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These are some trends I have culled and then 'deducted' from my research over the past 3 months - if you have any better information or see errors here, please comment or ping me via Twitter. This certainly bodes well for anyone in the digital content ecosystem - we just need to get 'old' to 'new' now ;)
Just a quick brain-dump, this time in swf / flash format (just open in any browser, hit space bar for next animation).
Enjoy. Share. And so on. And on. Download Gerd Leonhard Thoughts on 21st Century Content Economy
Read this:::: Davos09: A crisis and failure of leadership « BuzzMachine. Jeff offers some real nuggets here, and so does Richard Edelman with his 10th Trust Barometer (video below, sorry for the bad sound... it's UGC I guess)
Image via WikipediaIn my work on the future of media, technology and content I often run across related areas such as tourism, banking, energy and transportation; and I have recently ventured into some of those sectors, as well (in particular, tourism - more on that, soon).
So here is a short burst I want to share from the world of transportation: I think the Cars of the Future will become more like Social Objects. Of course, this will vary drastically from country to country (and cultures) but I think that an increasingly large percentage of cars will cease to be owned, maintained, paid and used by one party only. Instead, groups of people will have fractional ownership (as the brilliant Kevin Kelly calls it), i.e. use, share or access the car when and where they need it, and thereby using motor vehicles much more efficiently.
This will be true for plain-old functional cars ('just get me from A to B') as well as for fun, sports and other special-purpose cars. The obvious advantage of enormous cost and energy savings will make this concept pretty much irresistible - the only thing that keeps most of us from doing this now, already, is our reliance on the car as a status symbol and (indeed) as some weird guarantor of 'personal freedom' (yes...I am guilty, too). I believe that this will turn around within the next 3-5 years: if you DO own a car, just for yourself and your own enjoyment, people may well consider you hopelessly old-fashioned; and not much admiration will come your way any longer.
I also reckon that within the next 2-3 years many Europeans will not really enjoy individual driving that much any more, with lower and lower speed limits becoming a constant headache, mega-traffic jams and congestion charges and significantly increased chances of delays. This will lead to a much increased demand for high-quality public and semi-public (i.e. first and luxury class) transportation, which will be even further boosted by the fact that people will of course be fully connected anywhere and anytime they travel - and since they won't be busy driving they can take full advantage of this.
We will see steep increases in car-sharing services of all kinds (e.g. Zipcar in the U.S.), and the concept of self-driving electric cars will probably become a reality much sooner than we think - just click the icon on your mobile and the next available car will show up on your doorstep; hop-in and be driven to your destination without lifting a finger.
Driving yourself will increasingly become an exception rather than the default. Talk about change: 100s of Billions of $$, and Trillions of brain-cycles freed up. Think about what we can do with all that time we used to spend on driving. Tele-learning, networking, co-creation, crowdsourcing... here we come!
Image via Wikipedia
Jeff Jarvis is a leading thinker as far as the future of media is concerned; I have been reading his blog and his books for a few years already, and I can guarantee you: he's inspiration pure! So, I just ordered his new book "What would Google do" and really look forward to reading it - the topic is a perfect theme for anyone looking at future trends, obviously. Here is a short video with Jeff where he talks about the lessons we can learn from Google ("make mistakes and make them well")- check it out.
Image via WikipediaThis is a good read: Is music's future on the Isle of Man? - International Herald Tribune.... not just because they quote me (that's a good start, though;) but also because it's a pretty summary of the issues. I paraphrase:
"The island, a rainy outpost in the Irish Sea, is promoting an offbeat remedy for digital piracy, which the record companies blame for billions of dollars in lost sales. Instead of fighting file-sharing, the government wants to embrace it - and it is trying to enlist a skeptical music industry in support....Under a proposal announced this month, the 80,000 people who live on the Isle of Man would be able to download unlimited amounts of music - perhaps even from notorious peer-to-peer pirate sites. To make this possible, broadband subscribers would have to pay a nominal fee of as little as £1, or $1.37, a month to their Internet service providers"
"A lot of people in the business are concerned with how much money they are losing, but not with how much money they could make," Berry said. Under his proposal, the money collected by the Internet providers would be sent to a special agency that would distribute the proceeds to the copyright owners, including the record labels and music publishers. They would receive payments based on how often their music was downloaded or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in many countries when it is performed live or on the radio. The Isle of Man didn't invent the idea. The concept of a so-called blanket license to distribute music in digital form has been discussed since the days when Napster, before its rebirth as a legal service, thumbed its nose at the music industry"
"While the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major labels in the United States, has backed away from a nearly six-year campaign of litigation against individual file-sharers, the music companies' continuing effort to battle piracy in other ways dismays some analysts. "They spend 90 percent of their time trying to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10 percent of their time trying to make it possible," said Gerd Leonhard, author of "The Future of Music."
