The world is being Turned on iTs head as change occurs aT a pace greaTer Than aT any oTher period in human hisTory. lexus finds ouT whaT’s around The corner wiTh The help of some leading fuTurisTs.

WELCOME TO Tomorrowland

words chris sheedy | iLLUsTrATioN scoTT chambers

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and Watson, are the ageing population and

the global financial climate. “Regarding the

corporate world there has been a major shift

towards seriousness,” Watson says.

“People are looking smart at work, wearing

ties and having conservative haircuts because

they don’t want to lose their jobs. And a

funny current trend is that people who

previously had silly job titles are changing

back to serious ones. I know a woman who

was known as ‘Catalyst For Magic’. She has

now changed her title to ‘IT Manager’.

“The silliness has vanished and there’s a

shift back to basics.”

fashionOne major change in the world of fashion,

Walsh says, is wearable computing. “In Tokyo

I met with the head interaction designer

at Sony’s advanced research labs. He has

crammed a computer into a Bluetooth

headset and created a gesture-based

interaction model. By gesturing you can

initiate a phone call, for instance, or it will

project onto your palm the control panel of

an MP3 device so you can select music. This

actually works now. So a computer becomes

something we put on in the morning.”

There’s also a huge shift away from

mass-produced labels and towards

environmentally-conscious quality garments,

Watson says. Buyers more than ever will want

to know where the garment is from and how

it was made to ensure they’re buying from

a worthy brand. “People are beginning to

compare social, environmental and ethical

values of a brand in the same way they

compare price and quality,” he says.

enVironmenTAs we begin to worry about other things,

such as paying bills, we become less

environmentally aware, Watson says. Sales

of organic products in the UK, for instance,

“THe FUTURe IS AlReAdy HeRe, yOU

just have to know where to look,” the futurists

say. They tell stories of the use of technology

in cities such as Tokyo and Seoul, of transport

choices in cities such as Amsterdam and

Copenhagen and of balances of power

shifting from the USA to China.

But what exactly does it all mean for us, for

the individuals who will be affected by the

rapid and rampant change that we’re seeing

around us on a daily basis. What type of

world will our children be living in?

Mike Walsh, CeO of innovation

research agency Tomorrow and author of

Futuretainment, and futurist Richard Watson,

author of Future files: A history of the next 50 years, believe everything in our brave new

world will revolve around networks.

“The future is all about connectivity,” Walsh

explains. “When people are connected you

get feedback loops of behaviour. A good

example is what happens in the world of

ants. An ant individually is quite stupid,

but collectively ants can do amazing things

and that’s because their behaviour is linked

through pheromone trails etc, meaning they

are connected. The same thing is happening

with human behaviour thanks to the internet

and other communication tools. We’re now

so linked we have built a matrix of knowledge

which collectively makes everything work

more efficiently.”

Outside of increased connectivity, the

other great catalysts of change, say Walsh

have dropped 25 per cent in the last 12

months. But concern for the environment

will never go away.

“Over the next few decades we’ll start

running out of minerals and materials

quite rapidly,” Watson says. “Purchasing of

resources will become strategic with some

countries refusing to sell them, preferring

to keep them to themselves. As soon as

China becomes the biggest economy in

the world, around 2025, the US will likely

become quite protectionist.”

TechnologyFacebook-type networks will be applied to

virtually everything, Walsh says. For instance,

a similar networking idea will be applied to

the motorway over the next five years as our

cars become information collectors that feed

back to the internet.

Our cars will capture content as they drive,

providing traffic information, information

about the route we take most often, road and

weather conditions, average speeds and data

on the places we go the most. essentially our

cars will become nodes on the internet.

“The next generation of GPS will integrate

with the web,” he explains. “It won’t just

show you where to go but will answer the

question ‘where should I go’? The answer

will come from recommendations from

your network. Think of Amazon – the

best recommendations come from people

of similar taste to you. Apply that idea to

learning from your network about where

the best restaurant is that’s closest to your

current location.”

moToringSpeaking of cars, Walsh says car designers are

building more interactive visual platforms.

