“The future whispers, it doesn’t shout”
| brunocm, on June 8th, 2009
I read a quote on Paul Saffo’s homepage that resonated with me so I wanted to share – it’s from 1994:
“The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those that control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.” (Wired 1994)
Paul is a prominent forecaster and professor at Stanford. I was recently introduced to his ideas on FORA.tv, a great site for ideas (like TED) and worth a visit. You can see his video here.
Some topics and more quotes from his interview at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco are mentioned below just to whet your appetite for the 56 minute video. Some are direct quotes by Paul, some just ideas discussed, in no particular order. Be sure not to judge before seeing these in context! Be sure to listen to the Q&A session too…
1) “All revolutions have to start with the individual”
2) “Privacy – get over it”
3) most interesting things look like an “S” curve (Moore’s Law)
4) there is a shift toward city-states (away from nation-states)
5) Applied Biology will bring forth the next ‘revolution’. He provides a great quick history of relevant moments between science and industry.
6) “In an uncertain environment it’s better to move fast than to manage well”
7) Clean-tech is a real trend. He provides it in the context of other evolutions of Silicon Valley. He voices concern about the lag in response time of the social movement, will public opinion change fast enough?…He thinks it’ll be close but we’ll make it … (me: phew!)
8. Current photovoltaic startups CA have close ties to the German market.
9) Solar panels take as much energy to make as they provide in their lifetime – so currently they are only energy neutral (me: not to mention cost prohibitive and impractical to the end user, argh)
10) On the US reaction to 9/11: “The US responds really well to clear threats or clear opportunities. We do really badly with ambiguity, we’re a young culture.”
11) “We have to get humans out of the drivers seat”.
12) Per Sebastian Thrun of the AI lab at Stanford, by 2030 50% of all vehicle miles driven in this country will be driven by robots.
13) “Cash – use it while you can.” US Goverment is working on embedding RFID chips in currency.
14) “Some of the corporations will literally be armies”
15) “The way to find your way forward these days is to embrace uncertainty…and not try to arbitrarily eliminate uncertainty”