Read it and spread the word using the tools below;)
This is the mission for the content industries: the creation of new attention-based revenue streams
Joi is a great speaker and this presentation from this year's LeWeb conference in Paris is well worth watching (27 mins), particularly his comments on Copyright
Read: The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World - WSJ.com.
Their conclusions (hey... sounds familiar;): Don't control, let it go. Embrace experimentation. Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell. Listen to -- and join -- the conversation outside your site. Give consumers a reason to participate. Don't just talk at consumers -- work with them throughout the marketing process.
Related:
Image by gleonhard via Flickr
Everyone that follows my work knows what my message to the music industry has been, for the past 10 years: Change. Embrace technology and empower the User. Make the Artists Partners. Give Permission. Collaborate. Innovate constantly. Get out of your own way. Compensation not Control.
Until a few years ago, to talk about transparency, equality and collaboration was considered treason and people looked at me with deep pity when I suggested a radio-like license for music on the Net. Today, the concept of blanket licensing music on the Net (no, not a tax, but a strong, open ecosystem that generates many new revenue streams) has become a solid contender for a new - and much larger - music ecosystem that is being put together as we speak.
For the last 8 years, trying to control digital music (DRM, CD protection, broadcast flags etc) has brought the music industry a fundamental and detrimental crisis, war (on file-sharers), value destruction, squashed innovations, and lost trust on all sides - artists, consumers, telecoms and brands! Well done, musical Bushs.
WHEN will the industry switch horses like America switched from Bush to Obama, from destruction to innovation, from money-just-for-us to money-for-all, from control to collaboration, from prejudice to openness, from broadcast to conversation...? Isn't it time that we leave those professional lobbyists and purveyors of costly snake-oils behind, that we hand the wheel to the new guys, the ones that understand what music & a life around music is really like, outside of their bubble and above and beyond their severely limited assumptions? Isn't time for the lesser-privileged minorities (such as the actual creators, and such as those that are not from the so-called Western world) to step in and catalyze those changes? Where is the Obama for the music industry?
Here in Cannes, France, at the annual MIDEM music industry conference, we have once again debated and contemplated (and wined and dined and smoked) for the last 5 days. We have noticed some 15-20% less attendance, empty restaurants and much-less-than-usual action in the exhibition halls - the music industry as we knew it is OVER. And good riddance. The organizers tried hard (and did well!) but you have to wonder: what are you (the industry) waiting for? Is it not time to VOTE FOR SERIOUS CHANGE in the music industry, and make that switch to an open, collaborative and mutually fruitful ecosystem? Like... now?
Your thoughts? Obama Player Link
Image by gleonhard via Flickr
I made a bit of noise I guess (first time ever;) :
Other noise (good but Gerd-less;(
Isle of Man proposes file-sharing fee
You may have noticed this already but I am publishing more and more stuff via Twitter rather than writing constant blog posts with short content. Some people have commented that they don't want to join Twitter just to read these pings but that still want to read my updates, so... if this is you, just subscribe to my Twitter RSS feed and get all my pings in your Google or other RSS reader. Knowledge is power (well... with action that is, really!). You can also track my 'mind-stream' via my so-called Content20.net Tumblr site (or its own feed, too)
Dopplr rocks! The free service allows you to publish and share your travels with others, get input from people who have also been there (hotels, restaurants etc) and maybe meet with people in your network that are also be close-by. I have been using it for some time now (albeit not nearly enough) and it is become very valuable, indeed. I have met some very nice people this way, while reconnecting with others that are in my network but have been 'dormant'.
So today, the Dopplr people topped it all by sending me a free report with some very juicy morsels of information about my travel habits and history (see some excerpts below). These numbers are even scarier than I thought since I did not even share all trips with Dopplr, during 2008, but still - great intel to have. Keep it up, guys!
David Smith is the CEO of the Global Futures Forum, and I was delighted to be able to have him join me at the MidemNet Future Scenarios event here in Cannes, France, along with the brilliant and snappy Mark "Herdmeister" Earls (will add his slides here, shortly, too). David did a great job presenting the key future trends to the MIDEM audience - here is the PDF! Enjoy.
Download David Smith - www.thegff.com - MidemNet 2009
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