For instance, in order to make people change

driving habits some prototype cars have been

built with a visual of a vine on the screen

inside the car.

waTson says The lexus model of car producTion is The model of The fuTure in ThaT iT heaVily inVolVes The uTilisaTion of hybrid moTors.

When the car is driven in a way that is

not aggressive the vine grows, but drive in a

petrol-consuming way and it starts to shrivel.

“It’s a big learning from the internet,” he says.

“If you provide very simple incentives you

can shift behaviour.”

Watson says the lexus model of car

production is the model of the future in that

it heavily involves the utilisation of hybrid

motors. “Petrol will still be around in 25 years

but there will also be a rise of the plug-in

vehicle, the car that uses electricity.”

There will also be a renaissance of public

transport and of walking and cycling as cities

become more crowded, Watson says. The

models he looks to for future reference are

Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

reTailShop owners beware, a new breed of

consumer is on the way and they’re armed

with mobile phones! doesn’t sound too scary?

Consider this – there is now an application

in the USA called Shop Savvy which allows a

shopper to hold their mobile phone camera

over the barcode of a product. The phone

will then tell them if that product is available

cheaper anywhere within a 15-minute walk.

“Another interesting development is the

rise of RFId (radio frequency identification)

chips embedded in products,” Walsh says.

“In Tokyo you can choose a lipstick, put it

on a special counter in front of a mirror and

it’ll show you exactly what that lipstick will

look like on you. The RFId is essentially a

chip that broadcasts information about the

product. It also allows shop staff to do a

stocktake by simply walking down an aisle

with a receiver.”

enTerTainmenTForget about buying a television. What

you’ll instead be bringing home from the

entertainment store is a large touch screen

that will provide not only television but also

video on demand, internet, music, home

video, photo albums and more – all of the

multimedia within the typical home.

“This will have a huge impact for brands

thinking about advertising,” Walsh says.

“Television used to have the monopoly on

bringing moving pictures into the household,

but no more.”

With infinite content available on demand

the most difficult question is not how you get

to see it but rather knowing what you want

to see, Walsh says. “When we were growing

up we had a paper-based TV guide. The new

generation get all their recommendations

from people whose tastes they trust, from

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their social network.” Interestingly, Watson

says that as the world becomes more digitised,

live performance will actually become more

popular. “That live, shared experience of

being in a large area with hundreds of others

will not go away and in fact will become more

important,” he says. “The more life becomes

virtual the more people want to slow it down

and get attracted to the physical.”

public spacesTime and space – uncluttered, quiet space

– will become a luxury, Watson says. Public

spaces, including squares and parks will

become more commercialised with flat

screens on or in walls and even narrow beams

of sound containing audible advertisements

targeting people on a particular footpath,

for instance. look at the way bus stops have

developed for a guide to how other public

spaces might look in the future, he says.

But Walsh believes there will be an upside to

the digitisation of cities. “Cities will become

digital platforms. Seoul is a great example; it

has ubiquitous high-speed mobile broadband

so the entire city becomes clickable. There is

a great application for iPhones where you can

put your iPhone camera over any object in

the city and leave a little comment on it.

“Anyone else who comes to the same

place and holds up their iPhone will see

the comment you left there. It’s applying to

reality everything we’ve learnt from the web.”

homesAs overcrowding of cities increases homes

will change in two distinct ways, our experts

say. The security measures that we use to

protect our homes will become more high-

tech, including face recognition technology

that will turn on lights and call the police

when, for instance, a stranger enters the

garden at night.

The other change will be a polarisation

between wired homes and homes that are

seen as refuges from a wired world. “Some

people will want to unplug and have their

home as a sanctuary,” Watson says. “These

people will have a bit of technology but not

much. Then you’ll have the other extreme, the

people who have a completely wired home.

Their home will know when they are close by

and will start doing things for them – put the

heating on or run a bath etc.”

OUR FUTURISTS BOTH AGRee THAT In

almost every field the future is already here

in one form or another. Whether it’s hybrid

engines, digital cities, wearable computing

or social networks, the patterns have already

been developed.

All that remains now is to find out how

each of us as individuals will be influenced

by the changes.

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