What may happen in the next hundred years (John Elfreth Watkins amusing predictions from 100 years ago)

In 1900, an American civil engineer called John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000.... read more via the BBC. I just ran across this image of Watkins' predictions from 1900, and thought they would make a very good 2013 kick-off / happy new year post.

Some of my favs:

• Hot and cold air from spigots
• Ready-cooked meals will be bought
• Automobiles will be cheaper than horses
• Areal war-ships

Found via buzzfeed   How res download

New video: What makes us successful: Gerd Leonhard at TEDxCollegeBeauSoleil

Published on Dec 6, 2012, thanks to TedXBeausoleil:  "Gerd is a Futurist and the CEO of The Futures Agency, author of 5 books, former musician and a globe-trotting keynote speaker on the creative industries, media and communications, social technologies, as well as on energy, the environment and green business. Gerd is currently focussing on sustainable future scenarios and what has been called 'sustainable economics', including the idea of adapting Internet and networked-society principles to the world's urgent climate and environment issues. He is based in Basel / Switzerland; his new book 'From Ego to Eco' will be published in 2013"  

Download the slides here

 

New video: the future of the Internet, Data, Privacy and Information (Online Information Conference 2012 Keynote by Futurist Gerd Leonhard)

Just got this new video - it was a good talk, imho,  even if the camera angle is kind of odd... so check it out.  Thanks to Incisive Media for making this available; more details on the conference are available here 

My topic: "Everybody is talking about 'data is the new oil' aka big-data. SoLoMo (social local mobile) is the battle cry of the day. Human-machine interfaces are rapidly evolving and may quickly become commonplace (think Google Glasses, MSFT Kinect), artificial intelligence is the geek-phrase-of-the-day, and Kurzweil says the singularity is near/here. So how will our world really change in the next 5 years, i.e. the way we communicate, get information, create, buy and sell, travel, live and learn? What are the biggest threats and the hottest opportunities - not just in financial terms, but also in societal and human terms...?"    Here is the PDF with my slides.

A conversation with fellow Futurist Anton Musgrave (audio)

Anton Musgrave is a fellow futurist from South Africa and co-founder of Future World, and a great chap to talk to. This conversation is about what futurists do and what we don't do:)  Check it out.  

 

Anton Musgrave and Gerd Leonhard Futurists