Category Archives: Futurist

One of the hot topics at this week's Gartner Symposium/ITExpo is the future impact of smart machines that exploit machine learning and deep-learning algorithms to let them behave autonomously and can adapt to their environment.

One of the hot buttons with such machines is that they "can enhance processes and decision making, but could also remove the need for humans in the process and decision effort. CIOs will see this as a means of delivering greater efficiency, but will have to balance between the active human workforce and the cold efficiency of machines that can learn," Gartner analysts said.

[IN THE NEWS: Vinyl records fight digital death]

Still 60% of CEOs believe that the emergence of smart machines capable of absorbing millions of middle-class jobs within 15 years is a "futurist fantasy," according to Gartner's 2013 CEO survey. However, Gartner predicts that smart machines will have widespread and deep business impact within only seven years through 2020.

Gartner believes that the capability and reliability of smart machines will dramatically increase through 2020 to the point where they will have a major impact on business and IT functions. The impact will be such that firms that have not begun to develop programs and policies for a "digital workforce" by 2015 will not perform in the top quartile for productivity and operating profit margin improvement in their industry by 2020. As a direct result, the careers of CIOs who do not begin to champion digital workforce initiatives with their peers in the C-suite by 2015 will be cut short by 2023.

"The bottom line is that many CEOs are missing what could quickly develop to be the most significant technology shift of this decade," said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner, in a statement.

There is already a multifaceted marketplace for engineering a 'digital workforce,' backed by major players on both the supply and demand side. This marketplace comprises intelligent agents, virtual reality assistants, expert systems and embedded software to make traditional machines 'smart' in a very specialized way, plus a new generation of low-cost and easy-to-train robots and purpose-built automated machines that could significantly devalue and/or displace millions of humans in the workforce, Brant continued.

"The supply side of the market - including IBM, GE, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon - is placing large bets on the success of smart machines, while the demand side includes high-profile first movers that will trigger an 'arms race' for acquiring and/or developing smart machines," Brant added.

While Gartner research asserts that smart machines will have widespread and deep impact through 2020, we also recognize there are significant impediments in the business, political, economic, social and technology spheres that must be overcome and these include

Some other interesting smart machine observations from the Gartner analysts include:

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Smart machines: “Futurist fantasy” or future job menace?

At some point US Steel decided they wanted to be supercool and impress all the cool steel-buying kids, so they did something very smart: they hired futurist Syd Mead to make a bunch of paintings showing a utopian future. Built from steel. With lots of great steel cars.

These paintings show an incredible, sleek future, one that seems to take its design inspirations from 1970s America, but filters them through an elongating lens of sexy science. Check out that car in the top shot there it's clearly inspired by 70s-era Cadillacs, but takes all the those design cues to their utomost extreme, and the result is pretty spectacular. And, interestingly, it suggests a significant change to DOT regulations that put a huge emphasis on side-marker lighting.

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Also, what's with that white genetically-modified tiger-cat thing? Did he come in the car, or are those things just wandering around in the Utopian future?

There's even a Hot Wheels version of the Mead-designed Sentinel 400! Who knew?

Anyway, I suggest getting really close to your monitor and staring into these images until you believe you're actually living in there. Enjoy.

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This Is What A Great '60s Futurist Thought The Present Would Look Like

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Futurist Manifesto
This Article Futurist Manifesto is composed of Creative Common Content. The Original Article can be location at WikiPedia.org. The Futurist Manifesto written...

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RELOJ CASIO FUTURIST MOD A-220 MODULO 1922 ALARMA VIBRATORIA
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Topics: futurist, sohail inayatullah

SPEAK to Sohail Inayatullah for 46 minutes, and don't be alarmed, firstly, if your head hurts.

Also, try not to be surprised by the impressive list of people and organisations he has worked with, a sort of name-dropping on humble steroids.

The Singapore Prime Minister's office, Interpol, Australian Federal Police, BUPA, Victorian Museum, Boeing, Queensland Libraries, Victoria Health, Islamic scientists in Pakistan, Gold Coast council, the Hawaii State Judiciary, a "large cola company" and the Dubai Ministry.

Who is he?

Born in Pakistan, Sohail moved countries every two years due to his parents' work, living in Geneva, Malaysia, New York, Hawaii and Brisbane. He moved to Mooloolaba in 1999, lured by beachy promises from a QUT academic who heard him deliver a speech in Finland.

He has a PhD in political science and macro history, the study of big patterns of change going back thousands of years. He is an adjunct professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation and part of the International Advisory Council of the World Future Society.

Aged 55, he has two children, a daughter in Year 12 at Mountain Creek and a son studying linguistics in Barcelona. He became a vegetarian in 1975. He travels overseas delivering speeches four months of the year, and is home in Mooloolaba for the remaining eight months.

What does he do?

It can be hard to get your head around, but the question probably should be: what doesn't he do? He travels the world running foresight workshops. He says his job is not to predict but to "help with scenarios" to create a preferred future.

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Futurist asks the right questions

Quixey

Tomer Kagan, cofounder, Quixey

He's a board member of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and works with the National Science Foundation's futurist project.

His vision is that everything in our lives will be powered by software, even things like personalized food and traveling hospitals, and people will interact with the world through mobile devices.

But before you can use all of these apps, you have to find them, hence Quixey makes an app discovery search engine. It currently powers about 100 million searches a month and is used by companies like Microsoft, Sprint, and Ask.com.

His work as futurist is proving to be a profitable edge for his company. On Thursday, Quixey announced that it had landed a huge, $50 million round of funding lead by the Alibaba Group.

Alibaba is the "Amazon" of China, the largest Internet ecommerce site in that country. Google chairman Eric Schmidt's fund Innovation Endeavors also contributed (it had previously invested in Quixey). So did Atlantic Bridge, Translink Capital, US Venture Partners, and Chinese VC WI Harper.

Quickey has raised $74.2 million to date. We caught up with Kagen to ask him about his company.

Business Insider: Did your work as a futurist help him you nab this funding?

Tomer Kagan: When we're talking to investors we obviously talk to them about the future plans for Quixey and how we see the market 5, 10 and 20 years down the line. Alibaba and Quixey share the idea of thinking very long-term.

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This 'Futurist' Just Grabbed $50 Million In Funding For His App Search Engine

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Aleksandr Shklyaruk #39;Klucis and the Materialisation of a Futurist Idea #39;
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