Towards the end of 2012 I was involved in a project at The Marketing Store that attempted to make some predictions about the future of retail. As part of that I created a “Timeline of the Future” containing trends and events that I frankly made up, leading up to 2039. The dev team created a nifty interactive version of it but I can’t find it anywhere.

Some of this stuff will definitely happen. Some of it is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I thought it might be worth preserving here just in case any of it comes true. If it does, I’m quite happy to do breakfast TV interviews as long as I don’t have to get up too early and I can wear my own cloak.

Feel free to suggest additions/amendments in the comments.

2010 to 2019
Huge space storm wreaks havoc

(06/2013 – 09/2013) Scientists believe … Read More »

[This article first appeared on the Guardian Media Network - March 2013]

We live inside networks

Human beings live inside networks. We always have and we always will. At a fundamental level these are genetic networks – we are physically connected to our parents and influenced by the biology we inherited. We lived inside extended social networks before we invented fire. At a broader scale, we live inside ecological networks or ecosystems – biological communities of interacting organisms and their physical environment: complex webs passing energy between decomposing matter, soil, plants, herbivores, primary and secondary predators and back again.

Humans are ecosystems in their own right. The number of bacteria living within the body of the average healthy adult human is estimated to outnumber human cells 10 to 1.

Now we also live inside digital networks too. Networks of networks, even. The internet. Some of these … Read More »

[This article first appeared in Contagious Magazine - Feb 2013]

Retail and digital integration

When thinking about the integration of retail and digital it’s worth noting that they already are. Integrated, that is. People are integrating their retail and digital experiences, often in an ad-hoc manner, with the tools they have available. Software developers are providing numerous tools that help this happen. Retailers are typically not leading the integration.

As a society we’ve had almost a decade where we’ve lived with ecommerce. You could order a delivery from Pizza Hut online in 1994. That was back in the good old 20th Century. Back when people talked about the Information Superhighway and Apple released their newfangled PowerPC. Amazon arrived in 1995 and now it’s hard to imagine a time where we couldn’t buy online. There’s a whole generation that’s known nothing else.

Reasonable expectations

After a … Read More »

NASA landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars this morning

I’ve been enjoying Ben Hammersley‘s book “64 things you need to know now for then: how to face the digital future without fear”. You can find it on Amazon here.

It nicely demystifies the sometimes complex ingredients of the emerging future and shows their connections. It’s all done in a very accessible style so you don’t need a degree in political science, economics or computer science (or anything for that matter) to start to appreciate how the future is being influenced by these memes.