and that's what we'll be exploring in this webinar: how to create a successful, collaborative environment, built with employees who actually want to show up to work."

Morgan will be joined by Prysm's director of product marketing, David Schweer.

Additional related content can be found here:

About Prysm Prysm is a leading provider of cloud-based, digital-canvas solutions to many of the world's largest globalenterprises. ThePrysm Visual Workplace platform drives a new era of digital transformation and enterprise agility. By enabling individuals and teams to explore all their data, content, applications and tools on hyper-visual, always-on digital canvases, Prysm ignites innovative thinking, drives decisions, accelerates productivity and transforms presentations into experiences. Customers using Prysm benefit from an open, enterprise-grade solution that integrates with existing collaboration tools and scales to hundreds or thousands of users, while meeting advanced security requirements.

Founded in 2005 in the Silicon Valley, Prysm has over 500 employees with offices worldwide. Learn more atprysm.com.

About Jacob MorganJacob Morgan is a three time best-selling author, keynote speaker, and futurist who explores the future of work and employee experience. His latest book is, The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces they Want, the Tools they Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate (Wiley, March 2017) and is based on an analysis of over 250 global organizations. His previous books are, The Future of Work and The Collaborative Organization. Jacob's work has been endorsed by the CEOs of: Cisco, Whirlpool, T-Mobile, Best Buy, SAP, Nestle, KPMG, Schneider Electric, and many others. He is regularly featured in business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, NPR, USA Today, Forbes, and others. Jacob also has a popular podcast and Youtube series where he explores various themes around the future of work. You can learn more and get access to all of these resources by visiting: TheFutureOrganization.com

Contact Shannon Lyman Director of Communications +1 859-699-6891 SLyman@prysm.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/embracing-collaborative-strategy-paramount-for-future-of-the-enterprise-futurist-jacob-morgan-predicts-in-prysm-webinar-300422231.html

SOURCE Prysm, Inc.

http://www.prysm.com

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Embracing Collaborative Strategy Paramount for Future of the ... - PR Newswire (press release)